It's hard to put how I'm feeling into words right now. The one word that comes to mind is sad, but it's a different kind of sad. Twenty seven years ago my beloved Colorado Avalanche rolled into town and the state was finally able to root for an NHL team. They won the Stanley Cup that year, and again in 2001. Then came the lean years after the Avs superstars retired, and "lean" is an understatement. Just over five years ago the Avs were the worst team in the NHL and it was a struggle to watch them try and get through a game. Slowly, they rebuilt the team into a playoff contender, and then a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. They looked dangerous in the Covid bubble in 2020, then lost to Dallas in the playoffs. They looked dangerous in 2021, then had a total meltdown against Vegas in the playoffs. They looked insanely dangerous in 2022 and won the whole damn thing, setting a million records on their way to the Cup. In their 27 years of existence the Avs have had a handful of play by play announcers, most of them good. But they've had only one color commentator, and he was the best.

Peter McNab has called all but a handful of Avalanche games in the last 27 years. I was 14 years old when he began doing commentary for the Avs. I'm 41 now with a 14-year-old daughter. My fondest memories of the Avs are frequently intertwined with Peter's commentary, and I think most Avs fans can say the same thing. I've learned so much about the game of hockey from Peter. He made it easy to learn because his love for the game was infectious. He had such a passion for it and even though he came from a hockey family and had a lengthy NHL career of his own, he was still always amazed at how the game continued to evolve. The only stories I've ever heard about Peter McNab are good ones. There are too few people like him in the world. And now there's one less.

Late last summer I was scrolling social media when I saw an announcement that Peter had been diagnosed with cancer. My heart sank and I felt a sense of dread, which is common when you hear such news I guess. But I was hopeful. People beat cancer all the time and I chose to be optimistic. Peter continued to work while undergoing chemotherapy and seeing him with no hair made me so damn sad every Avs broadcast. It was a reminder of the battle he was fighting. The man had the same hairstyle for three decades so that made it extra jarring. He looked so thin and frail, and did his part of the broadcast from Denver when the Avs were on the road. In February of this year it was announced that Peter's cancer was in remission and it was the best news ever. If anyone deserved to kick cancers ass and live another few decades, it was him. In late June, Peter traveled down to Tampa Bay to cover the Stanley Cup Final and it was wonderful to see him on the ice after the Avs became champions. He was one of the few people who had been with the organization from the beginning. I think most Avs fans were under the impression Peter's cancer was still in remission as the current season of Avs hockey began. His hair had grown back and his color was better. Early in the season during a nationally televised Avs game, one of the commentators sent well wishes to Peter and another hockey guy, "who are battling cancer" and I became concerned. There was nothing anywhere else about a recurrence of his illness and that was...slightly encouraging. But on October 28th, Peter did the Avs pre-game show and he looked rundown. The Avs only had two games the following week because they were traveling to Finland to play them. Obviously, Peter wasn't going on a two week international road trip, but it was odd that he wasn't on the Denver based pre-game show. The Avs won both games in Finland, one on Friday and one yesterday. Today I was scrolling social media when I came across the announcement of Peter's passing. It was a gut punch and I could not stop the tears.

I never had the privilege of meeting Peter McNab but he was a part of my life for 27 years; from teen years, to young adult years, to fatherhood. I've watched and listened to him for 82 games a season for 27 seasons, plus parts of the playoffs. He is an absolute legend and will be terribly missed. I've been sad over celebrity deaths before but it's a kind of sadness that only really takes hold for a short time. This one hits different. It feels like a family member, a beloved uncle died. I can't stop thinking about it and how damn sad it is. I will miss his commentary, and his stories. I will miss seeing him in my living room three or four times a week. Avs games won't ever be the same. Peter's Avalanche career began with a Stanley Cup victory and it ended with a Stanley Cup victory. I'm so happy he got to see this core of players accomplish what they did in such a magical season. What a great man. What a terrible loss. RIP Pete.

