I saw Ali at Harvard. He was impressive. We loved him.

Then he did this. For the benefit of all of you who consistently declared him a coward.

Life ain’t what it used to be.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hmx1L8G25q4

I swear to whatever God you claim to believe in, I love Judy Garland more than any other white heterosexual male does. Or will. Or something like that anyway. What’s the new emphatic? I’m that.

Full disclosure. My mother and Judy Garland were exactly the same age. Born a month apart. Same height too. Don’t know what else to tell you.

Working so hard, working through the Mystery.

This is complicated. A guy I’ve dueled with here since the candidacy of Trump posted me into a spat he was having with some guy who took him down in the most obscene terms you could possibly imagine.

Whereupon I weighed in to let the guy know he’d offended a friend of mine and he should shut up. Then he called me a name and I threw down the gauntlet, promising he wouldn’t like what would happen next.

I warned the guy. He thought he could walk back into the saloon and survive unscathed. He made jokes about “hold the lettuce” and “hold the mayo.”

Before I could post this response, though, both he and the adversary I’d been drawn into the middle of were gone. Unfriended. Like a shot. What the hell. What part of “Hold!!!” do they not get?

So help me out here. I’m thinking I just got rid of two jerks in one throw, with barely a shot fired. Did I miss something?

I don’t usually miss something. Tell me if I did.

Just saw the picture tonight. Profoundly moving.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LtEQowDXUmU

Sad to see him go. Be gracious and remember what you liked about him and his music.

For us this is a golden moment. We don’t know how long it will last. Why it’s so life intensifying. We have to relish it one day at a time. Despite a quarter century of experience with sighthounds, these guys are new to us. Different. Let us count the ways.

1. They look like each other. Few greys do. They’re every color and often differ markedly in size. These guys are almost a Xerox of one another.

2. They don’t get on the couch. We have three to four couches ruined by greyhounds and deerhounds named Sonny, Patrick, Andrew, Molly, Psmith, and Raebert. These guys have no interest in couches.

3. They don’t do stairs. Greyhound literature full,of advice about how to teach them stairs. None of it works if they simply won’t.

4. They’re both twelve years old. Hardly any greyhounds achieve that age. These guys are still bouncy.

5. They are so much alike in every respect, but their personalities are nevertheless different. Both are individuals. Ultimate proof of canine consciousness.

6. Since we have the two of them, all the above reasons need to be multiplied by two. Which gives us twelve anodynes to the twelve plagues of the Old Testament. Provided by two twelve year olds. Rejoice with us in our golden moment.

As I said, a golden moment.

“And so we end the Passover seder according to law.
We have conducted it according to tradition, according to statute…

“Next year in Jerusalem.”

And so we pray that the Lord will pass over our greyhound sons for one more year.

Winter awaits us all.

Since they’ve been showing promos for Season 2 of the “cult hit” Mr. Robot, we decided to look at the pilot. It was, to be honest, a mixed bag. The lead actor, Rami Malek, is magnetic as a functioning autistic hacker who lives somewhere between real life and morphine-induced paranoia. He works for a computer security firm whose business comes mainly from E-Corp, a conglomerate conflation of Apple and Microsoft. He is recruited by an entity or an hallucination named Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) to assist in the cyber destruction of the entire global economic system. The emotions seem real enough and understandable in the millennial context, but the politics are warmed over borrowings from Occupy Wall Street graffiti. The general hatred of corporations seems to make no distinction between the capitalism that has raised entire populations out of subsistence living to general comfort and the corruption of the current parasitic government-bank cartel. It is, in this nightmare, all equally evil, which we are repeatedly meant to understand the E in E-Corporation stands for.

My wife kind of liked it, I kind of didn’t. I looked up the IMDB user reviews for episode 2:

For all you Bernie fans who know no history and have no idea of the difference between capitalism — i.e., creating value and therefore wealth — and crony capitalism — i.e., merely creating the appearance of value to no one’s benefit but your own, I give you…

The Boomer Bible’s Book of Adam.

Today is April 19, the 35th anniversary of The Boomer Bible‘s dedication on South Street in Philadelphia.

For Nth wave feminists who want the government to buy their tampons but don’t necessarily want to wear them because bloody pant crotches are so cool.

[Trigger Warnings. Metro guys might be micro-aggressed because their periods aren’t very, you know, red.]

For all the college kids who’d really rather die than live. Farewell is a cool thing to say.

[Trigger Warnings. Guy has a voice like a doomy foghorn. But dying is what you’re really after, right? Right?]

Kenny G. For every tone deaf college kid who thinks jazz is about playing scales in a melancholic way.

[Trigger Warnings. He is, after all, a White. Man. No matter how soothing and friendly his lazy saxophone sounds, he is guilty of cultural appropriation. Maybe we should shoot him.]

Lack of content, passion, and sex appeal are prime ingredients of safe spaces. Karen Carpenter had all of these until she died not so suddenly from not eating anything. Bask with her in the nirvana of no microaggressions.

[Trigger Warnings. Well, look at that dress. Yes, she defeated the rape culture, but what part of no slut-shaming did she miss? You’re supposed to be completely naked and still impervious to the patriarchal rape culture, even if she can sing you into a kind of stupid female trance.]

Joni Mitchell. Once a feminist icon. Used to hear her echoing through the corridors of Josselyn Hall at Vassar, where all the drab feminists were studying themselves. It should be a safe place for the college students who were once decidedly female, with breasts and vaginas and such. The, you know, neo-reactionary feminists who think vaginas matter.

