Variations on a Birthday Wish

Today, March 18, I turn 75. That’s three-quarters of a century, an occasion to be marked with something out of the ordinary.

One idea came to me last Friday, the 13th of all dates. Can’t recall any source of inspiration, though I did model it after the signs that line the highway approaching Wall Drug in what South Dakotans call “West River.” And I fashioned it a bit on “The News from Lake Wobegon” from A Prairie Home Companion with a common theme and a recurring phrase in the first five entries–the sixth being more akin to reaching the destination, a coffee and pastry shop in Newburyport at the Mouth of New England’s Merrimack River in lieu of a tourist trap posing as a drug store on the Plains somewhere between the Missouri River and the Black Hills.

Since then, I have posted one each day on social media. Expecting and aiming for a lot of laughs, the number of likes and loves and cares has taken me by surprise. But I laughed out loud when the second entry drew a comment from a friend telling me that I “may be onto a new podcast theme here.” If so, should I call it A Coastal Home Companion or Island Caffeine?

At any rate, I add that preface to explain the repetition you’ll encounter reading them all at once, hoping you’ll allow for it. I tried to lessen the pain of same by changing the phrases and words used, but how many ways are there to say 75 except to put the 7 before the 5? I suppose I might have used LXXV, but the letters remind me of sizes of clothing that I see on the tabs inside collars and waistlines, way too depressing for birthday requests:

March 13: — As in, Friday the… :

Word has reached me that, for my birthday this coming Wednesday, my renfaire friends in Rhode Island and along Massachusetts’ South Coast are pitching in to buy me a brand new Maserati Quattroporte. I’m deeply moved, but with a grandparent’s urgent obligation to this planet’s dubious future, I ask that any money that might be spent on me be given, instead, to the campaigns of candidates for the US Senate and House who have a viable chance of unseating a Republican. Thank you dearly, but please send your money to Brown in Ohio, Talarico in Texas, and others who might rid Congress of a Republican once their own state primaries are past. There’s also Ossoff in Georgia who needs to keep his seat out of the Republican column.

Trust me. As I turn a doddering 75, my Nissan Versa is an automotively young 76K, and it serves me well. I’ll make do.

March 14 — Pie Day:

Now I hear that my Dakota friends, from the ones still in the territory to the diaspora that spreads from Lake Michigan to the Salish Sea, are chipping in to buy me a $10K gift certificate on Amtrak for my birthday this coming Wednesday. Much appreciated, but times like these call for sacrifice, and I ask that the $10K go instead to US Senate or House candidates who have a real chance of ridding Congress of a Republican. There are House elections everywhere. Find the one nearest you that is close in the polls, and whatever you’d have spent on me, spend on the Democratic or Independent or Green, or Farm-Labor, or Yippie candidate who has a reasonable chance.

Trust me. I’ve been to enough places in my 75 years, and I am now quite content with my annual weekend getaways in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In January. January. New Bedford. New Bedford in January.

March 15 — The Ides:

Rumor has it that my Salem friends, including a few as far flung as Florida and Oregon, are pooling money to buy me an all-expense paid month-long vacation in Reggio di Calabria on Italy’s Mediterranean coast for my 75th birthday on Wednesday. Ah, my mom’s ancestral homelands I’d love to see! But, for the sake of our kids and grandkids–any greatgrandkids yet?–please spend the money instead to help elect US Senate and House candidates who have a chance of winning what are now Republican seats or who need help defending themselves against Republican challengers.

Trust me. I live on Plum Island, so I see enough salt water. Then again, if you persist, you might want to talk to readers of the Newburyport paper who have offered me one-way tickets to go far away.

March 16 — Madison’s Birthday:

Officials in Newburyport City Hall are planning to surprise me for my birthday on Wednesday with a gift certificate from Park Lunch according to the mole who last year leaked to me the Confidential Report on the Library Investigation. Quite generous, too. Could keep me in fried clams and onion rings every day all the way to Mayday, even if they are upwards of $40 per plate. Mayday, indeed, but I’d lose my appetite thinking of how the total of those tabs might flip one Republican seat in the Congress if it went, instead, to a candidate with a chance of beating a Republican.

Trust me. At 75, I don’t need any more fried food than the occasional salmon I’ll sizzle this summer. But if any councilor, clerk, or character in the executive branch wants to spring for a falafel or gyros wrap over at Port City Sandwich Co., sure, I’m there.

March 17 — St. Patrick’s:

Through the magic of social media, I hear that my friends from Central Catholic HS Class of ’68 and St. Augustine’s Elementary ’64 have arranged a 20-day group-tour to Ireland, one of my parent’s and most of their parents’ ancestral homeland. For my birthday on Wednesday, each paid a share to include me on the trip. That includes two I’ve known since first grade, 1956-57. Erin go bragh!, as we were taught to say 70 years ago. But in this year that may be make-or-break for those to whom we will be ancestors, I must say Erin go braghless… Sorry, but any money you might spend on me, will be better spent on viable candidates opposing Republicans for the US House and Senate.

Trust me. At 75, I’ve quaffed more Guinness than most people have seen. And by the time you read this, I’ll either be on my way to a St. Patrick’s Day concert playing yet another jig or in my seat tapping my feet and quaffing yet another Guinness.

