US Elections 2024

Donald Trump has resumed his role as Leader of the American people in a devastating loss for the Kamala Harris. Her Kumbaya Joy campaign after Biden's protracted abdication coupled with the wars in Ukraine, inflation, and emigration left the Democratic Vice President little time to combat the GOP leader's headstart. The defections of Latinos and Black males to the Orange Messiah nailed shut the coffin and we wake on a sunny morning in New York with clouds on the horizon, as the Republicans control the White House, Supreme Court, the Senate, and perhaps the House of Representatives.

Yesterday I sat outside 387 and thought about Mrs. Harris winning the election, suspecting the worst. The worst has come to roost. Life will go on, knowing the GOP will come after Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, the EPA, censorship of media ad mauseum.

Trump's victory is easily by a quote attributed to HL Mencken, an American author and social critic.

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.", which according to Wikipedia was not found verbatim in his published works, so the source and original form of this expression are not known with certainty. Likely a nearly verbatim paraphrase of: "No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

And so we go into the future.

Larry Flynnt - the Voice of Freedom

Larry Flynt publisher of Hustler credited his passion for the First Amendment with being sentenced to up to 25 years on obscenity charges in 1976.

“I think I had to stand in a courtroom and listen to a judge sentence me to 25 years in prison before I realized it was something that could no longer be taken for granted,” he said in a 2003 conversation. “And, you know, the fight’s been going on since then. We’ve won some, and we’ve lost some.”

Someone once said, "Pornography is the first defense of Free Speech."

I have never been able to find out whom.

Calm Before The Inner Calm

I'm sitting in front of Larina.
Calm under a sky deepening to velvet blue.
Velvet not dark
Not many people on the street.
Not many cars either. Calm
Maybe the calm before Kamala___
In my mind the USA has elected a woman
A hundred and four years
After they got the vote___
A warm autumn evening Couples walk their kids
Students come home from the park
Lovers hold hands
A single plane overhead
Flying north < br/> Calm
In Brooklyn
Satisfied by delusion
If only for now No matter what____
At least I had that moment of delusion.

Opps

To be expected

Jeffery Epstein's revenge.

Trump received basically the same number of votes at 2020, but Kamala got 10-15 million less than Biden so far.

November 4, 1978 East Village - Journal Entry

At Club 57 on St. Mark's Lang and I heckled the performers. Several people in the audience took offense. Miss Nancy, the emcee, shrilled, "Get the fuck out of here."

The crowd laughed and I responded saying, "Join the real world or at least the 1930s."

We didn't leave, but when David Dirtbomb, a comic, appeared on stage. He was stunned to see us stunned by out spotlighteed as the offendersHe knew us as ruffian protecting gays, queers, and dykes on the scene. The next act came onto the stage to rescue us from embarrassment. Over thirty people were pissed at us, including my girl friend, Alice, who had earlier extolled the turmoil of the bositerous claque in 19th Century French theater.

Adele Bertel from the Contortions confronted me and I grabbed the mike to recite a country western poem.

Lucky's Ten Strike
Woke up this morning
Broke and deserted
Mona left me long ago
She probably should have left
Longer ago___
Mona was there
The night
I rolled 300
Ten straight strikes
At Star Lanes Bowling Center
In Butte, Montana___
I should have never celebrated
By leaving with the cocktail waitress
Leaving Mona to take a taxi
Home___
Woke up this morning
Broke and deserted
Same as always
And even my belly belly
Is broke too.
This silenced the crowd. Adele said it was great. Alice glared I left her silence for another bar. Alice was not pleased. Fuck them all.

All Souls Day

My older brother and I were altar boys in the early 1960s Pre-Vatican II. We were taught to say the Mass in Latin by the diocesan priest assigned to the local church on the edge of the Blue Hills south of Boston. We understood nothing other mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa or 'forgive me forgive really forgive me'. Initially the church had bee a Quonset hut left over from an Army processing base along State Route 28. We wore black cassocks and white surplices. My mother was so proud of us at the Sunday Children's Mass celebrated by the pastor, an old, but gentle Father Curry from County Mayo. Gentle except for one time when two dogs ran up the aisle to start humping before the altar. The congregation horrified, the pastor put down the chalice and strode to the howling dogs and booted them in coitus over the altar railing. Everyone was shocked, as they fled the church together.

Father raised his hands and said, "Just dirty dogs. Not Satan."

The adults nodded their heads and the children all exchanged mystified glances, questioning whether they had witnessed a miracle. I knew it wasn't a miracle as an atheist, but hid my disbelief in my altar boy ego. For two reasons, later three. First, we were paid for weddings. Sometimes $5, sometimes $10, sometimes stiffed by the father of the bride. Secondly we were called out of school for funerals and holy days. We received noting for the dead, even on All Soul's Day. The Holy day after All Saint's Day was to honor the dead. At ten years old I didn't know many dead people other than people who had been dead before I was born like my namesake grandfather Peter Nolan from the Aran Isles and my father's father and my best friend, Chaney, who had drowned in Sebago Lake in the summer of 1960.

