January 1, 2017
The beat goes on...
NewYearsDay on Sunday seems wrong.
Even the fucking Rose Parade won't happen until tomorrow!
NFL Sunday bumps all in today's USA!
Trump has become de facto President.
Obama is packing up boxes of office supplies,
While taking actions worse than stealing the W's from WhiteHouse keyboards!
Let it go...seems like sound advice.
2017 marks 50 years since my high school graduation;
Reunion in August promises to be my last road trip,
from Sherman Oaks to Toledo and back?
Limited mobility rules my world so I will try to go;
It's by no means certain.
Writing this record of random thoughts on a mostly regular basis
Is my ambition for preparing to face my fellow 67 year old Toledo Woodward High School
Classmates unseen or communicated with since 1967.
My idea is to write in my voice at the reunion,
Like talking to fellow 2017 survivors.
What have I learned?
Number one, nobody gets out alive.
Jim Morrison tried to tell us but stubborn we are,
So death creeps near first then blusters and rants till
His sickle drips death on our shoes.
Also, that humor is our best defense from accepting #1
While waiting in God's waiting room.
Have you heard the one about the kid from Toledo who ended up in Hollywood?
It is a laugh riot!
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Saturday, December 31, 2016
One last thing about 2016...
As we rapidly close in on that time where the calendar flips one year, my thoughts speed up kaleidoscope images from this milestone mess of months whose sausage assembly process yielded us new President Donald Trump.
The age of Obama is over for now, maybe forever.
In a flash of history, the Democratic Party has gone from arrogantly assuming the inevitability of President Hillary to reeling stunned from the bitter rejection of blue voters up and down the ballot.
Life lesson learned: it ain't over until it is over.
Thanks Yogi.
Onward and upward with the arts!
The age of Obama is over for now, maybe forever.
In a flash of history, the Democratic Party has gone from arrogantly assuming the inevitability of President Hillary to reeling stunned from the bitter rejection of blue voters up and down the ballot.
Life lesson learned: it ain't over until it is over.
Thanks Yogi.
Onward and upward with the arts!
Friday, December 30, 2016
TrumpTwitterToday: "I told you Putin was a smart guy!"
TrumpTwitterToday: "I told you Putin was a smart guy!"
As we bid a thankful adieu to 2016, 2017 is busting to roll out its unique take on life, history, death and all other manner of life forces.
Donald Trump used to be just a guy on TV. Now he runs the world.
How in the fuck did that happen?
There is an added measure of pain and bitterness in our annual assessment of 2016 as a prognostication for what is to come. As wretched as our 2016 In Memoriam list looks, Trump and Putin doubling down with each other using nuclear threats offers me the deja vu comfort of my Lake Erie beach boyhood living past the imminent threat of the Soviets nuking Toledo, Ohio.
Which is to say the ever shifting sands of the possibility of millions dying from nuclear warfare becomes "reality" far too soon.
What will be will be. Que sera sera.
As we bid a thankful adieu to 2016, 2017 is busting to roll out its unique take on life, history, death and all other manner of life forces.
Donald Trump used to be just a guy on TV. Now he runs the world.
How in the fuck did that happen?
There is an added measure of pain and bitterness in our annual assessment of 2016 as a prognostication for what is to come. As wretched as our 2016 In Memoriam list looks, Trump and Putin doubling down with each other using nuclear threats offers me the deja vu comfort of my Lake Erie beach boyhood living past the imminent threat of the Soviets nuking Toledo, Ohio.
Which is to say the ever shifting sands of the possibility of millions dying from nuclear warfare becomes "reality" far too soon.
What will be will be. Que sera sera.
RIP Debbie Reynolds
And now this.
Debbie missed Carrie too much so she checked out of this juke joint and left us to be reunited.
Dying of a broken heart is a thing the docs say on TV. Surely in this case it is the smoking gun.