March 18: — Hangover Day:

Today, March 18, I turn 75. That’s three-quarters of a century, spanning from the appearance of the automatic transmission to the intrusion of the cellphone–or, in other words, the beginning and the end of human devolution. Certainly an occasion to be marked with something out of the ordinary. After sipping coffee with two friends at Cafe Chococoa for about two hours this afternoon, I realized just what that should be:

Sipping coffee in a downtown spot and chatting with anyone wanting to join me for all or part of two hours once a week. Starting next week, from Noon to 2:00 pm every Wednesday, I’ll be at Cafe Chococoa–located in Newburyport’s Tannery–or seated at one of the outdoor tables when weather allows, open to any and all subjects of conversation.

If you need added incentive, Chococoa makes a superb lemon-ginger scone as well as other tempting pastries. As an alternative to their fine coffee, their smoothies are quite good.

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A “selfie” more than three decades before the word was coined: In the darkroom of the St. John Valley Times, Madawaska, Maine, where I learned how to develop photos in February, 1975, just a month before my 24th birthday. Taken by a camera I put on a stand with a timer so that I could shoot my still-23-year-old self.

Ode to a Mar-a-LaGhoul

Maybe it’s my Catholic up-bringing that makes the ever snarling White House Press Secretary so offensive, always wearing a cross suspended from a necklace as if those asking questions were vampires trying to distort truth rather than reveal it.

Maybe I’m just embarrassed that she graduated from the same Catholic high school, albeit 47 years after I did. As consolation, Central Catholic also gave us Jonathan Lemire, the reporter who in 2018 posed the question in Helsinki which led to Trump’s revelation that he found Vladimir Putin more credible than American intelligence sources.

Or maybe the before-and-after photos have made me snap. Why does anyone that young–and, frankly, that naturally attractive–pump up her face to resemble yet another Mar-a-LaGhoul? With Loomer, Noem, Bondi, Guilfoyle and Melania, Team Trump already had five faces filled with more plastic than a landfill.

Unable to discern any credible reason why or how Karoline Leavitt devolved into what she now is, I must doff my cap to her and pay tribute. And what better tribute is there than song? With apologies to Neil Diamond, here it is, set to the tune of “Sweet Caroline,” though it might be more in tune with the title “Song Sung Red”–everybody knows one:

Sour Karoline

Where it began
I can’t begin to know when
But then I heard it growin’ loud
Was it term one?
She may have still been in high school
Hoping to make her family proud

[Pre-Chorus]
Reeee…
…Publican
Striking out
Joining Truuuump, Fooling youuuuuuuu

[Chorus]
Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Lying like you knock on wood (On wood! On wood! On wood!)
I’ve been inclined
To believe lies were not good
But now I

[Verse 2]
Look at ICE
And it don’t seem so certain
That this is still the land of the free
But Karoline’s cross
Shows it’s all holly holy
Home of the brave, we must agree

[Pre-Chorus]
Threaten
Pointing weapons
Shove to the ground
Beat the craaaaaap out of youuuuuuuuuu

[Chorus]
Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Lying like you knock on wood (Onward! Onward! Onward!)
Christian soldiers
Once believed lies were not good
But now it’s yes, yes

[Instrumental Break]

(Segue into National Anthem as played by Jimi Hendrix, then back into chorus)

[Chorus]
Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Lying like you knock on wood (On wood! On wood! On wood!)

Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Christian soldiers march onward (Onward! Onward! Onward!)

[Fade]

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For the original lyrics, click this:

https://genius.com/Neil-diamond-sweet-caroline-lyrics

L2R: 2022 & 2025.
https://nbatitlechase.com/2025/04/02/photo-karoline-leavitt-before-and-after-getting-nose-job-at-plastic-surgeon/

Possible Oscars & a Docujoke

Quite a delightful surprise to see Kate Hudson nominated for the Best Actress Oscar.

I’ve seen very few of her films, but I am relieved to see Song Sung Blue gain at least one nod. The Academy tends to dismiss feel-good features when awarding its statues, and what could be more feel-good than “Sweet Caroline”? But there’s a lot more to Song Sung Blue than Neil Diamond. Listen to the lesser known songs–some tracked for the film’s most intimate scenes–and you’ll find there’s a lot more to Neil Diamond than “Neil Diamond.” Moreover, put Neil Diamond aside, and the film has a lot to say about musicians trying to make a living–in this case two who combined to form a tribute band and a few who joined it.

That may be a second reason I should recuse myself from making picks. I haven’t seen Sinners with its 16 nominations, most ever in the history of the awards. Nor have I seen four others nominated for best film, which makes for half the field of ten. Of the five I have seen, I could make a strong case for both Hamnet and Sentimental Value. Marty Supreme not so much, and Bugonia not at all.

Of the five, One Battle After Another is the one most relevant to 2026, the one with the most urgent message. A comedy so dark and undeniably real that it dares you to laugh, it’s the one I’m most inclined to favor. I would certainly like to hear acceptance speeches from those who made it, but for all I know, the others may be just as willing to speak against America’s current War against the Arts as Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn. Those two and Benicio del Toro all have nominations–DiCaprio and Penn were funny, but del Toro was beyond hilarious.

As for Kate Hudson’s chances, she’s contending with Jessie Buckley in Hamnet and Renata Reinsva in Sentimental Value. I could make strong cases for all three. Buckley has the advantage of being at the center of Hamnet‘s finale, which might make the Academy consider adding an Oscar for Best Single Scene. However, I haven’t seen If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and since I found Bugonia about as watchable as Fox “News,” I’ll neither pick nor predict a winner.