[Trigger Warnings. This Mitchell bitch has to be put down, dontcha know. She thinks gender is about “both sides now,”not the multitudinumerareous sides there so obviously are these days. If I want to put on a skirt and watch you pee, who are you to stop me? Death to Mitchell and her bilateral sexuality.]

No Trigger Warnings for this one. It has absolutely no content, musical quality or intrinsic worth. It’s as much a piece of junk as a standard issue millennial brain.

No Trigger Warnings for this one either. It has absolutely no content, musical quality or intrinsic worth. It’s as much a piece of junk as a standard issue millennial brain.

Remember Lauren Bacall in Key Largo? “You know how to whistle don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow.” What Zampir knows how to do. Very easy listening.

[Trigger Warnings. Lauren Bacall. All that blowing. Reminds us of rape culture. Unless it reminds us of bad infomercials wanting $19.95 for Zampir cassettes. Whatever.]

Pure dreck of the sort that makes safe spaces safe. Zone out and pretend that YOUR life matters. (It doesn’t.)

[Trigger Warnings. If I have to tell you, you don’t even know a trigger from a dewy multi-petaled flower. You’re porn sick and you know it from the first rose on. Rapist.]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bMvqPffzDMQ

Scourge yourself from the taint of sexual desire, evil males. It this doesn’t make your space safe, there is no hope for you.

Your last, best, safe place. The dead zone of the human mind. Go here and you will never have to return.

Unless there be life and a heart in you, you damaged babies. You hide and cringe and carry on like infants. Here’s what WE were doing half a century ago. So get the hell off our tits and go to work.

Going back in time from Dogs of the Rings…

Bilbo lived in the Shire.

In a hobbit house.

Which is when Gandalf the Grey shows up.

The idea is an adventure. With a bunch of dwarves.

Bilbo was all for it. Where, when, and how high he asked.

The dwarves provided Bilbo with his own war steed. “This is all going to be so great,” Bilbo said.

On the way out of the Shire, though, the dwarves and Bilbo encountered an obstruction.

“Hmmmm,” thought Bilbo. And sat down to think about it. Then, with hobbitses-esque logic, he said, “Gotta go. Big guy said so.”

Whereupon the image of the Mothers of the Shire transformed.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SLJllk-0o6c

Stay tuned for Chapter 2.

Oh yeah. The guy from Iceland. Won’t ever be visiting Cleveland. He’ll be friends with other guys, in another world.

Word to Iceland. Don’t ever mess with Cleveland.

You and the Swedes like Wallander go down in the first five minutes.

But in honor of Wallander and Jussi and all of Wallander’s languid, slow moving, slow responding, emotionless cohort, here’s the best we can do.

Go ahead. Be all dead and everything. The dead video was as Swedish as we could manage.

Going back in time from Dogs of the Rings…

Bilbo lived in the Shire.

In a hobbit house.

Which is when Gandalf the Grey shows up.

The idea is an adventure. With a bunch of dwarves.

Bilbo was all for it. Where, when, and how high he asked.

The dwarves provided Bilbo with his own war steed. “This is all going to be so great,” Bilbo said.

On the way out of the Shire, though, the dwarves and Bilbo encountered an obstruction.

“Hmmmm,” thought Bilbo. And sat down to think about it. Then, with hobbits-esque logic, he said, “Gotta go. Big guy said so.”

Whereupon the image of the Mothers of the Shire transformed.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lR5DbMQgIOQ

We were talking about jazz. My wife doesn’t like jazz. She likes the blues, she thinks. I’ve been blues before she knew who Robert Johnson was. She’s mad I said that. But I live for everything people know nothing about. Honest to God.

Stones did it too.

We’re going to live till Keith dies.

Yeah. It is. Over.

You know about the boys.

And the girls.

Did you know about the fraternal boys? Bigshots on the bed?

We’ll get by.

“It is better to look good than to feel good.”

I’m thinking they’re going to understand this post.

I’m thinking they understand the term bulletheads. Old, bald, muscular, and active. Whereas I am still this.

But the irony is that I seem to have paid a heavier price than the bulletheads. My knees don’t work. How did that happen? They weigh somewhere between 180 and 220. I weigh 141 pounds. Their pictures show them para-sailing, water skiing, playing rugby, and tussling with grandkids. I’ve done all those things and a bunch more, but I guess I used it all up.

I still have hair. But now I’m wishing I was a bullethead.

God bless you all. Love talking with you guys. My Harley is cloaked in cobwebs. So is my Yamaha 250. I can just barely get into my Toyota MR2. Talking with you guys is the only way I stay alive.

Where were we?

So King Theoden was under the thumb of Wormtongue.

Then Gandalf shows up, renewed and Christ-like, to save the day by, what, effulging or something in glowing white.

Wherewith, Theoden is restored…

So we win the battle of Helm’s Deep, and then we go to Gondor with our new version of Strider, meaning Aragorn (see pic above), and when it looks like we’re just about to lose, he brings out the ghost army.

Rohan safe. Gondor safe. Meanwhile…

Remember these guys?

And the Ring.

There’s a close call with a giant black widow called Shelob-Bra. Really really nasty nasty one.

But Samwise tells her she’s just an annoying bitch and tells her to STFU. Which works. Road to Mordor ensured.

Which is how how Samwise basically saved the entire universe from Mordor, Sauron, and the usual idiots who think they know better than garden variety garden varieties.

Totally destroyed. To-tall-ee. In the Cracks of Doom.

And then there’s Aragorn to take credit for all of it. Why they call the last 300 pages “Return of the King.”

The Harvard Glee Club. Saw them blow away the Princeton Diversity Chorus a few years ago. Some things men do better.