Framing Britney Spears

For awhile now I've heard about this "Free Britney" movement making the rounds online. Although I like some of Britney Spears work, I don't follow her closely so I had no idea what the movement was all about. A few months back I do recall hearing about some of her more...special fans believing her social media posts were sending them coded messages about the current state of her life. I assumed that was what #FreeBritney meant; a bunch of bored wackos reading too much into a pop star's words. While I still believe those bored wackos are, well, bored wackos, I now know the main reason behind the movement is about the conservatorship Britney has been under for an unusually long time. After viewing the documentary, "Framing Britney Spears," I can see why these calls to release her from the conservatorship have become so loud. Some thoughts...

~ Why is Britney's father her conservator in the first place? According to the doc, he was in and out of her life growing up because he was an alcoholic who couldn't keep a job. A former rep from her label talks about how the only time she met him, he made a comment about how his daughter was gonna make a ton of money and buy him a boat. By a few accounts, her mother was concerned with making Britney's pop star dreams come true, while her father was concerned with the money she would make. For him to all of a sudden come into the scene and demand to be her conservator seems...odd. One could explain it away as no one else in her orbit daring to propose such a thing and him taking the reins. But even if you go by that logic, any decent father would want to see their child heal and be able to be independent, not continue to force a conservatorship down her throat. There's is something untrustworthy about that man.

~ Britney really did not win the lottery when it came to the men in her life. And that also dates back to her father. We learn all the important relationship stuff from our parents and if your father is in and out. and not particularly engaged when he's in, then you're very likely to internalize that and carry it into your own relationships. Those cycles are difficult to break and Britney seems to have had trouble doing so. We all knew her teen pop boyfriend was (and continues to be) trash. He cheated, then accused her of cheating and built his career off of trashing her and spilling her secrets in every interview he did. Her name was on his lips for years after that split because it got him attention. As someone in the doc said, he took control of the narrative and that led to her getting all the blame and him getting all the sympathy (he employed this same tactic after the Super Bowl incident). The fallout from that launched her into her mini-marriage and then right into the arms of the scammer that she ended up marrying and having two sons with. She now essentially supports those kids and the ex and his old and new families. I'm sure being under the thumb of her conservator has not helped her make good choices when it comes to men.

~ How is someone unfit to run their own life or control their own money able to perform so often? Britney has done several albums, tours, promotional work, guest appearances and even a Vegas residency in her time under the conservatorship. I can't wrap my head around being incapable of A, but fully capable of B. I have no doubt she loves/loved being a pop star, but I can't help but wonder if all that work was an effort by her father to make money and/or keep her pacified and controllable. Depending on how she was living pre-conservatorship, not working the last 13 years probably would've reduced the size of her nest egg considerably. Lawyers and child support are expensive, after all. Putting her out there to do something she loves, yet has no control of the financials of, sounds much more beneficial to the conservatorship than to her. Presumably if she's so unwell that she needs to be overlooked by a third party, you would want her to get well before she put herself back into the toxic environment of fame. Presumably. Adding fuel to this fire is one of her original conservatorship lawyers petitioning the court for a raise, saying Britney was making considerably more money at that point, and calling the situation a, "hybrid business model". What? This person is supposedly so sick that they need constant supervision of their actions, but you're saying it's a business model? How did that not attract the attention of someone to see if this ish was on the up and up?

~ When Britney had her meltdown and was 5150'ed, she saw the writing on the wall about the conservatorship and accepted that it was coming. She met with a lawyer, who had his own questions about whether she was of sound mind to hire him, giving what he'd heard in the media. He says she was perfectly coherent and very direct when telling him she knew she could not fight the conservatorship, but she did not want her father in control of her affairs. This lawyer went to court on her behalf and told the judge what she'd said, believing they could work out a deal where a impartial and experienced third party would be appointed the conservator. Instead, the judge told the lawyer he had a document that clearly showed Britney was not of sound mind to hire her own attorney and so not only would he not be granting the request, he would be booting the lawyer from the proceedings. He literally was not allowed to be her lawyer. The judge refused to show what document he was allegedly in possession of. This was the last best chance Britney had of making this conservatorship work in her favor.

