Daily beast

Why I vote Democrat.

I was on Facebook talking to a friend who is voting for Romney though not entirely happy.
She is voting more against Obama than for her party.
I think that's been the rule of thumb for a lot of conservative voters. They don't like liberalism but their party has been high-jacked by extremism.
Romney would have done much better to run with the views he had as the Governor of a blue state.
I lived there and we kind of got used to a Republican Governor in the land of Kennedy after Bill Weld. BTW, I'm not totally high on Obama either but will vote for him. I thought he could have been a great progressive one term president with sweeping changes.  I also think his reaching across the aisle drove the right further right to get away. Obama had a literal hand in creating the silliness that is Teabaggery.
My friend is a conservative Christian and is angered that her Christian friends are against Romney because he  is a Mormon. She likened this to the anti Catholic sentiment when Kennedy ran.
This got me thinking.
Kennedy was a privileged son of an ambitious man too. But that base was all about what FDR (Considered a traitor to his class) created. As I say, I lived in New England and benefited personally from the old money liberals who thought money was to be used for education, medicine, the arts, and social welfare.
My son had the best medicine, education, and is now getting a full scholarship to become a jazz musician. This literally wouldn't have happened in most other parts of the country.
 Mitt is from a world I saw out there too.
When I drove limousine for hedge fund managers and had a regular visits between investment companies, banks, Harvard Business school , and airfields to awaiting private jets.
The real interest there was maximizing money.
I overheard many discussions about labor as an expense that could be cut.
To them it was a line on a ledger sheet. To me, it was a community of Americans who just wanted to work. That's why I vote Democratic.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with extreme wealth, I just don't think it benefits the average American to have that mentality making policy and law.

Why I stopped arguing with my dog.

I had an epiphany the other day. Well that's not strictly true. More like, a creeping suspicion became fully realized the other day.
I forget that humans are the product of evolution and part of the animal kingdom. (This is debated by one of the groups  I will be discussing in this post.)  No offense to any Neanderthal Americans out there, we apparently have bit of Neanderthal DNA in us. But at one point in our history, Neanderthal and Cro -Magnon lived together. Neanderthal died out but Cro-Magnon flourished and became us.

We are still evolving and seem to be at a crossroads again.  The latest hallmarks of development in humanity are forward thinking, progressiveness, open mindedness, definitely more advanced. The old version of humans?  The neo neanderthals? Fearful, violent, superstitious, and lets be honest, dumber. So my epiphany? We've been arguing with another species. Ham Adams was born out of this impulse.
Now I see the silliness of it. It's like arguing with my dog.
It's silly to get mad or expect reason instead of a steamy turd on the living room carpet. If you are reading this and say to yourself, "Ham, I didn't evolve from no monkey." Sorry, you are part of the evolutionary dead end group.  If you are counting on an invisible man in the sky, astrology, or some other form of magical thinking to intercede on your behalf? Dead end.
Think life and happiness is all about the obscene acquisition of green bits of paper? Dead end.
Think weaker members of the tribe should be left to fend for themselves, there's only enough for me!! Dead end.
Think color of skin, sexuality, or superstitions different from yours matter? Dead end.
Think you should pray for me? Well. Thanks. I'll think for you.
Unlike homosexuality, for some this may be a choice. I know for me evolution means finding myself  embarrassed by my neolithic roots once in while. So at first, evolution seemed more a choice but like many things that frighten cave people, thought inspires more and more thought. That used to scare me too. And there may even have been a time in my life when I may have wanted the new information to stop and turn it all over to the lord. Now I'm happy and comfortable with the ever increasing darkness that comes with ever increasing light.

 Not sure how the Neo Neahnderthals'll die out. I'm guessing dietary, fatty bacon & chicken sandwiches etc. or hopefully shoot each other with those guns they seem to love so much.

So  Modern man, thank you for fire, the wheel, and the other developments of the last 30,000 yrs, but you're outdated. We need to go to different planets, cure cancer; end hunger, poverty, illiteracy, and can't use a species that panics at every new thing that comes along. Like the Neanderthals before you, we will carry some of your DNA with us. (Although a more advanced model than you we are still human and will fuck and even have a baby or two with morons) But you've served your purpose and belong in a diorama in a museum somewhere.  Not in public office or in serious debate.  There, there. Don't be sad!
You are going to a magic kingdom with rides to eat fried dough with Jesus for eternity after you all die out. Okay?