Speaking of the unwatchable, I wonder if it is mere coincidence that the so-called documentary, Melania, is released the very week that Oscar nominations are announced. Reviews make it sound like a worthy rival to Blair Witch Project for the most vacuous, pointless slop ever put on a screen, most all of them as brutal as Karoline Leavitt’s treatment of the White House press corps. Which reminds me that my next project will be a spoof of a Neil Diamond song I’ll rename: “Sour Karoline.” (…Lie! Lie! Lie! Lying never felt so good! So good! So good! So good!)

The predictions of failure at the box office, however, proved wrong, as the MAGA faithful packed cinemas, buying up tickets as willingly as they purchase $400 Trump sneakers, $200 Trump bibles, $99 Trump trading cards, and on and on. Can the MAGA crowd sustain these grosses for a film that the Hollywood Reporter calls “an unabashed, fly-on-the-gilded-wall fawn job”?

From what I’ve gleaned, the Epstein “associate”-turned-First Lady comes off about as warm and charming as her “I don’t care do U?” jacket and her Boris & Natasha hat. Even more damning are the memes proclaiming, “If syphilis was a movie…” or the mock–but very truthful–advertisements proclaiming: “She’s in the pedo-files!” Not only is she in the Epstein files, so too is a photo of Melania director Brett Ratner cozying up with one of Epstein’s trafficked girls. Bet you didn’t know that MAGA prefers movies over government files.

Not to worry, all may not be lost. My friend Kurt Kaletka in his history-rich and linguistically playful blog, “Truth or Better,” proposes that Melania might “have some worth” in the years ahead:

I can see Rocky Horror-type screenings of it, where the boys come dressed in suits and super-long red ties, blond wigs and orange makeup plastered almost entirely on their faces. The girls can show up with makeup and prosthetics to recreate the Mar-a-Lago Face phenomenon. You can go with other Trump White House characters, too! Use ghastly white face paint to copy Stephen Miller’s cadaverous look! Dress up like a Kristi Noem-style buckarette! Or copy the style of your favorite January 6 rioter!*

Kaletka obviously does not work in a cinema. Nor did I when Rocky Horror was released in 1975. But from the time I was hired in 1998, I did hear the Screening Room’s owners still bemoaning the mess they had to clean up every night of its run. After 23 years, they could laugh a bit, but the anger was still there.**

Let my friend make his appeal to the cineplexes with their high-powered cleaning machines. I’d rather watch Kate Hudson. Come to think of it, back in 2000 when still a new face, she had a moment in Dr. T and the Women that is as memorable as any I’ve ever seen. When her ringtone sounds during an exercise class, the annoyed instructor motions for her to leave the room. Hudson’s character holds up phone and announces, “It’s an emergency.” Far from any urgency, she says it as if talking about a napkin falling to the floor.

Yes, a three-word line, but at that moment I realized that cellphones had already turned “emergency” into the biggest one-word joke in the history of language. The Academy may also want to consider adding an Oscar for Best Single Word.

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*For Kurt Kaletka’s entire case for Melania Horror Picture Show, go to:

https://trueorbetter.blogspot.com/

**True story: About 2/3rds into a showing of Rocky Horror in Portland, Maine, some fifty years ago, a projectionist stopped the film to ask the audience to stop throwing things at the screen. Screens are delicate, easily stained, torturous to clean, and quite expensive to replace. He turned up the lights, but before he could get down from the booth and into the hall, the audience simply thought that the film was over. They were getting up, smiling, laughing, and ready to hit the nearby bars. He held his tongue and let them leave, which is exactly what I’d have done.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as “Lightning & Thunder” in *Song Sung Blue*:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30343021/

The Worst & the Darkest

If America’s Reign of Hate began with a TV show, maybe we can end it with one.

Face it: The combination of cruelty and crudeness of The Apprentice made him appealing to enough Americans to elect him president in 2016. And if you think that was a fluke, then you were in a coma when he won again in 2024.

He is Archie Bunker reincarnated, but with Archie’s harmless hard-headedness turned into the merciless humiliation of “You’re fired!” To those soaked in resentment constantly stirred by Fox News, those two words carried a decisive authority that made Hillary (“Stronger Together”) and Michelle (“When they go low…”) sound like wimps.

Moreover, Archie’s incidental racism is now full-blown white supremacy disguised as a law-and-order effort to control cities. To avoid the charge of racism, it is cast as suburban and rural vs. urban. If you’re still amazed that your Republican friends refuse to acknowledge that the Capitol was invaded by a mob on Jan. 6, it’s because the Republican dictionary defines “mob” as “city.”

The foremost unremarked reality of America today is that what we call Reality TV shows have nothing to do with reality, and yet enough of us are so enthralled by them that we have elected to live in one. Unreality is our new reality. George Orwell’s 1984, intended and always before read as a cautionary tale, is now an operator’s manual.

But enough of the problem we all know. To solve it, let’s start the show:

A friend suggests that we “turn The Apprentice upside down. Call it The Secretary. Instead of ending each show with ‘You’re fired,’ this would have the Chairman saying ‘You’re hired!’ to the worst candidate.”

Might take some effort to find a team of people capable of taking stage directions who are as shockingly pompous and/or ridiculous as Pete Hegseth, J.D. Vance, Steve Miller, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, RFK Jr., Karoline Leavitt, Cash Patel, and Pam Bondi. But I like the strategy of holding up a fun-house mirror to a reality already grossly distorted. There has to be some point at which even those who superimpose The Chairman’s face on the American flag can, oh say, see how anti-American they yet wave.

