It’s been an interesting week.
Vinnie wandered off (out the unclosed door of the RV!) and we would have never known except that I just happened to be looking out a window while blogging and saw a lady petting a dog down the street. I thought, “That guy looks a lot like MY dog!” Then, I thought, “I should introduce Vinnie to that dog.” When I got up to do that, I noticed that Vinnie was gone. (Then, I realized that BonBon had loudly alerted us about ten minutes earlier… and we ignored her!) Anyway, Vinnie was retrieved. My bad.
(BTW, we have gotten used to BonBon keeping a watch on things from her window perch on the sofa. She reminds me of “Mrs. Kravitz” on the old “I Dream of Jeanie” TV series, always keeping an eye open for scandals in the neighborhood. BonBon has the most acute senses of any Boston Terrier that we’ve ever owned. She can see, hear, and smell better than the others… it’s a GIFT, I suppose. Anyway, there is no way in the world that any burglar could ever surprise us at home or in the RV… BonBon is like a Chihuahua on steroids; her “alert” bark/shriek could wake the dead.)
Charlie has been feeling crummy lately. She had a lingering urinary tract infection and constipation, as well, for a couple of weeks. In the midst of that, I gave her the Old Lady Virus (a head cold that lasted 5 days). Then, her chronic “heartburn” got so bad that we headed over to the local emergency hospital to learn that she has a hiatal hernia and GIRD (gastrointestinal reflux disease), something that she will have to live with until we get home from vacation. Poor girl.
The weather in Oregon has been very nice for the past few months while it has been sizzling back in Mesquite, Nevada. It’s been so hot there that my drip irrigation system (underground water lines) has sprung leaks due to the heat cracking the cheap water lines. It’s the first time that we’ve experienced that in five years.
Speaking of water, our Mesquite home may be hit by some heavy rain this weekend. Hurricane Hilary is proceeding up the Baja California coast and threatens to bring tropical storm impacts to the Southwest. Some forecasts predict that a year’s worth of rain could fall in Las Vegas by Monday. Monsoonal rain events occur periodically in the Southwest during the Summer, but the forecasted tropical storm could be much larger. A tropical storm has not touched California in the past 100 years, so lots of rain falling very fast could really mess things up there. We shall see.
The unsettled weather in the Northwest has resulted in the usual lightning strike-caused forest fires that plague Oregon and northern California each Summer. Right now, there is a fire between Crescent Bay (California) and inland Oregon which has closed Highway 199, the very route that we use to escape the Oregon coast on the way home to Nevada. Hopefully, the highway will reopen in the next ten days, otherwise we may have to take a major detour (north through Idaho or south through northern California). That would suck.
Our good friend Lloyd appears to be enjoying his relocation to South Africa. He and his live-in squeeze Juanita recently went on a mini-safari at a game park in the area, getting up-close-and-personal with all manner of wild beasts. It appears that he and she are doing fine. We’re so happy for them, although we miss them a lot. Hopefully, they can stay clear of the lions!
It is becoming difficult to find any “news” lately that isn’t Donald Trump-related. The attention-seeking ex-President has his mug all over the news sites, with stories about his four indictments covering 91 potential felonies, his insulting/threatening/bombastic comments about judges, prosecutors, grand jury members, witnesses, etc., his incitement of followers to do whatever it takes to derail his prosecutions, and his 2024 campaign for the G.O.P. nomination.
In the past week, Trump promised a “major press conference” to unveil all the “proof” that he has been squirreling away regarding the “stolen election of 2020”. This would presumably be the factual information that he failed to produce in the 30 court cases adjudicated after the election… where judge after judge continuously and unsuccessfully challenged him to produce any evidence of a fraudulent election. Anyway, for some reason, Trump today canceled the big news conference on advice from his lawyers, which is odd, as the ex-President regularly disregards advice of counsel and/or fires them for not telling him what he wants to hear.
