Jerry Bruckheimer is Executive Producing 2017

You guys. I finally figured out what the actual fuck is going on here. Jerry Bruckheimer is executive producing 2017. There's simply no other explanation for the past 8 months.

The successful Hollywood producer, best known for his epic popcorn disaster flicks, has now broken the fourth wall to delve into a new genre of reality-based meta cinema. 

The plot:

A lecherous real estate magnate and pathological liar is unexpectedly propelled into the presidency of the United States.

His election, clouded by a perfect storm of nefarious foreign influence, technological failings, and disorienting propaganda is facilitated by a shadowy cabal of Russian oligarchs, neo-Nazi quasi-intellectuals, and his icy adult children. 

His estranged wife, a former super model partial to wearing 7-inch stiletto heels at all times, is reluctantly along for the ride and separated from her lover, the head of security at a high-end jewelry store in one of her husband's leveraged-to-the-brink-of-bankruptcy skyscrapers.

At first, the divisive new president is bouyed by a revanchist, disaffected populace impoverished and made sick by the very tax, environmental, and health "policies" he is advancing. 

Chasing the ever-elusive high of public adulation, he regularly holds Hitler-style rallies with the complicity of a craven and ineffectual Congress bought and paid for by weapons lobbyists.

But soon, the scope of the president's ineptitude is laid bare by crisis after crisis.

The American people begin to turn on one another as nature's wrath, propelled by global warming, unleashes its fury. 

Unprecedented storms and earthquakes shatter records, destroy cities, and befuddle embattled scientists whom everyone in authority refuses to listen to. Desperately warning of the next cataclysm, they offer data and tweet warnings in vain.

Meanwhile, a petulant and vindictive dictator an ocean away keeps testing new and better long-range missiles, daring the semi-demented and impulsive sociopath at America's helm to blow up the planet in service of his own ego like some sort of Freudian suicide bomber.

Please, Mr. Bruckheimer. Only two words can save us now: Bruce Willis.

These Tweets from Someone Named Prince Fuckboy Prove I Have No Idea What is Even Happening on This Planet

Sometimes I encounter something or someone, and I just have to shake my head and admit to myself that I basically have no fucking idea what is even happening on this planet. 

Like I'm in Denver for work, right, and in a six block radius no fewer than six hale and hearty aggressive white men with dogs demanded money of me and I'm just like WUUUUT. 

I mean, I grew up in NYC and I'm certainly no stranger to panhandling and I am fine with it. But these guys were seriously garnering ZEEERR-O sympathy. Like really dude? You were born a white man in America, you have a healthy dog on a leash, and you're asking me for quarters and then screaming at me when I ignore you? 

Like what is even happening on this planet right now. Which seems like an odd segue to Prince Fuckboy, but it's not.

I stumbled on Prince Fuckboy on Twitter and reading his timeline was proof positive that I really have no idea what is even going on on planet earth.

LEGIT there is a corner of the Internet and presumably the world in which speaking fluently and casually of fucking dragons and cryptids is a thing. I don't even know what a cryptid IS, and I'm afraid to Google it lest my browser cookies conclude that I want to fuck one.

Not only that, but apparently your choice of morning caffeine beverage determines what type of monster you are prone to fucking. The "classic" monsters like zombies and werewolves are for coffee and tea drinkers, dragons and cryptids are for tea drinkers, and robots and aliens are for coffee addicts.

I can't get enough coffee into my bloodstream fast enough between the hours of 6 and 8 a.m., and yet I've never considered fucking an alien OR a robot, unless you count like half the dudes I hooked up with in college. 

Then, yes. Of course then.

My point is this: there is a white dude with a pet dog screaming at me for a quarter, there's a community of tea drinkers who fuck cryptids and tweet about it, and I just give up on trying to make sense of planet earth anymore.

The Level of Nope on Chicken Sashimi is Difficult to Quantify

"Chicken sashimi." Now there's two words I never thought I'd say in the same sentence. Unless of course that sentence was "Chicken and sashimi are two words that do not belong in the same sentence."

First let me say that I love chicken, but I'll fully admit that chicken is gross.

The animal itself is filthy, stupid, and eats its own shit. And that's under the best of circumstances--the Whole Foods/PETA best-practices circumstances. Under the worst, it's so full of hormones your kids will go through puberty before dessert arrives.

