We’re Number One!

To mask or not to mask, that is NOT the question.

It’s not up for debate.  You go outside, you wear the f-n mask.  If you don’t you get fined $10,000 the first time.  The second time you go to jail.

And yes, I’m a liberal.

I will get the hose!

Jail is the last place you want to be in a national pandemic but jail is where you will go for not adhering to the #1 medically approved way you can best protect yourself and others from contracting and spreading COVID-19. If you’ve ever watched any of the Law and Order shows (Note: And at this point in our lives, who hasn’t?) you’ve doubtless seen the one about the person who knowingly spreads some very contagious, possibly lethal disease and is charged for assault or even murder in court for callously using their bodily fluids as their weapon of choice.

So, life imitates art, right?  And we haven’t even started on death.

Then why don’t we?

You tell ’em, Olivia!

I live in California and we now have the dubious distinction of being #1 in the country for COVID-19 infections.  More than half a million and counting.  We were doing okay for a while but since businesses reopened in the last couple of months we’ve seen a sharp surge or spike or whatever you want to call it in cases.  

Our death rate (Note: Almost 9224 people so far) is not quite commensurate with other hot spots but health care in California is a bit better than it is in other states.  Still, we’re catching up (Note: 219 dead in the last 24 hours) and if this continues, well, watch your back, America!  We’re gonna contribute mightily to the almost 160,000 and counting Americans who have already perished, with no end in sight.

(Note: FYI, that is more Americans killed than in the Vietnam, War, Gulf War, Afghanistan War, Iraq War AND Korean War combined).

Get a nice haircut for your open casket

California has for decades been known as the place that nationwide trends originate.  This has been both good and bad.  Sadly, we gave you the Valley Girl but on the good side Silicon Valley did revolutionize the world.

On second thought, perhaps that wasn’t as good as we figured.

Never a good sign when Zuckerberg is looking more and more like a Batman villian

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 40 years and have heard all the jokes, the jealousies and the jerk-offs who put us down but secretly long to be or at least borrow from us.  They haven’t really bothered me because even though I’m a New Yorker through and through California won me over long ago.

It had a freedom, an openness and a sea of possibilities that I was never able to find or be comfortable with on the east coast or in my wonderful New York City.  To this day I love the east coast, New York especially, but it simply isn’t California.

Forget the beach, I’m talking Laurel Canyon, Joni, Carole, Tapestry on repeat

And yet these days that’s the last thing New York, or any state should try to be.

As my husband travelled in the car this Los Angeles afternoon, he drove through the somewhat busy streets of West Hollywood and spotted packed tables of people seated in sidewalk cafes, browsing store windows or simply walking and jogging all up and down the streets without masks.

At his count at least 50% of the people he saw had ZERO face coverings.

WHAT THE F-CK!!!!????

I don’t get why this is so hard.

But please, scream FREEDOM and wave your flag

I do get that this mask thing has become somewhat political and that many members of the Republican Party are choosing to go mask-less as a political statement against Democratic liberals.  Even the recent death of 2016 Republican presidential aspirant Herman Cain from COVID, which was diagnosed right after he attended that huge Trump rally mask-less in Tulsa, Oklahoma, hasn’t stopped them.

But West Hollywood ain’t Tulsa, you’ll just have to trust me on that.  You have as much chance of attending a Trump rally here as you do of buying a ticket to an AOC fundraiser in Tulsa’s BOK Center, the downtown stadium where Mr. Cain and thousands of others exchanged air, spittle and who knows what other types of bodily fluids back in June to kick off Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.

So again, let’s pose the open question – WHAT. THE.  F-K.  GIVES?????

WHAT. IS. LOGIC

I say this pretty much sequestered in my house – high-risk group member that I am, and a very vocal one – and at the end of my rope.  I mean, I love my house, don’t get me wrong, and I know I’m A LOT more fortunate than most.  But even I don’t want to be here for the rest of my life.

However, I will be if the alternative means taking my life (and yours) in my hands because my fellow citizens are too dumb, selfish and/or vain to mask up.

