"House of Dracula" + My Top Ten Favorite Singers

This blog was begun Wednesday night, November 11 2020 :

Pearl and I had fun tonight watching "House of Dracula, one of the movies included in "The Wolf Man Legacy Collection" that I purchased on Amazon just before Halloween, and it's also the first movie I've watched since Halloween. Like everybody else, I've been distracted by the unfunny clown show in Washington, but since tonight is my last night at Pearl's until November 27th, and since I don't have a Blu-ray player at home, I figured it was a good night to watch one. I've actually seen "House of Dracula" before, a few years ago on a regular dvd that I got from the library. But it certainly bears repeat viewing (as do all the Universal Horror films and their sequels), and man does it look great on Blu-ray.

The plot is fun, too. As the movie opens, "Baron Latos" (John Carradine) appears at the door of "Dr. Franz Edelmann" (Onslow Stevens), asking for his help in curing a terrible malady that's causing the Baron to crave human blood. When he tells the doctor he will only be available for nighttime appointments, Edelmann puts two and two together, and Latos confesses that he is, in fact, Count Dracula. He then guides Dr. Edelmann down the stairs to the doc's laboratory, where Drac has already moved in - his coffin is sitting in a darkened corner. The nerve of that Count Dracula! Squatting in the basement unannounced. Give the governor a "harrumph"! But he does seem legit in his desire to be cured, so the doctor, a man devoted to the Hippocratic oath, takes Drac on as a patient, scheduling him for a blood test the next evening.

But then, the next day there is another knock at the door. This time it's "Lawrence Talbot" (Lon Chaney Jr.), also known as the freakin' Wolf Man. Talbot is distraught; he too wants a cure.

What are the odds that not just one, but two Universal Monsters would travel all the way to Visaria to be cured of their conditions, and that they'd have the same doctor? Man, that Edelmann must be a miracle worker (he ain't no quack that's for sure).

So there you have it. The doc has his hands full but he's up to the task, with the help of his two nurses, one of whom suffers from a severe curvature of the spine. Over the course of the next 67 minutes, Lantos/Count Dracula will revert to his old ways, first hypnotising one of Edelmann's nurses and then the doc himself, who he turns into a murderous proxy. You didn't think Dracula was sincere, did you? Lawrence Talbot is, though. He genuinely despairs at the coming of each Full Moon. He hates being The Wolf Man as much as Dracula loves being a vampire, and they couldn't have cast a better actor for the part than Lon Chaney Jr. He was so great at pathos.

At one point, Dr. Edelmann and his assistant are exploring a sea cave on the coast near his mansion. They are looking for the body of Larry Talbot, who's tried to kill himself by jumping into the ocean. Well, not only do they find Talbot - alive, no less - but as they are bringing him to safety they also discover Frankenstein in the same cave, buried in the sand. Now, I know what you're thinking : "C'mon Ad.....what're the odds of that"? But it's not as big a stretch as you think, because it turns out that Victor Frankenstein's castle was not far down the road from Dr. Edelmann's house, and when the townspeople burned the Frankenstein place to the ground, Frankie's body - over the years - migrated with the rubble into the sea, and finally into the sand inside the cave. But - and it's a big but - though he appears to be dead when Dr. Edelmann finds him, he isn't. It turns out that he cannot die, so in that way he is even more indestructible than Count Dracula, who by now is controlling the proceedings.

You can't go wrong with "House of Dracula", you get three Monsters for the price of one, and you get a Mad Scientist thrown in for good measure. And, you get John Carradine and Lon Chaney. ////

And this part of the blog was written on Thursday night, November 12 :

I'm back home, and it's a good time for a list, even though we've probably done this one a couple of times already. Let's run through The Top Ten Singers, shall we? I hope it's cool and not too boring. You can add your favorites, too. I was just thinking today that in my case, it's as notable for who isn't on there as for who is. For instance, Geddy Lee would not make my list, even though Rush is probably my favorite band. I loved him as a screecher on the early albums, and of course even when he changed his style and began singing mid-range in a kind of meandering way, he still got the job done and then some (even if on the last few albums he wasn't that great). But even at his best, and as much as I love Rush, Geddy would not make my Top Ten.

Same with David Lee Roth, same with Ozzy, though I love Van Halen and Black Sabbath and both are great singers for those bands.

My Top Ten is based on singers who strike some chord in me that has to do with emotion, and/or originality, and with their ability to turn a song into a story. Ian Gillan is not on my list, nor are any of Ritchie's singers. Doesn't mean they aren't great - incredible, even - it's just that there are ten I like better. For the record, David Coverdale is my favorite Blackmore singer. Even if you only took "Burn" into consideration, on that album alone he captures the flag.

But without further ado, here are my Top Ten Favorite Singers. The first three are set in stone as The Holy Trinity. The other seven are in no particular order, I'm listing them as their names occur to me. As a final note I should mention that Beatles are not included. Beatles are an entity unto themselves and thus are never included in Lists of Musical Favorites.

The Holy Trinity :

1) Greg Lake

2) Rob Halford

3) Doug Pinnick

These guys need no introduction nor explanation.

