THE NIGHT OF THE APOCALYPSE (from the Archive, January 1, 2000)
by Bruce Anderson
I set out from Haight Street for a night’s walkabout anticipating end-of-the-world spectacles. It was New Year’s Eve, end of an even thousand years if you calculate things by Anglo ways of reckoning, the last night of high tech dot com bliss and the prosperity American ingenuity brings about two thirds of its citizens. Up at home base, the hill muffins were hunkered down on the ridgetops, a year’s worth of rice and beans buried out by the pot patch in waterproof containers. The muffs had their generators gassed up and their AK-47’s on lock and load. The old lady had perimeter duty while old man muff checked out fields of fire. At the more excitable and apocalyptic-oriented venues like KZYX and the Mendocino Environment Center where linear thought processes were long ago traded in for intuition and non-print input, the libs had been positively giddy at the prospect of world’s end for a solid year.
I kinda like the world myself and, like most old commies, have great respect for the resilience of capitalism. I knew in my bones that the boys with all the booty weren’t about to let the counting house fall down just because a gaggle of techno-nerds had forgotten to adjust the computer clocks.
But just in case the four horsemen rode in on January One, what better place to watch them do their thing than San Francisco?
But nothing happened.
I’ve never seen The City emptier or quieter. It was so quiet it was eerie. I started out from Haight and Ashbury, these days a fashion center for young people with stores selling two hundred dollar pairs of rubber shoes with two-foot heels — I’ve lived long enough to watch the area do five sociological flip-flops — up Ashbury, down 17th Street, right on past a deserted Castro, down Market to the Embarcadero where a sedate crowd had gathered to listen to singers I’d never heard of. And I felt nothing resembling deprivation at my ignorance.
There were cops of various kinds all the way down Market posted at each intersection. Critical Mass, at least 30,000 bicyclists short of achieving it, pedaled sedately up Market about a thousand strong. A phalanx of motorcycle cops followed them while a police helicopter rotor-whipped the night air above. At Van Ness and Market, Critical Mass stopped for the red light as the police saw them through to the other side as if they were grandmas on three-wheelers. At 9th and Market a couple of cops confiscated two cans of beer from two hat backwards oafs. (It’s one thing to be a moron, but why try to look like one too? Kids these days….) “But dude….” one of the hat backwards complained as the cop plucked the beer from his hand. “Sorry,” the cop said, “This is no alcohol night.”
At the Embarcadero a group of Chinese kids stood laughing and taking pictures of one another as each posed from behind a pair of oversized glasses. Of the dozen of them, about half wore their hair short and dyed in day-glo colors. An old guy said to another old guy, “Al, did you ever think you’d see a Jap with green hair?” Al replied, “Maybe, but I never thought I’d see two of ‘em.” The old guys chuckled.
I seemed to be the third oldest guy in the throng. Huge speakers pounded out the painfully loud rhythms of sexual intercourse and ya-ya lyrics. Young people danced as cops plucked beers out of startled but unresisting hands. I didn’t see any fights or even anything that resembled the usual free-floating hostility present in mob scenes. There were a few groups of tough guys who looked like they wanted to fight, but nobody seemed inclined to rumble.
There was no point — celebratory or otherwise — standing around listening to music played so loud I couldn’t listen in on conversations so I walked back up Market, then up Taylor for a bolito bowl at Original Joe’s. The waiter told me that “the Mayor wrecked the whole weekend for everybody. The no drinking rule, all the baloney about how the cops were going to crack down on people. The Y2K bullshit from the hippies. That’s why nobody’s out there.”
Lots of stores on Market were boarded up, lots weren’t. Old Navy and the Gap store windows were covered with three-quarter plywood. Between the cracks, I could see fat guys in rent-a-cop unis standing round. Some of them wore sidearms. Would they die for ten bucks an hour when the wealth redistributors hurtled through the plywood?
I walked on up to Union Square where some kind of mega-millennial ecumenical prayer and music event was supposed to come off at $10 a pop. The believers had stayed away in droves. Union Square is a lot more crowded on Christmas day than it was End Of The World Night.