Wall Street (cares)

Hey all, Please visit WALL STREET (cares) Ham is now doing his shit starting on film.
Please share favorite links and subscribe. Hit the funny button at the end of each.
(if they are)
Thanks, Ham

Please give to Wall Street cares. Thank you!

WALL STREET cares

Wall Street Cares (Coming soon!)

Howdy, long time no write. Sorry there were several reasons. One, I've jumped between Blogger and WordPress. The WordPress layout was perfect but I missed much of the functionality of Blogger. Also, I think much of the fire was out. At a subconscious level I knew partisan politics was not the big issue. As we see now, the system is defective on both sides. Don't get me wrong I'm backing Obama and think the Republican Party has been co-opted by pod people and any sane or moderate voice in it is long gone or in hiding.


Lastly, I've been preoccupied with some other writing in response to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Like the protesters, It's taken me some time to get a grasp on the central issue. I woke up laughing at what I thought Wall Street might say in response in some unified way. As if they, A. Cared. or B. Were a unified body.


I've written about a dozen ads and showed them to a producer and director and they loved it.


We shot some promos and a pitch for funding. It's a low budget affair so I'll just be passing the hat on Face Book and emailing friends. My partners are already doing this type of stuff. The director Ryan Kleier is a UCB guy and is hilarious with a sharp ear and eye for satire. You can see his stuff by visiting Funkanomics. My producer is Steven Attema who, months ago, rather presciently came up with the idea of a film where Wall Street miscreants get kidnapped and beat up on TV for the amusement of the viewing audience. (I played a particularly awful guy and well, you'll see.) His movie is called Kill Street.


So Ham Adams is back and I'll be bloviating here once a week any way. And I'll keep you updated with my project  WALL STREET CARES. I'll have video posted here and on FB in a couple of weeks.


We are living in difficult, but exciting times. Solidarity and love to you all.  Ham

FAREWELL TO FUZZ - FAREWELL TO ED

I said good bye to my father tonight. He's been dead for over 5 years now but I realized I found myself in deep grieving for him on the train home tonight. I must have looked curious to the Halloween revelers. A man sitting quietly on the train, no costume, tears streaming down his face.

I cried when he died of course, but I don't think it hit me as hard as it did my brothers and sisters. Partly because of my philosophy. I think people live on in memory and partly because I was carrying his ghost. I was possessed by the ghost of "Fuzz," hale fellow well met.

 That's how a therapist labeled him when I was trying to sort something out years ago.
 I think now he was being kind. It would be fairer to say my dad played a role. Slightly foolish, well liked, but not respected. 
I am not saying he was a fool. On the contrary, he was a quiet, serious, shy, thoughtful, and steady Eddie. 
Friends who read this might be saying WTF?


That's because they didn't know the real Ed. They only knew Fuzz, the joker, hale fellow well met, usually after a beer or two under his belt. That was the other part. This facade needed fuel to stay up. I believe now he was really very very shy. Pictures of him as a young man show a loner. As a boy he worked solitary jobs. Trapping muskrat and mink was one of the things he did as a boy to bring home much needed money. 

I can see him rising early to check and set his long string of traps before school. 

I can see his H.S. photo, a slightly lost look in his eyes. 

No sign yet of the guy people knew as Fuzz.


I got to know that quiet solitary boy when I would get up early for school. I somehow knew I was invading an old old habit of solitude before going out to bring home the "pelts," only now the pelts were paychecks provided by a company he went to work for after his stab at his own business went bankrupt. Not for lack of hard work or even lack of business. It failed because my father had that bad for business trait shared by his sons, he trusted people and assumed they where good like him, even the partner who ran off with all the money and left him feeling like he'd failed. 

My mother said it was the only time she saw him cry.


So he took the job he would work the rest of his working life, save for a few odd jobs in retirement to keep him from the agitation of nothing to do until it was seemly to crack a beer. Noon, I think.


It wasn't a solitary job like he was used to. He had to work with other people. I think that is where Fuzz really took over. 

He was liked at work, but I don't think he was respected. 

Fuzz made friends by joking. He could be liked but a joker isn't taken seriously and that pained him. It pains me. No one had met the serious man who sat quietly before he went to the job where no one listened to him seriously. He had to go. To support his family.


I've carried both men around with me these 50 odd years. I've carried the ghost for 5.


I'm grieving for my father tonight because a friend shocked me. She said, you say some pretty unkind things. I knew what she meant. Fuzz takes over when I'm playing cards and drinking beer, two of the three things that we did together. Golf being the third.