I prayed for him every Mass. Not to God nor Jesus, but just prayed hoping his soul was in eternity waiting for me. As I got older, Father Curry explained how All Souls' Day has been observed on November 2 since the 11th century. I later learned from Wikipedia that this holiday had been established by Abbot Odilo, who had been the Benedictine Abbot of Cluny from the first millenium to his death in 1048 AD.

I don't recall serving at All Soul's Day, because the Mass is usually offered at the cemetery. According to Wikipedia in the Middle Ages, superstitious belief, probably influenced from Celtic paganism, held that the souls in Purgatory appeared on All Souls Day as witches, toads, goblins, etc. to persons who committed wrongs against them during their lives on earth. I've never seen them, although I do have the 'sight' thanks to the Cauld ie the placenta wrapped around my head at birth. I see the dead many places, but never on All Soul's Day.

ps I stayed an altar boy, for reason # # was we supped the altar wine, as we neared our teenage years. always careful to not spill a drop on our blemishless surplices.

Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa.

Numquam vere paenitet ie never really sorry.

November 3, 1978 - East Village - Journal Entry

Last night at THE NEW WAVE VAUDEVILLE SHOW at Irving Plaza was a great success, but a debacle for me. Klaus Nomi was the headliner along with a horde of starry-eyed rockers and artists. I was asked to be the security with my friends. None of us were paid, but we guaranteed free drinks .

The night of the show started slow, but by midnight the auditorium on Irving Place was packed with new wave affecionados. Klaus killed the crowd. He was a star. At the end of his performance the stage lights came up, signaling time to go home. I went from table to table telling the guests that they didn't have to go home, but they couldn't stay here. The rest of the security was guzzling liquor at the back bar.

Alice and her friends were flush with of achieving glory for an evening and tomorrow promised more with the B-52s headlining the show. Only one table remained and I approached the four rockers, telling the same thing as everyone else. They didn't like what they heard and a thin-haired guy in glasses asked, "Do you know who I am?"

I had seen him someplace, but said, "No."

"We're Blondie and we're not going anywhere."

"Blondie? I had seen them several times at CBGBs. I liked them and said, "It's been a long night. Just do me a favor and finish your drinks."

I turned to walk away, but he grabbed my shoulder. I shucked off his grip and slapped the beer out of his hand.

"Just leave, you cunts. You guys suck."

I was no music critic and they attacked me as if one of them had said, "One two three four."

I seized the forelock of the rocker in the glasses and whacked him in the face. He backed away and I found myself with a shank of hair in my hand. After that I was buried underneath them and their roadies. Not a fair fight. I was used to those.

Alice wasn't there when I got to my feet. I had trouble breathing. Two of my ribs were broken. I returned to our apartment on East 10th Street and lay on the futon wheezing. I coughed a little blood. Nothing serious.

Alice show up at dawn.

She sat in the kitchen.

"A good night."

"Yes, but you had to ruin it all. Blondie wants to play, but both them and the B-52s won't perform if you're there."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Well, the show must go on."

That morning we slept in separate beds.

Alice left for the show before sunset without saying a word. I wandered north to Irving Plaza and drank in the Polish Bar beneath Irving Plaza. The Poles toasted me. I toasted them back.

"Na Zdrowie!" I coughed with pain

I spit up blood for the next two days. I should have sued the band for a hundred-thousand. Sadly I wasn't that type of guy.

Fighters never are. We win. We lose. We never cry.

Never.

Times of Nothing - BET ON CRAZY

Thanks to Daylight Savings Time sunset will come an hour earlier this evening.

I hate the winter shift of an hour.

Back in the early 21st century I was working at a diamond store off 5th Avenue. A good address.

Not West 47th Street. The Diamond District. A squalid block which processes 89% of the diamonds in America. Dusk was always a little scary from November to March and one afternoon I received a phone call from a friend in Bruxelles.

"Are you all right?"

"Sure, why not?" I hadn't drank anything the previous evening. That's a lie, but one martini in the Oak Bar couldn't hurt my system.

"There was an armed robbery in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel." Alan was an art dealer. Criminals in that field never use guns. "A guard was shot by the robber."

"It doesn't surprise me." My police friends have been warning about the rise in crimes of opportunity. Times are tough. Budget cuts deplete patrols. Criminals are freed from prison. "The city feels a little like 1976."

"Rome seven days after the Huns burn it down." He was quoting my line from my book about punks. "You be careful."

"I will." With two kids in Thailand I have no interest in getting shot.

At least not over money.