A Hidden Message in Coco?

When I was a kid, my parents took us to movies like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which I found to be painfully boring in my four year old mind. Whenever they broke into song, I broke into yawns. There was no Star Wars back then. If they did do an episode of that iconic sci-fi, it would be devoid of any actual action and most likely be a musical. You see, children's films in my youth were written for parents, not kids.



Today, animated film often interweaves humor for both generations like when Anna in Frozen says in response to Kristoff inquiring about Hans's foot size,



"Foot size doesn't matter."

When Dick Van Dyke started crooning in his northern British accent during a scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I asked my father to take me to the loo which I found more interesting than the film. At four years old movies for me were as boring as church. It would be over a decade before the adolescent viewing audiences were rescued by the likes of Indiana Jones.

Recently, my wife and I decided to take our youngest, Willy, to the movies on a weekend when his older brother, Aidan, was away at drill for Sea Cadets. Christine often looks through reviews and critiques on Rotten Tomatoes to find a film. Before long she announced,



 

"Let's go see Coco. I can't find one bad review."

Without asking what the film was about, I agreed because, after all, as the family dad I'm the beta voice when it comes to what we do on the weekends.

Now, Coco is about a boy, named Miguel, who wants to be a musician, but his family, mostly spurned on by his grandmother, refuses to let him play music because his great-great grandfather split on his wife and daughter to go into the world and seek his fortune as a musician. The little girl, abandoned by her father, is Coco, Miguel's great grand mother, who is still alive even though she mostly sits in a wheelchair and squints as she is rolled from room to room in a semi catatonic state. It really blows to get old.

Miguel's family are shoemakers by trade owing to a successful small business started by his great-great grandmother after her husband ditches her and Coco for a life of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Miguel is expected to work in the family business like Jake Gyllenhaal was supposed to toil in the coal mines instead of being a rocket scientist in October Sky. Miguel wants to enter a talent contest with his makeshift, handmade guitar, but his grandmother smashes the instrument as she espouses the now familiar theme of "the importance of family." I was thinking more along the lines of "family sucks big time," but I kept that to myself.


Unable to procure an instrument, Miguel decides to raid a mausoleum of a famous musician who he discovers in a photo is his relative who chose music over providing for his wife and child in favor of money, fame and groupies. Miguel pilfers the guitar on the eve of the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday in which deceased ancestors are remembered by decorating headstones with photos and leaving food in the cemetery. Ratatouille must love this holiday. Magnolias are also used to adorn the shrines as they are the Flowers of the Dead. When Miguel touches a magnolia pedal, he suddenly can see all the dead people returning for the chow left by their living relatives. They aren't messed up zombies or confused dead people who terrorized Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. There was some attempt to make the corpses cute, but my six year old was having no part of it.

Now this is where this tale deviated from cultural appropriation to cultural aberration. In the movie there are no religious symbols or gestures with the exception of the grandmother making the sign of the cross once. When Miguel travels to the Land of the Dead, he discovers that his relative is not his idol, the famous singer Ernesto de la Cruz, but instead the song writer, Hector. In fact, Miguel learns that when Hector tried to return to his wife and his daughter, Ernesto killed him. The famed singer remains a popular performer in the Land of the Dead while his victim, Hector, is a down and out dredge. So much for Judgment Day. I thought Catholics believe Jesus sorts all that out when you take a dirt nap. Apparently not. In the Land of the Dead, according to Pixar, assholes remain assholes and losers remain losers.

 

 

The world of the living in Coco was replete with many cultural Mexican stereotypes as in Mariachi bands with colorful sombreros, spicy food, plenty of tequila, abundant clay pottery and embroidered garments. Even Miguel's young mother was working in the shoe factory while pregnant. For all the common Mexican cultural references present in the living world of Coco, the Land of the Dead was pure fantasy. Apart from the aforementioned screw job Hector encountered in the afterlife, the presence of colorful spirit animals was a little too reminiscent of Avatar. These creatures allowed Pixar animators to employ the extended color palate, making vibrant stokes of eye candy. Too bad the Catholic religion Mexicans follow here on earth is completely wrong. I guess that's okay because Catholics can sometimes be exclusive.

