Too Much Fun!

Art by Isabel Bryna

My daughter tells me that I need to change my frequency.

She blithely dances around her house singing amid bright colors and art, as if she were the star in a fantastical musical. She talks about moon phases and draws cosmic connections and spiritual symbols on canvas. 

I, on the other hand, issue warnings of doom and gloom due to our dictator president. 

She's tuned into the universe.

I'm tuned in to the next election.

I want to tell her that under a fascist government her art could be censored. It's a possibility, I want to say.

I realize she doesn't need to hear this, coming from an elder member of the old establishment. I think about how I tuned in, turned on and dropped out as a young man. That's how I arrived in Santa Cruz, at that time an enclave of post-Sixties hippies and progressive idealists. I lived on the fringe in a time warp.

Today I'm a doomsayer. I don't want to bum her trip. But...

What about AI? I ask.

She says it will never match the inner human spirit that is counterpoint and the essence of our spiritual being. Or something like that. She actually writes and publishes oracles. Her expressions exceed my simple understanding.

Each morning I bombard myself with negative energy of how the dictator has flaunted the law, extorted dollars, made himself richer while stealing medical care from ordinary folks. And so on and so forth. That's the job of a free press, to hold the government accountable.

But I believe my daughter is right. I need a new frequency in the greater cosmic universe. Regardless of who or where we are, the only thing we really have is time. This has become more obvious as I've watched friends pass into the next realm, whatever that is. 

With these meanderings in mind, following a day-long travel episode from the Hawaiian islands to the mainland, I had a dream unlike any other. I can best describe it as a psychedelic trip, with bending imagery and incredible audio depth. It was exhilarating.

I was throwing a party and many of my friends who have passed were in attendance. I wore a feather on my head and rode a galloping horse bareback over grassy, sloping grounds. I hugged the horse's neck whose head turned out to be Frida, my late, special German Shepherd. 

I greeted each of my guests with the two-finger peace sign and called: "Too Much Fun!" Which boomed out as if broadcast by loudspeaker. From their faces, surrounded by halos. I was feeling a new frequency.

Trail of Broken Glasses

I can’t see. That is, I cannot read normal sized typeface without reading glasses. You know, those “readers” you can buy at your favorite variety store.

This all started at about age 47, which just happens to be the year I was born, 1947. I know: weird. The same year I noticed the hair on top of my head was, shall we say, thinning.

That was about the time I decided to drink a gin martini every Friday night. To deal with loss. 

I knew it was a crutch. But after a couple of tini’s I had no interest in reading or thoughts about the top of my head. 

I realized I was experiencing a midlife crisis.

I went to my doctor who was a bald man with a beard whose eyes twinkled like starbursts. His high-resonance voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand erect. I guessed he was about my age and probably Jewish, but that had no bearing on my opinion of him. 

He had a jolly personality and a dog named Betsy who sat on the floor while the doc listened to my inner body with a stethoscope and said I had a "conduction variance" but not to worry. He said if anyone asks me about my heart just tell them about the variance. 

Betsy, a mixed husky breed, sat quietly still. The proverbial fly on the wall.

Hearing about the variance made me nervous. Was that the reason I spaced out so often? 

"What about my eyes?" I said.

"Follow my finger," he said. He proceeded to move his index finger in front of me from the left to right. "Your eyes look fine," he said. "Just pick up some reading glasses and you might consider smoking a little weed. It will relax you and help you to focus."

"Are you serious?" I said.

"Of course I’m serious. Marijuana has proven to be a relaxant for cancer patients."

The sound of the C-word scared the hell out of me. First the variance and now this. I could feel my weakening eyes bugging as if I had seen a ghost. My own.

"You’re jumping to conclusions," he said. 

"Jumping to conclusions!" I said, squinting at him to get a better look. I noticed a bulge in the pocket of his white coat and surmised by its shape that it was a small smoking pipe. "Are you stoned? What’s that pipe doing in your pocket?" I said.

"It’s not a pipe," he said insistently. "It’s a whistle for Betsy. I think you need to take a deep breath and open your heart and mind." 

He never showed me the whistle.

I left the doctor's office and went directly to a local pharmacy where I purchased a pair of 150-strength reading glasses, put them in my shirt pocket and drove home where I opened the local weekly newspaper to read the astrology column. I am partially superstitious, a trait I inherited from my mother who was 100-percent Irish. 