~ The lawyer who was removed from the case spoke of someone with knowledge of the conservatorship telling him Britney was the "highest functioning conservatee" he had ever seen. Does that mean she's...normal? Conservatorships are typically used for older people and tend to last the rest of the lives of those people. It makes perfect sense why they would be used in that capacity, it's highly unlikely someone in that situation and at that age would regain the ability to control their own affairs. But Britney is in her thirties with, hopefully, a long way to go ahead of her. Is the aim to keep her under conservatorship for all those years ahead? Even though she's "high functioning" and seemingly able to express coherent wants and non-wants to the courts? How has no court probed into this shady ass arrangement yet? How has no one wanted to speak to her at length and hear her side and figure out whether whatever ailment that was grounds to put her under the conservatorship is not under control now? I assume it was some sort of mental illness that started the whole thing and many of those can be controlled with medication and/or therapy. Even if it is a bigger, less controllable issue (ie. dementia has been one rumored issue), I would think that would be in writing somewhere and would make it more difficult for her to file court papers at all regarding the conservatorship.

~ Obviously, none of us are privy to the financial and in and out details of the conservatorship. But it should not be lost on anyone that Britney is paying the bills for this whole thing. The lawyers, the lawyers' lawyers, her father and his lawyers, her ex and, possibly, his lawyers. That's a lot of money. That's also a lot of motivation to keep the conservatorship in place. Her father has to account to the court what he spends, but that's still very little oversight. Britney likely doesn't know where all the money is going because she's being shielded from all of that by her father, who the court says doesn't even have to let her in on all of it. Where there's money, there's corruption.

~ The last thought I had watching this documentary was how unfair the media was to Britney, both before and after her meltdown. I don't think it's in dispute that, in the beginning, she invited the paparazzi and enjoyed the attention they brought her. But as that industry exploded, she was unable to control it and they became more aggressive in pursuing her. The doc actually had a pap who was asked if she ever told them to leave her alone (and we saw several pieces of video where she says just that) and he claimed she would say, "Can you leave me alone today, guys?", which he took to mean she just wanted to be left alone that day, not forever. Really, dude? She's pushing through the crowd, she's crying and she's begging you to leave on the regular. These photographers played a part in her downfall. And so did the mainstream media. There were so many awful pieces of video showing well known interviewers asking her cringeworthy questions. Diane Sawyer asks her how people should reconcile her girl next door image with her "slut" image, and later asks her what she did to Timberfuck to make him so hurt and upset with her. And she got so many questions about the supposed "slut" thing, when all she was doing was growing into her sexuality and wearing revealing outfits. Some random politician's wife called into a show to say how she wanted to, "shoot her in the head" for...I guess her image? Other interviewers inquired about her virginity and whether she'd had a boob job, right to her face. As if that wasn't enough, post meltdown, she became fodder for comedy shows and bits, even though she was clearly suffering from some sort of mental illness. The conversation of mental illness now is miles away from what it was then, but that's not an excuse. Clearly, she was not well and the media should've just shut up, rather than continuing to land body blows while she was down. 

I'm not sure what impact this documentary will have overall, it likely won't change anything when it comes to her court battle. But if you can watch this and not think something is amiss with her conservatorship, you need to watch it again and pay close attention.

Hitman Havoc

When I was in my 20's, one of my good friends at the time said she would never date a man who played any kind of video games because it was a sign of immaturity. She was in her 30's at the time and having trouble finding a man who did not, except for older men she had no interest in. She went on to marry a man who did play video games and they later divorced, and now she's married to an older man who does not play. The moral of the story? People are complex and think carefully about what your actual deal breakers are, kids. One of the memories I have of my childhood was mom saving up to buy a Nintendo for us kids, and then promptly getting hooked on it herself. My mother is in her 60's and still plays video and now occasionally tablet games. Some 84 years after getting my first Nintendo, I still like to game. But there's a secondary purpose to it now. Video games have been found to help patients with brain injuries recover, as well as help with anxiety. I literally have a doctor's note to play games. Yay for brain damage! That said, I'm not a super hardcore multiplayer gamer with some expensive ass setup. I tend to stick to single player games to unwind and help me focus.

