If you’re like me, then you find the convex parking garage mirrors, well, vexing (convexing?). I suspect they cause as many accidents as they prevent. And the ones in our garage (above) are way too small. I might be slowly morphing into Andy Rooney here (the expiration date on that reference has long passed, I’m aware), but I’d back off if they’d just standardize these things. Cars keep getting bigger and so should these mirrors…
But there is a trick I’ve discovered, regardless of the mirror size. Perhaps it’s too obvious to mention but since this is my blog… The first step is to slow to a crawl. This buys you some time. Your speed should about match that of The Rogues’ hearse from the end of “The Warriors” (1979). Then check the mirror and find your car. You’ll quickly recognize it unless you’re in a rental, in which case the first step is even more important. Now that you’ve spied yourself inching along, you will fall back on your ancient animal instincts and watch for motion. This is classic predator/prey shit that goes back to our pre-history. It’s there for a reason. Chances are the other guy will be moving faster (if not, then great!) and that contrast will help confirm who’s who and allow you to take whatever corrective action is needed. Voila!
The Rogues slowly come out to play on Coney Island in “The Warriors” (1979).
And as I was pondering this, it occurred to me that this directive of “find yourself first” could be applied to other life situations. It’s akin to “take a beat” or “gather yourself.” A preparatory step that gives you a chance to establish your center, your mood, your base. Say you walk into a party. It’s crowded and pretty loud. You won’t know even half the people. For me, an introvert who sometimes pretends to be an extrovert, that can be a little daunting. So you look into the proverbial mirror and drop a pin. Find yourself. Close your eyes, even. What’s the goal here? Maybe there’s someone in particular you want to catch up with. What do you want to say to them? Or maybe you plan to mostly observe. That’s fine, too. Just make a note of it. A little “swing thought,” as my friend RR likes to say. You have to set yourself before you can take a swing. Before taking it beyond yourself. Before thinking about the ball. And mightn’t this work as well for a job interview? A first date? A speech you have to make? A contentious Thanksgiving dinner with MAGA relatives? And here we’ll pivot from Mr. Rooney to Mr. Rogers…
Check your settings before entering.
Today’s lesson:
Slow down. Take a beat. Find yourself first. Think of all the things you have been or might be in similar situations. We all have a range. We are all 4D (three dimensional beings with a time variable). We can be funny or insightful or vulnerable or attentive, as well as their opposites. The question then is what do we want our equalizer settings to be, at least going in (game conditions will dictate some things). I think that if we do that, optimize our own settings, then we can better engage other people and find out who they are. If we focus solely on trying get ourselves across successfully, then we miss half the party. You don’t learn much from your own performance. Dancing alone can be fun, but it’s no match for that spontaneous bodily call-and-response with a partner. Melodies are terrific but often improved by harmony. So look in to look out. Find yourself to then find other people. Watch their motion and respond to it. What are their coordinates and heading? But don’t take my word for it, listen to the great Zen guru, Ty Webb. And if you’ll wear that blindfold, then you, too, can “be the ball, Danny.” This may all sound like pop, self-help psychobabble, and it probably is. But at least it might get us to slow down in the parking garages.
Michael O’Keefe as Danny Noonan in “Caddyshack” (1980). Be yourself. Then be the ball.
Promotional ad for Baltimore in Chicago’s Midway Airport accentuates the positive (June 2023)Public service message in Baltimore hits the negative head-on (Jan 2024)
My cousin and his wife sent me a Donald J. Trump bobblehead doll as a joke around the time of the 2016 election. And true to any Trump-related product, it promptly failed and the head fell off. I tried putting it to use for a series of photos before tossing his visage into the garbage (a deeply satisfying moment). I feel that long after he’s gone a disembodied Trump will continue to haunt this nation. America, WTF?!
“So what is Donald Trump to you?“
Donald Trump is an abject fraud.
Donald Trump is a physical and moral coward. He famously dodged the draft with phony heel spurs before spinning round to spit on the graves of those who actually risked/lost their lives in bona fide service.
Donald Trump is a raging and malignant narcissist.
Donald Trump is a lifelong tax-cheat.
Donald Trump is a compulsive liar. A sociopath of both the highest and lowest order. His lies run the gamut of the utterly trivial to the thoroughly tragic.
Donald Trump is a loud-mouthed braggart with few, if any, true life achievements and who rose to our highest office on the backs of white nationalists, hypocritical Christian evangelicals, and the self-interest of a like-minded Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump is a repugnant, pussy-grabbing, sexist pig.
Donald Trump has no true friends.
Donald Trump has no inner life. No soul. No palpable humanity. He is only fragile ego.
Donald Trump was a horrible President. For his paranoia and mendacity, he surpasses Nixon and enters the company of Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, and Warren G. Harding on the White House Wall of Shame. A second term would be an unimaginable travesty for America.
Trump-Nixon: “I am not, not a crook!”
Donald Trump is a sore loser. Maybe our country’s sorest. We need a little more R.E. Lee here and a lot less N.B. Forrest.
Donald Trump is a racist.
Donald Trump is a hypocrite.
Donald Trump is an intellectual cretin.
Donald Trump has terrible tastes. In everything. Decor. Wives. Offspring. World leaders. He’s a pampered philistine, thinly plated in fool’s gold. A gilded gutter-snipe.
Donald Trump is a giant fucking tool.
Donald Trump is a terminal tightwad who often feigns generosity. But when the check arrives, his black car is long gone. He consistently demonizes (non-European) immigrants while hiring illegals who ultimately get stiffed. And he does the same with his bespoke lawyers, so in that way he’s at least an egalitarian Scrooge. It’s as if just being in one of his tawdry towers is payment enough. After all we’ve seen, who would be stupid enough to trust this grifting carnival clown?!
