Weird Weekend In America!

Protests, "perades", assassinations, manhunts, US Senators mocking political assassinations, and it ended with a declaration of war by a mad King on blue cities while ignoring the Red States and their field workers, meat plant workers and construction workers. This is America today. Within 72 hours all hell breaks loose and this is an everyday occurrence nowadays in President Chaos's world.

Early Saturday morning a kook, dressed as a cop in a mask and driving a car made to resemble a police car, walked up to a house in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, rang the doorbell and when State Rep Melissa Hortman answered he shot her, her husband and their Golden Retriever killing all three. Yes, I do consider a Golden Retriever a person. The culprit then drove to the home of State Senator John Hoffman, rang the bell, and when answered pumped nine bullets into him and 8 into his wife. The cops showed up, the killer ran back into the house and out the backdoor eluding capture. The manhunt took 36 hours until they caught Vance Boelter in a farm field 3 miles from his house. Good job to the law enforcement of Minnesota.

Who is this guy? The Magats jumped immediately, blaming the killings on the fact there was a vote on healthcare for undocumented people and one of the two voted to take it away. This "proves" a Democrat killed one of their own for that vote. The killer was an appointee to a meaningless board of businessmen by Gov Tim Walz, thus "proving" he was a Democrat. Blah blah blah. Same old shit. Jan 6ers were feds, Antifa, or FBI. Trumps attempted assassin was a "radical left lunatic". The gaslighting never stops with these people. A sitting United States Senator, Mike Lee (R-Utah), posted two tweets mocking the killings on some weird ass twitter account while at the same time condemning it on his official Senate account. The guy is not well and hasn't been for years.

Look, it's common knowledge that Vance Boelter is a right wing nutjob. Ranting about abortion and illicit sex, loved Trump and had a hit list of 70 Democrats in various states in the Midwest, all pro-choice. This isn't that hard. I am not blaming MAGAts. I'm blaming Vance Boelter who just happens to be MAGA. Much like I'm not blaming the left for Luigi Mangione. I'm blaming Luigi Mangione. People are individuals, associated with various groups and political views, and certainly may be radicalized by bad actors, but in the end, it's on the killers. Nobody is going to indict Trump for the killing, though Mike Lee might be looked at. Ha who am I kidding, like Patel's FBI would ever do that. This is one sick society we live in. And its only gonna get worse as long as the bull in the china shop is still there.

Trump's lil 79th birthday "perade", held in DC and featuring a not so happy military presence. Out of step marching (many vets say it was on purpose), squeaky tanks, a guy holding a drone, guys sweating to death in Revolutionary War uniforms, more squeaky tanks, and yawning politicians. The crowd was small, empty stands, empty fields and less than enthusiastic troops. Happy Birthday Donnie. $65 million for an ego stroke. But anyway, congrats on 250 years to the United States Army, which my old man served in fighting Nazis 1941-1946. As far as 79th birthdays go, congrats Donnie, it's amazing the Big Macs haven't done a number on you yet.

No Kings protests took place in all 50 states. They were violence free other than MAGAts showing up at a couple of protests with guns and causing trouble. A man was killed in SLC by a volunteer security person firing madly at a guy with a rifle/ So much for volunteer security. The protest here in Omaha took place across the river in Council Bluffs, Iowa. This was done in deference to the College World Series, taking place in Omaha. We were there. It was too hot for human existence and being age challenged, we left after 90 minutes or so. I despise Trump, but I won't let the disdain kill me.

In Los Angeles, the protests were peaceful, confined to a two-block radius, and then came the sheriffs on horses playing Wyatt Earp and beating on people, shooting tear gas and causing trouble. Why is it ALWAYS the county sheriffs starting the trouble? They did it here in 2020 by charging people sitting down in the street and beating them up and they did it in LA over the weekend. Sheriffs. Man, why not try and become real cops instead of bitter bullies with power? There is open warfare here in Omaha as the Omaha Police Department has warned the Douglas County Sheriff's Department to stay in their own lane. Seems like our Sheriff, a short little man always dressed in tactical gear, can't mind his own business. They came into Omaha and killed a kid, they participated in the ICE raids, and they are always willing to stick their nose in business they don't belong. The OPD has had enough.