But chicken fat runs in my veins. It was the bread and butter of my people! Literally. Peasant Russian Jews and all their descendants used to put schmaltz on bread. That's Yiddish for rendered chicken fat whipped up into a Kosher butter substitute.

My great-grandmother, who spoke only Yiddish, bought a live chicken every week at a market in the Bronx where she watched the butcher cut its neck and bleed it out. Then she'd take it home, pluck its feathers, and turn every last bit of it into kreplach, which is a kind of dumpling. 

What peasant culture doesn't have a scary-looking dumpling?

All this to say, I can't escape my love of chicken. I love it in Caesar salads, I love it as Buffalo wings. I love it in General Tso's, I I love it in tacos and fajitas. I'm basically to chicken what Forrest Gump was to shrimp. It's like Green Eggs & Ham, all the ways and places in which I would eat chicken.

But one way in which I would NOT eat chicken is raw.

Raw chicken is like KRYPTONITE to Jewish mothers. If so much as one drop of raw chicken juice falls in a Jewish mother's kitchen, the whole place goes on lockdown like it was the CDC during Ebola.

So I really don't need Food & Wine magazine to tell me whether chicken sashimi is safe or unsafe. A hundred generations of overbearing, kerchief-wearing bubbies would rather handle battery acid than raw chicken, and really that's all I need to know. 

This whole thing sounds like something two macho foodies came up with on a dare and tried to pass of as a trendy fusion delicacy while they secretly laugh at everyone who orders it for $100 a plate.

FOH chicken sashimi.

Missed Connections: The Guy Who Flipped Me the Double (!) Bird on Industrial Blvd.: You Give Me Life!

You were wearing Wayfarers and riding in the passenger seat of a tan, late 90’s-model American SUV, which was merging at the intersection of Glacier Highway and Industrial Boulevard where Glacier turns into a one-lane road. 

I was in my forest green, beater 138,000 mile Subaru Forester with two 9 year-old girls--one in the front seat, one in the back, and a trunk full of bikes and camping crap.

I had to make a rather rapid choice (as one must at that particular intersection) whether to slow down and let you in (or in this case your girlfriend (?) who was driving), or rather speed up and get out in front of you.

I hesitate to use the verb “cut” in front, because that verb (if you're familiar with that part of speech) tends to have a pejorative connotation (if you’re familiar with that particular adjective and noun, or those parts of speech more generally) that isn’t exactly apt here. 

Really the choice one makes at that intersection—to get out in front or drop back—at least in my case, has less to do with an aggressive assertion of driver dominance and more with safety and split-second instinct. After all, I am a 40 year-old mother of two and my primary interest when I drive anywhere in Juneau is getting there safely and making sure my route intersects with the Lemon Creek Breeze-In so I can obtain a packet of Swedish Fish and three chicken tacos.

In this particular instance, I decided to get out in front as opposed to drop back. And what you did in that moment gave me such joy, such pleasure, and such a sense of just being HOME that I needed to reach out and find you again.

You gave me the finger, and not just one finger—but TWO. You hoisted both middle fingers on each of your hands high in the air, where I could clearly see them through my rear-view mirror, and you held them in position there for a good 30 seconds to be certain I wouldn’t miss the gesture.

I didn’t. I loved it. And if you can do that with just two fingers, who knows what else you can do with the rest of your hands BOWM CHICKA BOW WOWM, AMIRITE?!!?!

Since I live in Juneau (and presumably you do as well?) where people rarely honk, much less indulge in road rage, I frequently find myself pining wistfully for the gratuitous public hostility of my youth in New York City.

There, screaming SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!! out your 9th story window at a blaring car alarm was a common early morning salutation, and one’s middle finger was always ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice on the subway, street corner, or certainly—in a car. Indeed, my children's finest memory of visiting their grandparents in NYC is when, in their telling, grandpa Nicky inquired of a belligerent pedestrian on the corner of 42nd Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan, "You Wanna 'F-Word' With Me 'A-S-S-Hole?!'" 

This came on the heels of someone—perhaps an acquaintance of yours—recently screaming at my 6 year-old son from the window of a pickup truck that he was being a “little jerk” for holding a street-crossing flag in a confusing manner. It really just made my heart melt in homesick nostalgia; although if I'm honest, "little shit" would have sounded more authentic.

