Category: Life

  • The Power of Patrick Swayze (Unedited)

    So, I was all gearing and ready to go, to sit down and knock out a blog for today. My wife had left the tv on as she was finishing her lunch, and being that I was planning on working on the couch, I needed to shut the tv off to concentrate. But what was on tv was the final fifteen minutes of Red Dawn. The real Red Dawn. The 1984 John Milius directed Red Dawn that started among many, Patrick Swayze. It had been a couple of years since I had seen it, and the ending is pretty good, with the brothers on the bench Ikiru style.

    And then Road House came on, (I guess it was a Patrick Swayze marathon) and I totally got sucked into that movie. Make no mistake, and I have written about both Road House movies before, the original Road House is a bad movie. But man! It sure is a fun bad movie.

    BUT… I had work to do, so I thought it best to talk about the Power of Patrick Swayze.

    Actually, I wanted to talk about bad movies, and how I find myself needing them more than ever.

    And I love movies. I love seeing them in a theatre. I love watching them late at night. I love reading about movies, and how they were made. And I agree with the notion that good movies, even gut wrenching, tragic, everyone dies dramas, will always leave you feeling better than when you started.

    But right now, with the way the world is, a bad movie that just wants to be entertaining, and that is what Road House is, feels correct for these times. Bad yet entertaining movies know they’re bad, and not good for you. But I know that eating ice cream and cookies for dinner is bad for me, but some nights, it’s what I need to make it to the morning, and try all over again.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Tottenham, Valentines Day, and The Resistance

    (‘Cause she’s heart and soul…)

    I don’t think I am a fair-weather fan, but I have to admit that Tottenham Hotspur’s season is over. I wish it wasn’t, but it is time to throw in the towel. Nothing has gone right after the first month, and even with two wins over Man City, they still can’t seem to get their act together. This doesn’t mean that I will stop watching their matches – no, I will be there for every one – but this does mean that I will stop the believing in the hope that they will turn things around. Things will not be turned around. There will be no extra play next season, and if they don’t put on the brakes soon, they could slide right out of the league. They are only 10 points off from the bottom three, though I think relegation is unlikely for them, I also thought they’d finish in the top four this season. Shows you what I know. Hey’s to next season!

    We are not a big Valentines Day family. We get treats for the kid, but for me and the wife, it has never been an important date on our relationship calendar. But! We do get cards for each other. And we play a game where we wait to the last minute to buy the cards at a local drug store. The more picked over the card section the better. It’s fun to get a card that was meant for a grandmother, or one thanking you for your support in my time of need. Technically, these sentiments are not inncorrect.

    I didn’t have my money on the US Attorneys in the Southern District and Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section being the first lead actors in the Resistance, but I sure am glad they have integrity and a backbone.

  • Short Story Review – “Séance at the Dinner Party” by Tori Palmore

    (The flash piece “Séance at the Dinner Party” by Tori Palmore first appeared at Rejection Letters on November 27th, 2024.)

    Families can suck, and in literature, this is fertile ground for inspiration which has been plowed many times over, and will forever produce material that will be harvested for our consumption. As I get older, family dramas have become more fascinating to me, and Tori Palmore’s “Séance at the Dinner Party” is a absorbing stream of consciousness entry into the field.

    The narrator takes us through their thoughts/experience/emotions at this family gathering, I believe it is Thanksgiving. There is the subtext of death and the loss of a sibling, perhaps the narrator’s safety at these gatherings, and the repetitive “Brother is Dead” adds a staccato rhythm to the prose, keeping the piece unsettled. I appreciated Palmore’s use of short sentences to build tension and keep the emotions and reactions moving forward. The piece never feels like it can stop, that it will perpetually play over and over again, not only in the narrator’s life, but also in the mind, even when they leave this dinner party of family. How the narrator is uncomfortable with their family, how they don’t feel accepted, to the point of micro aggressions signaling that they are not fully accepted. Yet the narrator keeps their rage, even grief, in check. Though the narrator does escape this evening with their family, the ironic knowledge is that this event will repeat itself again.

    Palmore’s “Séance at the Dinner Party” is the type of flash fiction I look forward to reading. It is direct, clear, and puts me in a moment or emotional state that I can relate to, or learn from. And in the piece, Palmore also creates a moment that also feels as if it exists outside of time, which adds to the resonance of the story.

  • The Ghosts of Computer Viruses and John von Neumann

    Not sure how or why it happened, but computer viruses, at least the subject of them, popped into my head today. It seemed like in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, computer viruses were everywhere. Plenty of news stories, and hacker stories, in the media. There was that movie “Hackers” which wasn’t any good, but hey… I remember buying virus protection for my computers, as it seemed like at any moment something was going to get on my machine and crash it. Then, computer viruses went away. I know ransomware is still out there and a big problem, but I’m talking about those news stories about how “the Melissa virus is out there, and will activate on a certain date” – you know, that kind’a stuff – no one talks about it anymore.

    So, even though I should be working on other things, I started puttering around and reading up on the history of computer viruses, and I came across this guy – John von Neumann. The reason he is here with computer viruses is because he, for lack of a better explanation, came up with the idea of machine self-replication, and then helped create a model for it. Which, in essence, and feel free to correct me, is what a computer virus basically is.

    But then I started reading more about this guy. John was an expert in mathematics, physics, economics, statics, game theory, and he worked on the Manhattan Project. Hell, there is a creator on the moon named after him. Not for nothing, but why haven’t I head of him before? He seems like he was a person of great intelligence, and did just about everything one could do with a huge analytical brain.

  • The Super Bowl Happened

    For me, the biggest thing that happened on Sunday was that my daughter wanted to watch the game with me. I know part of it was to see Taylor Swift (she’s a huge fan of her) and part of it was the commercials, but I will take away that the kid wanted to hang out with me on the couch.

    The older I get, the less and less I enjoy the Super Bowl. The game, most of the time, is enjoyable to watch, mainly because it’s two very good teams competing, which inherently is a compelling dramatic spectacle to watch. But everything else, just reminds me that I and the rest of America, are nothing but consumers and marks for corporations. Which I guess does make it truly an American Holiday.

    That all having been said, I had my money on Kansas City winning. My public reason was that you cannot count out Mahomes, as I do think his is one of the best to play quarterback. My private reason was that I despise the Philadelphia Eagles. Yes, I am a Cowboys fan, and for that reason, I can never support the Eagles. Little did I know that no one on the Chiefs showed up to play. Mahomes wasn’t a factor – no one was a factor on KC – which made the game dull, boring, and my worst nightmare.

    Even the commercials, the last respite of a useless Super Bowl, were also dull and boring. The best thing I saw was the Nike women’s athlete ad, which had a good message, my daughter loved it, but I didn’t feel like it was breaking new ground so much as having to remind everyone that women’s sports are a force now and shouldn’t be underestimated. Yet, seriously, are there still people (men) out there who don’t know that?

    And that leaves Kendrick Lamar. I dug it, thought it was cool, and will also admit that I am very late to the Kendrick Lamar party. Thought it had a message, a point you know, he did the song everyone was expecting, and the American Flag chorography was spot on perfect. Can’t go wrong with Sam Jackson either.

    All in all, kind’a a letdown. But I got to experience it with my kid.