So, too, the title “chairman” suggesting a corporate CEO (with a subliminal echo of Chairman Mao) is more honest than “president.” But I might prefer a title to highlight the thuggish bent of someone who hints at threats of violence and who has rewarded those who have committed violence on his behalf. Call him “The Godfather.”

Also, The Secretary suggests there’s just one. We want a depraved, demented, delusional team worthy of the one now running the country. Our title should be a warped reversal of Pres. John Kennedy’s “Best and Brightest.”

Could be a variety show (remember those?), but of various TV offerings. Start with a game show. Contestants are asked basic questions such as naming the three branches of government. The one coming closest to “Mar-a-Lago, the Westminster Country Club, and Trump Tower in Manhattan” gets the points.

Then a reality segment of an ICE raid. Describe it as lawful, neighborly, and helpful, and you get points. Then a sitcom of Noem answering questions in her latest costume, hat, lip fillers, basketball-hoop ear-rings, and necklace with cross. Describe her as intelligent, coherent, and honest, and Points R U.

Maybe then a weather forecast to let the Marines know the best time to land in Greenland, or the Navy when to surround Cuba, or the Army when to ransack Seattle. Extra points if you can recommend restaurants and nightclubs where our troops can enjoy themselves.

The highlight would be a segment with Miller & Vance wielding charts to show the need for a forever domestic war. Orwell predicted “forever wars” to sustain a police state, but those were with foreign powers. We, as “Oceania” (America), would have only “Eurasia” and “Eastasia” (Russia and China) to choose from, though we could switch either from ally to enemy or vice versa at any time and insist that it had always been that way, that no change ever happened. Alternative facts beget alternative history.

With a forever domestic war, think of all the cities and states our federal government could attack and occupy where our troops would already know the language and be able to read signs to specific targets like grocery stores and elementary schools. Call this segment “Out Orwelling Orwell.”

The contestants would then be asked for the best course of action based on what they’ve seen. Those reluctant to send US troops into US cities would be gone from the show upon return from the last commercial break. And there would be no lack of ads to accommodate all the Republican donors eager for a piece of the action.

Also banished during commercial breaks will be invasion-curious contestants who have qualms about Congress (whatever that was) or the courts. Left on our screens will be those gung-ho to inflict punishment at home and abroad–though they might want to wear masks.

The last segment will be a rendition of the National Anthem as played by a marching band. Points will be determined by who can keep a straight face while singing “land of the free” and “home of the brave.” Upon those who do, The Godfather himself will bestow the blessing: “You’re hired!”

With the point made like that, Americans might ask not how our current Reign of Hate began, but ask what we can do to stop it.

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L-R, US Attorney General Pam Bondi, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem look on as US President Donald Trump speaks to the press before signing an executive order that aims to end cashless bail, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on August 25, 2025. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)
https://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2025/08/25/68acaf5ee4d4d8291a8b459e.html

No Bout Adoubt It

A recent headline in the Boston Globe warns that “New England voters say US is on wrong track.”

In other news, the contest for the “Understatement of the Year Award” is now closed to nominations.

Even if I think it can’t be topped, or bottomed, why close it? After an entire spring season of three blogs & columns per week, almost all of them on national or local issues, I suddenly have no feel for politics. Yes, I’m interested, and I cannot help but care. But what more can be said?

Waste, fraud, and abuse are all in plain sight, nationally and locally, each of them taking turns on roller coasters of corruption and tilt-a-whirls of incompetence. Even the in-our-face parade squeaked through DC to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” a Sixties anti-war song that takes a vicious dig a rich kids who bought deferments to dodge the military draft.

(One wonders, did it take them all of 40 years to realize that “Born in the USA” was not what they thought, or did Bruce Springsteen finally file a cease and desist?)

Bonespur’s humiliation has sent me into retreat. I was already experiencing bouts of schadenfreude* every time I heard or read yet another story of an avid Trump supporter victimized by their guy’s slashing and burning of government services, or by his goon squads’ arrests and deportations of their friends, neighbors, co-workers, employees.

Honestly, I am not proud of this–which is why I refer to them as “bouts”–but I began laughing at these people, some of them in tears, some hugging someone else in tears. At times, I find myself pointing at the screen as if putting my finger right in their face, wishing that we were face to face so that I could laugh right in their face.

Not sure if this would be of use in a self-help program, but I can identify exactly when this started. Remember the hurricane that ripped into the Appalachians and flooded the western reach of North Carolina? Residents were begging for help. Put another way: people who consistently vote for Republicans who deny climate change were asking the rest of us to bail them out of a result of climate change. And, if that wasn’t enough, southern Republicans started claiming that “Democrats control the weather” and that North Carolina was targeted.

Fox News then started howling that it was a Biden plot to seize their land. So not only did many of them not evacuate, but right-wing militias started blocking the roads, not allowing federal relief workers to reach those in need. And sure enough, they started complaining that Biden was doing nothing for them. And look at Bonespur speaking up for them!

Now I could have reacted with the anger and rage that would have produced an indignant column in real time. Instead, I laughed at the self-inflicted idiocy. I imagined myself offering to send a nickel to North Carolina, but they’d have to send me six pennies in change first. Then, I’d send the nickel. COD.

As I say, I’m not at all proud of that, but I can at least say that I never went through with any of it, not even to express it. Until now.