In May of last year my nephew suggested I download a free preview of a game called, "Hitman 2" and it was love at first play. H2 is the sequel to 2016's "Hitman" and follows the story of a born and bred assassin called Agent 47 who works for an agency that caters to the wealthy. Agent 47's handler, Diana, feeds him information and he does the dirty work actually taking out the people who have contracts on them. The games are incredibly immersive and have a ton of replay value. It's actually encouraged that you go back through each contract multiple times to get all the achievements and discover new areas, and it's been great escapism for these Covid times, (ironically, there's a side campaign for H2 that involves a deadly virus getting out at a medical facility and infecting people quite easily). Having played through both of the games, I was excited for the release of the final installment this month, and The Greek pre-ordered the fanciest version of the game for me for Christmas. When I bought the first two games, it was years after their initial release and so I had no experience with what release days were like from this company. Boy, did I find out last week.

The "Hitman" games all operate within one place, meaning that you can open H2 and have access to both that game and H1 without having to load each game independently. In theory, the final release, H3, should allow you to access all three games and any side missions from just launching H3. Since each game is tacked onto the last, one would think you could just install H3 and fire it up and be good to go. But no. A week before the game was released, the company that makes it, IOI, posted a very long-winded rundown of what players needed to know before playing. First, there would be a website you'd need to visit and register for an account there in order to link H2 to H3 and carryover your progress. At the time, it said that website would be up "soon" and that it was highly encouraged you link the two games before playing the new one. If you waited to link them until after you played H3, your progress in that game would be wiped. Also, PC players who used one particular store to play games would have to re-purchase H2 on a different store if they wanted to play at all, thereby wiping out any of their H2 progress and ponying up an extra $20 for a game they already owned. Even more ridiculous, all players had to download various free "access pass" add-ons for H3 that would allow access to H1 and H2. Confused? Yeah, so was everyone who intended to play the game. The PC re-buy thing did not go over well at all and apparently the backlash was so severe that IOI backpedaled a day or so later and promised no one would have to buy content they already owned.

The night prior to the game's release, the website to transfer your progress was still not live and I just knew there were gonna be problems. Since release day was also Inauguration Day (praise the Gods), I wasn't in a huge hurry to do the progress transfer. Good thing too, because that website went live at the very time the game released worldwide and almost immediately crashed. Since the transfer was basically required before playing H3, a lot of people were just stuck not playing at all until the website came back up. I managed to do the transfer late afternoon and then fired up the game that night to find some progress did not transfer at all, and I wasn't the only one with the issue. Even then, a lot of people complained they still could not even get to the website. The following night I played the game with few issues, but still saw people who were unable to. On top of that, complaints began to flow in about how nobody had been able to access the extra content promised in the deluxe edition of the game. That night, IOI released a new FAQ saying they were aware of the issues and that they would make the content available to PC players and then, at some point, all other console players. They also slipped in a new fact about how that progress that did not transfer was never meant to, something not in their original guide about the carryover. I logged on Friday night to play and could not connect to the game's servers. "Hitman" requires that you be online to play, a move supposedly made to combat piracy but that has never actually worked to do so. Upon checking the Reddit board for the game, I saw that a lot of people either had never been able to connect (either to the website or the game itself), and more had played fine for awhile but now could not get on. Still, some people apparently were able to play without issue. The lack of connectivity persisted throughout the weekend and only seemed to be getting worse, with more people reporting they could not play the game. IOI further compounded everyone's frustration by stroking their own member on Twitter, posting something about how the game was their highest rated ever and, in a second tweet, asking how everyone was enjoying it. They tacked on to the end of both those posts some one liner about how they were aware people had issues logging in. Some players were able to deduce that the problems had to do with those who did the carryover, since it appeared those who did not do it could play. Finally, on Monday morning, IOI posted that they were taking the servers down for a few hours to fix the problem and, as of this writing, it seems like they may have. But...wow.