I'm not mean. I'm joking. I was shocked because she couldn't see past that nonsense to the serious person I am. I thought we were better friends. It stung. But it set in motion a train of thought that would leave me weeping on the Q train in Brooklyn for a man who's been dead 5 years.


See that facade, that ghost isn't just a way to be funny and liked. It's also a test, and a gauntlet. I think I adopted the ghost to weed out the undeserving. If you can't navigate and see through this persona to the real me, you can't be my friend.


Why had I surrounded myself with this moat? The one that made my father liked but not respected? I guess it's what we do. We try on daddy's clothes to face the world.


But also I wanted to vindicate him. You want to love me? Love my father too! Goddamn it! He deserved better. Also I am my father's son in that I am a bit of a loner and shyer than you'd thinks and much more serious than you'd think.


It's hard enough to navigate and map my own psyche without fighting my father's feud with the world. So tonight I buried Fuzz. I remember how funny he was and how humor was the currency of the house and the test of whether you belonged. The last woman I brought home failed miserably. I stayed with her anyway. Got a son out of it but, Jesus! What a wet blanket she turned out to be. As foretold!


I wasn't able to eulogize my father 5 years ago. I kind of knew what I wanted to say but it seemed too much about me. Now I know why.


So now that I’ve buried fuzz, let me say good by to Ed.


My father was a flat bottomed boat. The seas of life would rock us but we could count on the steadfast love and support he always provided. He was a quiet, shy, and uncomplicated man. I think he would have been much happier as a farmer. He was a man of the earth. He never made much money. I often thought that was a big regret and one of the things that made him feel like a failure. My mother says no. She says he often talked of his portfolio or legacy, his children. I heard him say that too. Now I believe it. So good bye to the little blond boy who rose before dawn to help the household by walking over miles of ice and snow to check his traps in dark winter solitude. Good bye to the handsome high school graduate with the lost look and unsure future. Good bye to the soldier who took his only trip over seas and returned home saftley but changed, good bye to the smiling newlywed happier that I've ever seen him, good bye to the father standing with his small boys at the beach, his daughters making four, then me making five in the portfolio. Good bye to the man who's in the hospital where his wife and two of his children are hurt, one of them badly, after a car accident. Good bye to the father who is mystified be a son so overwhelmed by life, he doesn't know if he can go on. Good bye to the man who watches as his son learns that he will go on not because of anything he says but because the son sees that he is his father's son so of course he'll find it in himself to go on. And he does. Good bye to the loving grandfather, favorite golf partner, dirty joke lover, consummate word coiner, and yes, hale fellow well met.

 Your battles are won. Your legacy grows. And you will be for ever remembered and deeply, deeply loved.

END OF ARGUMENT!

“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.”

~ Robert Heinlein


I was just re watching a PBS film about the Medici.
I watched again because I was writing about a recurring theme in my life, futile debate with an obtuse nit wit,
and the historical familiarity was deeper than any similar exchange I might have had with any "reality challenged American" from the last few weeks.
Throughout history, people of good will have been optimistic and thought mankind would evolve and all would be explained through logic, scientific observation, and art.
During the Renaissance, the Medici family were patrons of Botticelli, Michaelangelo, Leonardo and Galileo and...well you get the idea.
The Medici knew talent.
This monumental leap forward from the dark ages should have led us to a very different world than the one we are looking at today.
We should have no disease, poverty, or hunger. And we should be flying around in cars like the Jetsons.
But into this flowering of humanity
stepped the first of the wet blankets,
a monk named Savonarola.
This demented kid toucher hated everything the Medicis had encouraged; humanism, science, art.
And he used fear.
Fear of damnation and the ruin of the city.
He preached and fanned the flames of fear and started to gain an audience for his hatred and fear mongering.
While Lorenzo de' Medici was strong and was taking care of his people, Savonarola was just an early Rush Limbaugh.
But as Lorenzo’s wealth started to decline, he could no longer keep the network of friends and friends of friends that had made the city prosper.
And when his health failed, he actually called Savonarola to his deathbed and of course Savonarola being the loving christian that he was told a fearful Lorenzo that he was going straight to hell.
What a dick! But this twisted fart wasn’t done.
He got more and more fearful followers including Botticelli who was persuaded to throw his own paintings on the lovely bonfire Savonarola’s followers had already started with books.
Then after a nice fire, they liked to go around and beat up homosexuals.
Sounding familiar?
Then came the second turd in the punchbowl,
The Inquisition. (No one expected them!)
When Galileo, who’s evidence that he earth revolved around the sun was right there in the eyepiece of his telescope for all to see said,
"Here look for yourselves fuckers!"