To be fair to myself, it was obvious to anyone paying attention long before the election that the Republican candidate for president was a frontman for Project 2025, and that the Republican Party, which has not offered its own platform in over 30 years, has adopted it as a Catechism. E Pluribus Unum may still be the official motto, but Survival of the Slickest is now the unwritten law of this land.**

Before and after the election, I often referred to veterans and farmers along with the more obvious targets of low-income people, the disabled, the elderly, those in need of medical care, and minorities, as in the cross-hairs of Project 2025. Now I’m horrified to find myself laughing at veterans and farmers breaking down while telling us they have nowhere to turn.

Must say that there was one that I didn’t feel at all bad about. In fact, I’m laughing now while writing about a young woman who serenaded Bonespur with a patriotic song at a campaign rally. Last week one of his goon squads handcuffed and shipped off her boyfriend to some detention camp. I hear she’s now rehearsing a cover of Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You.”

Sorry! That is so unbecoming of me. But this may be another of those 21st Century illnesses that requires and perhaps deserves understanding and, yes, tolerance, so that I may eventually be coaxed back into political commentary.

Perhaps even satire. After all, a subject as ripe as “understatement of the year” deserves full treatment. And by sheer definition, should cover all twelve months.

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*Schadenfreude: A loanword from German, a compound of the nouns Schaden, meaning (damage) and Freude (joy), the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another.

**Survival of the Slickest: A term coined by Martin Luther King to describe the USA in 1968, the year he died, and the year when he warned that America could return to the Dark Ages.

*Taming the Donkey*, EduardoZamacois y Zabala 1868
https://populartimelines.com/timeline/Schadenfreude/full

Twixt Twixt and Twizzlers

My one goal in life has always been to amuse myself.

But I get caught up in causes. Keeps me up so late at night that I don’t know what mornings are. Breakfast for me is at noon.

Night owl that I am, I often tune into sports as a way to decelerate from the heat of what I read and write into the slow cruise of watching games.

On the west coast, Boston teams play late into the night, and most other fans complain. I wish all their games were played there.

Works very well for me. If the game is dull or lopsided, it will lull me to sleep. Not one to live or die on the outcome, I can click it off anytime.

And then there are the ads, oh, the ads, yes, the ads, um, the ads! In recent years, there’s been a constant late-night pitch for drugs to cure this, ease that, remove something unwanted, restore something lost, smooth the skin, soothe an inflammation, stop an infection, enhance memory, strengthen… Well, you know…

Some require prescriptions, in some cases quite expensive, and not entirely covered by insurance. Others are over-the-counter, advertised like another candy bar you might find in a counter twixt Twixt and Twizzlers.

The names are always contrived and mostly in three clashing syllables so they sound like a list of entrees on a menu in a restaurant that serves robots:

Ozempic, Farxiga, Bimzelx, Eliquis, Latuda, Humira, Qunol, Dupixent, Ponvory, Mounjaro, Skyrizi, Biktarvi, Jarvgackey, Zamboni, Bonspuri, Trumbecile, Foxstacy, Magaron, and on and on. If your insurance covers just two syllables, there’s Rinvoq; if you’re a Republican donor and can splurge on four with your fat tax break, have an Iberogast while you laugh at suckers and losers who cannot afford medical care.

With its spectacular dance numbers, Jardiance would be the special served at an AI dinner theatre.

And for fast food, there’s Viagra, Cialis, and Bentcarrot.

Not one of them ever caught my interest. And I purposefully made that point to my doctor before asking for her opinion of the idiotic names. She laughed at the question, but changed the subject:

What about the disclaimers?

Should have expected a doctor to be more alert to possible harm than to comic coating. Knowing that I write for a newspaper, she urged me to heed instead the endless possibilities to which manufacturers admit—all while showing wonderful scenes of hiking, sailing, surfing, dancing, camping, playing games, rock-climbing, horse-riding, scuba-diving, sky-diving, feasting with family, entertaining friends, patting dogs, cuddling with… Well, you know…

We watch all those smiles and laughs while an accelerated tape admits that what they are selling may cause migraine headaches, diarrhea, vomiting, slurring speech, tingling in the extremities, stiffness in the joints, dizziness, despair, delusion, delirium, dementia, depravity, disorientation, memory loss, suicidal thoughts, and stupidity as profound as voting for politicians looking to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, cancer research, medical accessibility, occupational safety, farm assistance, weather tracking, emergency response, food and drug inspections, clean air and water, and on and on.

She’s right, of course. Risking people’s health and sanity is a bit more of a crime against humanity than ridiculous, formularized robot names. But, dammit, why can’t I just laugh at them?

Answer to that appears answered by a new ad. Another cutesy three-syllable name sounds like yet another drug, but the woman on the screen quickly tells us that Homeaglow is a professional service that cleans your home—not just another pill for perpetual happiness while at home, as I first thought.

Then she boasts: “We were able to fire our house cleaner!”

Young, attractive, blonde, and willing to say “fire” with a mindless smile, she needs only a cross around her neck to qualify for Trump’s head-nodding staff.

Talk about saying the quiet part out loud! Then again, in America 2025, nothing is quiet. We now live in a reality TV show where putting someone out of work is a selling point.

Considering how many public servants have been axed these past five months, “You’re fired!” may as well be the motto of Trump’s administration, just as it was of his “Apprentice.”

Question now is whether Homeaglow’s ad is a precursor.

