The rapidly decaying president of the Confederate United States of America is about to host human cockfights on the White House lawn and perhaps sell Trump-branded gas station kratom and shitty vapes to the various reactionary goblins, gremlins, and grifters in attendance at this tawdry spectacle.

But while that’s repellent to anyone with a shred of dignity, we’re not going to dwell on the sleazy Redneck Reich’s tacky fascist bullshit today. At least not very much.

No, it’s warm and sunny outside so we’re going to spend our time together talking about good things. And I promise to keep it short(ish). I’m writing today about only things that bring me some measure of joy, or at least satisfaction. I am making a real effort to write more about what I find pleasant and funny and joyful in these imbecilic times.

GEMINI SEASON: Speaking of warm and sunny, it’s June, my birthday month as a tail-end Gemini, and that reminds me of my favorite Jimmy Buffett lyric:

Full moon
So soon
Wishin’ every month of the year could be June

Eventually, those simple lines will be my first tattoo. Where on my body, I do not yet know. An arm? A thigh? My back? Somewhere on my chest? Inside my eyelids? Decisions, decisions. I want to be able to see and read the lyrics because they trigger pleasant summer thoughts amid wintry turmoil and pain. Maybe the outside of my upper arm. We’ll see.

I have a list of potential tattoos after those lyrics. Something of my cat. Something Key West, like the latitude and longitude of infamous literary Chart Room Bar. An outline of Ohio with a star marking Cleveland. A manual typewriter. The Gonzo dagger. The Chateau Marmont’s script logo. The Welsh red dragon. Names.

THE GRADUATE: My youngest daughter, Allison, graduated from high school last month. She’s obsessed with K-Pop and also with Japan and got to spend a week in Tokyo this spring. She’s also who introduced me to the classic Studio Ghibli animated 1992 film “Porco Rosso” for which I will be ever grateful. “I’d rather be a pig than a fascist” is an all-time piece of dialogue.

She also introduced me to the jazzy-pop solo stylings of Kim Tae-hyung, the South Korean singer better known as V of global boy band sensation BTS (although they’re now almost all in their thirties, so they’re maybe approaching their mid-1990s NKOTB era). His 2023 solo EP “Layover” is fine music for a lazy hot shower on an overcast cool morning, which is usually when I play it. I suspect any effort by me to get her into The Doors, Steely Dan, Jimmy Buffett, and the Velvet Underground will be met with disdainful eye rolls. Maybe she’ll like Chet Baker?

Her graduation ceremony, which featured a teacher or administrator collapsing on stage and EMS personnel wheeling in a stretcher, lasted longer than a typical commencement exercise because the principal gave two speeches and both felt like he was work-shopping a stand-up act. Also, he graduated from high school in 2006, putting him at around age 38. That’s much too young. No adult authority figure graduated in 2006. My oldest son was born in 2006. I took my first big-boy media job in Detroit in 2006. I was still doing by George Plimpton-Hunter S. Thompson arena football quarterback nonsense in 2006. My knees and body still worked as they should in 2006. We were at war with a different Mideast country in 2006. Time and age really fuck with you.

WIDOW’S BAY: Last week I discovered Apple TV’s hit series “Widow’s Bay” has been quietly released weekly on Tuesday evenings rather than the advertised Wednesday. This was very good news, even if it took me until the penultimate episode to discover I don’t have to wait until hump day to watch.

If you’re not familiar with the show, stop reading this and go binge the first nine episodes. Now. Get off your ass. Put down your phone. Binge it immediately.

It’s legitimately funny while simultaneously being legitimately frightening. Not cheap slapstick, not cheap thrills. It’s as if New England horror master Stephen King wrote a season of “Parks and Recreation” – and that’s pretty close to what this series is. It’s the brainchild of Katie Dippold, a former “Parks and Rec” writer who also happens to be the Twitter Babadook lady. Perfection.

Series lead Matthew Rhys is Welsh – for a nation of just three million people, Wales sure churns out more than its share wonderful entertainers – and he’s also a 1974 baby like me, so that’s an additional layer of appeal for me. He’s perfect in his role as the island’s frazzled mayor. And Kate O’Flynn as Patricia emerged as the show’s real star. We are Team Patricia on this essay site.

This is the first TV series (it just got the green light for a second season, woo-hoo! but please don’t take two or three years) that’s sent me to Reddit to read up on theories about the show’s plot and characters. I’ve not done that since Westworld premiered on HBO in 2016.

Season 1 ends this week and I will be bereft until I find another show (I can stick with one at a time) to replace it until the second season drops. Maybe Season 2 of “Palm Royale” because I loved the first season quite a bit.

BOO: OK, I am going to talk about the asshole that any decent person hopes exits this mortal coil soon. They booed that motherfucker before Game 3, and it brought me immense joy. He heard it. It eats at whatever passes for a soul inside that bloated villainous husk.

State propaganda outlet Fox News, in one of its more pathetic attempts to lie for dim fascist tyrant Donald Trump, tried to convince viewers that the 19,812 in attendance at Madison Square Garden were chanting “USA! USA!” when Trump’s orc-ish image was shown on the scoreboards in pregame to thunderous jeers.