On the Day of the Dead, at the border crossing from the Land of the Dead to the world of the living, Hector is repeatedly rejected by the border officials because his relatives on earth don't display his picture nor remember him. This doesn't stop Hector from trying to jump the fence anyway. This would have been a great opportunity to make one of those famous Disney trademark quips for laughs. Like Hector could have said,

"You know, that wall is not that huge."

But they steered clear of any of that. In fact, Coco was devoid of any witty humor. In one scene when a lot of action was taking place on a stage, a skeleton returns to his seat with two corn dogs and asks,

"Did I miss anything?"

"Nothing," I thought.

I won't spoil the ending of Coco for you, but I would like to recap the moral of the story. Family comes first, even if they want you to quit school and forgo your dream in favor of free labor in the family business. It's absolutely imperative to have a photo of your dead relatives in your house, or they fade away in the afterlife. I wasn't aware that technology here on earth was so connected to the World of the Dead. There is no justice after you croak. Leaving your children and wife here on earth doesn’t matter as long as you are murdered, and you write lots of letters.

I read an online article in Vogue entitled, "Why Coco Just Might Be the Most Important Film of the Year" in which the author stated,

"...at a time when the president went on to declare his candidacy by branding Mexican immigrants 'rapists' who are 'bringing drugs' and 'bringing crime' to America, necessitating his passion project of a Mexican border wall, Coco’s success is nevertheless a powerful political statement."

Hollywood is run by influential people who can set an agenda through weapons of mass media manipulation, including what is known as an "Oscar campaign." The latter was employed extensively by Harvey Weinstein whose career totals include 341 nominations and 81 wins. Exactly what is an Oscar campaign? It's well documented that the Golden Globes are awarded at least partially by bribing the Hollywood Foreign Press, which consists of 90 individual who publish articles or pictures outside the USA at least four times each year. In Hollywood, nothing of value is given away for free. Success in Tinseltown is all about clout management, that is, being perceived as the go to person for the next big project. A good publicist is a master media manipulator. There is no shortage of mutual hate between President Trump and the media, but that conflict shouldn't taint the truth less we succumb to abject propaganda.

Some may describe Coco as an "important" film, but in the end the movie has less character development than an Aesop fable, lacks any trademark Disney humor, and follows a tired theme of family and tradition all while ignoring the parts of a culture that don't fit the socially relevant message.

You'll Never Guess What's Ruining My Metrics

I delete anywhere from five to fifteen subscribers per day from my blog. If I didn't do this, I would have well over a thousand compared to the fifty I have. Why do I do this when begging for subscription is part of this new age, social media, selfie driven, narcissistic world in which we live in? Because they're all fake, that's why.

A few months ago, I noticed a spike in subscribers which immediately had me thinking that I crossed an unseen threshold in viral interest in stories about celebs, politics and diarrhea. At closer inspection, I noticed all the emails were from outlook and had odd, exorbitantly long usernames. Who would create such an encumbered email? The bogus subscribers look like this. 


Bogus Emails

No one intentionally would type "mascaraquettmuriellmo" every time they wanted to check email. I searched the internet in attempts to uncover what's going on. In a forum, I learned that this infection of fraudulent outlook emails with DNA like usernames is called "Subscription Email Spam."

Bots, computer programs that surf the web, look for blogs like mine to skew analytics such as bounce rate and session duration. They also consume my advertising budget by programmatically clicking on my ads. Apparently, they do this because someone is unhappy with something I wrote. What's puzzling is that to subscribe to most blogs you got to get past a CAPTCHA, the completely automated, public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart. You know, the annoying graphics which pose a masked series of characters that a human can read, but a bot struggles with. This is a typical CAPTCHA offered by the Google subscription service, Feedburner.