Is the contamination of cruelty and cynicism about to spread from the Trump administration throughout the world of advertising? If so, then where else?

And will we find it amusing when we’re ten feet tall?

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https://drmichaelwayne.com/blog/drug-ads-on-tv-a-brief-history/

https://funhouseradio.com/2022/07/04/white-rabbit/

Welcome to Garvey Island

Many friends are having no land’s end of fun spoofing the ridiculous dictatorial decree to rename the body of water framed by Florida on one side and the Yucatan Peninsula down below.

The cowardly compliance of Google Maps and, more recently, of the Axios news agency, has given them more reason to ridicule the move with imaginary moves of their own.

Some are truly funny. “The Gulf of This-Won’t-Lower-The-Cost-Of-Eggs” is a yoke of a joke, peppered and scrambled with political satire. And “Gulf of Loco Gringo” is seasoned with the hilarity of possibly offending rabid Republicans not because of what it means, but because it is in Spanish and they don’t know what it means. Press one for latitude!

So many revisions of The Gulf of Mexico, to use the name “assigned at birth,” people are now renaming other bodies of water. To protect Canada against the American dictator’s brainless threats, one renamed the Great Lakes, starting with Superior as “The Gulf of Molson, Eh?” Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker has called for Lake Michigan to be renamed “Lake Illinois.” And some Brits want the Atlantic to be known as “The English Ocean.”

Closer to home, a local wag called for Massachusetts Bay to be renamed the “Gulf of Newburyport.” This is one of those cases where laughing with someone turns into laughing at them. Those posting it don’t even seem to notice that Newburyport is nowhere to be found on their own map. The bay, no matter what we call it, is defined by Cape Ann on the north. It doesn’t touch Newburyport, or even Plum Island–which I think should be renamed Garvey Island, but that’s another yoke for another omelet.

Possibly this wayward cartographer meant The Gulf of Maine. Few people realize it, but this chunk of the North Atlantic that fits itself between Cape Ann to the south and Fundy Bay up north is named for the state that has most of its coastline. To rename it for Newburyport–or even for New Hampshire–would be as mathematically senseless as it is cartographically absurd.

The Bay of Fundy, by the way, separates New Brunswick from Nova Scotia, soon to be renamed respectively, though without any respect from us, “North Maine” and “East Maine” (with Newfoundland soon to be Far-east Maine, Prince Edward Island to be King Donald Island, and Labrador, Boston Terrier). The bay itself will be renamed “Musk Sea.”

Oh, Canada! Ah, Canada! Look out, Canada! Let’s fill it out, shall we? From west to east: The Yukon will be USAkon; British Columbia will be American Columbia; Alberta, Northwest Montana; Saskatchewan, Northeast Montana; Manitoba, Dakota Heights; Ontario, Lakefront Properties; Quebec; American France (with a ban on the French language). Across the top, Nunavut will be Allofit, and the Hudson Bay will be renamed Trump Faucet.

Enough! No matter how inane the American dictator sounds–or appears to be enacting a Three Stooges skit, as he did in 2019 with his idiotically Sharpied map of Hurricane Dorian–we laugh at our own peril.

The edict to rename the Gulf–and also to restore the name “McKinley” to Mount Denali in Alaska–exists as an executive order. No matter what anyone does to comply or resist, that order can and will serve as a pretext for Republican governors and state legislatures to screen all history, geography, and literature textbooks used in public schools. Do you think they are going to limit their censorship to a few names on the North American map?

By the way, the word “Alaska,” in the same language that gives us “Denali” (the tall one), translates as “that which the sea breaks against.” A bit too involved for the MAGA crowd, I’d say, plus it’s a foreign word. How about changing the state’s name to “Pound,” something they can not only understand but will make them snicker?

“Restore” McKinley? Textbook manufacturers who fall in line with the cowards at Google Maps and Axios stand to make a huge haul. They will secure it by “restoring” the lie of “benevolent institution” and “very well treated by plantation owners” to abbreviated passages on slavery. Furthermore, they will paint the American labor movement as a passing fad of immigrants under the spell of Bolshevism, if they mention it at all. As the first American dictator calls it, “Patriotic Education.”

Why not? For those now willing to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” the word patriotism is nothing more than a euphemism for “willful ignorance.”

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A map draw by Newburyporter Lucinda Cathcart for my book, *Keep Newburyport Weird*. The nine-mile long, pencil-shaped barrier beach attached to the mainland just under the Mouth of the Merrimack is navigable at high tide, and therefore qualifies as an island. As you can see, the name Plum Island has already been removed in preparation of the new name if I can ever figure out how to superimpose text without the whole image going dark. Then again, maybe going dark is the point of this name-change idiocy.

Garvey Island

As seen on Facebook. To have the name “Boston” so prominent right next to it makes it even more absurd.

Always Merry with Baby Jerry

Something curious about nativity scenes in and in front of homes that still fly Trump flags.

Do the Marys and Josephs have green cards? If not, may the figurines be rounded up and deported to Guatemala or Haiti or wherever they may have been mass produced?

And shouldn’t the anchor baby have an American name? How about “Jerry”? Same two first letters…

And if those “wisemen” are so wise, why the useless gifts?

Frankincense and myrrh? What? They think Baby Jerry has body odor? That’s not wise, that’s woke! Time to tell them, “You’re fired!”