The thing that struck me over the weekend is how this company has zero self-awareness and some massive cojones. First, you tell people they have to hand over even more money than they already have, and you do this five days prior to the game's release. Then, you make it a requirement to go through this ridiculous process just to carryover game data for a game that shouldn't need to be so complicated. You wait to put up a website you know will be overwhelmed, then don't seem to comprehend that everybody who was on that website will then go to the game, completely overwhelming your servers. And when the servers go to hell, only then do you decide to toot your own horn and ask how awesome the game you made is. It's almost a week later and I'm just now able to (knock on wood it works) take a deep dive into the game. I still don't have the extras that I paid for and was promised. To top it all off, game data that I assumed was going to be carried over, that I spent countless hours completing (and some of it sucked so hard to do) was never meant to be imported into H3 and they knew and didn't say anything until after people found out. I didn't have much experience with this company prior to last week, both the previous games fired up and needed to extra attention since they were so old. But now they come off shady as hell and very unprofessional. I understand it's a smaller company than when they started out, but come on. This is just a choice to not be as transparent as you should have been. When you wait to get all the pre-orders and then spring new, costly information on people, of course they're gonna be pissed. You didn't anticipate that? You didn't anticipate that a game that's been pretty well advertised (at least on Xbox) to attract a wide audience that would want to play on day one? Nobody calculated that waiting to put up the carryover website until literally the 11th hour wouldn't have a negative outcome? It's just all so amateur. And it makes me very happy this is the last game in the series and I have no interest in their next project, some James Bond thing.

As for my first impressions of H3, having only one play though under my belt, meh. They took out a lot of things that gave the first two games such tremendous replay value. The last installment of the game is shorter than the first two and the vibe of it is very different. Time will tell how much of that is my dislike of change and how much of it is just the newness of the levels themselves. The end of the story was very anti-climactic and the lack of interaction between Agent 47 and Diana is a definite downside. Going back to redo some of the stuff that reset is both intriguing and upsetting, especially considering IOI also removed some items that I used to complete those challenges. I will never understand why they continue to require a single player game to always be played online, especially when you consider someone had already cracked the game and put it out to the masses hours after its release. Seems like that requirement is doing more harm than good. Hopefully having actual access to the game without issue will be worth all the BS from the last week.

Undo It

 Admittedly, I had not heard of HBO's "The Undoing" until late last week when one of my clients raved about it and how the finale was a few days away. I decided to binge it over the weekend and was left underwhelmed. I wasn't exactly hooked on the first episode, it just didn't grab me. But I stuck with it thinking there must be a reason people were losing their minds over how good it supposedly was. This is fixin' to be a spoiler-heavy post.

"The Undoing" revolves around a married New York couple, Grace and Jonathan, who have a 12-year-old son named Henry who attends a ritzy $50,000 a year private school. A group of mothers at the school meet to decide what items will be involved in a yearly auction that benefits scholarship students at the school, but you get the sense they do so to meet minority requirements and make themselves feel like they do good in the world. It doesn't come from a place of wanting to actually help people. Never is that more apparent than when the Latina mother of one of those scholarship kids attends the meeting with her baby daughter. All of the other mothers side eye the hell out of her, except Grace, who is a psychologist that counsels married couples. Grace compliments the mother, Elena, on how cute her baby is and tries to include her in the meeting. A short time later, Grace is in the locker room of her gym when Elena walks up stark naked and starts having a conversation with her. Later, both women attend the auction, Grace accompanied by Johnathan who is a pediatric oncologist, and makes note several times of how he has to catch an early morning flight to Ohio for a conference. Elena attracts the attention of several men at the auction and seems in some other type of distress, prompting Grace to ask her if everything is okay. Elena says she's fine, she just needs to go home and pump milk for her daughter. Before leaving, she thanks Grace for her kindness and gives her a slow kiss on the lips. Shortly thereafter, Jonathan leaves the auction, saying he has an emergency with a patient. He returns home later that night and leaves early the next morning before Grace wakes up. That same day, Grace learns via a text sent out by her son's school that the mother of a student was murdered overnight and she soon learns the identity of the victim from another school mom, who is a lawyer. The cops and the media soon come calling, the police seeming to take special interest in Grace (who tells them nothing of the gym incident or the kiss on the night of the murder). Simultaneously, Grace is dealing with the fact that she cannot find her husband. He does not return her texts or calls and later that night she discovers his phone in the drawer of their dresser. The cops are also eager to find Jonathan after they learn he had an affair with Elena and is the father of her daughter, something Elena's husband had suspected.