Pretty straight forward. Some CAPTCHAs are more difficult to decipher. Once I was presented with this when being forced to register while buying a toaster.

No one needs toast that bad. Also, for some unknown reason I really wanted a unicorn. CAPTCHAs are annoying, but they're affective at warding off malware written by smart people who are probably fans of Star Trek. So the obvious question is how does a bot programmatically get around a CAPTCHA? The answer is: porn.

A Google search revealed that apparently some clever developer wrote software that copies the CAPTCHA image then reproduces it on a website that offers nude picture if one enters the correct sequence of characters. This allows a bot to match a string of characters to an image which then can be recalled later to circumvent the Turing test. It's hard for me to believe with all the porn on the internet that there are humans so desperate that they will bother to decode a CAPTCHA in order to gain access to even more porn. Let's face it, there's no shortage of nude people on the internet.

Back in the early 1990's when the internet became more widely accessible to the public, there wasn't a lot of information out there. The first time I searched the internet, I queried on "Abraham Lincoln" which returned four hits. Back then, there wasn't a lot of porn out there either. I recall the first time I saw a website which hosted naked pictures of humans. The web developer recorded who visited the webpage and for how long and presented a list of all the users who most frequented the site. The list was entitled, "The Internet's Horniest Geeks."

Kim 

Porn can have unintended consequences. Kim Kardashian once tried to "break the internet" with a picture of her bare ass. She presumed hordes of horny nerds, frantically downloading a picture of her bulbous butt, would crash the internet. It didn't work. The internet didn't grind to halt. I think if Kim wanted to bring down the internet, she would've had a better go of it if she sat on it.

Thanks indirectly to the most jacked up dorks among us, I've got scores of bogus subscriptions flooding my blog daily because someone is mad at me for poking fun at Stephen Hawking, Hillary Clinton or Kim Jong un. Luckily, I still remember enough web programming from my career as a computer scientist to write a script to purge suspect emails for me. I used to write software before my job was offloaded overseas to a country with marginal indoor plumbing as a cost saving measure recommended by financial bean counters. Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough to figure out how to prevent the circumvention of CAPTCHAs via porn. I would suspect that the solution lies somewhere in randomly changing the CAPTCHA image identification since its doubtful that the work of the bots occur in real time.

I guess in the end it comes down to the fact that one should never underestimate the elegant programming of a lonely geek.

What Did Bush Say to Obama?

Recently five former presidents gathered at Texas A&M University for a hurricane relief concert. During President Clinton’s speech, Bush leaned over to Obama and said something which cracked Obama up. Obama did his best not to chuckle, but things are generally funnier when you're not supposed to laugh. Having been raised a Catholic, I’ve been in that situation many times before.

Years ago when I was in middle school, we were discussing the Apostle Peter’s denial of Jesus after the crucifixion. My friend, Dean, looked to me and whispered,

“Jesus who?”

I immediately started smirking, then I said to Dean,

“The only Jesus I know does my car detailing.”

Dean burst out busting both of us. Sister Mary Artifact marched to the back of the room and smacked Dean on the back of the head. She sent me to stand in the front of the room in a corner with my back to the class. This wasn't a good idea. In the back, I was disruptive to only my immediate neighbors. Up in the front of the class, I had an audience. I stood up there and pretended to smoke my pencil which caused a few of my classmates to laugh. I pulled paper out the wastepaper basket which I mock read with astonishment. I discovered a small milk carton in the trashcan which I pretended to guzzle. Whenever Sister Mary wasn't looking I would turn and face the class and mouth her words as she spoke intently. When Sister Mary ventured to the back of the class to swat the closest chuckling classmate, I exclaimed,

"Biggus Dickus."

Now, if you haven't seen Monty Python's Life of Brian then stop reading and go watch it now. The scene in which Caesar, played by Michael Palin, explains to a centurion, played by John Cleese, that his friend "Biggus Dickus" had a wife named "Incontinetia Buttocks" used to make us laugh uncontrollably every time. Palin's lisp made it all that much funnier. The nuns considered the Life of Brian blasphemous so naturally we all watched the movie the first chance we got. The roman guards trying not to laugh was a familiar scenario for Catholic school kids. Most of us took a beating for laughing at some point during our Catholic education.