The way you rode (or got your girlfriend to ride?) my ass for six more miles until I pulled into the parking lot of Auke Bay Elementary School just so we could maybe exchange numbers and I could finally introduce myself. Well, heh heh, that really set my little heart a-flutter, but you sped on, content to let your two middle fingers do the talking. 

I wasn’t quick enough with my phone to snap a picture of your face or license plate, but I was able to do a quick sketch artist's rendering of your two beautiful middle fingers. I know my husband might not like me reaching out like this, so I am going to put this For yoU in Code, in language that I Know YOU will understand.

Love,

O.H.M.

My Mom Was Born in 1945. I Asked Her Some Questions About the World Then and Now. She Had Some Fascinating Answers.

1. Do you think the world is a better place now than it used to be, and if so, how?

The world is a big place, and I feel most qualified to comment on the United States and, indirectly, on other resource-rich countries. Compared to life 100 years ago, on average we live much longer, in much greater comfort, and with many more opportunities to travel and acquire new knowledge. We can save the lives of people who once faced certain death. I believe that every ill we see now, whether it’s interpersonal violence, war, natural disaster, epidemics, drought, famine or any form of social injustice, has been there all along and is not worse now, bearing in mind that governments are constantly changing and people in any given location fare better or worse depending on those fluctuations. I’m happy to have lived at this time and not at any earlier time.

2. How is it worse? 

It’s worse in terms of our ability to annihilate our own existence and that of other species. We have sufficient weapons of mass destruction to destroy the world many times over and we are making our planet increasing less habitable.

3. What's your biggest regret? 

I don’t believe in regrets, so I don’t have them. People make the best decisions they can at the time they make them. There’s no point in looking back and wishing you had been a different person who knew then what you know now.

4. What's your greatest accomplishment? 

Having my wonderful daughter. Nothing in my life has ever seemed more important than that or given me greater happiness.

5. Do you feel responsible for the actions of the Baby Boomer generation?: 

I feel responsible for the ways in which I have participated in exacerbating the world’s problems or shown indifference to other people’s needs or suffering. But I think of that as my personal failings rather the failings of my “group." I feel guilty about living so well when so many others struggle. I know how much of my good fortune is sheer luck.

6. What contributions/problems do you think your generation has made/inflicted? 

I don’t think there are clear boundaries between generations—one generation blends into the next, and there are always important interactions between younger and older people. If I think about what defines my “generation” best, I think it was the sixties. In the liberal Northeast we were against the Vietnam war and in favor of civil rights and the war against poverty, which I think were contributions. We also were into sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. That was a bit foolish—serious epidemics of substance use problems and sexually transmitted infections have always been part of the world’s ills. Later, our generation was among those that actively or passively permitted corporations to severely compromise our democracy, proliferate weapons of war throughout the world, support dictatorships and destroy environments. We also passively watched genocides and other catastrophes take place. These are huge and disturbing failings.

7. How do you deal with living with your choices?

Because I don’t believe in regrets, I accept the choices that I’ve made.

8. How to you make peace with your limitations? 

I believe that humans are a highly flawed species with great capacity to inflict harm. I work to be the best person I can be given my particular strengths and weaknesses. I’ve always been highly motivated to know myself and this has included facing and accepting the good, the bad, and the ugly.

9. What is your overriding philosophy on adult friendships? 

I believe that the less you expect from people, the happier you’ll be in your relationships. I let “chemistry” guide my choice of friends. I strive to learn what they can and can’t offer and to accept that. I consider myself responsible for my own internal state, but I’ve been very appreciative when friends have been good and helpful to me in times of need.

10. What about romantic relationships? 

Everything I’ve said about friendships also applies to romantic relationships. In addition, the most important things to me in my 40+ year marriage to your dad have been his unconditional love in good times and bad times, his fidelity and reliability, his sense of humor, his love of the written and spoken word, his intellectual curiosity and keen observations about people, his unambivalent support of my career, and his problem-solving skills.

11. What is your biggest concern for the world after you die?

That it will become uninhabitable by humans as a result of environmental harms and climate change, and that this will affect the grandchildren I love so much in particular and future generations more generally. 

12. Are you afraid of dying? Why or why not? 

I was afraid when I was young and experienced the deaths of my parents, but after spending so many years processing their deaths, I don’t feel afraid now. However, who knows how I’ll feel when I’m actually dying—I just hope that I’m not disabled for a prolonged period of time.