That’s some North Korean gaslighting even by the sewer standards of the servile dipshits at Fox except the North Koreans do actually cheer and chant under the threat of punishment. During Game 3, the crowd lustily booed and the camera quickly got away from Trump and paranoid Knicks owner James Dolan. But there was toadying Fox News, still bullshitting its audience of angry grandparents, landlords, and local car dealership tycoons.

Trump fell asleep during the game and then left early.

The Knicks lost that game because everything Trump touches dies, but with him gone back to his gilded trailer park in Washington, they won Game 4 in dramatic fashion after staging the biggest comeback in Men’s WNBA Finals history. Bing-bong.

[Editor’s note: I am a lifelong Cleveland Cavaliers fan, not a Knicks fan, but I would like to see New York win it all because I empathize with teams that have not won a title since South Vietnam was still a country.]

SAVAGE HOUSE: I saw the debut of the dark comedy period satire piece “Savage House” last weekend and loved it. Set in 1715 England during the Jacobite troubles, it stars Richard E. Grant as a pompous, striving former Welsh gutter peasant that has married a respectable English woman, played by Claire Foy, and taken her name to become Sir Chauncey Savage. Their manor is run-down and they’re nearly broke, and Sir Chauncey has taken to selling plots of the estate grounds repeatedly to different buyers among other schemes. They’re just a step ahead of debtors prison, reputation in shambles when a note arrives that a famous duke and duchess will arrive for an overnight dinner in ten days.

What ensues is a violent, gross, hilarious madcap effort to prepare the manor for aristocratic guests and the potential windfall of money, celebrity, and reputation-repair such a successful visit could guarantee in those days. Oh, there’s also a pox epidemic and everything is muddy and dark. Think “The Libertine” mixed with “Barry Lyndon” along with Hogarth’s “A Rake’s Progress” and Sir Harry Flashman.

I’m a huge Richard E. Grant fanboy, so this was right up my alley. He was born to play Sir Chauncey, who’s definitely a louche ancestor of Grant’s iconic shabby drunken prissy Withnail character from his first movie role. And Claire Foy has been well-decorated for her role as the queen in “The Crown” but if you ever wanted to see her in a big Georgian period dress bent over and getting her ass serviced by a butler on his knees, this is the movie for you. It’s a wild two hours.

Some of the reviews have been harsh, but I tend to share Hemingway’s opinion of many critics: “Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors.” He also said this, which is amusing: “God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won’t even whore. They’re all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they’re all camp followers.”

Anyway, this American-written and directed British period piece was available in just two Michigan theaters, and the nearest to me was just a couple miles away at the Bel Air Luxury Cinema on Detroit’s 8 Mile Road. That was a fortunate proximity. The theater, built in 1988 atop an old drive-in and renovated in 2016, has seen better days – not unlike Sir Chauncey and Lady Savage.

Oh, and there’s a scene where you can briefly see painted graffiti on a village wall that reads “DOWN WITH THE RUMP” which was a saying about the Rump Parliament in the era of Oliver Cromwell but the way the words are painted and seen only briefly on screen, it looks like “DOWN WITH TRUMP” and I am certain it was intentional.

NOW READ THIS: My friend Jerilyn Jordan, an immensely talented writer here in metro Detroit, has launched a pop culture Substack that you should subscribe to and read. It’s very funny, very vulnerable, and I am deeply envious of her command of language, storytelling and writing compared to my crude semi-literate and discursive typing. We also both can proudly claim to have pissed off Kid Rock.

READ THIS EVENTUALLY: I have been glacially making progress on the near-future political satire novel that’s been my sole life goal to finish and publish, hopefully with a legitimate publishing house. Do not ask me to explain the plot because it’ll just be easier to read the finished book one day. I will say it takes place about 40 years from now in a world that’s not especially different from ours today, but is post-MAGA as the country tries to repair all the damage from a brief second American Civil War that functionally wrapped up the first one. Confederate statues get blown up, badly. Florida is full FLORIDA. There’s minor league baseball, too, and what I call the Reverse Bay of Pigs. Just 30,000 more words, several more drafts, an agent, a publisher, and you can read it yourself! Oh, and does anyone have a sure-fire cure for writer’s block? A brain enema? Cerebellum Draino? EST? LSD? A full haymaker punch to the face?

COMING SOON: As another excuse to not write, I am launching this summer a new Instagram account (current personal account is here) solely for my weird collection of ephemera and my big assortment of random worthless trading cards (mostly non-sports including the cast of the movie “Xanadu”) that have deep meaningful appeal to only me (but hopefully you get a laugh from it all).

Also on my to-do list is an essay on the AI nightmare that ruling class is forcing on humanity, and something about the upcoming American 250 bullshit for which I feel no pride nor joy despite being directly descended from a family of American Revolution soldiers that spent all nine years of the war fighting and dying for our independence. Apologies for bringing up Trump again, but the collective atrophy of classic patriotism rests at the swollen ankles of him and his bovine-stupid, racist, violent followers.

(The image atop this essay is from Black Spring Books on Instagram, and there are a bunch more funny images like that)

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