Keeper of the Clown Bell

Something is missing I didn't watch any of the 9/11 commemorative speeches or participate in the remembrance of the terror attack that occurred 20 years ago today. I have changed so much from that day to this as to make this tragic event a portal bringing me face to face with an enthusiastic patriotic sap who swallowed the official narrative of events hook, line and sinker - I can hardly stand to look at him. He was sitting in his office cube in Mid-town Manhattan having just dropped his 5 year old daughter off for her first day at school. A young staffer ran into the room shouting about a plane flying into the World Trade Center and they all waved him away saying "get back to work kid, it's just a plane" thinking that it must have been a single engine Cessna that clipped a sky scraper. About 15 minutes later the kid came sprinting back into the room yelling, "a second plane had hit the towers" and there was a long pause in that busy hive of activity. He wat

  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