There was nothing else to do so I stopped to listen to an unaffiliated evangelical do his thing at the corner of Geary and Stockton. He was a stocky guy about 40 who resembled a squat Elvis Presley, black hair swept back like fenders on a ‘55 Buick. Elvis the God Guy was dressed in a black leather-like, head-to-toe zippered jump suit with an American flag sewed into its chest. God Guy wore a ten gallon cowboy hat festooned with flag medallions and alternating “Praise God!” decals. Nike running shoes rounded out the millennial attire. If Elvis was wafted away, raptured right off the corner, he might have a tough time getting past the security check at Heaven’s Gate in this get-up, but none of us knows for sure if there’s a dress code on the other side till we get there.
Elvis was bellowing apocalyptic warnings through a small bullhorn. He put on a lot better show than anything happening at the Embarcadero. Bill Graham Presents and Willy Brown should have hired him to liven things up. “God is not pleased with the Pope,” Elvis hollered at me as I settled in for the show. “Pope rhymes with dope. There’s no hope with the Pope.” That vein of alliterative gold quickly exhausted, Elvis brought his bullhorn inches from my face. “You ask me how I was brought up?” he bellered as if I’d asked. “Doesn’t really matter; it’s where I’m going that counts.” With that do-it-yourself exchange completed, Elvis pivoted to shout anti-Clinton insults skyward. “Bill Clinton is a filthy, stinking sinner. Will I pray for this stinking, rotten, evil man? Why should I? He’s pro-queer, pro-abortion.”
It wasn’t hard to understand why the preacher was reduced to an open air Post Street pulpit. His wasn’t exactly a Frisco-friendly message, although Elvis did toss out a few sops to the libs, whether or not out of concern for Frisco sensibilities or out of mental illness could not be determined with any certainty. “All weapons should be buried. They are evil. Praise God.” All he drew was chuckles from me and a few fish eyes from the few passersby who even seemed aware of him.
A young Chinese guy soon appeared, a mischievous grin on his face and a violin case under his arm. I got the feeling the preacher and the violinist were old antagonists. The kid took out a small amplifier and plugged an electric string instrument into it and began sawing unmusically away a few feet from the rambunctious representative of the Prince of Peace. “The devil won’t drive me out!” the preacher shouted at the kid who promptly turned up the volume on his violin for a round of Waltzing Matilda. As I walked up Post the preacher and the electrified violinist were a foot apart, the kid laughing and hacking away with his bow at his amplified strings, the preacher screaming, “The devil hisself is knocking at my door but he sure is wrong if he thinks God will let him in!”
At the rear door of the St. Francis hotel a bunch of cops were assembled to launch a mini-motorcade. The very sight of big black cars and motorcades makes me yearn for hand grenades, but I lingered, joining 50 or so other gawkers. I wanted to see who gets tax-funded escorts these days. The last time I checked, we were paying for the cops to whisk senior sluts from the U.S. Senate out to SFO as the peons pulled over to the side to let the leadership pass. A guy asked me, “Who’s here?” Al Gore, I replied. The guy turned to the lady with him and said authoritatively, “Al Gore. Wonder what he’s doing here? Let’s stick around.”
“Al Gore Al Gore Al Gores” ripple excitedly through the crowd, passed from one person to the next like a beer at a ball game. The crowd waiting for Al Gore grows larger. I lament my little treachery until I remind myself that anybody who’d wait outside a hotel door for a glimpse of Al Gore on the last day of a thousand years or any other day deserves whomever eventually appears and I hope it’s the third secretary of Independent Yakataka or Dianne Feinstein.
At the Civic Center another music festival of some sort was tuning up, but it seemed lightly attended too. I think it was a second whoop de doo sponsored by The City. I walked on up a deserted Polk Street until I got to Sacramento where I hopped a free bus. the Muni is never entirely free, broadly considered to include the emotional toll it often takes, but it was free to riders on this, The Last Night.
The bus was empty except for four Mexicans just getting off work. Early in the morning, late at night, the Muni is a mobile Third World, ferrying the legions of underpaid people who do the real work of our latest economic miracle, the SUV-Dot Com decade where the dollars go up but fewer and fewer come down.
I get off at California and Masonic to catch the 33 back to the Haight. Two middle-aged women, one black one white and nicely done up and how good it is to see women looking after themselves again after the long visual drought years of no paint and no pain over appearances join me at the bus stop. The area is deserted. “Do you mind if we stand near you?” one asks. “It’s creepy out here.” Yes, I’m the only one, I say. They laugh. I don’t know if I should be insulted at their menace-free assumption or elated that I seem capable of serving as armor against the urban night.
