The Next Generation

I spent the last two weeks reading 30 original screenplays and television pilots from graduating college seniors and here’s what I know –

It is a dark, dystopian world out there where pretty much NO ONE tells you the truth.

Of course, I already knew that but I’m almost three times their age.   I mean, when I got out of school in the seventies I knew the world could be a crappy place but what I was equally sure about was that there was also hope.

At least there was hope for better fashion #whoamIkidding #imkillingit

This was because I was as sure as shit that my friends and I were going to be able to change things.  At least a little.  I knew this as sure I knew I was going to live alone and lonely in a huge Malibu beach house, clutching my Oscar as I fell asleep.  That is if I didn’t die in my twenties of some horrible disease, a fact I was 100% convinced was a 50-50 possibility.

Well, of course I was wrong.  Here I am almost more than middle-aged in a relationship of 32 years with nary an Oscar in sight, living way, way across town in a house in the Hollywood Hills.

Yeah, I’m cool

Like many dreams, mine were fairly off but not totally unrealized.  Personal life aside, I did make it to L.A. and the movie business and worked in several categories where one could conceivably get nominated for an Oscar.

Right.  I know.  A grown up with a dream.

This, of course, is the point.  It’s not that my many wonderful students don’t have dreams.  It’s that judging from the past few weeks the majority of them don’t believe their best fantasies can take hold and flourish.

pretty much!

And, I mean, who can blame them?  Sometimes I turn on the news and can’t believe what I’m hearing and seeing.  When I read the newspaper it’s even worse.  And I came of age in the Nixon-Watergate era and spent the last years of my pre-teens watching Robert F. Kennedy get shot live on TV.  And this was several months after that same station almost got to cover the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. live instead of merely its bloody aftermath.

Those extreme acts, combined with a seemingly endless war in Vietnam and the Ohio National Guard murdering four innocent students who happened to be walking by anti-war protestors at Kent State University, made it seem like there was nothing the elders of the American status quo wouldn’t do to hold onto their power.

The general message to the young was:

We will literally kill you in a war or at school if you get too uppity and, if you don’t believe us, just give it a tryYou could easily find yourself in jail, overseas with a gun or in a morgue for doing nothing more than disagreeing with us if you’re not careful. 

Then or now? Does it matter? #Amen

We didn’t realize it at the time but in truth the country did have a modicum of sanity left.  As young people we innately understood we lived in an environment where freedom of speech was the norm, our federal elected representatives had just put the de-segregation of society into law and journalists were almost universally lauded by most, if not all, as the sacred last bastion of truth-tellers.

It was a world that had suddenly and almost completely gone totally off the rails but somehow we knew it was salvageable.  We had gone to the moon, you could still burn the American flag in the street and not get arrested and, if all else failed, the pleasures of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll would get you through until you entered what could only be described as the blissful golden Age of Aquarius.

Plus.. we had Cher

I so want that for the young people that I teach who are going out into the world today and it angers me each day that they have come of age into an alternate reality of stupidity, division and denial.

No one middle-aged can imagine what it’s like to grow up in a time where you could easily and routinely be shot up in your school.  In the sixties and seventies we had fire drills, not re-enactments of how to act or where to hide when a random gunman might happen to enter the building and aim a military style assault rifle to your head or the head of your friend, or younger brother or sister.

This is their reality. #sadtruths

As much as most of my contemporaries might have loathed Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and later, Ronald Reagan, none of us grew up hearing the president of the United States making allowances for white supremacists.  Or calling the American press the enemy of the people and degrading the indisputable facts they report as fake news.

Or, more importantly, respond this way when asked in front of the White House if the U.S. is about to go to war in the Middle East:

I hope not.

ARE YOU FREAKIN KIDDING ME?!?!

Say what you will about any of those men (Note: And I’ve said plenty) when they spoke it was with a definitive thought, not with the vague possibility that at any moment something absolutely horrible can and probably will happen so we’d gosh darn better be on guard for….well, anything.  And by anything he truly means ANYTHING.  Just ask him, as the press often does, if you don’t believe it.

Dystopian?  Dark?  Sadly, I fear these young people have it exactly right and I couldn’t be more pissed off about it.   We all should be.

The Who – “My Generation”

Notes from the Mueller Report

I spent the entire weekend reading The Mueller Report.  That means Friday night, all during the day and part of the evening on Saturday and half of the day and part of the evening on Sunday.

Yes, I’m a slow reader.

Still, it’s 448 pages and it’s dense.  Though it is not so dense that you need to be a lawyer to read it.  In fact, it probably helps to NOT be a lawyer. In that way, you don’t get lost in a mire of technicalities and convoluted, stretched-beyond credulity interpretations of federal and/or criminal statutes.

No TV lawyers either! #sorryAnnalise

What we laymen and laywomen (aka the voters) will ultimately see are the basics.  And then we will all have to ask ourselves some questions.  Those would be:

  1. Did Russia interfere in the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump to U.S. President?
  2. Did the Trump campaign work with Russia to get elected?
  3. Did Trump try to hide (aka lie about) his relationship to Russia?
  4. Does Trump have the qualities of someone we want to continue as President?