The last year I worked on the Oscar telecast in 2008, I was set to begin the gig in the show's Century City production office the Monday following Thanksgiving. That Sunday night, I followed up a notice I read in the Daily News about Debbie Reynolds celebrating Christmas in a Burbank neighborhood. It was already dark when I located the site and walked past season's lights and decorations in a real middle class Norman Rockwell dream.
Debbie Reynolds got her big break in 1948 when she won Miss Burbank and this night she was there to remember. With a couple of hundred of her subjects encouraging her stories, she told us intimate highlights from her career, including the time she got what she wanted from some military brass by following him everywhere to make her case. Finally, she won the argument by joining the general to do their business in a two holer outhouse.
Not your typical talk show remembrance, nonetheless unsinkable.
I still smile thinking of Debbie and Carrie, and I always will.
Debbie missed Carrie too much so she checked out of this juke joint and left us to be reunited.
Dying of a broken heart is a thing the docs say on TV. Surely in this case it is the smoking gun.
The last year I worked on the Oscar telecast in 2008, I was set to begin the gig in the show's Century City production office the Monday following Thanksgiving. That Sunday night, I followed up a notice I read in the Daily News about Debbie Reynolds celebrating Christmas in a Burbank neighborhood. It was already dark when I located the site and walked past season's lights and decorations in a real middle class Norman Rockwell dream.
Debbie Reynolds got her big break in 1948 when she won Miss Burbank and this night she was there to remember. With a couple of hundred of her subjects encouraging her stories, she told us intimate highlights from her career, including the time she got what she wanted from some military brass by following him everywhere to make her case. Finally, she won the argument by joining the general to do their business in a two holer outhouse.
Not your typical talk show remembrance, nonetheless unsinkable.
I still smile thinking of Debbie and Carrie, and I always will.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
RIP Carrie Fisher
I worked with Todd Fisher on a documentary during 2007 where we used his sister Carrie's home on Coldwater as the location for interviews.
Her house was famous for having been owned by the iconic movie designer Edith Head and it sat on a rise up the hill from her mother Debbie Reynolds's home as their three home, multi-structure compound created a secluded universe that existed somewhere between Walden and Woodstock. Carrie had an extended patio eclectically decorated mixing anything dramatic and visually interesting. It led to a vine covered hill with stone steps leading past her tiny but cozy writing workplace to a fenced in pool and poolside lounges. I remember walking up from her parking lot past her room full of exercise equipment including treadmills wondering if rich people bought stuff but failed to use it often just like real people.
Our interviews were mostly in various parts of Carrie Fisher's patio. It was another tough time for Todd as his wife was dying from cancer which claimed her a short time after our interview schedule finished.
One interview with a famous actress was done inside Debbie Reynolds home and I can recall soaking in what it must have felt like to be Hollywood royalty. Stuff that now rates as merely content in our Trumpian world of truthiness used to be history or at least private. That's part of what made Carrie Fisher special, her unflinching need to share her ideas, opinions, laughter with everyone lucky enough to be in her orbit, if even only for a little while.
Bye-bye Carrie...RIP
Her house was famous for having been owned by the iconic movie designer Edith Head and it sat on a rise up the hill from her mother Debbie Reynolds's home as their three home, multi-structure compound created a secluded universe that existed somewhere between Walden and Woodstock. Carrie had an extended patio eclectically decorated mixing anything dramatic and visually interesting. It led to a vine covered hill with stone steps leading past her tiny but cozy writing workplace to a fenced in pool and poolside lounges. I remember walking up from her parking lot past her room full of exercise equipment including treadmills wondering if rich people bought stuff but failed to use it often just like real people.
Our interviews were mostly in various parts of Carrie Fisher's patio. It was another tough time for Todd as his wife was dying from cancer which claimed her a short time after our interview schedule finished.
One interview with a famous actress was done inside Debbie Reynolds home and I can recall soaking in what it must have felt like to be Hollywood royalty. Stuff that now rates as merely content in our Trumpian world of truthiness used to be history or at least private. That's part of what made Carrie Fisher special, her unflinching need to share her ideas, opinions, laughter with everyone lucky enough to be in her orbit, if even only for a little while.