The Rest of the List :

Todd Rundgren

David Gilmour 

Jon Anderson

Peter Hammill

Russell Mael

Alice Cooper

Eric Johnson

You'll notice that there aren't a lot of what you would call classic lead singers on there, guys like Robert Plant or Paul Rodgers. My choices are esoteric - as yours might be - and they are based on what the singer makes me feel, in relation to the music he is performing. Some folks might say, for instance, "Eric Johnson"? How can he be one of my favorite singers, right? It's all because of the feeling - for me - whereas Ronnie James Dio, while no doubt an amazing singer, just didn't do it for me in the same way, or not enough to include, in his case, in my Top Twenty.

You can't just belt it out. You have to bring the feeling. You have to bring the lyrics to life, or at least elevate the song or lead the song, even if the lyrics are not at the forefront.

Do you wanna know a great singer? Nick Drake. He barely whispered his vocals, but the effect was goosebump inducing.

I could go on and on, because to me, singing makes a song, even more than guitar playing or any other instrument. I'm not talking complex progressive or instrumental music here, but basic pop and rock. And in those formats, you've gotta have good singing. In the 1960s, the vocal melody was emphasized above all else, which is why you have so many indelible pop classics from that era.

I'll stop now, and I know it's all subjective. I could list a few dozen other singers. These just happen to be my very favorites.  //////

See you in the morning. Tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)

Rock Band T-Shirts

 I've got a new hobby : collecting band shirts. It started a few months ago when I was absorbed in my Gentle Giant craze (which hasn't ended). In August, I was listening to Giant every night, cycling through their eleven studio albums over and over again as I engaged in a rediscovery of their music. It seems I wasn't the only one doing this, because over the Summer a GG revival appeared to take place. There was the fan video of "Proclamation" that played on FB and featured all the original members in cameo slots. Then one day, the Giant page on Facebook posted an announcement : "In honor of the 'Proclamation' video, the band is offering it's first ever t-shirt, with a screen print of a tour poster from 1971 on 100% cotton". I paraphrase, but they posted a pic of the shirt, the band's first, and it looked good. It was also was said to be high quality.

This last part is important, because now, in online reviews I've read, there appear to be too many instances, with merch being a big business, where a shirt looks cool on your computer screen, but when you get it in the mail it's really thin, or it's a cotton/synthetic blend. In the old days, when you bought a shirt at a concert, it was cotton and it was good quality. Not every shirt was a "Hanes heavyweight" (though some were), but most all were 100% cotton and were durable. That's why you saw so many Led Zeppelin and Yes shirts throughout junior high and high school, because kids could wear 'em for years. I mention this because I would never have started my new hobby if the material of the shirt was cheap. If there's one thing I love, it's my t-shirts.

But I hadn't bought a band shirt since I Don't Remember When. When was the last time I bought one? It would've been at a concert, sometime in the early 80s. I know I had a Motorhead shirt, and a Judas Priest. Back then you could get a band shirt for ten bucks at a show, and not a bootleg either, but an official one. Even earlier than that, back in October 1974 I bought a Golden Earring shirt for five dollars at their Santa Monica Civic show. The very first rock shirt I ever bought was at the Rick Wakeman concert a month earlier, in September '74 at the Hollywood Bowl. That one probably cost five bucks also (don't remember), but the thing was, I wore it for years, until it had holes in it, and even then I kept wearing it for a while. Finally in the mid-80s I threw it out, but I wish I hadn't. Even as a tattered rag it would have sentimental value now.

But I stopped buying band shirts for two reasons. The first was, by around 1986 most shirts had gone up to fifteen bucks, and the second reason was that, in the 80s I very often didn't have fifteen bucks to spare. And also, there was a "been there done that" aspect. I'd gone through the shirts of most of my favorite bands and artists, and over time had worn most of them out. And I had other ways to show my devotion, especially posters, and my collection of rock magazines : Creem, Circus, Circus Raves, Hit Parader, and the English weekly newspapers, Melody Maker and New Musical Express.

 But considering t-shirts, you didn't always have to pay a high price at a concert. Down in Hollywood in the mid-1970s, there were a few shops that specialized in what were called "iron-ons", where you would go into the store and select an iron-on transfer of your favorite band's logo or a band photograph, and then the employee would run it though a heat press that would seal it squarely on the front of a colored t-shirt. Iron on shirts were very popular in the 1970s, because they were cheap and long lasting. It's fun to think back upon that time, when on a few occasions my friends and I literally rode our bikes from Northridge to the Sunset Strip, just to check out the rock 'n roll scene in Hollywood. It was a 40 mile round trip, but well worth it to a fifteen year old, and part of those adventures was stopping off at the Iron On stores. 

Well anyhow, it had been roughly 35 years since I bought my last shirt at a concert, when I saw the Facebook post for the Gentle Giant shirt. I was so excited by what was happening with my rediscovery of their music, that I decided I had to have it. I figured that what I was saving in concert money in the year of covid, I could spend on the occasional band t-shirt. So I started with the Gentle Giant, and figured I could afford one a month.