When Obama tried not to laugh at Bush's comments, the look on Bush's face was all too familiar to my middle school mind. As I watched the video, I came up with this list of top ten possible Bush comments that made Obama laugh.

1. Would he just die already.
   
2. Hey, Barack, pull my finger.
3. I wonder which of us use Boll & Branch sheets?
   
4. Where's Puerto Rico?
   
5. You hear Carter wants to help Trump? And to think, Larry Flynt is trying to stick it up 45’s ass.
   
6. Hillary wanted to come, but she didn’t get the email in time.
   
7. Is he introducing Harvey Weinstein?
   
8. You think Carter will make it to the end?
   
9. Beyoncé had the best video of all time
   
10. We’re all gonna get matching tats after this.

When Bush started smirking and Obama smiling, I couldn't shake the feeling that Sister Mary Artifact was going to emerge from the crowd and shuffle across the stage. She'd crack Obama in the head and send Bush to stand in the corner. Of course, in my day, Sister Mary was a thousand years old so its not likely she's still around, but you never know. Sister Mary wasn't the picture of health in 1976. She was pear shaped, and for some reason she was always coughing up phlegm. I was never molested or anything like that during my eight years of Catholic education, but I was smacked in the head more times than I care to remember.

Either way, something tells me that Bush is going to keep the laughs coming.

Hollywood Ending



Abe

When I finally got around to watching the movie, Lincoln, I was certain I was in for a spellbinding journey. Directed by Stephen Spielberg, the film garnished a best actor Oscar and Golden Globe for Daniel Day Lewis. Lewis also received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance as well as many other accolades. I enjoy movies about the past for the difficulty in weaving a compelling story in amongst historical facts.



During the tense scene depicting the vote on the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery in this country, I noted early on that the delegates from Connecticut voted against the bill. I never knew my home state was on the wrong side during this pivotal time in our country's sordid past. Growing up, my teachers always told us that all six New England states ratified the Thirteenth Amendment.

I didn't even wait to leave the theatre before I googled this earthshattering event that went against everything I was taught in grade school. I quickly discovered that all four Connecticut delegates voted in favor of ending slavery. The same reaction perplexed Congressman Joe Courtney from Connecticut, who rifled a letter to Spielberg requesting that the error be corrected.

In response screenwriter, Tony Kushner, explained that Lincoln was a historical drama, not a historical documentary, and as such many elements like conversations and ancillary characters were fictious. Apparently, Kushner erroneously believed that the vote proceeded alphabetically according to state, and Connecticut being early in the alphabet, needed to vote against the Thirteenth Amendment to create tension. The filmmakers wanted to convey the concept that the bill barely passed. Actually the voting proceeds in order of the number of delegates in each state and not alphabetically. Apparently, the historical consultants on the film were not, well, historically consulted.

It's always been okay to change historical facts for a Hollywood makeover as long as doing so yields a better story than ordinary reality. It did get me thinking about a lot of films which would have been better if the story followed a more cinematographic theme rather than the boring truth. So here are a few popular films which could have benefitted from some literary license.

The Martian

This film was widely touted as a technically accurate portrayal of space travel, but unfortunately it contained significant errors. First off, the Martian atmosphere is 1% as thick as that on earth so it's unlikely that a storm on Mars could pick up a human in a spacesuit and fling him so far that his buds can't find his hapless carcass. The storm was the basis for Mark Watney's mishap that led to his stranding. Sometimes techno geeks criticize science fiction films for esoteric anomalies like satellites orbiting in the wrong direction, the sound of explosions in space or the wrong constellations in a scene. I think you can punt on some of these things, but not on the basis for conflict in a story. The main plot elements should be grounded in real science, not science fiction. The Martian astronauts also didn't appear to be affected by the 1/3 gravity on the planet as well.
 

