FERRERMAN- AGAIN?

 My brother passed last Thursday, after a brief, very brutal battle with cancer of the esophagus. People always describe cancer as a battle, but in most cases, it seems like an ass kicking. An unfair fight. One that no one is ever prepared for. Overwhelmed, so many people- no matter how strong they are in healthy life- wind up just lying there and taking it. It doesn't give you much choice, depending upon the stage. You probably know that. Pat entered the hospital on June 1. I drove up to visit on the second. He had lost a lot of weight; how much, he wasn't sure. It turns out they didn't have any scales in the house, so going off his driver's license listing him as 155, it was a good chunk. Knowing that the DMV prefers to reenter basic data as previously entered to move things and people along, I doubted that was accurate. Various DMVs had me for years at the 140 pounds I was at 16 when I first got my DL. Every female DMV employee has seen my eyes as blue. They are haze...

Leave it to Trump to celebrate his 80th birthday with the gift of a UFC fight to Americans- as long as they have a paid subscription to Paramount+. That's not how gifts work amongst normal people. I'm a reasonably normal person and I quit the Paramount last month, but I still have access to it until something like the 17th of June. So, just checking to see if I still had it, I switched from a ballgame and watched two minutes of a birthday boy cage match. It was boring! I've seen better fights on the street. I've been  in better fights myself and I'm putting on no pretenses of me being a skilled brawler. It's just that sometimes in a boy or man's life, you have to fight. Same for girls and women. Sad, but true.  The thing about a street fight is that most of the time, there is a reason for the people to be fighting. They don't like each other. Maybe they are fighting over a girl. Or they are just drunk and stupid. Drunk and stupid is a lot of fights. Peop...

 This was partially inspired by rival blogger, Maggie. I don't know if she is my muse or if I'm hers sometimes. 🤷 Today she wrote about growing older. Mostly though it was inspired by a video I saw a few nights ago showing high school pics of beautiful actresses. Having an eye for the ladies, I had to figure I would ace it, like Trump picking out critters. Well, of course I failed miserably. It was tough! Except for Marisa Tomei (whom I always thought I had a chance with...) the contemporaneous beauties were rather plain back in their teen years. This is not  to suggest that they had work done. Not at all. Many of us girls and boys grow into our selves a little later than some others do. That's just facts. It was also inspired by a long ago YouTube I saw of what porn actresses looked like off camera. It was quite shocking even though I had not had carnal knowledge of these actresses, so I did not know their names or the body of their work. They were remarkably plain lookin...

 Several weeks ago, newly elected NYC mayor, Zohran Mamdani, met with Trump in the Oval Office. I guess it went well and Trump had nothing but nice things to say about him despite his being a socialist, communist, foreigner and all that. I guess people were surprised because Trump is the roughest, toughest, baddest hombre to ever stalk the earth. Why then, did it go so politely?  Well, because Trump's a pussy. He doesn't confront men face to face. You can get punched out for that, and that probably happened in the past and he learned from it. I'm not suggesting violent confrontation is ever a good thing, but when a guy is habitually only vitriolically confronting women, it kind of tells a story about how rough and tumble a guy is not.  I imagine the meeting with Mamdani was designed to have Trump win him over with his reputed charm. This has worked with a vast number of former Trump detractors from Cruz to Rubio and way beyond. Maybe he takes them aside and tells them som...

Maybe it's time I retire this joke: "You may be American in the kitchen, but European in the bathroom".  Nobody gets it! When it was told to me by my Greek friend, Paul, I got it right away! I'm sharp like that, but also immature. So, maybe it's just me that gets it. Paul was probably about the same age as me, but he grew up as a Greek American kid while I grew up as an All-American boy of multi-ethnic background long lost amongst my ancestors. Like most of the Greeks and Slavs I knew, he learned English at school and spoke his parent's tongue at home, translating for them because they were too busy working to make a life for their children to learn English. This is the story of America. Always has been. I think it takes a lot of guts to go to another country and try to make it. It still happens every day. People come from all over the world to be Americans. It isn't easy and they never do it fast enough to please those who think it is easy because they we...

 I lost interest in the NBA after Michael Jordan retired for good. Growing up Chicago-adjacent, it was a great time to be a Bulls fan, but with Magic and Bird in their last years too, it just wasn't must see TV for me anymore after they were all gone. I just didn't have basketball in my heart and soul like baseball, and to a lesser extent, football. When the Knicks of New York got into the finals this month, I was only mildly curious. I got a little more curious when Trump reared his ugly head and threatened to ruin it for everyone by making Gane 3 all about him. I went so far as to search my streaming services to see if I could conjure the ABC Network. Truth be told, I was kinda interested in hearing NYC boo Trump live.  You know, I couldn't? I couldn't find ABC anywhere. It's still Channel 7 in Chicago, but I'm not sure anyone can watch it unless they have a package. It's the same with CBS and NBC (2 & 5 in Chicago) All three are offered as local news,...