My second shirt was a very beautiful Alcest tee, for their "Spiritual Instinct" album. Right now I'm trying to go for bands that not many people know about. For my third pick in October, I wanted a really bitchin' Triptykon shirt, but all they had left was Small size, so I went for an Emperor shirt instead. This was at the Rockabilia website (free plug), where they do the "recommended for you" thing. I have two Emperor albums, both of which are classics in the Black Metal genre, so even though they're not one of my very favorite bands, I felt legit in buying their shirt, especially because it looked awesome. :)

And finally, because of another Rockabilia recommendation, my t-shirt for this month was for "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". Yeah, I know it's not of a rock band, but I had to have it. The thing is, I had me a Texas Chainsaw shirt back in 1988. For real. I've even got a pic of me wearing it somewhere. So when they recommended this new one, which featured the original movie poster on the front, I had to have it. It just came in the mail today, and it's heavy duty cotton. I'll be able to wear it for many years.

What should be my next pick? I'm thinking Bill Nelson or Van Der Graaf Generator, if they have shirts available. I'll let you know. I haven't actually worn any of my shirts yet. For one thing, it's suddenly become freezing in Los Angeles; the dreaded L.A. Cold is upon us, and from what I see we are twenty degrees colder than Wisconsin right now. So I can't break out my new band shirts just yet. But soon, or maybe in the New Year. We often get a warm spell in January, right around Super Bowl time, and that should be a New Year in other more important ways for all of us. 

Maybe I'll break one out around January 20th, when it will be time to have fun again.  /////

Much love, and I'll see you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Character Matters

This part of the blog was written on Saturday night, November 7 2020, on the day the election was decided:

This afternoon, just as I pulled out of the parking lot at my apartment, I saw a double rainbow, crossing the sky beneath a break in the clouds. In Los Angeles, and especially the Valley, Summer ended today. It literally went from t-shirt weather to very chilly overnight. Thursday was 95 degrees, yesterday around 80, today 55, with rainclouds on the horizon. So there was the rainbow, with another, fainter one inside it.

All I could say was "wow", because............well, because today. :)

We've known it was coming since Wednesday night, but today it became official, and the weight of one man's hate filled psyche fell away from us. Some pundits have proposed that Trump will remain a "kingmaker" in the Republican party, and that he might even try for a comeback in 2024, to avenge his "rigged" defeat and stand tall before his cult members.

I say "haha" to all of that. Trump is toast. It feels as if he's already gone, and while he might end up with a tv or radio show if he avoids prison (or when he gets out), he'll never be back as a candidate again. I mean, are you kidding me? He just got creamed. But enough about him. Did you see Joe Biden's speech? He knocked it out of the park. It's pretty amazing that a guy who grew up with a stutter can do as well as he did. But more than that, he's a man who lost his wife and daughter in a car accident, and then one of his adult sons to brain cancer. Biden himself had brain surgery in 1988 to repair an aneurysm that could have killed him. He's run for President twice before and never made it out of the primary. So if ever there was a man who lives by the motto "never give up", it's Joe Biden.

Again, as I said yesterday I'm not here to stump for him, though I do find myself liking him more and more already. I know he's a career politician, and we're supposed to hate all those guys, right? "They're all crooks" is the saying. Corporate America runs the show, and it doesn't matter who is President. But I don't believe that, because the tone of politics is just as important as the policies that are set by any given administration. Also, I must add a quick aside, once again, in favor of the center over the Far Left and Right. We get things done in this country in increments, by cooperating. But beyond the job of administrating,  our leaders - and even our artists, sports heroes or simply your boss in the workplace - set the tone for the culture they preside over. Just as John F. Kennedy set a tone of class, intelligence and high expectations, what he espoused was reflected in our culture. His image was "Camelot". He said we would go to the Moon, and we did. The other side of the coin was Trump, who spewed hate, lies, arrogance and stupidity, and during his time in office it was those qualities that were reflected in our culture. So yes, while Corporate America and Wall Street may dictate the economics in this country, and pull puppet strings to an extent on Presidents from either party, it nevertheless does matter who is President. Politicians may be a tainted bunch, but they are not all crooks, any more than the general population are all crooks. So I'm gonna trust Joe and I think he'll do a damn good job. ////

And this part of the blog was written tonight, Sunday November 8th, 2020 :

If you saw my Facebook yesterday, you saw my post that Grimsley delivered flowers to Joni Mitchell on her birthday. Pretty cool, right? Especially on the day Trump was defeated. Well today, Grim texted me to say that he was about to leave on another delivery, this time to the house of Alex Trebek. The flowers were for his wife. Grim had blown his mind a few months ago, because he had delivered to Alex himself at the same house. It may have been in July on Alex's birthday, I can't remember for sure. But Grim could barely believe it at the time, and he texted me that day right after it happened. He said Alex came to the door himself to get the flowers. And now today, Grim was delivering to his wife. R.I.P. not only to the greatest game show host of all time, but also to a man whose picture should be in the dictionary next to the words "class" and "gentleman".

Life is unique and strange, and you never know what's going to happen, even when it seems like every day is the same. Me, I've gotta get back to writing my FOIA requests at some point, because if I don't I'll be kicking myself one day. I'm not saying that they'll do any good, but you never know. It's just that I'm now 60, and I don't wanna be 80 one day and say to myself, "you didn't try hard enough". I used to try very hard, in the late 90s, but I got ignored, or called names. One person shouted me down and hung up on me. But the truth is the truth, and as the saying goes, "The Truth Will Out". You can walk away from the truth, you can ignore the truth, you can deny the truth, you can bury the truth, and most often if you do those things it is because you are aware of the truth and frightened of it. I'm the only one who is not frightened of 1989. The truth, over the course of history, has a way of rising to the surface, and one day it will do so in this case, which I am certain is the biggest secret in America. It is without a doubt the most highly classified secret in the CIA's records.