All of the above is supposed to set up a classic "whodunnit". The problem is that I never suspected anyone but Grace and Jonathan. "Clue", this was not. But apparently it was for a lot of people on the Twitter who were all seemingly shocked by the twists, turns and outcome of the show. I'm not sure if  any of the red herrings in the show were intentional or just forgotten plots. We see Grace have first person flashbacks of the moment Elena is murdered. We see her caught on street cameras in the vicinity of the murder at the time of the murder. The cops repeatedly tell her they believe she's hiding something. I wondered if it wasn't the psychologist who did it in some kind of mental state, or something along those lines. Jonathan, swarmy and unlikable from the gate, has been hiding not only the affair, but the fact that it cost him his job three months prior. Elena's son developed a rare tumor and Jonathan was his oncologist. He and Elena began an affair and didn't try to hide it and after three warnings about his behavior, the hospital finally terminated him. He claims Elena became obsessed with him and forced him to get her son into the school, then she proceeded to stalk his family. His alibi is that he left the auction to tell her to leave his family alone, but ended up having sex with her. He returned to break off the relationship and found her bludgeoned to death, then fled to upstate New York. He swears up and down he couldn't have done this because he loved Elena and her son, even going on TV for a pre-trial interview that apparently swings public opinion on the show, but I didn't find all that convincing. My first instinct was that he definitely did it, but I hoped the obvious wouldn't be where the writers went. And then they did. Grace is the one who lays the framework to convict Jonathan and it is her testimony that sinks him. He knows this and on the day of the verdict, he kidnaps Henry and threatens to throw himself off a bridge. But narcissistic sociopaths don't kill themselves, so instead he lets the kid go and is arrested and that's when the credits roll. And so did my eyes.

If done correctly, telling your audience, "Hey, here's the killer" in the first episode and then cementing it in the last one can be great. But "The Undoing" was not. Jonathan constantly showed narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies. If he lost his temper with his son, he made a comment about that person not being him and you could see him settling himself back into his facade. He lied for years to Grace about a story involving his dog getting out of the house and being hit and killed by a car. It turns out it was his 4-year-old sister who was killed that way and, according to his own mother, he did not mourn her at all. He visited Elena's husband before the trial to proclaim his innocence, apparently trying to charm him into believing him. His "love" for Elena came out of left field when he needed to pour it on for the cameras. During a fight in the prison yard he needlessly bites the finger of another inmate and continues to hold on even after the fight is over. All of these clue you in to just what kind of person Jonathan really is. All you had to do was pay attention and you knew he was the killer. In the end, it turns out he went to see Elena for a hook up and when she began talking about blending their families, he flipped out. He told her if she ever came near his family again, he would kill her. She doubled down by saying she knew he could never hurt her and he shoved her to the ground. She came at him with a sculpting hammer and he intercepted it and hit her once, and then repeatedly. The answer was what we were told it was all along. I hate that kind of predictability.