Who hasn't had enough? Trump got his "perade", the protests were massive, and Trump is pissed. So, before even condemning the Minnesota murders, he sent a lengthy insane Truth Social post where he declared war on Blue America. Trump and his ICE thugs will invade LA, Chicago, New York and any other blue city he feels like invading. He wants violence, he wants death, he wants to invoke the insurrection act so he can unleash the American military on its citizens. Trump is a despicable 79-year-old despot out for revenge because he's never been accepted into celebrity society he so longs for. If we let him get away with it, we shall be sorry.

Resist. Never Stop. Our country is at stake.

Brian Wilson And Sly Stone!

The deaths of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson remind us boomers of our own mortality. Chrissakes, if the legends die that means we all are gonna die too. It's a fact that we cannot get away from. Time kills us all. But we still have Sly and Brian's music and it will always make that inevitable demise much less painful.

The Beach Boys. As a literal child of the 60's, how can one not be familiar with the sounds of California. I came of musical awareness not because of the Beach Boys but because of the Beatles and the Monkees and the Doors. The Doors were California to me. The Beach Boys were too slick. Too appealing to girls for me. A Beach Boys concert in the mid 70's at the old Civic Auditorium in Omaha, minus Brian Wilson, made me really a non-fan. The screeching girls, the adoration of friends of mine, I didn't get it. We ended up sitting down on the floor and wished it was over. I secretly had taped the concert for another person who couldnt attend, and when I gave them the cassette they acted like they had obtained the Holy Grail. I'm sure the quality was awful but whatever floats your surfboard I guess. Years and years later, I saw a sort of version of the Beach Boys with Mike Love and Bruce Johnston and it wasnt that bad. I even kind of liked it. My older age had caught up with me. Now I understand the genius of Brian Wilson. Listening to the albums I had previously rejected as tripe, I got a whole new perspective, one of a middle-aged man, not of a rebellious teen into the anti-establishment rock of the Doors and the Airplane. Brian had his problems. But don't we all? We aren't in the public limelight, thus we don't get lied about or ridiculed for our weirdo behavior. In fact, a sandbox in my house sounds kind of intriguing now. RIP Brian Wilson.

Sly Stone. Sly and The Family Stone. Never heard of them. And then I bought the Woodstock album. I bought it for Hendrix, for the Who, for CSNY and for the Airplane. What I got was not only them, but an introduction to the band that blew the place up at 3:30 AM. Sly and the Family Stone did Dance to the Music, I want to Take You Higher and Music Lover. Good lord. Who the hell are these guys? And then I heard "All the Squares go home" and fell in love with Cynthia Robinson (RIP Cynthia). What the hell? It was band of blacks and whites and was pure joy. Much like Santana, the diversity appealed to me. But Sly Stone. With his huge afro and wide smile, who could not love this guy? I wore that Woodstock album out listening to those Sly and the Family Stone songs. Wow, the hits after were so come together y'all who couldn't love it? Everyday People, Thank You, Family Affair, Hot Fun in the Summertime. This was the black Beach Boys. Live life, hate nobody, have fun. Then came the drugs, the crazy wedding at Madison Square Garden, the mohawk, the disappearance. Sly Stone and Brian Wilson were kindred spirits. Both did their own thing, were self-destructive and had trouble living among us peasants.

And now they are both gone. I hope they find happiness wherever they are. Genius is a bitch.

MJ The Musical!

 Before MJ The Musical begins, people wander around on stage. It's kind of confusing at first as we see people walking into what seems to be a rehearsal studio. We get a man keeping time by shouting 5 minutes to Michael, 3 minutes to Michael, 1 minute to Michael as the performers stretch and dance and do yoga. Then in comes Michael, to great applause. We then get Beat It, complete with the Eddie Van Halen solo. The musical then begins to explain the story of the Jacksons, The Jackson 5 and Michael himself.

MJ is preparing for the 1992 Dangerous Tour. His perfectionism and quirky wants and needs are driving people crazy. His manager fights him on safety issues; his accountant fights him on money issues. It's a disaster in the making. An MTV journalist shows up to interview Michael and thinks she's going to break through. But he has conditions. Only musical questions. This is the catalyst for the story.