 

The movie could have been made more compelling if Matt was stranded on Mars with a chimpanzee named "Chim-Chim." Even though The Martian won a Golden Globe for Best Comedy, it would have been actually funny if a monkey other than Damon was in the film. A lot of Hollywood flicks include an animal for comic relief. The 1964 movie, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, included a monkey named Mona, which was adorable in her little spacesuit, complete with tiny helmet.

Chim-Chim in The Martian could have saved Matt Damon from certain death as the monkey sacrificed himself when warding off an attack of alien lizard-like predators that lay eggs in your stomach, which explode, flinging guts and blood everywhere when they hatch. You know, something never done before.
 

Gravity

This film also deviated from scientific facts, but the mishap is certainly possible, that is, a catastrophic collision and disintegration of satellites orbiting the earth bring calamity to shuttle astronauts. Space debris whips around the earth at spectacular speeds. The movie implied that the Russians fucked up somehow when they shot down a defunct satellite with a missile and caused the chain reaction, the so called Kessler syndrome, which sets the plot in motion.

Clooney's character, endlessly jabbering veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski, who sounds more like a bowling buddy than a seasoned astronaut, commands his last mission as he buzzes around in a Extravehicular Mobility Unit which seems to have an endless supply of fuel. Clooney senselessly flies around like a kid on a playground even though extravehicular activity is usually not the job of the mission commander. Amusement abounds as Phaldult Sharma jumps for joy yanking his tether, as he succeeds with a repair procedure on the Hubble telescope. I'm no astronaut, but I would guess that normal operating procedures don't involve testing the fidelity of a rope in space. Clooney also almost loses a screw from the Hubble telescope. This doesn't happen either as fasteners are often mechanically attached to their panel to keep space junk out of orbit. After the cataclysmic collision, Clooney rescues Bullock, but later runs out of fuel in his mobility unit. I'll bet he wished he didn't zoom around like an ass wipe in the opening scene.  

The scene in which Saundra Bullock was attempting to communicate with some foreign dude on earth, and she hears a baby crying as well as a dog barking always disappoints me. For what seems like an exorbitant amount of time, a talented and beautiful actress is wasted by howling like a dog for no logical reason. Obviously she can't communicate with a foreigner which limits the possible dialog. Bullock's character lost her only child in a tragic playground accident, which leads me to believe she would have focused on the child crying in lieu of the barking dog.

Gravity was written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron, the same guy who did the riveting film, Children of Men, my all time favorite flick. In the latter movie, the human race is inexplicably unable to conceive, and the world unravels in the absence of children. A young teenager becomes the only woman on the planet to give birth in two decades. Factions attempt to kidnap the baby as their symbol of their organization. During one dramatic scene, a rebel is pinned down by gun fire. As bullets ricochet above his head, he says,

"I was carrying the baby up the stairs. He started crying. I've forgotten what they look like. They're so beautiful. So tiny."

I thought for sure when I heard the baby cry in Gravity that Cuaron would have had Bullock's character say something similar about the beautiful sound of a child crying as heard by a mother who suffered such an unbearable loss. It would have been an appropriate nod to his other magnanimous film. Instead we got the dog barking scene. Oh, well.

When Clooney was being dragged away from Bullock only to release himself to save her, the up close and personal sacrifice made for a very dramatic scene. Problem is that there was no basis in physics as to why Clooney was being pulled away. All Bullock had to do is tug on the tether and Clooney would've drifted to her. You can't kill off a protagonist with convenient science. I would have had a monkey named "Chim-Chim" at the controls of a robotic arm, snatch Bullock from her perilous predicament. Clooney, who never got along with Chim-Chim, would've been swatted into oblivion by the same robotic appendage. The monkey gives Clooney the finger as he sails by the window.

Titanic

I liked this movie, but why did the ship have to sink? It was fun watching Cal chase Rose and Jack about the decks, popping off shots at them as they scurried about. The whole ship sinking gimmick was a bit of a distraction. In fact, with a little editing, the film could have been turned into a rom-com.
 