The 33 eventually appears. My wards and I are the only passengers until Hayes Street where an odd guy in white bucks trips and sprawls onto the bus, lying on the steps like he’s dead drunk or has just dropped dead from the exertion of climbing onto the 33. But he’s neither, just clumsy. “Are you going to ask me if I’m alright, driver?” Mr. Prat Fall asks. No, the driver says without even looking at the guy as he pulls out into a uniquely vehicle-free Masonic. “How about you folks? Are you going to ask me if I’m alright?” Mr. Prat Fall ask us. Are you alright I and my two wards chorus. “Yes, I am, thank you,” PF says and, apparently gratified at our mannerly response to his inquiry, sits down without saying another word.
The Muni is endlessly fascinating. San Francisco is endlessly fascinating. The libs are lamenting The City’s alleged loss of its “diversity,” but I’ve never seen it more diverse, and I’ve been living there and going there for 55 years.
At Haight and Masonic I alight. One of the two ladies I was selflessly accompanying point to point or at least until a visible threat materialized, wished me happy new year as the other said, “Thank you for guarding us.”
Shucks, ma’am, happy to put your mind to ease.
Haight Street was deserted. Ben and Jerry’s was the only place open. Even the bums, and the winos and the tax-funded dopers had disappeared. Excuse me. Even the homeless seem to have packed it in for the night. Maybe the people who refuse to consider the revival of the state hospital system took them home to welcome in the new year or the end of all years, whichever came first, but nobody was out anywhere in San Francisco. Only a few thousand suburbanites were massed at the Embarcadero, gaping at the Ferry Building and massing at rows of Porta Potties for easily the most chaste New Year’s Eve in the history of the Golden Gate.
The next day the paper said that there were fewer police and fire calls on New Year’s Eve than there are on any Friday night of the year. People stayed home for the end of the world, but it didn’t end anywhere, even the places where it was supposed to.
COUNTY NOTES
by Mark Scaramella
CEO DARCIE ANTLE, who is also the Clerk of the Board and has been since former CEO Carmel Angelo surreptiously snagged the function out from under the Supervisors back in 2010, is out for yet another incremental power grab. This time, she’s putting more restrictions on agenda items, as if the Board’s agenda is hers to control, not the Supervisors. A proposed change to the Board’s “Rules of Procedure” under consideration next Tuesday directs that “All items to be placed on the agenda shall be presented to the Clerk of the Board [Antle] not later than 12:00 noon on the Monday two weeks [sic] preceding the regular meeting for which the agenda is prepared and shall include a complete agenda summary, all supporting documentation, and a fiscal analysis if necessary. The Clerk of the Board [Antle] may require that items be submitted earlier than the Monday two weeks preceding the regular meeting, to account for holidays or other periods of limited staffing. The Clerk of the Board [Antle] may authorize limited exceptions to the above procedure on a case-by-case basis to accommodate time sensitive items.” Time sensitive in Antle’s opinion.
Notice that the Supervisors, who supposedly control their agenda and should be able to “authorize” their own exceptions, are not even mentioned. CEO Antle may mean to direct these instructions to her department heads, some of whom may occasionally be tardy or incomplete in submitting their agenda items. But if so, why is she putting it in the Board’s own Rules of Procedure and not simply a memo to staff?
ANOTHER of CEO Antle’s proposed Rules of Procedure changes would push more items onto the consent calendar to avoid board and public discussion. (Consent items are only discussed if a supervisor pulls an item; the public has no say, other than requesting that a supervisor pull an item.)
WE EXPECT these seemingly minor additional usurpations of the Board’s authority to go through as usual without a peep from our elected representatives who are happy to let the CEO take over the functions they were elected to perform — as they refuse to take even a small symbolic pay cut as suggested by outgoing Supervisor John Haschak.
SHERIFF KENDALL appears to be angling for as much federal money as he can get. A consent calendar item for next Tuesday calls for the Board to approve a Memorandum of Understanding that would enable the County to bill the US Capitol Police for “security” during “congressional events.” Why this wasn’t in place earlier isn’t mentioned. There’s no explanation of why Congressman Huffman’s poorly attended Mendo get-togethers need special security arrangements, unless he’s afraid of getting some angry feedback for his Potter Valley water policy or his defense of Netanyahu’s destruction of Gaza.