That's why I haven't tried as hard as I should have, though I did make a request in 2017, and then wrote a detailed letter of what happened in response to their denial, which came in the form of a Glomar.

Now that the political crisis is over, I wanna get back to reading books and watching movies and hiking on my days off, but I say all of the above because we see, in 2020, that life can get unpredictable. You never know what can happen. Neil Peart died when the year started, then last month we lost EVH. Today we lost Alex Trebek. I speak on my own behalf because no one has ever spoken a single word about what happened in 1989, and the fact is that many people who know me know something about it. A handful know much more, and of course the hierarchy of the CIA knows exactly what happened. Bill Clinton knows. I'd much rather be writing about movies, books, music, and benign things, but I'd like to let those folks know - the ones who know but have never said a word on my behalf - that I'm still here, and I will never give up.

What we see with Donald Trump is that it's not your ambitions in life that matter, or what you've achieved from a material standpoint, it's what kind of person you were. /////

And that's really all I know.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Another Political Rant, Sorry But It Must Be Said

 I've got nothing to report, but I'm checking in anyway just to keep the blog going. I'm as sick of all this waiting as you are. I haven't watched a movie since Halloween, nor begun another book since I finished Rob Halford's "Confess" about ten days ago. Before the election I was too nervous to read or watch, and now I'm too distracted. I keep switching from MSNBC to CNN, and even to Fox, looking for any available updates. Steve Kornacki has become the man of the moment for the entire nation.

But please.......somebody call this thing already. We need to get rid of Trump, but just as importantly if not more so, we need to get rid of Trump-ism, to get the focus off all the chaos and unpleasantness brought about by one man's deranged psyche that encouraged his nuttiest followers to come marching out of the woodwork. I can understand (sort of) the rank-and-file Republicans, "Ma and Pa Conservative", who voted for Trump because he represents their party and they feel the need to keep Democrats out of the White House. Even though I disagree vehemently with most Republican ideas, I can still respect folks who hold basic, conservative views, and who vote Republican no matter what. However, in a quick aside, I must ask myself a question : "Hey Ad, what would you do, if the Democratic Party nominated a dangerous kook? Say, a Far Left version of Trump. A full-on Communist megalomaniac". I can answer that question without flinching. If the kook's Republican opponent was a standard issue politician, a professional in other words, I'd vote for him instead of the kook. I'd vote against my own party, in other words, to avoid helping a crazy man become President.

Now, I'm sitting here wondering why Donald Trump still got 70 million votes. We all know about his core, a worrisome percentage of people, a lot of them gun nuts and 'Muricans, who voted for him precisely because of what he espoused, not in spite of it. But how many militia members and rednecks are there in this country? I'm talking "full on", like full on AR-15 maniacs and hard core racists? How many exist? One million? Five million? Ten? If it's the latter, that would mean that one in seven of Trump voters is a full on crazy person, and that's pretty scary. I'd like to think the number is not that high. The FBI, or at least the non-Barr faction, would know for sure, and I hope to God they are monitoring these people like they always did in the past. 

I ask because Trump is like Charles Manson. He's quite a bit like him in fact. He's a con man with great charisma and a force of personality who is able to project his psyche onto other people in order to use them for his own purposes. Trump has an enormous psychic reservoir, which in his case was enabled by the media, which allowed him to spread his personality and his message on a nationwide scale. Manson had no tv coverage until he was caught, but he was still able to get young hippie girls to kill for him, by convincing them to do so. We have evidence of what a powerful sociopath can do, and I have thought for a while now that it would behoove us, not just as a nation but as a world society, to undertake a Major League Study, on the level of a psychiatric Manhattan Project, to identify the signs and traits of a blossoming psychopath in the same way we identify autism or other behavioral disorders. I mean, I'm sure that is done already, but it needs to be done most assuredly on men (or women, though they seem less susceptible to sociopathy) who seek power, or any position of authority.

The prime trait of a sociopath is the ability to deceive, to fit in as "normal" and hide their intentions. Trump was not a classic sociopath in that sense, because he always telegraphed to his followers exactly what he felt. But remember that he had spent the decades previous to his run for the Presidency simply as "The Donald", a semi-handsome rich guy who was known only as a bling-bling celebrity real estate magnate, who appeared in People magazine. He was quiet in those days, other than talking about his fabulous wealth and building projects. But as a true sociopath, he had a plan to gain power. And ultimately, he achieved it, and as he did his true personality came out, and we saw the monster.

Make no mistake (and I'm sure you won't), Trump is a monster. He's not just a whiner or a racist or a crook.

He's a very bad guy. The only thing that held him in check is that he was operating in America, where we can say "Fuck You" to the President, and where half of us can spot a sociopath coming a mile away.

For me, reading Mary Trump's book was quite enlightening, and I believe it will be the final word on Trump. Mary Trump asks the question, "Why does the media treat him as if he is normal"? What she means is "why do they treat him as if he is merely an asshole, rather than a certifiable sociopath"?