The ending when Rose tosses the "Heart of the Ocean" necklace into the sea never made any sense to me. After Rose finds herself a survivor on the deck of RMS Carpathia, alone in the rain and cut off from her wealthy friends and family, she gives her name as "Rose Dawson" before she discovers the jewels in Cal's coat. The ending scene includes a collage of pictures of Rose on horseback in Egypt, flying a biplane, deep sea fishing, all the things Jack would've done if he had any money. I figured Rose did all these things after she hocked Cal's coat and the diamond. I'm not sure how Rose paid for all these adventures as an uneducated woman in 1912. I would have had Rose use the money from the gem to become the first female astrophysicist instead of some bimbo bouncing around the planet. Rose says,

"A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets."

The only secret I want to know is how she weathered World War I and the Great Depression while travelling the globe on perpetual vacation.

Saving Private Ryan

This film should have followed the revisionist history movies like Inglorious Basterd and Django Unchained which fulfill our desires to rewrite history. The former movie portrayed a white guy assembling a Jewish guerrilla group who whaled on the Nazis, including scalping SS officers, and ultimately assassinate Hitler. The latter was about a black gunslinger who shot white slave owners. I think if Private Ryan was a full fledged trans soldier who was completely accepted by his army buddies in 1945, the film would have been a real groundbreaker.

Pearl Harbor

Another movie that would have been better as a comedy. Perhaps a small, ragtag group of GIs defend the entire island against the invading Japanese. There would be a wisecracking dude bro from the Bronx, an ivy leaguer from Connecticut, a rough and tough sergeant with a good heart, and two comic relief goofballs, Minnesota Bear, who wears his ball cap up turned, and Gooz who has a pet rat. The constant companion to the main protagonist, Rafe, played by Ben Affleck, is a monkey named "Chim-Chim" who seized the controls of his airplane when Rafe is knocked unconscious. Chim-Chim shoots down several Japanese zeroes before Rafe regains consciousness.

Apollo 13

The riveting true story of astronauts, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise and their ill fated trip to the moon had many tense scenes involving NASA geeks trying to figure things out with slide rulers. It was a testament to the can-do attitude of Americans that I sometimes think is lost to the millennial generation, who are always popping 5-Hour Energy every time they have to do something physical.

The story would have been more compelling if the three astronauts were accompanied by a monkey named "Chim-Chim" who saved the crew when he seized the controls and stabilized the cripple capsule. Lovell and Chim-Chim perform a difficult extravehicular activity (EVA) to repair the damaged spacecraft only to have Chim-Chim dragged away by an unseen force that only affects him. He sacrifices himself by uncoupling then casting off his tether. As he drifts away, Chim-Chim flips Lovell the bird.

Blog of One

This post marks the end of my blog. I agreed to write twice a week for a year. I wasn't sure if I would be able to keep it up, but I did. Initially, I thought I would run out of ideas after a month, but they kept rolling in. With 104 posts, over 25,000 page views and a bit over 30 subscribers, I think I can say that it was an enjoyable run. I wrote this blog to sharpen my skills as a humor writer, and now I'm tasked with completing a comedy script I've been toying for a few years now. Thank you, for the kind comments. I had a lot of support from friends and family who said things like,
"You write a blog? Where?"

Throwback of Aidan, Me
and William

"I haven't read the last three months."

"You swear too much."

"That last post was stupid."

My wife, Christine, who is often the subject of many posts along with our boys, Aidan and William, have been the editor and first line readers, respectfully. They are my closest advisors who let me know when I've gone too far and occasionally not far enough. They are all the very best of everything in my life.

I'll likely return to Blog of One in the near future after my latest project is brought to a close. It's been fun and educational. I've learned many things, but one thing is for sure.

I haven't a clue what makes people laugh.