Instead, let’s have Elon Musk bring his new Trash Can Cybertruck with a booster seat so Baby Jerry can drive. RFK Jr. can lug in roadkill from the New Jersey Pike, fur to keep the infant warm, and a carcass to spin on a spit over Musk’s truck when it bursts into flames.

Better sedate the barnyard animals so a bloody cadaver doesn’t spook them. I hear that a worm in the brain works wonders for the willfully oblivious.

Also un-American are camels. Let’s lose the Dead Sea vibe, and get Rocky Mountain high. Saddle up some horses, put ten-gallon hats on the wisemen, and add wisewomen like Kristi Noem and Marjorie Taylor Greene with miniature AK-47s so Baby Jerry can start exercising his 2nd Amendment right.

This is America. Good guys must have guns.

The gold? Now that’s as American as it gets! But shouldn’t the bearer of that brick be in the image of the American Messiah?

Color him orange, put him in lifts so that he always leans unnaturally forward, top him with an absurd blonde toupee, and dress him in a dark suit with an overly long red tie.

Could even mechanize his hands to zigzag as if playing an accordion—or shuffling overturned cups for willing suckers to guess which one conceals the prize.

Enough!

Sorry, but such was my reverie over chowder in the Maine Diner last week after spotting a bumper sticker that demanded a double-take:

“Trump – Pence.”

Almost got back in the van and drove down to Egg & I. Did I really want to eat anywhere near someone who would yet pair the hangman with the one he would let hang?

If Donald Trump has proven one thing, it’s that, in his America, there is no such thing as contradiction.

Also erased are traditional American ideals. No matter what history teachers tell their students, or parents their kids, might does make right.

The Supreme Court has ruled that one man certainly is above the law.

Republicans in Congress who, at a would-be dictator’s beck and call, now vote against bipartisan bills that they themselves crafted are living–if cowering–evidence that the last two lines of the National Anthem are laughable.

And just a glance at the resumes of a few cabinet nominees, ambassadors, and advisors will dispel any remaining notion that America is not for sale.

Textbooks will be edited, as they already are in Florida and Texas and states in between. Slavery will be taught as a jobs-training program with no mention of whips and leg-irons.

Manifest Destiny will be continued to be taught as “development” of land for “best use”—but now without mention of broken treaties or the massacre of buffalo herds, much less of unarmed villages.

Confederate flags will fly alongside Old Glory, as they have at rallies all across the country since the first MAGA rallies in 2015.

Swastikas may need another year or three before they are openly welcome by a political party that has already espoused their methods and much of their cause.

The Bible will be a text in public schools, as it now is in Oklahoma. But the stories of the Golden Calf and the Tower of Babel will be glossed over due to glaring similarities to 21st Century America. Can’t risk letting the kids catch on.

All while we keep singing that we somehow remain “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

So why not scenes of refugees fleeing for the sake of their child’s life? Why shouldn’t they adorn living rooms and lawns of the same devout Christians who just last month voted for round-ups, family separation, and mass deportations?

You like irony? Most all the immigrants from south of the USA are Catholics carrying rosary beads, and some bring miniature Marys and Josephs and Christ childs of their own.

But, hey, the lights are so colorful, the price of eggs is coming down (or maybe not), and in America we insist on being merry and saying “Merry Christmas.” Or else!

Oh, Father high in heaven, forgive me if I take a knee.

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Actually, this appears in front of the United Methodist Church in Claremont, California. Now it is a meme on social media.
https://www.salon.com/2022/07/27/do-right-wing-evangelicals-really-want-a-christian-nation-hell-no/

Keep ‘Mas’ in Christmas

Maybe somewhat quiet this year due to so much other heavy weather, but the “War on Christmas” rages on.

Not the war that Fox & those who put the “mental” in Fundamental fabricate year after year, nor is it waged against the first syllable in the word, the name, the “reason for the season” as some like to remind us.

In fact, the so-called War on Christmas is a diversion from the real war. Whether we accept or reject the religious claim, the fictitious war hits us with such blizzard force every year that we surrender to the factual war without knowing it.

We surrender even though the unwarranted pressure of that war drives us to all levels of frustration, distraction, anxiety, exhaustion, and at times violence.

It’s as if we are boxer Roberto Duran in the Superdome ring in 1980, putting his hands up and saying, “No mas! No mas!”

Except that he actually did fight eight rounds before he knew he was beat. In Spanish, he was saying “no more, no more.”

We, on the other hand, put up no resistance whatsoever—unless you count procrastination which everyone admits is lame. “Mas” would give us eleven more days, yet we act as if there never was any “mas” to begin with.

Yes, I’m talking about the second syllable, the other syllable in “Christmas.”

Since Olde English “mas,” or “feast,” evolved into “mass,” most take it to mean a religious service. Today’s services may clock under an hour, but thanks to the leisurely pace of camels in the Year Zero, the feast of Christ’s Nativity is twelve days.

Dec. 25 is the beginning, not the whole. Jan. 6 is just as much “Christmas” as the day we call by that name, and so is every day in between.

This is why Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night, why we sing “Twelve Days of Christmas,” and why many trees remain in place for that time.

This is why Jan. 6 is a holy day marking the arrival of the Three Kings.

Some 35 years ago a Catholic priest proposed in a Boston Globe op-ed column that the holiday be divided in order to keep religious intention free of material indulgence.

Since the unholy American trinity of Advertise, Buy, and Sell has a lock on Dec. 25, he suggested that religious observance be the end of the 12-day “mas,” The Epiphany—a name that by itself focuses on faith and the good will to sustain that faith.