The Inquisition replied,

"We don't need to look. The sun, stars, and planets are all fixed and the Earth is at the center of it all."
"Now would you like to recant or would you rather have a hot poker up your ass?

"END OF ARGUMENT!"

If this still sounds strangely familiar to you, you are not alone.
I have caught myself arguing with people who don't think evidence is an important part of argument.
So often I have labored and presented evidence, even off of Fox, only to be told it's liberal bias or have it ignored completely in some sort of psychological version of  "LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
The wittiest of come backs has been,
"Oh yeah? Well you're fat!" and the idiot's quod erat demonstrandum,

"END OF ARGUMENT!"

What argument? You ignored or couldn't understand what I said and you presented no evidence yourself!
My mistake was an assumed intellectual bipartisanship.
To discover the true nature of the solar system,
I was looking through the telescope and and they were listening to Glenn Beck.
I think all things can be resolved with a meeting of minds,
they had closed and boarded theirs up against any assault or dangerous light.
As long as mobs of people are so violently and mindlessly swayed by fear and dogmatically follow the rantings of a modern day Savonarola and need to consult a poorly written piece of fiction to see if their hand is right in front of their face,
we will need people of good will and optimism to continue to make two steps forward for every one step back.

Meanwhile I'll be giving money for swinette* lessons in lieu of singing lessons.


*ask my brother Mike. He made me laugh so hard my nose bled!

Another Sam Adams please!

I’ve been struggling with a one man play about Sam for a while.
I think my interest started when I was doing a lot of speaking to large groups of people, usually in character with scripts by my friend Jon Lipsky. 
I love Jon and his knack for making history and information accessible is unequaled.
But I couldn’t afford Jon so I started thinking about the minimal history I have with Sam Adams brewer Jim Koch. Jim was starting his now wildly successful company and I was managing a bar next to the photographer who was helping design his label.
Jim gave me some bottles with type written labels, I tasted them and ordered right then and there.
His first sale. I think.
Before I could approach Jim with my hand out,
I needed to do the research and write an outline for the pitch.


That was a while ago. Very long while ago. 
The frustrating thing is Sam was concerned he might get his friends hanged so he burnt all of his writing and correspondence.
 He has also been the victim of bad press from early biographers.
(Untrue and poorly researched)
He also didn't care about his place in history. He just wanted it done.
He was also overshadowed by cousin John and Ben Franklin. 
Both of whom came way late to the game and were very interested in their legacy!


But Sam was the firebrand. 
Ahead of the crowd and could not be bought or dissuaded. 
He risked all when John, Ben, and most everyone else were hedging their bets and afraid to take a stand. They must have thought him mad. There were some early life lessons that may have led Sam to get radical before everyone else, but I’ll save that for the play.


Sam Adams became my personal hero then and there. He didn't bow to kings, he didn’t bow to money, and he didn’t bow to public opinion.
He knew right was right and eventually everyone knew he was right.


He was the first American advocate of hope and change.
The first radical liberal and true progressive.


Is it any wonder why I get heated when I see Republicans wrapping themselves in the flag, donning tricorns, and picking up the drum & fife?


Put away that flag you revisionist posers! You were the Loyalists/Tories! 


The conservative thing to do was to protect your interests and siding with the crown was where the money was.


It’s where the money is now. 


Republicans knock idealism, hope, and change. 


So when you get sucked into a debate with Fox “News” watchers, remember Sam. 


Who better to side with than the founding father who had genuine ideals, stood his ground because his heart was right, and saw that a country could be built for generations on hope and real change.

Hi I'm a lazy welfare cheat and I want to "WIN BEN STEIN'S MONEY!"

Ben Stein was out talking about how Obama want's to "punish him" by raising his "TAXES!"


Two important things to remember.


Firstly: Bandying about the word "TAXES!" is a hot button.
    The Republicans know this and have linked "TAXES!" not only to the Democrats but also social programs unpopular with the GOP and further criminalized "TAXES!" with the the stain of "lazy brown and/or Spanish speaking people. 
This is called *N word baiting and has been used by those with the means to distract the general public since day one.
* insert Irish, Jew, or whatever ethnicity was the goat in that era.


I pay "TAXES!" no matter who is in office and I bet you do too! 
Eight years prior to Obama's inauguration we had a record surplus. The subsequent loss of that surplus and then record deficit wasn't done by welfare moms driving Cadillacs nor Obama in some sort of psychic violation of the space time continuum. 
 It was pissed away by a government led by a Republican president, controlled by that "fiscally conservative" Republican majority, and enabled by a wussy Democratic minority.