Bye-bye Carrie...RIP
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
December 27, 1967
It was cold and gray in my Silver Spring, Maryland apartment the morning my Toledo, Ohio high school sweetheart and I planned to elope.
Karen's Dad Cliff forced us into action when he found letters I wrote her when she thought she might be pregnant and demanded that she no longer see me. I had graduated from high school in June and followed a job to D.C. while she was then a senior at Notre Dame girls academy. We met at a dance in the summer of 1966 and melded into one soul to the point where her fathers edict required us to act upon our solemn pledges of mutual love.
A Toledo cab ride to Toledo Express Airport instead of her previously planned downtown destination whisked her onto a flight to Washington National where I would pick her up at the gate (no security then) around noon.
It began raining. Hard. Then harder every hour the rest of that day.
Karen was one of the final people off the plane and my heart skipped a beat when I saw her. (Interestingly, many years later I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation!) The rain framed her long shapely legs as she strode down the stairway in a sexy black faux fur coat. Our eyes met and we shared the same air.
We drove to nearby downtown Alexandria, Virginia and got blood tests and filled out forms for the justice of the peace. His rich Irish name of Daniel Fairfax O'Flaherty made us trust him and he made our love official.
We were married. Now what? First, hide out from our parents until we settled somewhere.
My most recent sales gig was in Baltimore so we drove north.
As we moved slowly but steadily up the Baltimore Washington Parkway, the rain was intense. And then I ran out of gas. I had failed as a new husband within the first hour of our marriage.
Leaving my bride to wait alone in our useless car, I got out and connected with my Boy Scout roots by walking almost two miles back to a Shell service station. I bought a can of gas and he gave me a ride back to my Malibu.
Karen did not laugh then, but later we both laughed a lot at this memory.
Karen's Dad Cliff forced us into action when he found letters I wrote her when she thought she might be pregnant and demanded that she no longer see me. I had graduated from high school in June and followed a job to D.C. while she was then a senior at Notre Dame girls academy. We met at a dance in the summer of 1966 and melded into one soul to the point where her fathers edict required us to act upon our solemn pledges of mutual love.
A Toledo cab ride to Toledo Express Airport instead of her previously planned downtown destination whisked her onto a flight to Washington National where I would pick her up at the gate (no security then) around noon.
It began raining. Hard. Then harder every hour the rest of that day.
Karen was one of the final people off the plane and my heart skipped a beat when I saw her. (Interestingly, many years later I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation!) The rain framed her long shapely legs as she strode down the stairway in a sexy black faux fur coat. Our eyes met and we shared the same air.
We drove to nearby downtown Alexandria, Virginia and got blood tests and filled out forms for the justice of the peace. His rich Irish name of Daniel Fairfax O'Flaherty made us trust him and he made our love official.
We were married. Now what? First, hide out from our parents until we settled somewhere.
My most recent sales gig was in Baltimore so we drove north.
As we moved slowly but steadily up the Baltimore Washington Parkway, the rain was intense. And then I ran out of gas. I had failed as a new husband within the first hour of our marriage.
Leaving my bride to wait alone in our useless car, I got out and connected with my Boy Scout roots by walking almost two miles back to a Shell service station. I bought a can of gas and he gave me a ride back to my Malibu.
Karen did not laugh then, but later we both laughed a lot at this memory.
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
The world is changing
Donald Trump is picking his staff after shocking us all by beating Hillary Clinton.
The world is changing.
The week before, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time since 1908.
The world is changing.
I have become a full blown agoraphobic in my 60s, allowing my daily life little variety.
The world is changing.
Life goes on...in a changing world!
The world is changing.
The week before, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time since 1908.
The world is changing.
I have become a full blown agoraphobic in my 60s, allowing my daily life little variety.
The world is changing.
Life goes on...in a changing world!
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