As noted, she is a PhD, a clinical psychologist. She's got her Uncle nailed down.

He's a psycho, and he's brought the crazies out of the woodwork.

His personality disorder is not all that different from Charles Manson's.

It's no joke, and he cannot be allowed to remain any kind of force in American politics. He, and his cronies like Steve Bannon, absolutely must be dealt with , because they are not joking in what they say.

I hope Joe Biden will reinstate a strong Justice Department and go after these people. They need to be brought to account. To do otherwise, to let them linger in the American political conversation, would be to everyone's peril.

Sorry for yet another political post, and I apologize also for unfinished thoughts. I am too tired to edit a rant right now, haha, and I hate all this stuff to begin with. But I was born in 1960, and I grew up during a time of idealism, in politics and in culture. JFK and The Beatles. I went to an integrated elementary school in 1967 that had every kind of kid you could imagine. But all we ever thought of ourselves as, was kids.

What kills me is the regression in this country. We were already moving forward in the 1960s! Black folks were moving into the middle class, becoming doctors and lawyers. We even had a black congresswoman, Shirley Chisolm, who ran for President. What Trump has done has been to take everything backwards, and to make people think it's always been this way. But it hasn't.

We were moving forward, forward, forward. I've been there to witness it.

All of this is why we absolutely cannot allow Donald Trump to walk away. He's got to pay a price for what he has done here, and so do his henchmen.

I hope the Biden justice department is listening. /////

Hallelujah and Good Riddance

 Like everyone else, I'm exhausted tonight. Exhausted but relieved. Last night at this time I was a nervous wreck, certain Trump had won but not knowing anything because I had turned the TV off early on election day. Once I heard the morning reports of super long voting lines in the battleground states, and the commentators' remarks that they were made up of likely Trump voters, I just felt sick. "Here we go again", I thought, and I turned the news off. After that, I assiduously avoided a tv set all day, and the only site I used on my computer was Amazon. I just didn't want to hear a thing about the election, for fear of having a stroke.

I even went to bed at 11pm, unheard of for me. Before I did, however, I wrote a tirade of a blog, decrying the pollsters, predicting a Trump win, and just generally venting my spleen. Like you, I despise Donald Trump. And I still decry the pollsters, particularly Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, whose word on anything in the future won't be worth a plugged nickel. But I'm glad I didn't publish that blog, because......

I couldn't sleep. When I woke up in the middle of the night, sometime during the wee hours, I decided I had to know. So, I did what I always do when one of my teams is playing in a big game, say the Super Bowl. If the game is close, or my team is losing, I always turn it off. I'm like Jerry West, who used to leave the building during Lakers games when he was general manager of the team. He said it stressed him out too much to watch, so he'd get in his car and drive around until the game was over. Then he'd come back to The Forum and find out who won. I'm the same way. If the Rams, Dodgers or Lakers are winning a blowout, no problem. But if it's close or they're losing? Off goes the tv set. Like Jerry West, I just can't watch.

So you can imagine how much worse it is with a Presidential race, when Satan is in the White House. The pollsters have all predicted a blowout. "Everyone will vote against Satan". Right? Only - as of yesterday morning anyway - it wasn't turning out that way. Almost half of American voters love Satan, or at least the privileged minion who serves him from the White House. Pretty spooky, eh?

But late last night (or early this morning, still dark outside), I woke up, came out to the living room, and turned on the tv. I muted it right away, so I wouldn't be able to hear any bad news. I also closed my eyes. I knew it was already set for MSNBC, so after steeling myself, I opened my eyes for a quick peek, expecting to see American flags waving like crazy at a Trump victory celebration. Instead, I saw James Carville sitting in his living room, wearing an American flag shirt. He was being interviewed, and speaking, so I dared to unmute the remote. Here's what I heard :

"And I'm confident enough with where we stand now, that we'll have enough to win when the other states report. I've waited four years for this, I can wait another four days".

And with that, the weight of the world fell from my shoulders.

It's not just that four more years of Trump would've killed me (and all of us), it's that four more years of Trumpism would've killed America. This past summer was crazy. Citizens fighting each other in the streets? With assault rifles? This is something we've never seen before, and it very well could have led to a mini-civil war. But now, as it is clear that Joe Biden will win the Presidency, we can slowly begin to reinstate law and order, to once again have a legitimate justice department, and to reduce chaos all around. Joe was exactly the right candidate to defeat Donald Trump, calm, experienced and running from the center. I've heard some complaining today that he didn't have a blowout. Well hey, he was running against the most meat-and-potatoes, drink raw blood son-of-a-bitch the Republicans have ever nominated, not to mention The Biggest A-Hole Who Ever Lived. The Right loves him for those very reasons! He's their #1 guy, he's Satan. So of course the pollsters were wrong! Of course the Repubs were gonna turn out in record numbers. They freaking worship Trump.

But look what Joe Biden did : he not only beat Trump in the popular vote by an even bigger margin than Hillary Clinton did, but he's gonna win the electoral college, too, and therefore the Presidency. He might wind up with 290 or even 300 votes if he can win Georgia and Pennsylvania.