The second thing: Ben Stein is fulfilling his duties as a republican shill AND LYING. 
The man worked for Richard Milhous (Ben Stein wrote these lies for me) Nixon for the love of Cheebus!
I suspect If you subjected him to an independent audit after said laws were passed, he'd still be rich. (He's made enough money to dodge "TAXES!" with greater ease than you or I.) His income only reduced because of the network's, "No ugly old people" policy and dwindling Bueller residuals.   


If a Republican wanted my vote, he'd guarantee he would close all tax loops and everyone would pay a fixed flat tax. 
Yes even that non tax paying criminal Rupert Murdoch. (If that doesn't make you mad but seeing someone using food stamps does you are not only bad at math, you are an idiot.)


We both know that kind of tax reform ain't going to happen. 
They'll continue to hit the "Tax panic button", 
Play pin the goat tail on the beaner, 
and laugh when you pull the big R lever in November because-
a. It won't help you a bit.
b. It probably will hurt you. 
c. You don't even own a yacht you silly working class person.

Secession now!!

What if Lincoln was wrong? 


I worked a job that required me to research American history for many years and I wound up a pretty enthusiastic if not good historian.

Like many Americans, what turned me into a history buff was the Civil War Series by Ken Burns.

I recently re-watched it. The feeling I always have after the conclusion of that comprehensive series is great sadness and a sense of the futility of such a war. It was the bloody price paid for the compromise on slavery during the revolution.

Like with any unpaid bill the interest was huge and as historian Barbara Fields says, "It's not over, we're still fighting it, and it can still be lost.


We appear to be almost as divided as we were then, I thought, why not?   Let's lose.

I got some heat for a comment I made about nothing good ever coming out of the south.  
Further qualifying it by saying any southerner worth his salt came north and if I met you it was in the north.  
“Frank, desperately shallow. Desperately” said a southern man, WHO WENT TO UNIVERSITY IN THE NORTH!”  
I was being simplistic and absurd, slightly. 


We have a line already laid out (Mason-Dixon) and if we are to agree to disagree why not an experiment.


Abolition was a progressive idea. Slavery was a necessary evil  for economic reasons. 

It was the conservative thing to do and the current conservative movement in America has more in common with the CSA than the America forged by every major event in American history from both (or all ) parties.

What if we had split along the Mason Dixon line and become two separate nations?

A list of conservative assets for one. Fundamentalism, Creationism, Libertarianism, protectionism, no government services, corporate tax shelters, free guns, banjo lessons, etc.


The Progressives can keep progressive educational and social programs, free medical care, diplomatic relations with the rest of the world, all those Ivy League elitist universities and all that wacky science stuff from the north that led to things like the moon landing ,  breakthroughs in medicine from those elitist medical schools, stem cell research, Al Gore’s internet, etc.


Two countries. Let's see who thrives.


They can still call themselves America and fly Old Glory.


We can choose a cool new name like Dave and fly a flag with a big arrow pointing down that says, "I'm with Stupid."


I know what your saying, "Buddy, I'm living down south and I'm a liberal." 
You can stay as a resident alien. 
Same for conservatives in the north. 


But I suspect after the the neighbors start leaving brand new trucks up on blocks, setting up revival tents and speaking in tongues to you in the south and womyn's drum circles and LGBT mosques appear in the north, you'll both want to move.

Agitate Agitate Agitate! ~ Frederick Douglas

This is something I wrote in response to concerned friends & family who thought me too agitated


The fire has subsided a bit but I felt compelled to write why.


Well I was one of those who thought no fucking way are Americans dumb enough to put that faux Texas chimp into the White House....TWICE!


Though now I think the Republican party has gone a good way toward making themselves irrelevant in 2012, 
 I ain't taking no chances.


Or as W says
 "There's an old saying .... fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." (Sheer genius!)


If you have a friend or loved one lost to FOX, I am sorry for your loss.


If you are a FOX viewer yourself, who's reading this to you?


BUT!  If you know some one who says, "Calm down. Let's all get along. Don't get all heated up. They made the trains run on time, etc."


Grab them by the collar, yell, slap them, wake them up!


Is this "Let's not hide the Jews in our attic, it's not our problem, and it will all turn out ok" time?
No, but fear led us to the dark side. Fear led us to the worst 8 years in American history.
Yep I'm counting all wars and the great depression because the vote is still out and we need the full eight to recover. I'd hate to lose that chance because of sheer mugwumpery.