Donald Trump often takes credit for other people’s achievements, and he always blames others for his own frequent and stupid mistakes.
Donald Trump is the absolute personification… the quintessence… the apotheosis… the ne plus ultra of corruption. In the manner of King Midas, everything he touches turns to fool’s gold and then, in short order, becomes a pile of shit. An ice-cold seat awaits him in Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell.
Donald Trump has very small hands. And we all know what that means!
Illma Gore is an artist from Brisbane, Australia whose painting “Make America Great Again” was banned from Facebook in 2016. She also received death threats and was physically assaulted by the MAGA horde. Not much has changed since then. Her posted caption for the work: “Because no matter what is in your pants, you can still be a big prick.” Fucking brilliant.
Donald Trump is an avaricious, venal, and gluttonous miscreant. He is a bottomless pit of wanton greed and lust for power.
Donald Trump is fantastically insecure. Hopelessly and endlessly insecure on a celestial scale. A black hole of all-consuming insecurity.
Donald Trump hates himself but projects this disdain onto his would-be enemies.
Donald Trump, while not necessarily the subject of one, is the human equivalent of a stretched and degraded 80’s-era VHS pee-tape video.
Donald Trump is just a dick.
Donald Trump never displays a genuine smile or mirthful laugh. And that tells a very lot. There is an utter absence of joy in his being. He is made purely of bad energy. The dark triad, plus a few. The Eye of Sauron would finally have to look away. Sad!
Donald Trump is an insurrectionist.
Donald Trump is said to be more of a symptom than a disease. And that may well be true. But that’s also true of lesions in tertiary syphilis that render appalling and grotesque the contours of the human body (see below), as Trump does of the political discourse and our institutions.
Donald Trump admires fascists and covets their unchecked power. He may ultimately rise to their ranks as a polyester knock-off before being tossed into the rancid dumpster of human history.
Donald Trump is an orange-skinned reality TV buffoon.
Donald Trump regularly cheats at golf and has a hideous golf swing.
Donald Trump, in the parlance of William Shakespeare, is a “spleeny, hell-hated clotpole”… or a “dissembling, clay-brained joithead”… or an “unmuzzled, fat-kidneyed lewdster”… just to name a few.
Donald Trump is a bully.
Donald Trump is the tragic mirror in which we see all of what ails humanity (an astute observation by a family member, LF).
Donald Trump is unfit for public office. He’s unfit for private office. He’s unfit period. Full stop.
Donald Trump has a terrible record as a businessman. He’s the Trump Shuttle serving Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka to graduates of Trump University en route to a Trump Casino to bet on the defunct USFL’s New Jersey Generals in a place they call Trump’s Twilight Zone.
Donald Trump is a divisive demagogue.
Donald Trump, as my mom might say, is a fink.
If Trump were in the Legion of Doom or SPECTRE, he would surely be fragged for polluting their public image. As with all things, “evil” has its limits and unthinking idiots will not be tolerated.
Donald Trump is a national and international disgrace.
Donald Trump holds the Bible wrong side up and wipes his ass with the Constitution.
FILE – In this Monday, June 1, 2020 file photo, President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House in Washington. Part of the church was set on fire during protests the previous night. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Donald Trump isn’t at all funny.
Donald Trump never admits that he’s wrong and never says he’s sorry. This despite the fact that he’s most often wrong and is one sorry-ass excuse for a human being.
Donald Trump is a petty, thin-skinned, vindictive and manipulative asshole.
Donald Trump is an unstable non-genius.
Donald Trump is America’s fulminant perirectal abscess that steadily seeds our national blood stream with virulent, drug-resistant bacteria threatening septic shock and multiorgan failure of our body politic.
Donald Trump is a reflexive misogynist.
Donald Trump is a walking tabloid who never reads a book. And, although he’s a published author, has also never written one.
Donald Trump is a fuckwad.
Donald Trump has been convicted in court, by a jury of his peers, of sexual assault and defamation of Jean Carroll. That cost him 5 million dollars for starters. A subsequent defamation charge for his double-down defamation of her added another 83.3 million dollars to the ledger. Trump Crime Family, Inc. has also been found guilty by a New York State judge of civil fraud to the tune of 355 million dollars plus interest. Maybe DJT and his crack legal team finally just got tired of so much “winning.”
Donald Trump has ridiculous hair. Absurd hair. Insane hair. Inane hair. Fraudulent hair.
Donald Trump is the fullest possible embodiment of everything and everybody that you, your parents, your teachers, your siblings, your friends, your classmates, your co-workers, and your romantic partners never, ever, ever wanted you to be.
Donald Trump sucks ass.
Donald Trump is now the very thing he was most afraid of becoming. A total… fucking… LOSER!!
“The Masque of the Red Death” is an Edgar Allan Poeshort story from 1845. It seems that many of the themes from the 19th century are back in vogue, or perhaps they never went away. Napoleon has returned, yet again. As have the various infectious scourges (bacterial, viral, fungal, political). And also the overpromise of technological innovation. Plus arguments over voting rights, immigration and potable water. Oh, yes, and the rising chatter about civil war in America.
Zipperotomy is a new and minimally invasive surgical technique allowing fast bedside access to the thorax. When a practitioner was asked about its ease of use, they replied, “it’s a SNAP!”
“The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
— Matt tAIBBI in “ROLLING STONE” FROM APRIL 2010
The facade of the Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Ave in Washington, DC (from Jan 2024). It’s unclear whether Wall St.’s money-suction apparatus is being dismantled or simply upgraded. I would predict the latter.Goldman’s large bore money ducts set to continuous low-gomco suction.
Great Exudations 