He got more votes than any Presidential candidate in American history, even more than Obama, his former boss. And think about it : Joe was running against Trump, the Republican equivalent of Satan. Obama had it relatively easy in comparison. His opponents were McCain and Romney. Repubs don't like it when their nominee is a gentleman, and/or a R.I.N.O. They see those qualities as wimpy. That's why they didn't turn out for those guys. But give them a dirty rotten bastard for a candidate, a sociopath and a mean mf-er, and they'll show up in droves.

Joe had to beat Donald F. Trump, who was so much worshipped by the Republican party that every single one of their Senators and Congressmen bowed down at his feet, even guys he had belittled during the campaign.

And Joe did it. He beat this monster. The world is now rid of Donald Trump. So what's not to like? I say "Hallelujah"! and "Three Cheers For Joe Biden"! Three cheers for all the young people, also, who helped put him over the top. Three Cheers to the Midwesterners who helped restore the Blue Wall. Way to go Michigan, way to go Wisconsin! Good job, Elizabeth! And thanks to Bernie, also, for giving his endorsement to Biden. He wasn't my guy, but I know he was for a lot of Democrats, particularly younger folks, so Three Cheers to him also. I'm sure he will be rewarded in some way by the Biden administration.

And finally, Three Cheers for the African-Americans who always come up huge for the Democratic party. They might wind up being the final nail in Trump's coffin if we can overtake his rapidly shrinking lead in Georgia, and win that state tomorrow. 

I'll be honest, I wasn't a huge Joe Biden fan going in to this election season. I was hoping Hillary would run again, defeat Trump and get sweet revenge. I love the Clintons, and it would've gotten Bill back in the White House, too, as First Man. But when it became clear she was not gonna run, I began to listen to what the pundits were saying about the crop of Democratic candidates, and I started to watch Joe Biden. And by last March, when we had our primary, I was ready to vote for him. He looked like a good old fashioned American political candidate, steady and experienced. And he turned out to be pretty energetic, too, not the senile old fool the right tried to paint him as.

Way to go, Joe. You rock, as far as I'm concerned.

Now, I know I need to add the disclaimer that it's not officially over. In fact, there is still at this hour a horrific scenario in which Trump could overtake Biden in Arizona, and also hold on to his leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia. The cable news networks, especially MSNBC, like to keep everyone on tenterhooks, because it keeps viewers watching and raises ratings. But at this point, I am trusting experts like David Plouffe and James Carville, who were respectively Obama's and Bill Clinton's campaign managers. They are not mere pollsters - who as we now know are a joke - but real, on the ground right hand men to former candidates, both of whom became President. I trust what they say.

As you know, I don't like politics, so you won't be hearing from me on that subject during the Biden administration. My life is about a thousand other things besides politics, and even when George Dubya won the most contested election in history, and beat Al Gore (who I think would have been our best President ever), I eventually got over it. I knew Bush was gonna beat John Kerry and got over that, too, even though I certainly did not like George W. Bush. But I got over it because, in the final analysis, even though he sucked, he was from a professional political family and he at least tried to run things in a semblance of a dignified way, even if it didn't seem so at the time. But now, compare Dubya to Donald Trump, and you can see what I mean. I can accept a Republican presidency, if the President carries himself in a reasonably decent manner, and if his administration is not a complete circus. Even with Dick Cheney as his vice president, and a bunch of evil neo-cons as his henchmen, I could still ultimately forget about George Dubya Bush, and his Presidency, and live my life while it was happening. Because at least they were professional.

Not so with Donald Trump. I was never able to forget about him, not for one single day for the last four years, because he was in our face the entire time. He was not only The Biggest A-Hole In World History, but also The Biggest F*** Up, and The Biggest Liar. He very nearly destroyed our country, and Good Lord may we never forget that.

But soon he will be gone, and I hope we will forget him as a person, after he taxed so much of our attention on a daily basis. I hope he winds up in prison, where he belongs, in a cell with William Barr. There, they can line up for chow and sit on their bunks and reminisce about the good old days, locked down 24/7 like the children they caged, and we will never have to think about them ever again. Good effing riddance. ///// 

I Don't Like To Talk About Politics But Tonight I'll Make An Exception

 So whattaya think? Is it okay to be optimistic, maybe relax a little bit, or are they gonna pull the rug out from under us again? MSNBC has already begun their election coverage, they're pushing Biden of course, and their anchors are trying hard to keep the smiles off their faces as they note his leads in the various battleground states and especially in the all-important Pennsylvania, where they say he's all but guaranteed to win. Without coming out and saying so, they're acting like it's in the bag. James Carville says the networks will declare Biden the winner by 7pm (pacific time) tomorrow night. And Michael Moore, who against all odds predicted a Trump win in 2016, says that the only question remaining is the size of Biden's victory. Will he eke out a win or will it be a landslide?

Me, I'm not ready to let my guard down just yet. I mean, I'm not saying Trump is gonna win, only that we've been down this road twice before, in 2016 and also in 2000 with Bush/Gore, when NBC infamously named Gore the winner on election night, only to go back and retract their proclamation later on in the wee hours. That one was a gut punch, but the shock of Trump - of all people - beating Hillary Clinton four years ago felt like a decapitation.