If another fear mongering chimp gets into the oval office next election it won't be because I didn't pester my friends and family to be as agitated as me.


Sorry guys. I love you and I'm going to be a pain in the ass a little while longer.

Choose Hope

This was a response to some tit making a, “How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?” comment months ago on Facebook. 

I wrote fresh preamble to it, but it was turning into more of a pre-ramble so I'll save it for tomorrow.

Thanks to Heidi Mastrogiovanni for the inspiration.

FDR was, much like Obama, all hope and no substance. So empty was his promise that some of America's wealthiest men tried to organize a military coup to overthrow his New Deal presidency and install a government modeled on Mussolini's fascist state.

(This was before the excesses of fascism were known and many still admired him.) Wall Street's Robert Clark vowed that he would spend half his $60 million fortune to save the other half. Luckily the man they approached to head the coup, General Smedley Butler, played along only to expose the plot to Congress. Now Rupert Murdoch is succeeding where the 1933 plotters failed. 

To protect the interests of very wealthy people he has built a media powerhouse that not only muddies any real argument and labels anything resembling truth as "typical liberal bias" but has also managed to convince thousands of Americans (sorry, mostly white) that it would be in their interest to vote Republican and stop taxes from going to immigrants and other freeloaders. 

I'm just an actor and history buff and can't really work all of this out but when I need to defer on the Constitution, I choose those "elitists" like Robert Reich, Bill Moyers, and  president of the Harvard Law Review and U.S. President, Barack "Hussein" Obama. 

You can stick with Glenn Beck and Roger Ailes.

The Founding Fathers where all about hope and change.

I stand by them.

I stand with the man who told us not to fear fear.

I stand with the audacious one in office now.

You can stand by the conservatism of the Tories.

You can stand with the fascists of the 30's.

You can stand with the fear peddlers of Fox. 

You can also stand by  a daft bint who thinks Adam and Eve rode to school on a dinosaur and an inarticulate fundamentalist delinquent from Connecticut with a pathologically assumed  Texas accent who took H. Hoover off the hook by paddling the Nation and the world further up shit creek than Hoover could have imagined.

Just be advised your views aren't new, original, or even necessarily yours.

Goodbye Greg G.

I was going to call this post Ridi Pagliaccio, but didn't want to disappoint people looking for new ways to serve pasta.
My brother has been a comedy club owner for over 25 years.
I've been running into the same handful of comics who also act at auditions for years. The one thing I can say unreservedly is they are some of the unhappiest people in the world.

Odd isn't it? All that laughter. Night after night.

With Greg Giraldo's overdose and Arte Lange's suicide attempt, I thought about two comics I admired who weren't so lucky,
Rich Jeni and Tony Hancock.
I'd met and seen Rich many times at my brother's club.
He was a master at working the audience and riding the crest of the laughter like a champion surfer.
He always left me sore in the sides and crying with laughter.
But he couldn't escape the undertow.
I still listen to and laugh at Hancock Half Hour all the time and Tony shuffled off this mortal coil when he decided "not to be" 42 years ago.
I used to look at the glum faces of the comics I knew from audition waiting rooms and think that that misery came from waiting to be "Tim Allened" but realistically looking at years of going from the Chuckle Hut in Bumhole Iowa to the Whacky Shack in Whogivesashit Minnesota and sitting in a Holiday Inn after the show watching the $19 movie single handedly.
Now I think it something simpler and deeper. Like an fat opera singer who feels empty after all that outpouring and has to stuff food back in the same hole, the void left after all that laughter and happiness that a great comic gives needs to be filled.
I wouldn't begrudge them if they kept some for themselves.
Get well soon Greg.*

* It appears he was worse off than we thought.

Rest in peace.