My bet is that it could take the hot spot illnesses and underestimated deaths nationwide of thousands of teenagers once school begins to get people motivated.  But then again, the slaughter of an entire classroom of  6 and 7 year olds by a lone gunman with an assault weapon didn’t foster much of a change almost a decade ago to our nation’s gun laws, so perhaps I’m mistaken.

The Chair does not sugarcoat things!

We Americans are a really, really, really strange breed.  We elect our first African American president and then eight years later turn around and put a White Supremacist racist (Note: Can you be one without the other?) in the White House.

We could easily do a similar reverse turnaround on masks and COVID-19.  Or we could just let the virus spread further, mutate and mow a good 25-50% of our population down (Note: FYI, that’s 80-160 million people sick and/or dead) and make the decision for us.

Who knew SNL could predict the future? #idid

Count on me to be at home, watching it unfold from my safe house in California.  If you happen to pass by I’ll be the one screaming obscenities at the window at you if you’re showing too much nose, mouth or skin as I wonder who the f-ck we are and what the f-ck we have all become.

The Eagles – “Hotel California”

Fizzled Fourth

I don’t know about you but I was dreading this Fourth of July holiday weekend, and not only because my dog and pretty much every dog hates fireworks.

At this point, each dog owner has figured out ways to comfort their pooches, whether it’s with love, food, drugs or a very thick blanket.

Are these humans serious?

And when that doesn’t work, you just hold them and pray, even if you’re an atheist.

No, instead, it was the American culture wars I was dreading and all the talk about and around it.  The endless rhetoric of left vs. right, patriotism vs. treason, all spewed through or at the lens of the pancake made-up person with the loudest bully pulpit in America – our current and very bloated POTUS.

Frankly, he and it has just given me a headache and caused me for the first time in my life to wish illness, death pestilence and/or a bad cause of piles on another human being.

Population: Me

And despite what it might seem like I truly don’t wish bad things on other people.  Ever.

Not only is it not good karma, it’s simply toxic and immature to do so.  To pollute your life with thoughts of destruction and suffering for another life is to deny yourself the pleasures of existing at all.  Our time here is short and there’s loads of crap to deal with.  SO much crap these days and SO much time to deal with it.  Why waste precious moments on HIM or THAT?

Evaluating what constitutes as a “waste” is really difficult

Don’t take this to mean I’m not speaking out, not voting, not doing everything but handing my house over to Joe Biden in the next four months in the spirit of Independence Day.  Or, that I am advising any of you to not to do all of the above.

It’s just too much to go on and on AND ON about this or it right about now.

That is because it’s not the SYMBOLS of America that make it great.  It’s only the progressive actions of truly patriotic Americans that allow us to approach, or get anywhere near the vicinity of greatness.

OK, this might be a bit much #imisshim

Incidentally, the term progressive is not meant to be political here but to merely express the concept of being forward thinking i.e. regarding the future.   The word is literally defined in our dictionaries as proceeding step by step to our greatness.

The way to honor our very American and admittedly very flawed Founding Fathers is not to symbolically clench and squeeze the flag or an eagle or any of our fellow citizens in deference until they break or are torn apart, much as we might enjoy doing so.  It is instead to embrace the legacy of freedom and liberty and justice for all articulated by our 18th century leaders and try to actually make them happen – and grow it.

… and I don’t mean this kind of patriotism

More simply put, the question to really ask on the Fourth of July, and every day, is how do we take what they gave us and do better?  How do we run with those ideas and expand them into the 21st, 22nd and every other upcoming century in a way that meets the needs and the population of the moment?

As we look out through our windows and talk through our masks (Note: If we’re smart) this July think of one way to help make freedom, liberty or justice happen for one cause, one group or one person and take some small step to do so.

This can literally be ANYTHING – a spirited discussion, a cash contribution, a demonstration, a comment or even, perish the thought, a tweet (Note: Try not to rely too heavily on the latter for obvious reasons).

… and absolutely not this nonsense #no

If all else fails, watch Hamilton on Disney Plus.  It encapsulates the ideals and intent of what our framers started while pushing that rock just a little farther up the hill.  Not to mention, it’s chock full of old, new and re-appropriated ideas alike.

Even if it’s not to your taste it will get you thinking, and isn’t THAT what this is all about?

If not, it should be.

Cast of Hamilton – “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”