My readers resting on the bridge of my nose, the words on the page popped out as clear as a clean shot of gin: "You have reached a critical point where the stars are aligning for your benefit. Follow your instincts and you will optimize this convergence of heavenly insight."

My instincts told me to load up on readers, which I have done ever since, reeling through the years, from 150-strength to 250. The resulting problem, however,  has been a trail of broken glasses. Either I sit on them,  squash them in my pocket, inadvertently stretch the arms till they break. Or simply can't find them.  Readers are typically made of cheap, brittle plastic. I keep a roll of Scotch Tape handy.

I have a magnifying glass in my desk drawer at home, but that doesn't help when I'm not there.

Lucky for me there always seems to be a broken pair of readers nearby. I'm adaptable. I don't smoke anymore. I'm on to the bigger stuff. Midlife crisis is so passe'.

 

 

House of Cards & the Playboy Girls

It's been about 10 years since we watched Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) weasel his way to President of the United States in the ground-breaking Netflix series, House of Cards. We know how that turned out. Not good for Frank and his cohorts.

If you did not watch the series, let's just say Frank got his just due, following six seasons of nefarious skullduggery that included a couple of murders performed by Frank himself. Then, of course, the man who played Frank, Kevin Spacey, was convicted as a sexual predator. Goodbye Frank. So long Kevin.

Critics for the most part gave high marks to the show, especially the acting, which included Robin Wright as Frank's likewise super-ambitious spouse, Claire Underwood. Many critics found the acting superior to the screenwriting. I could hardly wait for the next episode.

Fast forward to 2025. We find ourselves in our second iteration of the Donald Trump Shit Show, with current episodes high-lighting the comely, glamorous girls who prattle obsequiously around the fat-slob host. A couple of my friends call them, "The playboy girls." Making America great again. Tune in and turn on.

As this season rolls by, the host is losing his bearings caught up in rambling word-salad rally-talk that can go on for hours. He slings vile shots at former President Joe Biden and his administrators, as well as his opponent political party, the Democrats, whom he refers to as far-left radical lunatics. He's attempting to prosecute his former Director of the FBI.

He has fully weaponized his government actors in every department. A tactic that brings to mind the frenetic, machine-gun mouth Republican Jim Jordan who redundantly accused the Biden Administration of "weaponizing government." Hello!? Obviously, the primary goal of the DTSS is to obliterate anyone who called him out for his unlawful misdeeds. It's not weaponizing the U.S. government, it's mob-execution-style payback. Blackmail. Extortion. Corruption. Run amuck.

Like Frank Underwood, whom some critics compared to Shakespeare's MacBeth, The Donald is faltering and in trouble. His government is currently shutdown. Actors from his own legion are upset, including MAGA queen Marjorie Taylor Greene. She understands that her constituents do not want to lose their health care, which has been taken from them by the boss’s Big Beautiful Bill. Those folks will not be able to afford health insurance without government premiums that DT has ordered slashed. Alas. Same is true in most red states where DT was voted back into office. 

His supporters who so hopefully voted him in to bring prices down are the victims. His wealthy donors who make millions every day on mergers and takeovers are the winners. One thing he has never done, is put together a policy for health insurance for "his people." 

As a quasi political junkie whose been around the block a few times since President Nixon, I have watched the neoliberal fleecing of America's working and middle class. We've been given the shaft. We pay the tax bills while the wealthiest, increasingly, receive the predominant spoils. The disparity between the rich and the fast-increasing poor is enormously unfair. It's only gotten worse.

The DTSS is sponsored by the wealthiest people in the world, starting with Elon Musk. Our only chance at a fair shake, is our numbers. We can achieve critical mass. In a democratic republic we have the advantage. It's just navigating the lies and the gerrymandering of legislative districts like they're doing in Texas. California has a proposition on the ballot to allow the state to fight fire with fire, a chance at honest representation in Congress. Yes on 50.

Politics are painful and there will never be a perfect government. We're not a perfect species. But we can attempt to be fair and just as our fore fathers dreamed.

House of Cards came along at the perfect time, shortly before Trump's first term. Frank Underwood showed us a familiar story of how a greedy, unethical ruler ultimately fails and falls. Let it be a lesson learned.