ON THE OTHER SIDE of the Sheriff’s financial ledger the Sheriff is asking the Supervisors to approve a $1.3 million “Food & Laundry” contract for Mendocino inmates in 2026. Last we heard the Jail was having selected inmates do most of this, so that inmates can earn some side money, get some extra credit for time served, possibly time off their sentence for good behavior, and to get some work experience. Not to mention saving the County some money in these tight budget times. This is one of those jail “services” that does not need 24-hour coverage so we’d expect that taxpayers should only have to pay for some basic admin and supervision, not the actual laundry and food services.
HOUSEKEEPING: The Supervisors modified the item requiring consent items to be placed on the consent calendar two weeks in advance by changing the word “required” to “requested.” They also the proposal that would put items on the consent calendar when there was a question about putting it on consent or the regular discussion calendar.
AFTER HALF AN HOUR OF POINTLESS DISCUSSION, the Board re-appointed First District Supervisor Madeline Cline to the Inland Water and Power Commission. Lame duck Supervisor John Haschak and proposed that Supervisor Maureen Mulheren be appointed because Cline had voted against the Democrats 3-2 vote in favor of not objecting to the Potter Valley dam removal a couple months back. Cline is much better versed on the subject and the project is in her district.
SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS spent his entire “Supervisors report” whining about the County’s financial reporting, and browbeating his colleagues to declare that improving financial reporting as the Board’s #1 priority for 2026. As we have noted before, neither Williams nor his colleagues have commented on the monthly budget vs. actual report now being provided by the CEO’s office as a buried link in the CEO report which gives a departmental budget snapshot broken down by line item. Williams has been whining about perceived County financial reporting shortfalls since being elected back in 2019. In his early years his complaints were aimed at County Auditor (and later Auditor/Tax Collector) Chamise Cubbison, instead of where they should have been aimed: CEO Darcie Antle. At first Cubbison responded by asking Williams what reports he wanted, what reports were other counties getting, etc. Williams simply repeated himself, never providing a single example. He then merged his complaints with former Supervisor Glenn McGourty which ended up with the Board suspending Cubbison without pay on the flimsiest of accusations from DA David Eyster. After Cubbison left, Williams stopped complaining about financial reporting while Deputy CEO Sara Pierce was appointed Acting Auditor/Tax Collector. But after Cubbison was exonerated, Williams returned to his high horse complaining about financial reporting but no longer mentioning Cubbison. Williams has not identified a single particular problem or missing report. One gets the impression that Williams thinks that somehow “improving our software” will magically provide him with simplified push-button yes or no reporting options from which the all-knowing Supervisor can grandly pick. But as usual Williams refuses to actually dig into the county’s various departmental budgets or even review and comment on the CEO’s existing report. Unfortunately, Williams’ colleagues never bring up the existing report either. On Tuesday, Williams’ colleagues would only agree that financial reporting will be a subject of the Board’s January workshops, now scheduled for January 13, 14, and 19 when the Board plans to discuss the reently completed State Audit report.
RATHER THAN constantly whining about financial reporting, Williams shou;d simply put the existing budget vs. actual report on the Board’s main agenda for discussion and public comment. And he should explain exactly why that existing report (or individual departmental budgets) don’t meet his lofty expectations. As far as priorities for 2026 go, as confirmed by the State Auditor report, it’s quite obvious that the County’s number one priority should be collecting taxes due.
CLAY EUBANK (AV EMS Officer/Ambulance Manager) reports: “The county is attempting to find alternative ways to get us the [annual ambulance supplementary] funding rather than through the general fund. My guess is that we will not receive it next year as the county claims to have a significant shortfall.”
Mark Scaramella Notes: Mr. Eubank is referring to the annual $200k ambulance allocation that has been used to supplement the County’s three struggling volunteer ambulance services in the unincorporated inland areas, Covelo, Laytonville and Anderson Valley with approximatly $67k per service. Mr. Eubank’s impression that the County “claims” to have a significant shortfall is correct, but as the recent state audit report shows, the County has failed to collect over $30 million of taxes due. Not only is the County’s failure to prioritize tax collection affecting its own operations, but the failure cuts into funding for schools and emergency services as well.
