Hater's Digest
Bite-sized bits of an inner world that will leave you wondering where it all went wrong.
Usually the guideline here has to do with…obsessions. So, not so much the new’s cycle but what the new’s cycle’s done to both me, and my head, in the preceding week. But this week? So much…sooooo much. Which is why…a digest. Quick hits of hate. Hope you enjoy it. Save the lectures, post-reading, for folks in your yoga class. I cannot/will not be helped.
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THE DEATH OF THE OPPOSING CLASS
Elon Musk, whose ardent desire to be the first thing we think of when we awake and the last thing when we go to sleep has had a terrible bunch of days. The rocket he tried to fire off on 4/20 failed, both as a joke, and as a rocket that was not supposed to be one. Twitter continues to stumble over blue checks, salty investors at Tesla rumble, stock prices sink even as profits rise from reduced prices on cars that are still moving slower than any salty investor would like.
And I’m not caring about that.
I AM caring about Bluesky. Jack Dorsey, the man who took the unlikely Twitter — “what a fucking stupid idea,” I said about Twitter when Twitter first became a thing — and made it a thing, sold it to Musk for $44 bil or thereabouts. Then promptly took the cash to go start Bluesky which, for my money, is the most serious existential threat to Twitter since the last serious existential threat in the form of Musk himself.
Why?
Because as soon as it’s a bonafide thing what’s left of the reasonable center and the vast majority of Twitter users along with image-conscious celebrities, will flee for it. So far, so good, right?
Wrong.
Musk and his cabal of anti-wokers, “free speechers”, neo-neo-cons, MAGA-lites and fan boys don’t exist outside of their continued and continuing desire to “show” the rest of us…what? This, at present, is unknown. However, they seem to thrive as crap in a punch bowl. Without the punch bowl, the crapness of their angle of attack is not nearly so exciting.
It seems Tony Danza has forgotten that he’s Tony Danza. So here’s my reminder for Tony Danza: fuck you Tony Danza.
So, the curse of any/many opposition parties. Without something to oppose they are effectively nowhere. Without libtard tears and hand wringing? Well, it’s just a crap party. And one that even verifiably crappy people can’t be tricked into going to. The question is can Musk be tricked into overpaying for Bluesky too?
WHEN YOUR NOMINEE IS RAPEY McRAPESTER
You’ll see. We’re going to lose so much. So much. We’re going to lose so much you’re going to get tired of losing, to paraphrase one time president and current Republican front runner Donald Trump. And he is.
But I’ve come not to bury Trump, but to praise E. Jean Carroll. It’s one thing to have been raped by Donald Trump when nowhere on your agenda was the line listing “rape by Donald Trump”, and something else entirely to have to publicly cop to having had anything at all to do with his penis.
How bad was it?
So bad that for the remainder of her life up until the very moment I’m writing this she hasn’t been able to stomach a romantic relationship of any kind. Now to a narcissist I am sure this is a success story — “I was THAT good” — but to the rest of the world it is what it is: horror to not be duplicated.
And again, for some moments of brief levity consider this: dinner time at Casa Trump when it’s only Melania and The Donald in attendance. This, really, I’d wish on no man. Almost. So, happy wife equals happy life? What’s the flipside of that? I guess whatever it is when you’re pregnant and your husband is raw dogging strangers in expensive department stores.
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH TONY DANZA?!?
I had such high hopes for Tony Danza. A New York street kid after my own heart, he escaped the squared circle of a career as a boxer and slid into playing, well, Tony Danza on a TV show called Taxi. I loved his wide-eyed eagerness to please and tuning in every week to see a guy who you felt like had won the lottery? And not just a guy, but a guy like you? Delightful.
Then, like anywhere else in Hollywood…you start hearing…things.
Agent Mary Meagher went to Tony Danza’s wedding. Mary drank too much, as people are wont to do at weddings. Mary found herself dancing on a table top. Not soberly, since it’s rare that anyone does anything like that soberly. Mary, rest in peace, gets fired by the top flight agency that she worked for. The suspected trigger puller? Danza.
