FERRERMAN- AGAIN?

 Thanks to the miracle that is streaming, I've been catching up on old HBO series that I mostly missed, back in the day for wont of premium channels. I'm talking "The Sopranos" and "OZ" so far. Donald Trump gets generally favorable mentions from time to time in both series, because at the time, he had the appearance of a young, fit, successful, multi-millionaire businessman. Young AJ Soprano, for example, wanted to fly helicopters for Trump and work his way up the Trump ladder of success.  A couple years ago I saw an episode of "This Old House" where Bob Villa was interviewing Ivanna Trump about the nearly completed Trump Tower. It was a real fluff piece, but what struck me as odd was that she was the hostess, not The Donald. I thought a guy of his ego would want his face dominating the TV, not his plump wife. He didn't show until the end. Maybe he orchestrated the whole thing to keep her busy while he was with a mistress? Thought crossed my mi...

 The only people who read this blog are the fine folks at Blogger. They've seen fit to hang an advisory warning on two of my posts. As is the custom with media these days, no explanations are necessary. It's like being married and the wife is mad at you. "Well, if you don't know, I'm certainly not going to tell you!" So, I get that. Fair enough.

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I was recently quite surprised to learn that our nation's elite Special Forces can't fight.  Oh, they can certainly kill you quite dead with guns and phoned in air strikes and they are THE best in the world at that, but in a one-on-one fight, many of our nation's most talented street and bar-fighters would mop the floor with them.  When I worked in Memphis, I heard a lot of stories of Marines and Sailors coming down from the Naval Air Base in Millington to drink, and fight with the locals in the area of Memphis known as Frayser. This has been going on for decades. I assume it was a rite of passage for the service men. It sounded like a weekend for the local brawlers. Something to do.  I worked with several of these guys. Not a one of them was as tall as 5'7". Their stories tended to check out though. They were older men when I knew them, probably all dead now, and long since removed from fighting in bars anyway. I'm not sure the younger generation picked up the...

  I posted this on Blue Sky a few times last week, and because I'm so coy and clever, I labelled it as "adult" so it would be covered up. This means that anyone who saw the photo would see it was 'hidden' and have the option of clicking on 'show' or scrolling on by. To further obfuscate things, the accompanying text was some variation of "These are three of the finest, mature bottoms you'll ever see." Cute and clever, eh? Well, I  thought it was.  Only one person commented though. Could he have been the only one with enough curiosity to dare to see what was behind the curtain? I imagined  that folks would click on it and go: "OH! I get it! Those are nice! These are Revere Ware pans as you might know. I think the two bigger ones are about as old as me. Mom would know, but she passed a year ago. All three were hers. Lot of meals in those gems. It was a lot of elbow grease and Bar Keepers Friend to bring them back to near their original glo...

 This whole 'man or bear' trope currently on social media is pretty stupid. I've been a man all my life and I gotta tell ya I don't much like them either. But, given a choice in the woods of a man or a bear, I'm going with the man every time. It's an easy, obvious choice. If you have a man with you when confronted by a bear in the woods, your chances of survival increase exponentially if that man is a slower runner than you or if you conk him on the head or just push him down and run like Hell. Duh. Why can't women figure that out? They chose the bear, perhaps because they read that book about bears going shopping and they are like; I like to go shopping!"   Girls, bears are not looking to go to Target with you. They're looking to eat you or kill you. They like low-hanging fruit as much as the next species, and that's why you conk the guy on the head and take off running. Pretty simple. I don't understand women. Maybe it shows?  You know who...

 Why do we bother with this ridiculous dance of tax cuts for billionaires every four years? Why tax billionaires at all? Don Trump may answer that. Not sure it's in the wind, though, and I really wonder why not. There's a cap on so many things in life. There might as well be a cap on when you stop paying taxes. Let's say it's $100 million. No, let's say it's $10 million because if you put the goal at $100 million, people with $50 million dollars will fucking muke about how unfair that is to them. We don't want to punish anyone here. We're not animals. In an oligarchy like the United States, not paying taxes at all is the goal of every wealthy person. Ask the poorest, dumbest maga and you will learn that taxes are theft. It's just awful that you make money and the dang gubmint has its hand out every April saying, "Gimme our  share!" "OUR SHARE??"  What the fuck does the dang gubmint have to do with the hedge fund that YOU  sweated ...

People weren't too surprised when America elected Tony Soprano as president. After all, a previous president had been a television game show host. Around the world they were saying, "Well, that's America..." However, folks here and abroad were confused given the fact that Tony Soprano was a fictitious character. To further complicate things, the great James Gandolfini who had portrayed Tony on the HBO series was long since dead. Tony Soprano had a lot of fans though, and a lot of big money behind him and with that, if you get the media behind you as well, you are going to be president. The media had no problem overlooking Mr. Soprano's lack of existence in real life. They pointed out that, although Mr. Soprano had been believed to have committed many crimes, the Feds had failed to bring charges, much less convictions. And what would convictions matter anyway with pardon power and full presidential immunity?   The Soprano campaign was different  even by America...

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  "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". ~JFK Yep, JFK said that. It kinda sounds like something Trump would say if he could speak in complete sentences. It really could be the slogan of the current (maga) republican party, if they could have complete thoughts. If they had a party platform, that would be a very good one. What they are doing is a perverted interpretation of JFK's famous quote. Since Reagan in 1980 came on the scene with his own famous quote about the nine most dangerous words being, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help", they have bent over backwards being anything but helpful to the American public. Essentially, they ran on the old republican saw of "small gubmint".  One could think that meant they were going to streamline it, cut waste and spending, kinda fine tune it to make it run better. These are pretty good sentiments- if you don't think about them. That's the ke...

 Finished 'bingeing' "Boardwalk Empire". It was a pretty intense series. Ambitious too. I know a bit about the beginnings of the Chicago mob, but as soon as Al Capone came on the scene- in Atlantic City??- I had to question the historical accuracy of this undertaking. I had never heard of him having any doings in AC. Same with Lucky Luciano, Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and various other, lesser-known gangsters. I know about artistic liberties in film, but this seemed to be a sort of orgy of inclusionary story telling. Too many chefs in the kitchen.  OK, there was a "Nucky Thompson" in Atlantic City at the time, but his real name was "Nucky Johnson". So, rather than being shirttail Irish, he was Norwegian. He was a bit of a bootlegger and a political boss, but evidently, he never killed anybody or even ordered anyone to be killed. Not a lot to build on there and I can see a writers need to embellish more interesting, relatable chara...