KEITH LOWERY:
In my opinion…
There is a saying that history repeats itself. In the case of the current CEO just compare notes of the previous CEO and you have the full template as, “What not to do”.
CEO Angelo manipulated the BOS for years and moved money around like a Ponzi scheme.
If things were as good as CEO Angelo praised herself for at the time of her retirement then why did things start to fall apart so quickly? The difference is that the current CEO doesn’t have the same skill set in playing the game, “Hide the ball”!
2016/2017 the BOS was informed that there were fiscal issues of at least $12 million shortfall in a complicated transition of Mental Health Services. 2023/2024 the County CEO’s office states that there’s a shortfall of approx $12 million in Mendocino’s budget. This just so happens to be a time of wage negotiations with SEIU and other bargaining units.
Fast forward to 2025 and the County says it has found the funds that balances the budget somewhere in between $12 and $16 million?
In my opinion if most of the County departments were able to have their own actual budget and the CEO’s office was unable to manipulate those budgets like using funds from Social Services meant to provide services to the public rather than reduce services and supply those funds to general fund departments or inflate the overall budget to make it look like the CEO is managing a balanced budget.
The dollars that come into departments like Social Services should be used specifically for services that those dollars were originally intended for and not for some position in an underfunded department like Environmental Health or for the purpose for covering costs of internal County Counsel positions or for the outside Counsel the County uses like Liebert, Cassidy and Whitmore.
The Child Welfare division has somewhere between 25% to 35% staffing shortage and yet the Social Services Director is not able to utilize those funds because of the manipulation of County finances.
MIKE WILLIAMS:
I watched the Seymour Hersh documentary Cover Up. At risk of being “woke”, which really means getting at the truth, Hersh has exposed US abuses from Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, and support of abuses in Gaza. Given the things he uncovered and exposed it’s amazing that he still survives. Shameful behavior by our “leaders”, many would be classified as war criminals in a sane society. And now the current administration is even worse. A reckoning is needed to restore the values of decency.
TOM ALLMAN:
I have known Buffy Wright Bourassa for approximately 20 years and consider her a very good friend. She has my 100% support and endorsement for the third district supervisor in Mendocino County. She was raised in Mendocino County and she understands the needs that our rural county has.
Improve our local economy
Improve our mental health services
Understands that public safety is a primary responsibility of local government.
I hope you will consider Team Buffy also!
From Ms. Bourassa’s election facebook page:
“I’m Buffey Wright Bourassa—born and raised in Mendocino County, a proud member of the Sherwood Valley Rancheria of Pomo Indians, and a candidate for Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, District 3.
I currently work for the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office as the Restorative Justice Program Manager and bring more than 11 years of experience in county government, including Public Health, Human Resources, and labor advocacy. My work focuses on accountability, collaboration, and creating solutions that make government work better for the people it serves.
I’ve also served three terms on the Tribal Council for Sherwood Valley Rancheria, gaining over a decade of experience in tribal governance, program management, and fiscal responsibility.
I’m a wife, a mom of four, and a grandma to six amazing grandsons—raising my family here in Mendocino County and staying deeply rooted in the community I call home. I believe in community voice, transparency, and results—from better roads and responsible budgeting to public safety, emergency preparedness, and thoughtful land use.
This campaign is about listening, showing up, and working together to build a stronger future for our community.”
Ms. Bourassa is listed as Mendo’s Restorative Justice Program Manager in the Sheriff’s office and a member of the Sherwood Valley Rancheria (Pomo). Apparently Julie Beardsley supports Ms. Bourassa as well.
MISTAKEN IDENTITY
I like a French poet named Jacques Prévert. I have a few of his books in French and I have Ferlinghetti’s translations published by City Lights in 1952. Being in the mood for one the other day, I punched in “Jacques Prévert Poems.” The top entry was from allpoetry.com. The one beneath it caught my eye. It was from a university in New Zealand. Clicking on it produced an “AI Overview,” consisting of a brief biography and 12 poems translated by Alastair Campbell (whose name I didn’t know). I read them appreciatively.
