A gift from me to all the...
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LOOSE DOGS (Patriotic Rebels)
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LEMMINGS (#NeverTrumpers of every stripe)
.'THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY'
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Starring Barry Sanders as President Trump
(He jukes, he spins, he outruns 'em. They see him coming and then they see him leaving.)
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With Wannabe-Tacklers as Democrats, RINOs, NeoCons and other Communists 'n' Imbeciles
(They grab, they dive, they leap. Where'd he go? How'd he get out of THAT?!)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSCG6NGUCE8
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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"Improv virtuoso!" - cool. Exciting video. Teflon Don and Teflon Barry. The defenses are like "Let's try plan A.. plan B, plan C, okay plan D - that'll work.... plan E" The defense is like Wile E Coyote.
ReplyDeletePerennially Underrated Don and Underrated Barry. Underrated Barry in the general public because I don't think the Lions got much national network coverage. Also, with the Lions being not a top-notch team, you gotta figure the opposing teams' whole defenses were focused almost wholly on Barry.
G Dogg / A-DogG ~
DeleteVery good point about NFL defenses being able to prepare entirely for Barry Sanders (as much as one can prepare for him -- and good luck with THAT!) They had no other notable weapons, so if you could contain Barry to some degree, you had nuttin' else to worry about. And yet, look at what he STILL did despite a defense's complete attention.
I think my favorite quote about Sanders came from an opposing defensive backfield player the year the Lions made the postseason.
One guy who had faced Barry more than anyone else on his team told his fellow players: When you miss him the first time, don't chase after him. Just stay where you are because he's probably coming back your way again later in the play.
Ha!-Ha!
And that was one of the primary sort o' thangs I had in mind when this analogy came to me...
Trump rarely just moves straight ahead. He employs so many fakes, jukes, and misdirections. Everybody takes his every word for Gospel and assume he's going in the direction indicated, and then the next thing you know, the play has gone in some other way. And the fools just keep falling for the jukes, spins, and backpedaling over and over and over again.
I didn't catch on to Trump's style immediately, but now I've got him figured out to a degree (to whatever degree one can figure out Trump -- and good luck with THAT!)
Recently, when he told the Dumb-O-Crats and the NeoCon traitors that he would sign any DACA bill they put on his desk, a bunch of conservatives, like Ann Coulter, etc., (and phony pretend-"conservatives") went ballistic. But by that point, I already knew the whole thing was a ploy to make Congress look inept and to call their bluffs.
It's like watching an episode of 'MOONLIGHTING'. If David and Maddie solve the case in 21 minutes, you KNOW a big twist is coming, because the episode is still only half over. Obviously, it's a "fooled ya" fake-solving of the case, because there are surprises yet to come. There is at least one major, unforeseen plot twist still up around the bend.
And that's my view on the way Trump works. He's gonna tie everyone up in knots before they finally figure out where he was going. And by the time they figure it out, he's already gotten there. (Like that play where Barry had the Patriots player turning in circles. Or the one where Barry ran right behind the Cowboy lineman, who never saw him coming and only saw him leaving. THAT is Trump Illustrated on a football field!)
I gotta say, Trump has been fun to watch. Yes, he annoys me at times; yes, RON PAUL will always be my ideal President. But Trump has already done more that's positive for the U.S. than any other president in my lifetime.
And I pity the fool who is never gonna be smart enough to get a handle on Trump, the same way defenses could never get a handle on Barry.
Improv virtuosos indeed!
By pure happenstance, I've been listening to the soundtrack of 'WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT' the entire time I've been writing this comment. Somehow, it was... perfect. I'd even go so far as to call it a case of "Congrutiating".
Thanks for the comment, Brother. I think you may have been the only reader who "got it".
~ D-FensDogG
STMcC Presents 'Battle Of The Bands'
Well, here comes your braggadocio buddy who claims to have any tenuous connection to the British language... and yet I think the Brits who wrote the Constitution before it was written (Locke or... Orwell I don't know). Fun fact - did you know that British Literature people will never stop saying how much better and raw Irish writers are than English writers. ("The English are at war with Irish and Scots. Goes to show that even in a land with no blacks or Puerto Ricans - people will still find a reason to fight" (Jimmy Walker (paraphrasing) In school I took an upper-division British Literature (caps) class...thinking it would be fun and that I only had to get a D to graduate. I wrote my 12 page paper listening to Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique and weaved in everything but the kitchen sink "Don't use clichés!"