If you changed the name of Trump to Smith and every person who worked for him to nom de plumes like, say, Mitzie, Fritzie, Trixie and Vi in this exhaustive account, and then afterwards refrained from consulting with ANYONE who had legal expertise or skin in the game, I promise you there would be only ONE WAY to answer all of these questions.

  1. YES
  2. YES
  3. YES

and

     4. NO!!! No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Me, the entire weekend

But don’t take my word for it.  Here are only a few salient facts.

  1. Did you know that Smith’s campaign manager actually gave specific and ongoing polling information to Russia throughout the campaign about the Rust Belt States that eventually gave Pres. Smith his Electoral College victory? We’re talking about data from and about Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota – the very states that put him over the top.

Oh yeah, he did.  He met up with them and handed the facts not only right before the Republican convention in 2016 but in repeated contacts prior to, right after and right up until the November election.  Truly.  It jumps right out at you in the first half of the report (aka Volume I).

Reading the Mueller report like…

  1. You will also read in that same volume pages and pages on Smith surrogates such as Roger, I mean, Dodger FlintStone, among others. He and they were active participants in promoting fake, Russian-created groups with names like “Stop All Immigrants,” “Being Patriotic,” “Blacktivist” and “United Muslims of America.”   These groups were designed for and succeeded in fanning the flames of partisan anger and resentment on social media among your fellow voters.  Many hundreds of insurgent Russians, helped along by Dodger and the like, then sponsored fake live events where phony Russians (or Americans cooperating with phony Russians) posed as disgruntled or partisan Americans at rallies where shouting matches often ensued.

The anger generated by these events, spread through many other social media repostings from still more Russians and Smith-ers, then spawned other real and more partisan events until soon literally millions and millions of more people became angry, isolated, alienated and convinced that only Smith, who was usually programmed at still other events to coincide with the apex of said bubbling anger, could tout himself as the only one who could save them from such vitriol.

Fanning the flames

  1. You probably already know about that famed “whistle-blowing” organization named Leakie-Lots. But did you also know that the report delineates ways Dodger and the gang communicated between candidate Smith, Leakie and the Russian government tricksters illegally obtained hacked emails as well as other illegally obtained and damning information about the other side?

Oh sure, you’ll read excerpts from any number of Smith tweets and speeches that presage or capitalize on deadly information on his competitor that the Mueller Report connects to relationships between the Smith campaign, the Russians and still other people in the Dodger mold. Ilk.  Whatever.

Chairy, does this get better?

  1. The second half more specifically centers on the personal machinations of President Smith.  For instance, all during that year he spent on the campaign as Candidate Smith, denying he had ANY business dealings with Russia, his lawyer Fritzie, as well as his children Minnie, Ninnie and Nonnie, as well Minnie’s husband, Creamy, all KNEW that this was a big LIE.  In fact, each of them was periodically briefed during that time about ongoing plans to construct an enormous Smith Tower in Moscow.  In fact, this building was being touted as possibly THE potential luxury destination in all of Moscow, and perhaps the world.  And it could be worth countless millions, and in the end perhaps billions, to all of them.

Not as dumb as they seem

  1. But likely the most salacious documentations in the entire report confirm most of the news stories and, yes, gossip, about Smith’s personal behavior during his first two years in the White House. It seems our Electoral College POTUS really did order his closest non-family member advisors and cabinet officials to end the Special Counsel investigation into his relationship with Russia by every means necessary in fear that it would be “the end” of his reign.

His lawyers, appointees, cabinet members and friends (Note: All of whom he saw as Smith employees) tried to ignore his most outrageous requests, such as lying under oath to the SC about specific conservations he had with them and testifying to the exact opposite of what happened.  But it didn’t always work.  So if Smith persisted they would then be forced to prepare resignation letters that he would or wouldn’t accept (Note:  Sometimes he’d even just carry them around in his pocket and then lie about it to promote even more fear), stand their ground and get privately and/or publicly berated by him, or ultimately fired (though in the case of the latter, never by Smith in person).

working for the Smith administration

Various Smith retributions and temper tantrums occurred over other subjects but by far the worst had to do with Smith and Russia.  Despite whatever was observed first-hand, if Smith wanted his people to state it was raining outside, his people were expected to stand before the world in the blazing bright light of a sun-drenched day and convince everyone within ear and eyeshot to come inside in order to get away from the undeniable storm clouds pouring down on them from up above that no one but them and their fellow selected few who were also on the team could clearly see.

Still works #dated #delusional

Okay, perhaps this is all a bit cute….by half.  But it could be the only way to truly understand what the Mueller Report offers about our democracy is to change the names in order to not pre-determine an outcome.  Certainly, reality isn’t doing it.  Thus far about 40-43% of voters are still behind Electoral College POTUS Trump, I mean, Smith.

Think about it.  Then read the report for yourself.  And soon.

Ray Charles – “America The Beautiful”