Or, Outside Lands. I’m to be onstage as part of a live theater/music deal with the Red Room Orchestra doing their take on The Great Lebowski. Me. And Tony Danza. Which excited me. Native New Yorkers, especially transplants to California, are a different breed and I’m looking forward to jawing with Danza like I’m looking forward to being back home.
I finally catch him outside the staging area. We’re walking toward each other. He’s walking with two other cats, neither of whom seem familiar, but I’m aiming to slide on in there. Taxi was big in the ‘70s. I do jiu jitsu with guys who were born in 2006. The numbers of people bracing Danza at this point can’t be a growing concern.
[T]hey seem to thrive as crap in a punch bowl. Without the punch bowl, the crapness of their angle of attack is not nearly so exciting.
As we get closer though, now about 20 feet away, I can see the former boxer and New York native do that thing that’s only been done to me by Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Michael Glaser, Gary Oldman and the assassin from Scarface, and recently Breaking Bad, Mark Margolis on being recognized by me. Something very much along the lines of “oh my god. He’s looking at me. FUCK. Won’t these people ever leave me alone?!?” complete with the averted eyes and the scuttle for some sort of separateness from the tiresome public.
Shit.
I breeze on by him, saying nothing then, nor during the show, nor after as we stand around the catering.
And finally this last week, on some red carpet deal he braces some poor celebrity interviewer who was probably not even alive in 1979, then pats him on the face, asks him to get some questions that don’t suck and stalks off.
It seems Tony Danza has forgotten that he’s Tony Danza. So here’s my reminder for Tony Danza: fuck you Tony Danza.
MY “FATHER” JUST HAD A MASSIVE HEART ATTACK
Talk about burying the lede, eh?
Yesterday one of my sisters called me to let me know that our “father”, the man who disowned all of his children over charges that would have made Stalin blush in their threadbareness, had had a massive heart attack. He and I have spoken once since I turned 19 when he launched into a decades long estrangement, instigated by his third wife Carole, but clearly signed off by him.
He actually died for five minutes but was brought back to life and now he sits in a hospital somewhere in Maryland. Having lost the will to live but not yet dead.
“I know you said there’d be no death-bed reversals, but I just thought you should know,” she said.
“Well, thanks. I mean I’m not hopping on a plane or anything, but my Mom will want to know this.”
“That’s what I figured.”
But then the story gets stranger. While none of his kids were planning to visit him, and as reports go, only one of his two stepsons has, the woman that launched a passel of disowning, Carole, was nowhere to be seen. Which seems like an analog for life if there ever was one.
This may have all changed by this writing, hours after the first reports, but that’s not what interests me. What interests me are all of the early condolences that cause me to echo my sister who, in explaining why she’s not going to the hospital puts it plainly: “I said my goodbyes a long time ago.”
Which is nicer than anything I’ve been able to manage and what I’ve been able to manage has been met with an almost universal “afterschool special” desire for a happy ending when I share it. However, being disowned by your father at 19, something I write about in the memoir much more fully, creates a different kind of animal. And in this case an animal that sees “happy” in a totally different way.
Which way?
I go to Bad Brains for that because “in the end you just may see that what you receive is what you gave to me.”
So, so long “Pops” if you make it very much past publishing this, and thanks for setting out a sterling example of what I never want to do or be. Said not with hate or rancor but just a general indifference. You have earned it.
The last conversation I had with my father was also at 19. It consisted of me screaming at him that if he ever fucked with my mother again I’d kill him. Oddly enough, our interactions ceased until his funeral 20 years later. Cleaning out his crappy apartment with my little brother, I realized that my primary motivation in life has been “don’t be your father”. You’ve come a long way from where you could’ve ended up, never forget that.
I love your stuff because it’s always very real. I’m sorry about your dad. I feel like you can’t really compare different peoples bad experiences on a crappy scale. It could always be worse. I spent a lot of years talking about my dad hoping to get to a place of no regrets. I feel like that’s as allusive as “no mind” is in meditation.