Wondering if he had done more than these 12, I punched in “Alastair Campbell, Jacques Prévert.” An “AI Overview” appeared on the screen. It identified Alastair Campbell as “Tony Blair’s former press secretary,” and explained “While Alastair Campbell is best known as a political commentator, author, and podcaster (co-hosting The Rest is Politics), this connection highlights his literary side, showcasing his work as a translator for the influential French poet known for simple, poignant verses.”
Then it dawned on me: AI is likely to conflate me with the Fred Gardner who wrote for the Berkeley Gazette in the early ‘60s! My life and The Other FG’s overlapped more than the Alastair Campbells’ did!
Oi vey!
This Fred Gardner
HAS FORMER AG COMMISSIONER HARINDER GREWAL settled his long-delayed wrongful termination suit against Mendocino County. We are unable to access the County’s new registration-only case index system. All we know is that the Supervisors haven’t discussed the case in closed session since December of 2022. Last we heard he had dropped his attorney and was representing himself.
WHEN AUGIE AVILA RAN FOR FOURTH DISTRICT SUPERVISOR
by Augie Avila
I went into politics in 1964. It wasn't really my decision. I'd say that people conspired to get me to do that. My wife likes to tell the story about how for years I'd read the newspaper and she'd listen to me criticize the people in office.
Finally one day, she said, "You know so much and think it's so easy, why don't you run for su-pervisor?" Then a couple of our friends said to her, "Get Augie to run for supervisor." And she said, "Well, I'll do my best."
At that time she got a little money from her father. To wear a fur coat in Fort Bragg, at that time, was showing off. She said, "You either run for supervisor, or with this money I'm going to buy myself a full length mink coat."
I went down the street one day and somebody said, "I hear you're running for supervisor," and I said, "Where'd you hear that from?" "A friend told me." "That's news to me." Then a friend of ours, Vic Biaggi, at a party one day, he kept putting the pressure on me. "Oh yes, you're gonna run." I said, "I'm not cut out for that. I don't even have any knowledge of city politics, let alone county politics. “ “You can go there,” he said, "and you can learn." We shook hands and then I said, "Okay, I'm in the race now." Then I went all out.
I campaigned door to door. I had blocks. I'd take one block in one day and a part of a block until I got down to Italian town. I was running against a former supervisor, Harold Bainbridge, but Oscar Klee had beat him out. Oscar Klee was supervisor then but he decided, eventually, not to run, and he never ran against me. I forgot who else was there. I had three opponents. The last opponent was the road foreman here, Ernie Thorstrom, and he filed, I think, on the last day.
He and I had to run it off in the general election.
I won the election and I had to start off from scratch. One of the older supervisors, Joe Scaramella asked me after a few weeks, "Don't you say anything?" I said, "I just listen to the elderly people. That's the only way I can find out what politics really is, see?" I had never been involved in politics before. I had been involved in organizations.
I was the district manager of the American Legion. But I had never held any kind of public political office.
But slowly I grasped the manifestations of politics. The second time I ran, I didn't have an opponent and then the third time I ran, I had one opponent.
I was first elected in '64-'65. The areas have all been redistricted. The time I ran, my district, the Fourth, went down to Albion. Then, after the Supreme Court ruled that districts had to be divided on the basis of one man, one vote and had to be equalized, the district lines were moved. They had been from Hales Grove to Albion for years. We had a supervisor once who lived in Albion. Then ten years later the district lines were moved and again ten years after that.
I was a supervisor for twelve years. I think that any politician ought to retire after about twelve years. In fact, I had Al Beltrami (Mendocino County Administrator) draft up a resolution to be adopted by the Board that Supervisors could hold terms for only twelve years. It's legal, but I sensed the policy of the Board and I decided not to introduce the resolution. I think three terms is enough for any Supervisor, because I think it needs an injection of new blood and new ideas. You get pretty stereotyped if you're in there for too long, if you don't think along the lines of progress, you know, changes.
There was another reason too. My father was getting old and I kind of felt that he couldn't go on much longer, so I thought maybe the best thing to do was to get back to the ranch and try keep it going.