We go back in time to Michael with the Jackson 5, the domineering father Joseph Jackson, the brothers and the abuse as the Jacksons try and please Dad to no avail. We get the Apollo; the Ed Sullivan show and the gigs in places long in the past. Hit after hit put the pressure on Michael as the front man.

Michael grows up, physically at least, and goes out on his own. Meanwhile, we go back and forth in time from the troubled 1992 MJ to the Thriller MJ. Will the tour even happen? Those are all questions answered at the end of the musical. We get references to Bubbles, the hyperbaric chamber, the pill popping, and even a short reference to the "allegations". But since MJ the Musical is approved by the Jackson Family, that's as far as it goes. Well ok, but it's all about the music. As Michael tells Rachel the MTV interviewer, "listen to my music and it will answer any questions you have".

Now the performances. Jordan Markus is adult MJ, speaking in a constant whisper and nailing the moves and the voice. He is phenomenal. Devin Bowles plays Joe Jackson AND Rob the tour manager. He moves from one character to the next in the blink of an eye. He is a brutal money hungry grifter one instant and the caring father figure of Rob within seconds. He's great also. The young Michael and teenaged Michael, played by Quentin Blanton Jr and Erik Hamilton respectively. Those kids have great voices and great presence. Anastasia Talley plays Katherine Jackson, their mother, with a sense of keeping the family together to matter what. She gets a solo song towards the end that had the audience cheering as it well should. Her voice is perhaps the best in show. Rachel the journalist is played by Cecilia Petrush, and she is basically the narrator. She doesn't sing much but sets the tone for the story's back and forth timeline. She's kind of irrelevant to the story to be honest. I found her cynical cameraman, played by Anthony Garcia, to be the comic relief and it was apparent he's a stage veteran.

The background dancers and singers do their job with flair and great dedication. It's a good cast.

So now what about MJ the Musical as a 2 1/2-hour experience. Did I love it? No. Did I like it? Sure. Is it too long? Yes. Was the music great? Yes. Was the band superb? Yes. So, what's not to like?

No idea. It just struck me as cold. Like the Tina Turner musical, it was musically brilliant, but the story didn't grab me. I guess it's just a matter of taste. If you want a Vegasy impersonation and legends show you'll love this. If you prefer a story, warts and all, maybe it just doesn't get there for you. That's me. It fell just short.

However, we do get the 3 things MJ started. We get the robotic moves of Soul Train, the moonwalk of Billy Jean on the Motown at 20 special, and finally the lean of Smooth Criminal (my favorite MJ song).

Stick round after the curtain call as you get a real jam session where all the minor characters get to show their chops. 

The sound sucked as usual at the Orpheum, perhaps the whispery voice of MJ contributed to that but the music was grand. The crowd was kind of lukewarm, perhaps due to the fact MJ's core audience is now over 60 and not quite as energetic as the kids on stage.

Should you see it? Yes, of course. It's fun for us old folks to remember our youth. 

The "Invasion"!!

Show me anything in this now deleted tweet that is untrue. Stephen Miller is a bitter punk, once rejected by a Hispanic high schooler and now the chief architect of the Final Solution. At this point it's round em up and deport them to some other shithole prison where nobody knows what happens to them. Ya know, like Auschwitz. Sooner more than later, if they get away with this, we shall see them round up American citizens and who knows what will happen to them.

But ABC, led by the coward Bob Iger, got a load of that Terry Moran tweet and made him delete it before suspending him for telling the truth about a guy nobody fucking voted for. ABC, not known for courage, refuses to stand up for its reporters, anchors and show staff. They recently poured $15 million into Trumps pockets because George Stephanopoulos hurt Trumps feewings. CBS is close to paying off the Felon for doing what all networks do, editing a boring part of an interview, I hope they stand their ground, but fascism needs corporations to cooperate, and man are they ever cooperating with this thuggish administration.

What's going in Los Angeles is nothing more than government sanctioned violence. Egged on by Trump, his plastic Barbie Noem, his scummy AG and his drunken Defense Secretary, the violence was started as it usually is. By nerds who were bullied in high school now with power. Cops and Guardsmen and Sheriff's Deputies and State Patrols and perhaps US Marines are dying to get revenge on those bullies who probably grew up and aren't like that any longer. Which you can't say about the goons who are sketchy and embraced by ICE. 

