This Blogger has a friend, who is an actor. He played the lead in a Los Angeles production of STEAMBATH. STEAMBATH is one of those plays not produced nearly enough on America’s stages( MARAT/SADE, NO EXIT,SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR and THE BALCONY being others). STEAMBATH is set in an afterlife, in which that afterlife is set in a steam bath;  God is there, as the  Puerto Rican attendant. It is an absurdist play; but, since all of us are living through these absurdist times, it resonates. As the Israeli/HAMAS devolves into absolute absurdity, perhaps God indeed is a Puerto Rican steam bath attendant. The people of Gaza are starving; they need food. Israel, at war with HAMAS, the terrorist overlords of Gaza,  has restricted food supplies; in an effort, this Blogger assumes, to get the emaciated people of Gaza to turn against HAMAS. To alleviate the starvation, a consortium of nations: America, Jordan and Egypt have begun to parachute pallets of food supplies into beleaguere

  A State of the Union review is required by the Constitution; this Blogger has seen many of them. The first  one being, President Eisenhower, on a black and white Dumont television, with his family. Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union was the most divisive, mean spirited, infantile, petty, taunting and obtuse State of the Union in American History.  His speech must have been written by arrogant leftist Manuel Azana; the antebellum President of Spain; who taunted Spanish Rightists into Civil War; which they won. His speech was stark in its Jungian revelations about Joe Biden. What did it reveal? JOE BIDEN is a child of a lesser God; being a Washington D.C. insider, since he was 29 years old, has leeched from him, any iota of magnanimity. He offered not one hint of good fellowship to those Americans who won’t take a knee to his true personality, DARTH SIDIOUS. JOE BIDEN  dropped the curated shroud of empathy and revealed himself  to be a real life DARTH SIDIOUS, the STAR WARS' insid

  February is Black History Month and as sure as the Earth turns, Black writer and thinker, James Baldwin becomes popular. Baldwin was a very homely, frail, towering Black American intellectual. Black and Gay…..he was driven from his Baptist roots ( his Father was a Minister) into exile in France. From there, he launched jeremiads against American racism, most notably in his book of essays, THE FIRE NEXT TIME. One of the things that this Blogger finds most intriguing about Baldwin is his hatred of one of this Blogger’s favorite American novelists, Nobel Laureate Mississippi white supremacist, William Faulkner. " Faulkner told the New York Herald Tribune that he longed  for the return of the “benevolent autocracy” of slavery , in which “Negroes would be better off because they’d have some one to look after them.” In 1956,  he told a journalist that if the Federal government used troops to enforce integration in the South he would do as his Confederate great-grandfather had done bef

   In the “old days”, every Friday night, there was an hour of boxing, on national television, on NBC; sponsored by Gillette. That hour of the week was the only hour in the week, in which this Blogger’s mother allowed his father to smoke a cigar in the home. He would sit with his sons and his stogie, every Friday night, talking about his favorite fighter, Jack Dempsey. He would debate the validity of the “Long Count” well into the night; the Long Count was when Dempsey knocked down Gene Tunney for over 14 seconds, but was denied the knockout because he did not follow the then new rule and go to a neutral corner. Jack Dempsey had a restaurant in Manhattan then; once a month this Blogger’s father would go over from Brooklyn and have dinner there, discussing the Long Count.  This Blogger’s father was fixated on the Long Count. A viewer could see real reality every Friday night; one could see Emile Griffith pound Benny Paret to death, on national television, for calling him(Griffith) a Spa

     "capo dei capi"- a Mafioso term, boss of bosses- One of the puzzling enigmas about the Founding Fathers (Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams, Madison)  is why they deferred to Washington? He was not a particularly great general; in retrospect he seems dull, pedestrian and aloof(his best friend was his slave). He literally botched the New York campaign against Howe...why wasn't he fired then? Or at Valley Forge? Why did they need him? Why would the Revolution need an incompetent General? He certainly was not a Cromwell.....but then again, maybe he was. The Revolution needed Washington because he was a mean s.o.b......in fact, this Blogger believes, he was the meanest of all the Founding Fathers. They deferred to him, because they were afraid of him. The incident revealing Washington's meanness  was the Pennsylvania Line Mutiny.  There was a mutiny among the Pennsylvania troops; Washington crushed it, without too much effort. He then ordered the court martial of th