America's Got Tragedy

After twelve seasons, I've finally got around to watching yet another talent show. Simon Cowell produces America's Got Talent (AGT), which is thankfully devoid of the nut job highlights so prominently featured on other talent shows like American Idol. Who can forget William Hung's rounded rendition of the Ricky Martin smash hit "She Bang." Or the sagging protest anthem "Pants on the Ground" by Larry Platt. Or Season Seven's white fur hat wearing Renaldo Lapuz's sensitive original "We're Brothers Forever."

William Hung

American Idol routinely dedicated a lot of air time spotlighting the performances of various talentless people. I hated sitting through their fifteen minutes of fame. Luckily, Cowell didn't port this feature to AGT. Instead he copied another often used tactic to garnish favor from American audiences, the tragic story.

After cordial introductions many of the contestants launch into the details that brought them to sing, play the piano or juggle flaming bowling pins, a family member's Stage 5 colon cancer or their own struggles with physical disability. One contestant sang an original song after going completely deaf, another's father was battling the big C. Still yet, a woman who survived a fiery plane crash in her native Nigeria only to be tragically scarred, sang Ed Sheridan's "Thinking Out Loud."



America loves an underdog. Not only did all these acts receive a standing ovation, a few reigned in the coveted golden buzzer, the gimmicky techno beeline to the live show. The young lady, Evie Clair, who tearfully sang for her dad during his chemo treatments, and the nine year old singer, Angelica Hale, who survived a kidney transplant when she was four years old, (she got the kidney from her mother), both got the golden buzzer. It's not that I didn't find their stories compelling. It's just that without their tragic tale of overcoming hardship many of their performances were mediocre at best. Marisa McKaye, the soft spoken and humble 12 year old girl didn't retell a gut wrenching story before she played her guitar and sang. She was sent packing by Heidi during the judges cuts. After thanking the judges, McKaye sweetly said as she fought back tears,

"It's okay."

She would be in the finals if her little brother had died of Spontaneous Human Combustion. McKaye showed a level of maturity and poise not seen among many of the other, older contestants.

Sara & Hero

Take the case of Sara Carson and Hero, the trained dog. When we first met Carson, she talked about how shy she was from all the bullying she endured in school. She credits Hero with saving her life. Her pirate themed act involved prancing about the stage while the dog jumped through her legs. They appeared to be fighting each other as the dog took her sword in his mouth and jumped about on its hind quarters. Mell B and Howie were not impressed as Carson crumbled into a ball with her dog and sobbed. Heidi liked the act as did Cowell, who went up on stage to argue a case that Howie should change his vote. The audience was clearly 100% behind Carson because in America a healthy dog trumps a human cancer victim every time. Howie wisely acquiesced because as the show's producer, Cowell's his boss.

Colton &Trent Edwards

There are other strange phenomena occurring on AGT that I'm not able to understand. Take the case of singing, dancing duo, Colton and Trent Edwards, who call themselves "Mirror Image," taking a cue from their mirror twin status. A mirror is just what Colton and Trent need in the Edwards home. Not only do they suck as singers, their dancing is so bad that it's embarrassing, times two, to watch them flutter about the stage. I'm not sure which one said this so I'll just say the left one exclaimed,

"The world is our oyster, and we are its pearls!"

This is what happens to millennials with snowplow parents, constantly telling them that they're special snowflakes. They go onto a syndicated, national television show and make permanent fools of themselves. I feel bad for the Edwards twins. I have a few surviving pictures of my long hair days, "parted in the middle and feathered on the sides." There's also a shot of me in a shiny celery suit my mother borrowed from her friend who's son wore it when he graduated in 1971. I got to wear it when I went to honors night in the early '80's. I didn't know at the time how foolish I looked in the outdated suit. That was a long time ago, but I still wince whenever I see that picture.

Darcy Callus

The Edwards twins, through the magic of the internet, will be able to relive their cringe worthy performance on AGT for the rest of their life. How these two snuck past the judges cut is beyond me. I must have missed the fine print which states that a quirky, questionable act beats out a tragic story. The Edwards twins even trounced Darcy Callus, who sang and played the piano.