An American version of Bloody Sunday is upon us. It's inevitable in this current mood of half the country appalled by these ICE hooligans and the other half who want F15s to strafe their fellow Americans. When it happens, and the Trumpers all come in their shorts, it will finish us as a country. We will have turned the corner from the world's finest democracy to an authoritarian shithole. Once you massacre a number of Americans, it becomes easier to do it again and again. Because journalism is fucking dead. Unable and unwilling to hold these Trump ruffians accountable, news corps are joining the team. Don't offend these guys because we may have lost profits and ever since 1980, journalism is just another money-making division of the American Conglomerate.

LA is not an "invasion" of migrants and illegals. It's an invasion by government bullies looking to stay in power and appease a racist base.

Just because an incel like Miller can't make some girl like him, we all have to suffer. Even Millers wife, taking one for the fascist team, can't stand him any longer and is so beaten down, thinks a choad like Elon Musk is an attractive alternative. It's an invasion all right but not the one Miller and Trump think it is. 

They are the invaders of every decent Americans minds.

Resist 

PS- Ice vermin invaded Omaha today by raiding 3 meat packing plants. The low hanging fruit these cowards go for to please Miller's 3000 a day quota is pathetic. Word is employers were cooperating to avoid government blackmail. And yes, there were protestors. Hey folks, it's here in "Real America". We dont take kindly to invaders. Or do we?

California Trends!

 It's still exhausting. Donald Trump gets worse and worse every day. Once you realize that bottom will never be reached, it gets even more exhausting.

Over the weekend, we had the American Gestapo (ICE) decide to go to a Home Depot in Paramount, California to meet the Cosplay Barbie (Noem) quotas in rounding up all those MS13 gangsters (day laborers) that hang out in the parking lot to maybe pick up a roofing job on top of their drug dealing and sex trafficking profits. So, they've run out of "criminals" to roust. Since the human migraine (Tom Homan) took over as border czar (head of the American Stasi) this has never been about rounding up criminals. They are all gone, sent home under Biden and Trump in his first month. When the American KGB would round up 100 Hispanic men, 20% would have records deemed deportable while the remaining 80% were traffic violators or had no record at all. This was the sign either fellas you're out of criminals or fellas you suck at investigating and are so lazy you are picking the low hanging fruit. The low hanging fruit are kitchen workers, crop pickers, farm hands and construction workers. These are people who are doing shit jobs to send money home or feed their families. To the American SAVAK, they are just quota numbers. 

Noem and Homan are the bar floozy desperately trying to stay young and the loudmouth at the end of the bar spouting off his Archie Bunker bullshit without the comedy, respectively. They set quotas that can only be met with low hanging fruit. Thus, the protests in California. 

People are sick of this shit. Well, most people, there's always the Stephen Millers of the world who got rejected by a young woman of Hispanic origin in high school and decided to hate everybody not white. Those people are a lost cause bent of burning down the world. It's called MAGA.

But most people have had enough. Most people now know of a person being roughed up and rousted by a thumb breaking organization like ICE. We've seen it on the news, on social media or by word of mouth. Here, in Omaha, ICE agents, masked as usual, followed a young man to a local restaurant where he worked. He saw them and ran into his place of employment. ICE followed him into the diner, all geared up in their vests, guns and masks and took him down in the restaurant as people ate. One patron, a real humanitarian I'm sure, kneeled on the guy's legs as ICE did their usual "stop resisting" bullshit while cuffing the guy. The look on that kids face as he was pulled up was horrifying. He had no idea what was happening, had a speech impediment, spoke little English and was scared to death. Well good you say, he's an illegal and that's what I voted for. Oh yeah, he was the wrong guy but as the American Secret Police scream out "stop resisting" it warrants a bogus resisting arrest charge, so they are never wrong. It's fascism 101.

California starts trends. Resisting a fascist state is always a noble cause. Punching Nazis is always a noble cause. California has started a noble cause. As this military takeover of blue cities spreads, and it will, resistance is mandatory for any freedom loving person. Living here in "real America" where change is looked upon as a festering sore, this trend is not that far away. Progress always wins, and it may be a long bloody war, but it wins.

Resist!