BTW, many of Trump’s ex-lawyers are now in the crosshairs of special prosecutors, facing various charges and possible disbarment. Ex-Trump inner circle consigliere Rudy Giuliani appears to be in great jeopardy, as his counsel was central to many of the nefarious schemes that evolved to affect a coup d’etat after Trump’s 2020 electoral loss. Mr. Giuliani is reportedly seeking money from the ex-Prez to help with his legal costs. (What does M.A.G.A. stand for? “Making Attorneys Get Attorneys”)
What is really odd about the latest Trump news is that the guy, who stands no chance of being elected President in 2024, continues to be the presumptive G.O.P. nominee in 2024. It is as if the Republican Party has a death wish, dutifully following the Pied Piper’s death march to the sea. The G.O.P., in its present state, seems unable to grasp reality and pivot to a platform and candidate who doesn’t repulse most Americans.
The fault lies with the Trump faithful who have their feet immobilized in concrete, i.e. the belief that he was The One, God’s anointed, the Commander in Chief who was going to kick Mexico’s and China’s ass, the guy who was going to put Black and LGBQ citizens back in their place, and so forth. Admitting that his cult following was wrong about Trump is about as likely as the ex-Prez admitting that he lost the 2020 election.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been making a fool of himself for the past several months, trying to out-Trump the ex-President by making all manner of outlandish statements, promises, and doing stupid things just to get attention. His unprovoked attack on Walt Disney Corp. (because of its embrace of diversity) has turned into a self-inflicted wound. The only way he gets the G.O.P. nomination is if Trump drops out, Trump gets thrown in prison, or Trump chokes to death while eating a cheeseburger.
The only person that I know who’s had a worse month than Donald Trump is my Mesquite neighbor and hiking buddy, Mac. The poor guy has been suffering from chronic vertigo, keeping him from doing the things that he likes to do (biking, hiking, music). He’s miserable and depressed right now and his doctors don’t seem to know how to resolve the problem. I’ve had vertigo and it is SCARY. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
For Mac’s sake, I hope that his docs find the magic bullet… soon.
Bradley Cooper, the actor, is in the news this week. His new film, about famous composer Leonard Bernstein, has been getting flack because Cooper had the effrontery to wear a prosthetic nose in his role (to emulate Bernstein, who had a good-sized proboscis). Some Jews are outraged about the “Jewface” look, as if Cooper’s intent was antisemitic.
C’mon, folks, if the producers were antisemitic, why would they make a film honoring a famous Jewish composer? Cooper’s makeup (the latex nose) is no more offensive than Rami Malek’s prosthetic teeth when he portrayed Freddy Mercury or John Wayne’s oriental eye makeup when he starred as Genghis Khan back in the 1950’s.
Get serious, people! Should John Hurt have worn no makeup when he portrayed the disfigured “Elephant Man”… so that no one suffering from proteus syndrome might be offended? How about Mel Brooks playing an Indian chief in “Blazing Saddles”, shouting to his on-the-warpath braves in Yiddish? Where were the offended Jews when that movie came out? (Or the outraged Native Americans?)
Jewish people, like many ethnic groups from the Middle East, tend to have larger noses than others, just like lots of northern European folks have red hair and freckles and many South African women suffer from steatopygia (large fat accumulations in thighs and buttocks). So what? The variety of bodily features is part of what makes the world interesting; if we all looked alike… oooh, what a boring place it would be!
The so-called ”Jewface” issue seems to be a big thing in the Jewish community. In West Los Angeles/Hollywood/Beverly Hills, an area heavily populated by affluent Jews, the number one cosmetic surgery is the “nose job” (i.e. reducing the size and shape), which tends to make the patient look less Jewish. Evidently, Jews don’t like looking Jewish.
I think the biggest thing about the Bradley Cooper “Maestro” portrayal is that the producers chose to use an Irish-Italian heritage actor to portray a famous Jewish man. Certainly, there are plenty of Jewish actors in Hollywood who could have done this work without a nose prosthesis. However, none of them is currently as popular as Bradley Cooper. And, in Hollywood, money (as in ticket sales) is what “makes the world go round”.
(It also doesn’t hurt that Cooper is also the Director of the film and he is a Co-Producer along with Martin Scorcese and Stephen Spielberg, probably the most famous Jew in Hollywood. He, also, has a big nose.)
MONEY was probably the number one factor in 1956 when some genius moviemakers cast John Wayne in his colossal flop, “The Conqueror”.
I’m not Mongolian but I find THAT pseudo-Oriental mug offensive!
“Ah, so, Pilgrim!”