From 2019
The Thai Festival for the end of 2018 has come to an end. The police are are overwhelmed by the traffic, as milliions of Thais travel to the distant provinces to see their families. The holiday death toll reached over 400 with countless thousands injured in car and motorcycle accidents.
Driving drunk is a norm.
Everyone is in a hurry.
And there is no telling what's on the road ahead.
Only Libya has a worst fatality record.
Only space invaders are worse.
Few holidays are more commercialized than Christmas. The chorus of BUY BUY BUY on TV drowns out any rendition of SILENT NIGHT, as hordes of Americans flock to the malls in their SUVs to buy products made in China. Credit cards are whipped out at the cash registers to complete their Xmas gift list on December 23 and 24, the last two shopping days of the shopping frenzy. My last purchases on Christmas Eve were two beers at Jacob Wirth's in Boston, a good luck cat from a Chinatown shop, and a T ticket from South Station to Braintree.
My hand went into my pocket in the train parking lot. My sister had bet that I wouldn't be on time. Our first rendezvous of 5:45 was blown, so I doubled or nothing for 6:10. I was three minutes late. Her lovely daughter Sara got the $20. I sat in the back of their Benz and we drove through Weymouth Landing to a party at my old neighbor's house. The orgy of buying was over. It was time to consume.
Drinks, food, friendship.
My cup slippeth over and my other brother-in-law dragged me from the house, a glass of whiskey in my hand.
"Merry Christmas."
My exit was cheered by the stayers-on. David said, "You won the drunk of the party award."
"There was never any doubt in my mind."
The next morning I woke in a wounded state. I called my kids in Thailand. They were happy and Mem still had a little money left in her wallet. I wouldn't have to go to send a Moneygram on Christmas. We opened gifts and no money passed any out of or into any of our hands. Dinner was free and I begged off going to the movies with my nephew and my sister that evening to drink with my brother-in-law.
Free.
I crashed on the sofa around 10pm.
A day without money.
If only every day was Xmas.
Rain pounded the Brooklyn streets in sheets on the last night of 2018. Shannon and Charlotta traveled to a Fellini soiree on Park Slope. I had planned to spend the evening with Doctor Nepola, except on Sunday I discovered my old college friend invitation was for Christmas Eve.
"Opps."
Geoffery invited me to a Lesbian party in Bushwick.
"There might be ten people there."
"Food?"
"Pizza."
"I like pizza, but the only pizza in that neighborhood in Dominos. Drink?"
"Shots of Bourbon."
"Jack Daniels almost killed me in 1970." Foreign consprators had tried to the same to Cary Grant in NORTH BY NORTHWEST.
"It's a ten minute walk from my house. The B54 runs to my corner. That's your bus, right?"
"I'll think about it."
I hung up and popped the cork of a bottle of Frexenet sparkling wine. I liked how Spanish had Xs.
The dawn was breaking on Sri Racha and Wat Singh. I called my children in Thailand. I wished my wives 'Sawadee Pii Mai'.
My daughter was born on January 1. She was named after my mother.
I have loved her from the moment of conception.
Angie's fifteen.
I am lucky to have her in my life.
Same as my son Fenway.
Noy
Noy.
Flukster.
And crazy little Pen.
"You go out tonight?" asked Mem from the other side of the world.
Nu asked the same.
I told them the same thing.
"I'm staying home. Kin Khao Kundeo. Dim Kundeo. Mii Monsoon."
"I hated winter rain.
I phoned Ty Spaulding in Hawaii. We had met in the Himalayas in 1990. He was going to the movies in Honolulu.
I told him about the rain.
I wished it was snow.
I come from Maine.
When I was a young boy, winter was winter.
Not anymore, but no one now wants to hear about the then-before.
"Is it snowing." Ty wasn't a fan of snow.
"Not at all. Rain and lots of it. I'm not leaving the house."
""Harder than Oahu."
"Yes, and colder."
Ty loves his island.
So do I.
What was there not to love about Oahu?
It's New Year's Eve 2019.
The rain has let up.
A half million people awaited the dropping of the ball in Times Square.
I might have seen it once, maybe twice.
I remember being with the Prince of the Night.
Arthur Weinstein.
We were in the MTV control room two stories about Broadway.
A top executive sneered at the hoi polloi below him and Arthur said out the side of his mouth, "Without them you are nothing."
Only the executive and I heard those words.