The noble instinct of Pat Tillman

I was reading about the very sad case of Pat Tillman. We were blessed to have had such a strong idealistic patriot willing to run into harm's way when his country was attacked. Do we deserve such loyalty and bravery? I don't know.  
I do know that his government didn't.
War after war, fat, f4, draft dodging, bureaucrats pander to and exploit that noble instinct and send wave after wave of young people to their deaths. We were attacked, Tillman answered the alarm, and was promptly killed by the very same people who sounded that alarm. That's the sad part. 
War is rarely just. People die by accident or friendly fire. No glory. Just loss. 
But then his government really let him down. 
They tried to cover it up.
The training is so bad that the gulf war death rate from friendly fire is 52%...FIFTY TWO PERCENT.
Accident? No. More like Casino odds and Death holding the house advantage. Only 48% of the bullets are coming from in front of you so maybe turn around if you want a better chance of survival. Now it gets sadder. 
The government sent a democrat and republican to Tillman's memorial service. And they presumed to comfort his family with the promise of a heavenly home for Pat and assurances that we will all see him in the sweet by and by. 
Is this variation on 72 virgins supposed to absolve the government's culpability in this crime? 
"See he's not dead. He's playing Pinochle with grandpa."
To his great credit Pat's brother Richard thanked them for their well intentioned words and said, "Pat wasn't religious he's just fucking dead."   What balls. I hear him loud and clear.


So what comfort is there to be found if not in heaven?


By making sure this never happens again. His family needs the truth. His family should want for nothing and see all those responsible, all the way up to the highest level, man up like Pat and take the blame. 


Finally, Pat Tillman will live on in the hearts and minds of his family, friends, and a world left diminished by not only his premature death but also the loss of that noble instinct to do the right thing.
An instinct that his government so mindlessly and criminally abused.




See Richard Tillman on Bill Maher

Pulling your pants down! Such a terrible thing?

I'm getting busy trying to finish some of the unfinished stuff in my life.
I've come to this sudden burst of resolve because:

A. A terrible life long belief in a nebulous future over which I have little control.
B. A good talk with my brother who, at the age of 60 realized he might just be the grown up in the room. Like him I always looked for someone who would tell me what to do.
Fuck it! I'm working with people 20 years or more younger than me. I'll be the wise man.
C. A health regimen that has me feeling like the man I was 30 years ago when "there was no try, only do!" Piss & Vinegar full of, I am.
D. Like a lot of folks, I've been an armchair critic. It's far easier to be a sack of unfulfilled potential than to be embarrassed.

This leads me to the pants thing.

 “Anyone who subjects himself to publishing might as well walk down Madison Avenue with his pants down."  J.D Salinger

A family much concerned with embarrassment.
I was confused that even after his early success, he was embarrassed. Embarrassed!

So as I tackle the projects that were moldering in the remainder bin of neglect, I thought,

"I'm a blue collar slob with terrible education, poor grammar and spelling."
 And this brings me to the second half of this post's title.
"Such a bad thing?"
I had a friend Len Corman. He was an actor and also my dentist! The best dentist ever.
A very distinguished actor and gentleman.
When I first started acting I struggled with embarrassment.
I would toss and turn in bed for days after an audition. Thinking how awful I was. What could they think of me? Stuff like that.
I was telling Len how embarrassing it was for me and he gave me the best advice I've ever gotten,
"Such a terrible thing?"
He was right of course. Now I love to audition and when I have the job, I'm the grown up at work.

The same is true of the new creative projects I am now going to jump into.
I'm confident of the initial inspiration.
I now have the will.

I'm sure I'll get some tuts as I walk down the street with my earnest but half thought out ideas in torn and past their prime Fruit of the Looms. ~  "such a terrible thing?"

Welcome to Skrunt!

After It was suggested that Facebook may not be the best place to give free reign to my spleen, I decided to move to a blog. I can save FB for The 7am b.m. report.

This site will be the repository of my personal assholotry. My posts are quite short. I hope brevity is the soul of wit. If I can't make a point in one or two paragraphs, I'm flogging a dead horse.
Firstly let me explain the title. When my son was young his mother and I would read to him so much that his fist words were narrated like a children's book. He also had an innate gift of coining new words.
I had asked him a question and his rather forceful objection came out, “No!, he skrunted."
I use all the words at my disposal and am a godless heathen so move along if that ain't your cup o' punch.

There is a lot to say “No!” to after the last few years and it turns out that scrunting* is actually an old English hybrid of screaming and grunting. (And as with any word you can think of, it is a euphemism in the Urban Dictionary.)

* original spelling

If I've offended.

People use the phrase "I am offended by that!" and expect it gives them higher ground, moral authority, or some sort of license. No. What it means is that you are offended.
So fucking what. [This is a paraphrase of something Stephen Fry just said on the radio.]
I once offended an ex GF by putting on after shave. It turned into a big fight about my underlying passive-aggressive motives. (ex indeed!) The same is true of language. I think political correctness and censorship are the small minded neurotically trying to enforce and prop up their own world order. To that end, I will make every effort to only say what I mean and own it. That way we'll know where we stand with each other...cocksucker!