Callus made the mistake of not coming up with a sob story like his beloved cat, Tinkles, choked on a monster hairball on the way to the hospital to be treated for a terminal case of feline leukemia. Instead he just came out and did his thing. I'm no musician, but I thought Callus did great. Cowell said his performance wasn't as good as the first, then sent him packing.

Something happened to Simon after his best friend's wife gave birth to Cowell' son. He actually mellowed. This happened to my wife, Christine, as well, except that because I don't have any friends, the baby was mine. Before we had our children, Christine was a tough as nails, straight talking, businesswoman. Years ago, we were watching American Idol when some little girl melted down while singing.

"Poor kid," I exclaimed.

Christine launched, "You want to be a professional singer, you have to suck it up, overcome the nerves and soldier though the pain. You can't start blubbering on national TV."

I think I saw out of the corner of my eye, Christine draw a line across her neck with her index finger as she made a cutting noise. At the time, I didn't know I married Anita the Hun. After she gave birth to our first son, Aidan, we were watching the show when the same thing happened. A kid started to mess up on stage. I looked at Christine as she said,

"Why doesn't someone help that poor boy? He's pouring his heart out up there. That's somebodies baby, you know."

I think the kid was like 22 or something. Anyway, Cowell has gone soft, and it's reflected in AGT. I miss the old Simon. The cocky Brit who'd spit out Coke while trying not to laugh at some dude ruining a perfectly good Ricky Martin song. I don't know where AGT is going, but I'll see it through to the end.

At least they cut that chicken that played the piano.

Crisis in Nevada, Not Enough Pot

I ❤️ Nevada

Recently, the Governor of Nevada has declared a state of emergency due to the severe shortage in recreational marijuana. Less than a week after going on sale following legalization in November, officials underestimated the number of potheads in the state leading to the massive shortfall.

The Nevada Tax Commission issued the following statement,

"Based on reports of adult-use marijuana sales already far exceeding the industry’s expectations at the state’s 47 licensed retail marijuana stores, and the reality that many stores are running out of inventory, the Department must address the lack of distributors immediately."

The problem started when the transportation of ganja was given exclusively to alcohol distributors in accordance with state law and the Mafia. The alcohol distributors were not able to keep up with the high demand. The state legislature is voting on an emergency provision which would allow distributors of medical weed to backfill in response to the severe shortage. They're also considering allowing a guy named "Lil' Monty" to help out since he's uniquely qualified to meet the growing demand.

"I got hookup on 'dis shit, solid gold, foe as many peeps as you want. Nome wat I sayin'?" said Monty.

The liquor wholesalers were taken completely off guard by the sheer volume of reefer sales. Jimmy "Socks" Scalise said,

"Madonne! These guys want cronic, you know, da good stuff. No schwag for these chooches."

The shortage of Mary Jane has reached crisis proportions since sales began last week. Spokesperson for the Department of Taxation, Stephanie Klapstein, said,

"The business owners in this industry have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build facilities across the state. They have hired and trained thousands of additional employees... Unless the issue... is resolved quickly, the inability to deliver product to retail stores will result in many of these people losing their jobs and will bring this nascent market to a grinding halt. A halt in this market will lead to a hole in the state’s school budget."

A state imposed 15% "cultivation tax" on recreational bud goes toward schools much like the proceed for gaming in Atlantic City was supposed to support public education. State officials plan to backfill the budgetary hole with funds for medication alotted to low income seniors and from the Head Start Program.

An unnamed Nevadan official said,

"Nevada is the only state in which paying for a piece of ass is legal and regulated so it's no surprise that we'll lead the country into recreational pot smoking. If schools are impacted by budgetary constraints, superfluous programs like STEM will be cut to save gym. It's about priorities."

It's important to keep the gambling community well supplied with booze, ass and now pot in order to fuel the state economy. Next year, Nevadans will vote on a statewide referendum to legalizing money laundering to help the slumping economy.