The exec cringed with rejection.
Arthur's club THE WORLD was the best in the city. He knew cool better than anyone. The executive knew nothing but profit.
The rain stopped tonight.
Hundreds of thousands of people are stuck inside the police cordons.
There is no leaving for security reasons.
Drones float overhead. Cameras studied the crowd. No drinking allowed.
Yet at ten seconds to the new year and the masses count together.
"Five-four-three-two-one." The voices of the people.
Happy 2019.
One and all everywhere in the world.
And I am happy.
Because I am not wet.
Good night and sweet dreams."
The US Meteorological Survey has reported that New York City received a little over twenty inches of snow this winter. All I saw were a few dustings, then again throughout February I was in Kenya and Tanzania.
Snow topped Mount Kilimanjaro and some days ran down the slopes, however the equatorial sun melted the snow cover by noon.
The temperature at the Maranzi Hut was around freezing at night, but my sleeping bag kept me warm, so I spend another winter without snow.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Hurricane Dorian is predicted to hit the Bahamas as a category 5 storm on Sunday. Houses on those low islands are required with be built to withstand 120mph winds. Dorian might top the record with 200 MPH cyclonic gusts. Donald Trump has tweeter that the hurricane with will catastrophic and headed to his Virginia Golf Course to whack the ball around the green for the Labor Day holiday.
"What me worry."
The tidal surge is the next danger, as the hurricane drags the ocean onto the coastal front.
Convicts have been sandbagging the houses of the wealthy in Florida.
They will not be evacuated during the storm.
They are criminals jailed to be punished by the State.
Throughout the week meteorologists had fathom to path of the storm; first Florida, then the Carolinas and the open ocean, but hurricanes are fickle creatures and now Dorian seems to have altered its course to strike the Florida on Monday.
Palm Beach is empty.
Houses ready to be looted.
Dorian do your worse.
There is no global warming.
Donald Trump knows best, plus America's guns will protect its southern citizens from the storm and anything that follows the wind.
In January the St Louis Blues were the worst team in the NHL. Tonight they beat the Boston Bruins at home in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup. A second goal with 7 seconds left in the first period basically sealed the fate of the home team dashing my hopes for victory.
Their rookie goalie stopped every shot, but one.
Final score 4-1.
Drat.
I thought this was our year.
I was wrong.
No more ice.
Not until the start of the 2019-2020 season.
I stowed away my Bruins gear.
And as all fans say after a loss, "Next year."
The US Federal Government shut down has entered its third week. Parks and Federal offices have been closed, over 380,000 federal employees have been furloughed and more than 420,000, such as the TSA and the Coast Guard are working without pay because Congress and the White House have not funded their agencies due to Trump's desire to have his Wall with Mexico.
During the 2016 presidential campaign Trump vowed to have the Mexicans erect a wall on the southern border to prevent the flood of illegal aliens from Latin America. #45 has yet to meet with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist president on Mexico, however Vicente Fox, the ofrmer leader said for Trump to go fuck himself, if he thought Mexico was contributing a peso to the Wall.
Trump then said the USA would construct the Wall with American dollars.
$55 billion, which was the exact amount Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld claimed to be the cost of the Iraq War.
They were off by $1.5 trillion.
ps the foto is humvee Staff Sgt. Michael F. Barrett, military policeman, Marine Wing Support Squadron 373, was riding when it was struck by an improvised explosive device attack in Iraq 29 September 2004. Barrett was severely injured in the attack and is still recovering from his wounds.
Frustrated by the 24-hour surveillance Trump declared a government lockout right before Christmas.
No bonus for the Federal employees.
No lit Christmas tree.
Trump flew to Iraq for the first time to visit with troops fighting the endless war.
The soldiers appeared genuinely happy to see him.
One even said, "You're the reason I joined the Army."
Making America Great Again.
What about Melania's desert boots.
They are bigger than Donald's. Small boots means small hands and small sox and some other things, but back to the shutdown.
Donald had invited people over for Christmas.
He ordered pizza.
No one came.
Alone and steaming.
He tweeted that the shutdown was just starting.
"It could go on for months or years."
Mean old Donald.
He really wants that Wall.
I see two in Tijuana.
One in Algodones Dunes, California.
But Trump wants something even more elegant and then the lockdown will be over.
He ain't getting shit.
Not with the Democrats controlling the money in Congress.