In a Just World.

I'd love to be a lefty version of Rush Limbaugh, but have too much respect for the sanctity of marriage to do it 4 times and too much respect for the dangers of over using prescription drugs to get addicted. But I sure wish I could parlay my penchant for being a full o' shit bloviating gasbag into cash too!

Canadian, the new N word.

That's right, Canadian.

A friend and I were discussing all the different substitute's we had heard for the N- word (which already makes me feel like I'm using baby talk when having an important sex talk."The man put's his pee pee in the woman's twinkle!"-Yes I actually heard a woman use twinkle for vagina.)

Anyway my friend said that Canadian was used when honking (Honkying?) on about..um..Canadians. (a lot of Fox "News" watchers where he used to work. Am I making a sweeping generalization about Right wingers? Yes. Yes I am.)

But, to my point. I have one you know!

I had an argument with a simpleton about the use of words. She insisted some words are never to be used by anyone. Ever!

Not her call. I say use any word any time. Just have your heart straight or take the consequences.

Richard Pryor made me laugh and think with it. "Dr." Laura got her miserable ass fired with it. Win-Win.

Jimmy the Greek showed his appalling ignorance without even using it.

Mel Brook's, "Can't you see that man is a ni..." and "I said the sheriff is a ni-(dong!)", plays with the word and the inappropriateness of it brilliantly. As we should have learned from the Shirley Sherrod fiasco, context is everything.

Fox you!

I'm tired of the "we can't spend our way out of debt!!" mantra accompanied by the dire warnings of something even worse to come. Take a look around cock knockers!

This is what bottom looks like!

Government spending has been monopoly money for a long time now.

The myth of the "fiscal conservative" ain't holding water anymore. You pissed away our record surplus and let Wall Street shoot the poot on red after it had been snorting coke out of a hooker's navel and was clearly shit faced on Southern Comfort.

Now you can't spare a quarter to help maintain social and educational programs?

Fuck you!

Old dogs watch fox.

In the gym today, unsolicited, an older gentleman gentleman thought it safe to start pontificating about the worst president ever, Barak Obama. I guess he's used to being indulged in deference to his age and because I am white, he thought it safe to gas on.Well I have been guilty of letting a sleeping dog tell his favorite neegra joke, but not today grandpa.. I left him very unsettled and I'm sure he's obsessing with his cronies about the guy who dared to strongly disagree with him, told him why he was wrong, and then called him a fucking idiot.

Something cleansing there.

Good work out.

Union yes!

I grew up in a neighborhood with families protected, in part or directly, by a workers union. I saw many men missing fingers, limbs, or an eye from their pre-union career. Business has a priority to it's stockholders and the bottom line. Workers get safety, security, and paid time off only because they are part of a fraternity of friends or because their employer wants to keep that fraternity out. Either way, the union is why. Things must have been pretty bad for men, who lived through the depression, to risk all to change it. I am most proud that my grandfather was one of the men who helped start the UAW. That middle class was most responsible for America's post war prosperity.Without it the only thing I can see is what I saw in south America, a huge void between a few wealthy and many poor.

Vissi d'arte

I had a great experience working with a commercial director.

Working as a day player I am expected to fulfill a small task with little direction or rehearsal. Big stars can show up not knowing lines and do a shit load of takes. I get one or two. And frankly that's all that should be needed.

Well how fun it was when I worked on a commercial and did the lines as intended once (maybe?) and spent the rest of the time on improv. When someone says you are a creative guy, have at it! It's a real treat. The only other times I've been lucky enough to do this has been in theater and Tom DicCillo let me go nuts on Law & Order (little of it was used) but still, the guy's terrific.

Most of the film and TV we consume has become like the food we consume. "Cheese" wrapped in plastic, market tested, cheaply made by non cheese makers.

It's on the shelf, I guess it's food.

Now as I deal with the consequences of years of cramming any old junk in me gob, I'm trying to think about EVERYTHING I consume.

Is it fresh, good for me, made by an artisan, and most importantly, soul sustaining.

Don't get me wrong, I'll probably eat and watch some processed junk today, but feel empty and bereft of spirit for doing so.

I also hope to get work that pays well but leaves me unsated.

But I feel inspired to try to be a collaborative story teller and make something with love that will stick to the ribs.

Lately, I've been dazzled by Auto tune the News. It's funny, original, great commentary, and as music better than any of the Olive Garden shit on American Idol. All done by people with a strong urge to create something wholly new.

It fed me and makes me want to cook.