MARILYN DAVIN:
Beg to differ on the Italian series, but since this is the AVA I have little fear of being hauled off to a dungeon for expressing it. I watch Scandinavian films on Netflix. Before giving the nod to The Snowman (based in Norway but American made), I recommend Borgen (Danish), which features the inner working of the Danish parliament and Chestnut Man (also Danish), a great murder whodunnit. These films feel like home for several reasons: the women (gasp) are normal – normal, healthy weights, nobody is ever on a diet, no fake boobs, no detailed sex, no Goldilocks tresses framing inflated breasts precariously exposed to tiny, cinched-in waists. Northern European women clearly have not adopted the so-called “hyper feminity” of Trumpworld, where women in his orbit look like high-end hookers. That aside, since these films do not feature complicated graphics, explosions, and the like, they instead offer complicated plots and intelligent story lines. They also show collegial relationships where everybody has healthcare and there’s no homelessness. Democratic socialists all, the embodiment of which Satan in the White House has asked us all to fear.
MIKE KALANTARIAN:
Complete agreement on Scandi films, an oasis of quality films and series. A recent find was the short series “Families Like Ours” (the same filmmaker, Thomas Vinterberg, also made a delightful movie about five years ago called “Another Round”).
Even though most American productions are junk, every once in a while you come across inspired greatness. I thought “Succession” was an outstanding series, and more recently the film “Train Dreams” gets very high marks.
ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] I’m going to keep saying this. Every time. I am done paying taxes. Have you not figured out where the money originated? The taxes we pay is what funds every one of these multi-billion dollar scams. And here’s a thought - if billions of dollars aren’t really doing anything but lining the pockets of fraudsters, those same billions of dollars are not needed in the first place. Why the hell are we giving it to them? Why do we continue to give our own money to the government who does not track where it goes, does not use it in ways that I approve of, and never punishes the wide spread abuse when it discovers, much to its amazement, that people are STEALING it. The only answer is to not give them money in the first place. Anyone who disagrees can keep on being ripped off
[2] If the goal was to reduce drug dependence, they would make quality rehab facilities free and readily available. Treating the addiction is the only way to get an addict off of drugs. And, as long as there is a demand for drugs, there will be people who will figure out a way to supply them. Trump’s extrajudicial killings aren’t about reducing drugs– it’s pure showmanship and the natural result that happens when an impotent Congress refuses to rein in the actions of a petulant man-boy.
[3] I still recall my first Physics 101 test, fall semester 1973, at Boston U. Remember those blue cover answer booklets that required you to answer the problems using both English language and physics/math? None of that multiple choice crap that is much easier to game. There I sat, child 3 of 6 of a father who never saw junior year of high school, using my slide rule for calculations. And I hear it, "click, click, click", and realize that the rich kids were cruising along with their calculators. I was the last to turn in my booklet, but I aced the test. Is there a way to "get back to where we once belonged"?
[4] I have a bold prediction for 2026: it will be just like 2025, only stupider.
[5] I have two boys, 22 and 19 and I spent a few parent teacher conferences telling teachers that I'll deal with my sons' behavior issues. I did. I managed to get those boys through school without any form of psychotropic drugs and they are are still covid vaccine FREE pure blooded American men. What our schools have done to countless young men in this country is horrific. It's what we get when school systems are run by women. In my local elementary school during my children's tenure there (I have two boys and two daughters) they never had a male teacher. Principals are always female. School board is populated by women. Education is a feminine system run by females and it punishes our young men for being young men. I tried to get on the school board and was soundly defeated. I'm not a popular person and my views are very conservative when it comes to government and what government should be doing. Not popular in a society that worships government.
[6] Nobody knows what the rationale is because the administration has failed to describe a coherent rationale. It’s about drugs, no it’s about oil, no it’s about China, no it’s about saying the phrase “Monroe Doctrine” as some kind of magical incantation. Also the US government is going to run things even though every component of Venezuela’s prior government, military, judiciary, and affiliated militias are still in place… the simpletons envision every geopolitical scenario as a tournament between their respective heads of state. And the arguments domestically are viewed as a sportsball game between team blue and team red. Never mind that this scale of regime change has always resulted in boots on the ground which is a nice way of saying our sons will be shipped off to yet another foreign misadventure to be ground up in Moloch’s meat grinder for the financial benefit of the military industrial complex. That there are still people who think this time it will be different and that the law of unintended consequences will be suspended for the first time never ceases to amaze.
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