Ray Donovan

I have taken a deep dive into this show on Showtime.

They are into Season 6; I started watching about 2 weeks ago and I am half way through Season 3.

Fucking awesome show. Reminds me very much of The Sopranos. You know, you got these bad ass characters you should hate, but because you get to see their sensitive side, you love them, you root for them.

Man, every time Ray Donovan kills somebody, I celebrate with champagne.

Anyway, as I try to fine tune my life before there ain't nothing left, and I am wondering how to handle a certain situation I say to myself "What would Mickey do?"

Referring to Mickey Donovan, Ray's Dad. Played by Jon Voight.

Awesome character. "Devil may care I don't give a shit about anything" kind of guy.

Jesus Christ I love this fucking show.

Best Pre-Game Hype EVER

Been meaning to tell you.

Football players go crazy right before the game, on the field, trying to pump up their teammates. 99% of the time the talk is so lame it is embarrassing. A fucking joke.

Example: "We are gonna kill these guys. How we gonna do that? We're gonna score more points than them. How we gonna do that? We're gonna score more touchdowns. More extra points. More field goals. If we are ahead at the end of the game I guarantee you a win. On three. One-two-three: "more points."

Kirk Cousins gets my award for best pump up speech ever. This season, Week 6, Vikings/Cardinals.

"Hey, I got a question for you. How did you feel after last week's victory, men? Great, right? That's because it was earned, men. Nothing in this league is free. Nothing's a gift. You can't just roll your helmet out there and play. You gotta go out there every play and earn it. And you gotta take it, men.

Defense, I've been a rookie quarterback before. You can suffocate him. You can suffocate him. Make him miserable......all game long. Get us the ball back."

Fucking awesome. Absolutely fucking awesome.

It's True

Gonna change my name, legally, to JuJu Smith-Schuster.

That name is too fucking good for only one man to own.

This Is Why We Have A Dickhead In The White House

"The 1960's were over, and for all the noise and strong points protesters had made during that extraordinary decade, the sense remained that an opportunity to forge fundamental change had been missed, that the American government was as unresponsive and autocratic as ever, that America remained divided as ever by inequalities of race and class. The great rebellion had fallen short. The hippies were moving on, taking jobs and moving to the suburbs. They would pull out their dirty old t-shirts and bell-bottomed jeans to attend Dylan concerts, but the next morning they would dress again in suits and ties and head to their office jobs downtown. Their strident songs and dances hadn't quite done the job."

From "Ali: A Life", by Jonathan Eig

I have been saying this for decades but this paragraph says it better than I ever did.

My generation rose up as one, threw a spotlight on all the injustices and corruption in this country, and tried to make a change. There will never again be a movement like that in this country. It was a one shot deal.

You can blame us for getting sidetracked by drugs and sex (not a bad way to get sidetracked), and that is true to some extent. But the real force, the true, overwhelming reason behind this failure was and is the power wielded by the government, corporations, and the wealthy.

They saw an uprising that threatened to upset their lifestyle, that threatened to wrestle control away from them and give it to the people, where it truly belongs. And they fought back with everything they had. Money, power, corruption, violence, lies. You know, the weapons they use every day to keep us in our place.

Hope resurfaced briefly in 2008 and 2012 when Barack Obama was elected and re-elected to the presidency.

What, a black man?

But if you paid attention, right after he was elected the first time around, you noticed people lynching him in effigy all around the country. Those assholes exposed this country openly and honestly for what it is.

A vicious, racist, violent country. A country founded on bloodshed, torture, slavery, lies, corruption and a massive imbalance between the haves and the have-nots.

trump and the cretins who support him are the ultimate result of this horrible karma.

My generation mistakenly thought we could win that fight in the sixties. We never had a chance.

And no one ever will.

Goin' Shoppin'

Heading out to The Gravitas Store.

Gotta get me some gravitas.

I Don't Understand The Rules

Per society's cast in stone laws:

At what age are you no longer allowed to stoke a fire in the belly?

Stuck In The Middle With Me

I am not as bad as I used to be, not as good as I could be.

Psychotic MD

Is it possible to sustain brain damage from repeated figurative blows to the head?

One of The Many Reasons I Loved HST

"More than six hundred reporters had arrived in Zaire, and, with the possible exception of Rolling Stone's Hunter S. Thompson, who spent much of his time shopping for elephant tusks, smoking marijuana, and getting drunk, most of the journalists were miserable."

From "Ali: A Life",  by Jonathan Eig

The man always knew how to have a good time in any situation.

What A Fucking Conundrum

Got a lot on my mind right now. Not sure why. Not exactly sure what exactly is on my mind (that's a fucking lie).

Can't sleep. Waking up at 3:00, lying awake for hours. Hasn't happened in a loooooong time.

Last night I strolled downstairs at 4:00 and tried to sleep in my recliner. Lakota climbed up into my lap and I was so comforted. Until half an hour later she jumped down and found someplace else to sleep.

I experienced a feeling of being alone like I have never experienced before. Gut level alone.

So I got a lot on my mind. But I have recently lost my mind. So I won't really know what I have on my mind until I find my fucking mind

What a fucking conundrum.