I remember writing, right here at this blog, something to the effect of "Get ready to wake up to our first woman President. She's also gonna be one of the best Presidents we've ever had". I wrote that on election eve 2016, then around 7pm the next evening I sat benumbed in front of the tv as the CNN anchors, who did nothing but promote Trump the previous 18 months by giving him wall-to-wall coverage, soberly announced his electoral college victories in state after state. The map was filling up with red, and I just remember turning the tv off and shutting down inside, not just thinking "here we go again", but "what in the hell has happened to America"?

By now, we all know what has happened to America. The only question is will it happen again?

I really don't think it will, but..........

If it does, we're doomed, or if not doomed, we're well on the way to being so.

But what concerns me just as much, if Biden wins, is what our response will be to the Trump presidency once it is in our rearview mirror.

I don't think we can afford to let it pass, to just allow Trump and his cronies to walk away as losers. I think they need to be indicted, and indicted for every single crime they committed while in office. This includes Trump and William Barr of course, but I think it must extend all the way down the line, to Mike Pompeo, to Jared Kushner, and to every member of the Trump administration of whom it can be proved committed criminal acts.

These people need to be held accountable, or else someone will try it again at some point in the future. We were very lucky that Trump was a buffoon, rather than a man of determination and focus like Adolph Hitler. Trump is a wannabe, and we should thank our lucky stars for that, but what if we just brush off his aberration of a Presidency? What if we just say "whew, thank God that's over", and allow him to retire to Mar-A-Lago, and allow William Barr (a criminal of the first order and committer of treason) to walk free as well?

We will be inviting a far worse right wing candidate to run at some point in the future, and to run unscathed as Trump did. Think about it : while the media lambasted Trump on a daily basis for four years (after they helped him get elected), no one, including the much-hoped-for hero Robert Mueller, was ever able to make anything stick to the man. The Mueller Report amounted to nothing, the impeachment didn't remove him. He was able to publicly insult and belittle members of his staff, which included a four star General. He publicly encouraged violence, which resulted in death and with armed militia members openly parading in the streets.

So no, if he loses tomorrow, we cannot just let him walk away. He needs to be made an example of, as a warning to anyone who would try this again. Because here's the deal : we have a democracy, right? So what would happen if a majority of the population decided that they wanted to elect a ruthless dictator? Would that result be allowed to stand, even if the guy got the majority of votes and the electoral college? What if the guy ran on a platform of total domination against people the far right hates? Would the result be accepted, just because we live in a democracy and the vote was the will of the people?

What if one day, we elected a man who made Trump look like Mr. Rodgers? I'm not talking about a dictator who rose to power through a military coup or some kind of takeover, but one who was elected by the people, like Trump was.

We've seen that impeachment doesn't work to get rid of such a man, not if he's got every Senator and Congressperson in his party under his spell.

In short, what I'm saying is that if we just shrug, and let Trump slide, we could be opening the door down the road, for a far worse candidate, one who could become an elected dictator. A real dictator, like Hitler, not just a wannabe like Trump.

So, I think we have to show America and the world that candidates like Trump will not be tolerated in the future. I know we have free speech, etc., and we need to keep that right above all, but Trump won in large part because of all the coverage CNN gave him in 2016, and the things he said during his campaign appealed to the most base instincts in the people that became his unwavering "core". Those people suddenly felt justified and vindicated in their racist, hateful views, and they came out of the shadows to strut their stuff in full view, because Trump was their President. Again, witness the openness of the militias. Those groups used to hide in the woodwork during the tenure of other administrations.

We need to go back to having an FBI that has the edge over these groups. We need to send the fringe elements in this country back into their holes, where they can be infiltrated and kept at  bay. I'll get off my soapbox now, because I don't like to talk politics in the first place. I end up going off on every tangent imaginable and end up ranting. And that gets me to my final point for this blog.

I wish everyone would stop ranting, both on the Right and Left. I don't like rants. I don't like sides. As I've mentioned many times, when I was 20, up until about age 28, I thought I was a communist, or at least toyed with the idea, but even then my thoughts were not entirely devoted to politics, as seems to be the case for so many people these days. Yeah. young Me wanted to be a Commie, or as Far Left as I could go, but eventually I learned about Uncle Joe Stalin and Chairman Mao, and - "Hello Ad"! - I discovered that these guys and their systems were as bad or worse than Hitler's. Fascism, Communism, it's all the same, just located at two opposing ends of the spectrum : the Far Right and the Far Left. In reality, minus a few fine points, they are the same goddamn thing. And I don't want any part of either one, because all they want is to fight.

So the final point I wanna make is that I hope this country will move back toward the center. That's where I wound up, once Bill Clinton became President. I think he was one of the two best Presidents we've had in my lifetime, the other being John F. Kennedy. Both were centrist Democrats, and both presided over a time of prosperity and high optimism. Neither was perfect as a human being, but then who is?

The point is that they were great Presidents, and they governed from the center. Obama was pretty good too, and if we're gonna be fair, I'll include George Bush the First and Jimmah Carter. Both were decent men, and of course JC has gone on to become a great humanitarian. Even President Reagan made peace with Gorbachev and helped end the Cold War. 

I hope we can get back to civility in this country, and can stop all the hate and name calling, and that goes for the Left as well as the Right. Stop hating on people, people. The Internet had been a huge part of this problem, but just let people have their views. Most folks, Republican or Democrat, aren't killers. They just wanna live their lives.