Just keeping the word “Christmas” and holiday decoration out of ads for imbecilic movies (“Opens Christmas!”), violent video games (“Rated M for Mature”), and sexual performance enhancing drugs (“Come play with me”) would help our sanity.

But to free ourselves from pressures of buying and sending gifts and cards on deadline, we need an epiphany of our own.

If the family called “holy” by those who observe Christmas as a religious holiday can wait twelve days for gifts, why can’t we?

And cards. In fact, you might say that cards are so much less of a commitment than gifts that we should have another five weeks, maybe combine them with Valentines for a sly way to hedge romantic bets while saving on postage.

But that’s a detail to be settled once we solve the main problem: The fabricated pressure created by an unnecessarily shortened shopping season.

Is it any surprise that this begins with days having such names such as “Black Friday” and “Small Business Saturday,” or that each day of it would have a repetitive soundtrack to drive us up a Wall of Hurry Up?

Long ago I made it the first rule of my life that whenever I hear the word “hurry,” the answer is “no.”

This has served me well, and I would have been spared a few disasters had I adopted it sooner. Yet, despite that, even I have fallen unwitting victim to “no mas” Christmas only to share the pressures and anxieties most Americans have every mid-to-late-December.

Admittedly, my own epiphany here is too late to do anyone any good this year, but we have not just twelve days but twelve months to put the “mas” back in Christmas next year.

And you know how good we all are at getting things done ahead of time.

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Postscript: This 2014 Newburyport (Mass.) Daily News column is slightly updated from the collection, Keep Newburyport Weird. Not until I dusted it off did I realize the added significance of the date, January 6. Looks like I have two weeks to tell you what I think of that.

The site that posted this graphic is “no longer available.” A prisoner of war perhaps?

To Where We Once Belonged

Any chance the new Dylan film, A Complete Unknown, is adapted from a college course? Doubtful, but I did ask the same question four years ago about the eight-hour Beatles documentary, Get Back. Why not try again?

Back then I heard that Suffolk University in Boston offers a Beatles course, and I already knew that one Prof. Richard F. Thomas tuned up his Harvard seminar for a witty and most enlightening book titled Why Bob Dylan Matters.

Tangled up in the controversial choice of Dylan for the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, Thomas plays the Memphis blues quite well.

From me to you, none of this comes as a surprise. For years, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan have appeared in the course listings of colleges from coast to coast. Nor is it surprising that a magical mystery tour would be offered at a law school. At all colleges, no matter the money-that’s-what-I-want major, all bachelors’ and masters’ degrees still require some can’t-buy-me-love credits.

I don’t want to spoil the party, but the surprise is the course name. In my life as a college writing instructor, the constant reminder for every student was to be specific.

Tell that to the prof who titled the course, “Here, There, and Everywhere.” Must be a relief for him or her following professional she-said-she-said workshops offered by the Newburyport Bar Association such as “Grey Divorce: Special Issues in Middle Age Misery.”

Do you want to know a secret? I’m envious.

For years I chafed at concocting required syllabi, something always in the way of an organic, got-to-get-this-into-your-life, 16-week experience. Wish I taught at Suffolk where a song title-turned-course title would allow me to plug in any Beatles song to any day on the schedule with any number of honey pies, glass onions, and blackbirds across the universe:

“And Your Bird Can Sing” before Thanksgiving, “Here Comes the Sun” before spring break, “Taxman” for mid-April.

Not only that, but the very name would allow me to satirize the whole nowhere man notion that there should be a syllabus for any course open to creativity. Baby, can students drive a car with their eyes glued to your pre-fab plan? Or would they be getting better all the time looking through you at a long and winding road?

My Beatles course would have eight days a week, with “Tripperday” placed between Saturday and Sunday to give students an extra 24 hours for valuable research while partying with Lucy in the Sky, Polythene Pam, Bungalow Bill, and all the lonely people.

All while allowing more time for this boy’s professional development by—now that it’s legal—getting high with a little help from Sgt. Pepper, Dr. Robert, Father McKenzie, Mr. Kite, The Walrus, and Rocky, my old roommate back at South Dakota State.

Or to flirt with Sexy Sadie, Eleanor Rigby, and Lovely Rita, maybe woo Lady Madonna or Penny Lane. (Is she related to Lois?)

All that would justify a syllabus printed sideways to further aggravate fools on the ivory hill who fail to realize what goes on in the hearts of artists. As John Lennon let it be: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Oh, is there anything more deserving of spoof and goof than the syllabus in what should be the strawberry fields and yellow submarines of liberal arts? Give me a once-a-week, three-hour seminar, and I’d even label the 15-minute break on the helter-skelter document with “Through the Bathroom Window.”

Now that I’ve followed the sun into yesterday, I can only say I want a revolution in how the arts are taught and pass ideas to those far closer to just seventeen, you know what I mean.

Courses such as:

          “Over Troubled Water,” architecture.

          “Say a Little Prayer,” divinity.

          “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” business management.

          “Get It While You Can,” economics.

          “Followers of Fashion,” marketing.

          “Sympathy for the Devil,” history.

          “Fooled A-ga-ga-gain,” political science.

          “Eve of Destruction,” meteorology.

          “Thick as a Brick,” freshman classes that really are (but which no one wants to admit are) remedial.

My examples betray my age? Get back! All things must pass.

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