Quite Possibly My Favorite Poem of All Time

Clay comes out to meet Liston

Clay comes out to meet Liston
and Liston starts to retreat,
if Liston goes back an inch farther
he'll end up in a ringside seat.
Clay swings with his left,
Clay swings with his right,
Look at young Cassius
carry the fight
Liston keeps backing, but there's not enough room
It's a matter of time till Clay lowers the boom.
Now Clay lands with a right,
What a beautiful swing,
and the punch raises the Bear
clean out of the ring.
Liston is still rising and the ref wears a frown,
For he can't start counting
till Sonny goes down.
Now Liston is disappearing from view,
the crowd is going frantic,
But radar stations have picked him up,
Somewhere over the Atlantic.
Who would have thought
when they came to the fight?
That they'd witness the launching
of a human satellite.
Yes the crowd did not dream,
when they put up the money,
That they would see
a total eclipse of the Sonny.

Cassius Clay

I Was Just Thinking......

I live in a run down house, got me a run down bank account and a run down body.

I think I can turn things around.

My Favorite Literary Line

Torturous hatred filled his soul with mountains of pus garbage

What Love Is

Love is a strange little animal.

Between humans, anyway.

It starts out as one thing and then becomes the real thing, if you are lucky.

Confident people approach love with cockiness. "Yeah, I know I am attractive, I am personable and I know people naturally want to be around me."

That kind of attitude makes meeting people easier, but I think it complicates things in the long run. You gotta get past the ego and get down to what love truly is; you gotta dig down with sincerity and an appreciation for how powerful love can be before you can honestly say that you are "in love".

Most people fail at this. Or don't even try. And then love becomes an endurance test. Or divorce.

Shy people avoid this. Just summoning the courage to ask someone out is a big deal. If they get over that hurdle I believe shy people are more honest. I am talking about people who do not fit the classic definition of being physically attractive, and people who have little or no self confidence. People who maybe get little respect and attention in their daily life. People who just are.

Love to them is magic. "Holy shit, this person agreed to go out with me. Maybe I won't be alone for my entire life." They understand on a deeper level what it means to open yourself up to another person, how risky that van be. They get how hard life is and how amazing it is to share it with someone. They skip the whole "trying to impress each other" bullshit. They go right to the "this is who I really am" chapter in the story.

This is my theory. I could be completely full of shit. I often am.

And I am not demeaning shy people. I am respecting them. They are more honest.

When I see a scene like that in a movie - two shy people having dinner for the first time - or read it in a book, it resonates with me. You say "For Christ sake, Joe - it's only a movie." Yeah, I get it but what the hell do you want me to do? Stalk shy people?

Movies quite often depict life as it truly is. At least good ones do.

For me it always comes down to honesty - straight ahead emotional and intellectual communication. No bullshit. I ache for that. I get it from my family, but when I walk out the door it's a whole different story.

I don't blame people. You gotta shield yourself to survive. This is why I hate going out in public.

If I have to talk to someone I want that communication to be pure. Silly, huh? I just think that if you gotta interact with people it would be nice to interact with who they really are.

Ridiculously unrealistic. Which is why I have my books and my poetry to protect me. Can't resist - I dredge that lyric up from time to time because it resonates with me. Thanks, Paul Simon.

Anyway, what I meant to say is that's why scenes of shy people stretching out into love rocks me. It just seems more real to me. And it shines a white hot spotlight on how risky it is to decide to trust someone.

A Certain Type

There is a certain type of movie that resonates with my soul.

Do you have that? I fucking hope so. You need it. You need something so powerful that you can escape your own life for a couple of hours.

If you don't have that you are probably an alcoholic or a drug addict, and that is completely understandable.

For me, the story, the characters, the setting , the music - every single piece of it connects with exactly who I am.

There is no one  stereotype - I could list at least a dozen movies - probably 25 - that mean this much to me. I am not going to list them because what resonates with me does not resonate with you, and if you do not connect with what I connect with I just don't give a shit. This is my life.

A recent comparison. There is a movie called "Heat". Pacino. De Niro. Everything about that movie validates who I am. There is one scene in that movie that I have elevated to iconic status in my mind.

Al Pacino is a detective. De Niro is a high level crook. At one point they meet in a diner to have a conversation. And that conversation is dripping with awareness.

Pacino knows who De Niro is and what he has done, De Niro knows Pacino is a cop who will do anything to take him down.

The tension in the scene comes from an awareness that each man respects the other, but there is also an awareness, blatantly obvious, that each man will kill the other if it comes down to it. Their conversation is direct, and whatever subtext there is, is right out there in the open for the two of them to consider.

Watch the movie. Unless you are fully committed to watching Vin Diesel in The Fast and The Furious XXV. In that case, go fuck yourself. You are not a movie fan; you are a celebrity fan.

In 2016 a movie called "Hell Or High Water" showed up. Starring Jeff Bridges. Grabbed me by the throat.

The final scene is mind blowing, reminiscent of the Pacino/De Niro scene in "Heat". I put it on the same level. The whole movie is good, maybe you'll have the guts to watch it (I don't fucking care), but that last scene between Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine (Toby Howard in the movie), is what life should be all about, but isn't. Just like Pacino and De Niro.

What I fucking love about this is that "Heat" came out in 1995, "Hell Or High Water" came out in 2016. Movies keep rolling along and, if you are lucky, you keep stumbling across a movie that just pins you to your seat and opens your mind to possibilities of a life you may have led.

Or a life you wish you had.

Brief aside: I am on a Jeff Bridges kick right now. Watch "Crazy Heart" if you dare. I have 4 or 5 or 6 times now. Last Tuesday was the most recent. Very human, very straight ahead real.

The movies that I watch save me. So far, anyway. They provide a reality I wish I could incorporate into my own life. To avoid boredom, to avoid phoniness, to avoid political correctness.

To avoid niceness. Christ I fucking hate being nice.

Ultimate Epitaph

The ultimate epitaph that is appropriate for the vast majority of human beings on this planet:

"Please forget you knew my name".