ReplyDeleteThe teacher told the class "We're in the midst of a genius." Triple take: They looked at her. At Me. At her gain. They thought I was a retard because I didn't speak their taught English. It was quite simple, really. The age old - write from the social, political, and economic. That pretty much covers it. Fancy wordplay is annoying.
In college, I was voracious, reading everything that told me professors' point of view was myopic BS.
Since then I've read/fallen back on magazine articles, I did my time.
You, S-Man, are so much more well read... volumes and volumes more. I thought I was smarter and "out of bounds" to professors.
You know a lot more. I can't fathom, Way out of my depth.
Thus, I'm happy that you write about sports and pop culture.
Cheers, Bro/Teacher.
Well, DogG, I must say I feel genuinely honored and a good deal embarrassed by the overly generous compliment. I thank you! It's a good thing life has already beaten this sword into a plowshare (i.e., any chance of an inflated ego long ago beaten out of me by disappointments in life), otherwise, that's the kind of compliment that tempts a person to believe their own press.
DeleteInteresting backstory, Brother!
Me, I got through 12th grade, hating school, and without the grades or the interest to go on to "higher learnin'". I already knew that ACTING was what I wanted to do, and they don't teach that in college. They pretend that they do, but they don't. So I started taking professional acting workshops and studying the craft on my own.
Eventually, I found my own true self, naturally lost interest in acting, and moved on to writing.
As for my reading habits: I read a bunch of the "Classics" in my late teens and through a good chunk of my twenties, when I was very idealistic and just plain lucky that I did not contract a severe case of Liberalitis.
In my late twenties I started listening to a lot of Conservative Talk Radio (mostly Dennis Prager), and developed a pretty straightforward Conservative mindset. A lot of things that happened in politics still mystified me because, well... "straightforward Conservative mindset".
In March of '94, I decided to move back to Los Angeles from Prescott, Arizona. A very cool coworker / friend of mine -- Straight, White, Conservative Christian Male -- gave me a "Going Away Gift": 'The New World Order' by Pat Robertson.
One month later, in L.A. (where for well over a decade I had been saying "God is dead"), I had a totally unexpected Spiritual experience with Christ.
THAT experience, in conjunction with what I'd found and corroborated in Robertson's book, set me on the path of E-Ticket Self-Education.
From '94 to Today, I have read almost exclusively Nonfiction (focusing primarily on Spirituality and Politics -- which are clearly intertwined).
The funny / ironic thing is that, now at the age of 58, having long since past the point of 'Diminishing Returns' from reading Spirituality and Politics, I find myself thinking of revisiting the world of "Brit Lit" and reading a few of the A-List Classics that I missed during my first Fiction Phase (e.g., 'Moby Dick', 'The Great Gatsby', and 'Donkey Hohtey').
Thanks again for the kind words, McBrother DogG!
~ D-FensDogG
Stephen T. McCarthy Reviews...
I hear you, S-Man, you seem a scholar or professor with consistent research. I wouldn't want to be on a witness stand if you were the opposing attorney.
ReplyDeleteMegadittoes. Well over 95% of books I've read are non-fiction. Therefore fiction can be new, fresh... novel. I don't understand the English majors' world... thus wrote of the author's biography and historical context of the writing. In short, what were the environmental factors that caused the writer to write the book. [In the now abstract - don't remember any specific WW I books nor WW I poetry (chaos!)... seemed quite powerful - a time of massive paradigm shift - could the human mind fathom WW I and unprecented mechanization of war... going into or running out of trenches for no good reason].
The exception is when non-fiction is focused soley on making a point. My favorites would be 1984*, Animal Farm, and Ayn Rand's Anthem (and Brave New World and Farenheit 451). The point of the books is to make a point. And the point is so good one (I) can't recall or know how good the writing or characterizations are - they certainly don't get in the way of the point.