So let's hope we end the Trump era tomorrow, and may we never return to such an awful place. A price must be paid for what has happened here, but it must be paid by the man himself, and his cronies, his co-conspirators. If there is justice, they will wind up in prison, and it will send the message to Never Try This Again.

As for the American people, we must come together, stop hating, and stay away from the fringe.

That's all I know and all the politics I hope to talk for quite some time to come.

See you in the morning. May it be a wonderful day, the day we've all been hoping for.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Happy Halloween + "The Devil Rides Out" (semi-jibberish review because of tiredness)

 Happy Halloween! I hope yours was a good one. Pearl and I had fun even though there were no Trick or Treaters this year. We still carved a pumpkin, and went for a walk around the neighborhood to check out the decorated houses, of which there were many. I don't know if other folks were doing trick or treat, or if they just decked their houses out for the fun of it, but in our area at least, there were actually more Halloween Houses than usual. I think people just wanna have some fun after all we've been through this year. Elizabeth, I hope you had a good Halloween, and were able to do something fun. Post a pic if you dressed up!

Shakespeare By The Sea streamed a live performance of "Titus Andronicus", one of The Bard's gorier plays. As you know, I'm a big fan of SBTS. I really missed seeing them live in the park this Summer, so it was cool to watch at least part of the broadcast, which I did in between my usual evening duties. If they leave it up on Youtube, I'll watch it uninterrupted next week.

But the piece de resistance for this Halloween was a screening of another Hammer Studios classic, "The Devil Rides Out"(1968), based on the novel of the same name by the late English occult author Dennis Wheatley. In a quick aside, it says on Wiki that some of his books, featuring a character named "Gregory Sallust", were a main inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond, a poignant connection to discover on the day Sean Connery died. At any rate, it appears that Wheatley was a best-selling writer during his career. I've only heard of him through this movie, but if it is any indication of the quality of his writing, I'll be looking into his work very soon. As for the movie, it was yet another film I came across through the constant hounding Amazon does, via it's recommendations. If you buy stuff or even click on a dvd from Hammer, for instance, Amazon will then hammer you with recommendations for Hammer. You already know this, of course, having your own list of recommendations I'm sure. But for me, two that they Hammered Home were "Plague of the Zombies" (reviewed in the last blog) and "The Devil Rides Out", which, like "Plague", was a rare find and high priced collector's item until Shout Factory released it, too, on Blu-ray a year ago.

Because I got such a good deal on "Plague" (as noted in the last blog), I figured "what the hell". It was Halloween and I needed to finally obtain both of these movies that have been bugging me for a few years. So, I kicked George Bush to the curb and went ahead and bought the Blu-ray of "Devil Rides Out", full price but free shipping (because Amazon), and even though it wasn't cheap, I'm pleased to say it was money well spent. I am new to Blu-ray, but these things look incredible.

The colors and photography alone on "Devil" are worth the price of admission. In another aside I must mention that both "Plague of the Zombies" and "Devil Rides Out" are Color By Deluxe, and when those films were made, in 1966 and '68, my Dad was vice president at Deluxe, so that was kind of cool to see.

But the thing is, we've been sticking to only the most evil films this Halloween, and "The Devil Rides Out", while very beautifully filmed and well acted, and made by a highly respected British studio, is nevertheless a sick and twisted story of a devil worshipping cult, led by a maniacal sociopath who has the power to call up old Splitfoot himself.

Christopher Lee stars as a good guy for once, which made me happy because I just saw "The Wicker Man" on TCM, and he makes me so mad as "Lord Summerisle" in that film. If there was ever a horror villain you wanted to punch, it's him. But he redeems himself as the Duc de Richeleau, who at the beginning of the movie has met up with an old army buddy from the Lafayette Escadrille. I don't know what they're doing in England if they're supposed to be French, but they're gonna go meet up with the son of a former third colleague who is now deceased. The trio had fought together in WW1. The third man was killed. Christopher Lee and "Rex", the second friend, have sworn to take care of the dead man's son. 

But when they arrive at his house in the English countryside, they discover that he's caught up in a Satanic Cult. This happens right at the beginning of the movie. Christopher Lee, as the Duc de Richleau, recognizes on the spot what is taking place. He's a hardcore Christian but has experience in black magic, so he immediately tries to pull the young man out of the cult he's immersed in.

In doing so, he crosses the Grand Wazoo of the cult, played Charles Gray, whose ice-blue eyes show the temperature of his blood. As badass as Christopher Lee is, and with all his horror credentials, he's gonna have to call up everything in his power, including a long lost Latin invocation, to deal with this guy.

"The Devil Rides Out" plays like a thriller for much of the way, but retains that pastoral English feel. The movie takes place in the late 1920s, but England is timeless, because of it's landscape. While it doesn't have the unrelenting grimness of "Plague of the Zombies" (which is downright brutal), it does give you that sharpness of Brrrittish intellect, where they see themselves as naturally above all other humanity, at least in matters of resolving good and evil.

The last paragraph probably sounds like a bunch of jibberish. That's because I'm super tired after a long day. But, I had a blast and I love Halloween, and tomorrow we get an extra hour to sleep, so I should be slightly more coherent in the next blog. I will definitely check in before the election. See you in the morning.

Tons of love!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)