Keeper of the Clown Bell

  MAGA I have a soft spot for overly ambitious works of art that absolutely fail if measured by conventional standards of aesthetics and good taste but must be admired - worshipped in a way - for their sheer audacity and scope. The 1970's (especially the first half of that decade) is a treasure trove of these spectacular crashes which include John Boorman's " Zardoz " (1974), " Tales from Topographic Oceans " by Yes (1973), " Einstein on the Beach " by Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson (1975/76), Robert Pirsig's " Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance " (1974), " Mockingbird Wish Me Luck " by Charles Bukowski (1972),  Richard Nixon's Resignation  (1974) and  Evel Knievel's Snake River Canyon Jump  (1974). Evel Knievel was a boyhood American hero of mine and  his death defying AMC Harley-Davidson motorized leaps  over cars, trucks, water fountains and many other things are legendary but strapping himself inside a gi

50 years ago Woody Allen made a movie titled “ Sleeper ” which was pretty funny and managed to cram  profound observations about human nature and revolution into a slapstick dixieland dystopia. I’m not going to call the film prescient or visionary because I believe almost all science-fiction is simply a reflection of the time it is created and NOT the dates chronicled in the book or movie (in this case, the year 2173). The formulation goes something like this :  1948 was 1984, 1984 was Neuromancer, 1999 was the Matrix, etc*. so that makes Sleeper the Nixon Presidency. About 2/3 of the way through the film we learn that "The Leader" has been successfully blown up in a terrorist attack 10 months ago and the nation has been flying blind for the better part of a year.  We the People are blissfully unaware of this crisis and simply live as "normal" eating at McDonald's, having our robots do our work and taking a well deserved break in the  orgasmatron. The Aries Proj

Far be it for me to criticize the US war effort in Afghanistan because I, having been an eye witness to BOTH attacks on the World Trade Center in NYC, was all gung-ho to send our boys (and girls) into the Hindu Kush and kick some Taliban supported al-Qaeda ass in the autumn of 2001. Call me an impulsive warmonger or whatever but I knew people who got trapped in those flaming towers downtown and I wanted my payback in buckets of blood. In fact, two nights before the World Trade Center attack I was seated for dinner next to a very nice woman who subsequently perished in the terror strike. She burned alive while making trades for Cantor Fitzgerald and I've remembered the lightheartedness of our conversation on that innocent and optimistic night with a sickening sense of nostalgic foreboding many times over the past 20 years. To put my mood at the time in some kind of context I should point out that I was an early middle-aged husband and father of two enjoying the NYC renaissance under

Smells (D)irty Back in the Bush 41 years I had a female friend (easy on the eyes) who worked the Senate floor managing the stagecraft and overseeing teenage Pages who fetch glasses of milk for the senior citizens who occupy the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. How shall I say this? I’d like to tell a tale without incriminating the young lady who imparted the juicy anecdote that kicks off the narrative of this blog post. She told me her story in confidence and, as far as I know, I’m the only person other than her and the US Senator who stuck his tongue down her throat in room off the Senate floor to know about it. Oh well, fuck it, it happened a long time ago and snoops will have to do some serious digging to connect all the dots. She was the daughter of some big time industrialist who, I guess, thought he was doing his daughter a solid and called in a favor to get her thrown into the vipers pit of the United States Senate. Thanks Dad! In those days (1988-1992), I was a young buck lo

There was a time, back in the spring of this year, when friends and acquaintances (and sometimes perfect strangers) would ask me if I’d had the COVID-19 vaccine and I’d scoff “fuck no” while staring them down as they made arguments in favor of the jab. I grew tired of listening to their twisted “logic” and judgmental moralizing so now I’ve formulated a new, more nuanced response to these prying inquiries and confidently say “yes, I’ve been faxinated .” I wait a moment exchanging smiles and eye contact before poking back, “now, can I ask you a question? Do you think I would lie about getting the vaccine?” Oh, I feel the hate flow through them. Not immediately, no, it takes time for my question to sink in to their programmed hive mind but after a few seconds the fact that I feel no guilt or remorse (and I mean not even a little) about telling a bald faced lie about my vaccine status to these NPC busybodies sets off a thermonuclear mind bomb in their head. It’s hilarious and these Jo(((k)

One of the many great things about being an American is having a shot at adding your name to the short list of heroes and villains that have clawed their way to the top of the social order and get immortalized in bronze or marble effigy that is shat on by flying rats and spat upon by filthy vagrants ( and southern ladies ) long past your mortal expiration date. Top of that list of quasi-eternals is George Washington who is not only the  Father Of Our Country  but also one of the greatest men in world history and will be studied and remembered for millennia as a person of excellence. The glorious truth is that Washington is so singularly outstanding and his accomplishments so unique that there exists a wide gulf between him and all the conventional "also rans" who incorrectly get equated with him - Founding Fathers Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, etc or POTUS's Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, etc or Moral Leaders like Colonial Evangelicals, American Progressives and Ci