* At an underground reading club in East Germany, folks said (truthfully paraphrasing) "It's not fiction."
I would also put Less Than Zero and American Psycho near the top - talkin bout my generation.
Conservatism has always seemed common sense. I guess it doesn't tell the big picture. I still enjoy politics most as theater - all the world is a stage. Bread and circuses and circuses - and Trump jumps to 306 electoral votes.... .. MSNBC is.. is .. is .. declaring Trump as the victor - they can't make this stuff up!
Cheers McBrother.
>>... when non-fiction is focused soley on making a point. My favorites would be 1984*, Animal Farm, and Ayn Rand's Anthem (and Brave New World and Farenheit 451). The point of the books is to make a point. And the point is so good one (I) can't recall or know how good the writing or characterizations are
DeleteYep! I've read '1984', 'Animal Farm', 'Brave New World', and indeed they're all about the (important) messages. I would say that the characters are fairly one-dimensional, which is OK in my book as they primarily serve the messages.
I've also read Ayn's 'Fountainhead' and I'd say the same about her. She was an extremist but still had something important to say and to consider to some degree. (Just not entirely to HER degree, IMO.) I've encountered many excerpts from 'Atlas', but never read the entire thing. (I watched the first installment in the movie series -- or part of it, anyway -- but it was not good.)
The thing about Ayn, however, is that once you understand what her message is, there's no real point in reading more, because it's just the same idea being repeated, and she was not a very talented writer. (Awful dialogue -- reading it made me cringe. It was all exposition masquerading as dialogue.)
I also read 'Less Than Zero', not long after it was published -- before it was a movie. It was interesting to me that a number of places and businesses mentioned in that book were still operating in L.A. at the time I was reading it in L.A.
A writer I want to read is Taylor Caldwell. I've quoted some of her conservative statements at times but have never actually read any of her novels.
Got a new BOTB installment coming up on Thursday. I'm curious to see how this one plays out, because this time I really don't have more than half a clue.
~ D-FensDogG
Stephen T. McCarthy Reviews...
"I also read 'Less Than Zero', not long after it was published -- before it was a movie. It was interesting to me that a number of places and businesses mentioned in that book were still operating in L.A. at the time I was reading it in L.A."
ReplyDeleteI read it in Santa Barbara - well, Isla Vista - the ghetto of SB. Experiencing culture shock at the time - a hick in newly discovered decadence... I found the book only a slight exaggeration/a confirmation of Isla Vista apathy or affect-lessness. Where so much was "whatever."
- So and so crashed his car, whatever
- So and so got drunk and broke a window, whatever
- So and so took shrooms, jumped off the roof and broke his leg, whatever.
Ellis' sequel, Imperial Bedrooms, starts with his characters at the theater watching the movie Less Than Zero and saying how false and lame it was.
Hollywood producers aren't going to allow an adaptation that actually shows how awful kids of producers are. Thus the afterschool movie... with morality.
****
Sounds like you've got a good song matchup if you don't know the outcome. If you really want your favorite guitar solo to win, make the competing song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glo8WeM6__4
Cheers, McBro
DogG ~
DeleteI'm not sure if I've been in Isla Vista before, but knowing Santa Barbara to be somewhat hoity-toity, your remark made me chuckle. It reminded me of when I used to tell people I was from "the bad part of the Pacific Palisades" (a seriously high-rent district in Northern Santa Monica.)
I like the cleverness of starting out the sequel to 'Less Than Zero' with the characters watching the 'Less Than Zero' movie.
I once wrote a screenplay that ended with the one of the characters beginning to write a screenplay for the movie that the audience would have just seen. A somewhat similar kind of concept.
"The Surf Punks" -- Ha! That guy kinda looked like Sammy Hagar. And "Surf Punks" -- that would have been a good name for the Z-Boys if they hadn't already been called the Z-Boys. (I've got me a "Battle For Dogtown" BOTB installment planned for February 15th.)
Hang Loose and Hang Ten, McBrother! COWABUNGA!!
~ Stephen
'Loyal American Underground'