13. What are your priorities for the next phase of your life and why? 

Since I spent much of my life believing that I could die at any minute, I always tried to do what I most wanted to do. I’ve been on the same mission since childhood, trying to understand the world and participate in it through the prism of the medical and psychiatric care that disadvantaged people need. That never changes. My relationships are more important to me now than ever. I adore spending time with Paige and Isaac and nurturing younger people in whatever ways I can. I find that having a 72-year-old-body is like driving an old car. It requires much more maintenance to keep it going, so of necessity I have to prioritize exercise and self-care.

Juneau, I Know What You're Doing

Listen, Juneau. Stop it. I know what you're doing. Just stop. Seriously.

You do this all the time. We've been together for what? 12 years? Do you reeeeealllly think I don't know the games you play? Do you think I don't know your empty promises? I'm sick and tired of your hot and cold (wet and dry?) bullshit, and it's time to set some boundaries here.

You've been a COMPLETE ASSHOLE lately, and obviously you know it. At a time of year when you're SUPPOSED to be at least halfway decent to me, you've been nothing but impossible--with torrential rain, 50 degree temps, and the sun nowhere in sight for weeks--no actually? MONTHS on end. 

You've abused my good will and wreaked emotional havoc on my life, and you KNOW IT. 

You've isolated me from my friends, controlled my money, and tried to limit my mobility with your "low ceilings" and "mechanicals."

Now it's Labor Day Weekend, so what do you do? I'll tell you what. You show up with sun, blue sky, mellow temperatures, no insects, etc., just in time for the shittiest part of the year, as if to remind me that I shouldn't leave you and tell you to fuck off forever, and only come back if and when one of our mutual friends has a wedding in you.

Like do you really think I'm gonna fall for this again?

Because trust me, I won't. I don't care if you show me blue sky for the next three weeks. It won't last, and you and I both know it. I will do it this time. I swear I fucking will. I know this tired ass game of yours. 

Be a total shit head all summer, and then for the last long weekend just bust out all the stops: the cloudless sky, the sun, the time off from work, the available camp sites because school's back in session and the tourists are almost gone.

Rinse and repeat.

I am sick and tired of this vicious cycle, I have to tell you. I can't have you toying with my emotions and treating me like shit only to come crawling back to me with this whole eco-porn act. I've seen it all before and I'm not buying it.

Okay fine, this is your LAST CHANCE. I mean it this time.

Happy Labor Day Everyone: Samuel Gompers is Hot AF!

I'm looking forward to Labor Day this year you guys, but still trying to come up with my costume. I'm torn between going as Samuel Gompers or sexy Samuel Gompers. (Samuel Gompers is the original woke bae).

Also, I'm putting together my Labor Day playlist. So far I have "Workin' 9-5," "Work" by Rhianna, "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad," "I Ain't Gonna Work on Maggie's Farm No More," by Bob Dylan, "We Can Work it Out" by the Beatles and "Everybody's Workin' for the Weekend." Also Beyoncé's "All the Single Ladies." That song has nothing to do with the labor movement, but it fucking CRUSHES it on like, evvverryyyy playlist.

And the kids are psyched for the Labor Day Pageant and a visit from the Labor Rat. Which is actually this giant, inflatable rat? That hangs out on picket lines around NYC? (If you've ever lived there, you know him well). He leaves a basket of union cards on your doorstep and is a fixture in the Labor Day Nativity Scene.

Then I'm going to bring the kids down to the Union Hall to sit on Joe Hill's lap and tell him what terms they want in their collective bargaining agreement this year. (Please don't tell them he was executed by firing squad in 1915)!

Also don't tell them that their ACTUAL real life great-grandfather (a.k.a. Franma's dad) was part of the IWW and went to federal prison for 7 years for sedition when he organized copper miners during World War I!

Yikes! 

Anyway, I'm off to pour myself a nice stiff glass of Labor Day nog. Don't get caught with me under the punch-clock (you know the custom! MWAH!) I'm gonna leave out some prison gruel for Joe Hill when he comes down the mine shaft, and head over to JoAnn Fabrics for my cat-ears and fishnet tights for Sexy Samuel Gompers.

Finally, don't tell my grandpa's ghost that I'm joking about Labor Day. That shit ain't funny.

Happy Labor Day everyone!