At the end of "The Undoing" I had more questions than answers. Jonathan borrowed $500,000 from his father-in-law, what happened to that money? I suppose he could've paid off Elena but she wasn't staying away from him and was not exactly living in luxury. Why was Grace having first person visions of the murder if she didn't do it? What we see her flashback to is the exact same shot we get when we see Jonathan committing the murder. Why was Elena relegated to being just a background character? Given her level of distress in the first episode (the only one in which she was alive), it seemed like there was going to be an explanation given at some point. Jonathan's claim that she became obsessed with him may have actually held some merit in that Elena's husband admitted on the stand that she had been receiving psychiatric counseling. We never hear what for or what kind of treatment she was getting. It could've been as simple as dealing with her son's illness, or it could've been that she was a crazy ass stalker. But we never hear anymore about it. We also hear nothing about how Elena called Grace several times (she didn't answer, assuming it was junk) or the nude portrait of Grace that Elena had hanging in her studio. It's like they drop breadcrumbs about her maybe being crazy and then just ignore them. When Jonathan's high powered attorney asks him if he has any other dirt swept under the rug, he confesses to having had one other affair before Elena. The way this is done is a bit cliffhangery, as if who the person was will be revisited later and their identity will be a shock. But it's never revisited. Nor do we ever hear how Jonathan spent his time in the three months he was unemployed, or where exactly he was planning to go the morning after the auction. He was quite insistent that he had a flight to Cleveland in the morning, moreso than anyone actually going to a conference would be. Was he just going to go to a NY hotel with Elena? Again, not answered.

My biggest gripe with this show is that it never really mastered putting forth other suspects. I'm not sure if that's because the point was to just let people wildly come up with their own theories, or the writers just weren't interested in focusing on anything but Grace and Jonathan. Jonathan's lawyer accusing Elena's husband of the murder is thrown out at trial, but never fully explored. He's shown as a hothead in flashbacks of fights between he and Elena, but the idea that he had to have left an infant and a 10-year-old alone in his apartment and somehow magically dodged all the street cameras never felt possible. Grace's dad was apparently a suspect for some people, probably because Donald Sutherland is a big name to play such a bit part. But I never suspected him. He's rich and ruthless, no doubt, but never struck me as a killer. The focus of the show was clearly Grace and Jonathan and Grace's coming to terms with what she had actually married. That's all it should've been about. The one thing it did do was make me appreciative of writers who are not lazy. Thankfully, it was only six episodes.

The Party Told You To Reject The Evidence Of Your Eyes And Ears. It Was Their Final, Most Essential Command

Way back when G and I were just starting out, she introduced me to her people. Many of those around her were religious and that almost immediately caused friction since I am not. One of her sisters liked me, the other one was more 'meh' (and also more religious), and the husband of that sister flat out did not like me. He kept a relatively small circle of almost entirely hardcore religious people. His children were not allowed to celebrate Halloween because he believed it was somehow demonic (thus highlighting one of my problems with religion - nobody actually educates themselves about ish, they just blindly follow). I was fresh off meeting the immediate family when G and I went to lunch with one of her oldest friends, who we'll call Q. Q is white, blonde, blue-eyed and a California transplant from back East. The moment we were introduced, she shook my hand and said, "Are you a believer?". It was like the beginning of a cult recruitment film. The minute I said I was not of the same faith as her, she became disinterested. Lunch was awkward and full of small talk. She had no interest in getting to know me and, later that afternoon, contacted G to say that she didn't believe things were gonna work out between us. Q was involved in a lot of G's family and friend get togethers and we largely just ignored each other at those events. G and I never really talked about Q, or the issue that existed in us not getting along. But apparently Q talked her ear off about me. Her favorite play was to talk about how if we decided to have children in the future they would be "misguided" and "confused" about their faith. The entire time G and I were together, Q was dating someone who struck me as non-committal. Sometimes he would be at events, most times he would not. He didn't engage much with anybody when he did show up. She talked about his work being super important and claimed that's why he rarely was around. I later found out he was a flight attendant who preferred to spend the time he was in town with his friends, rather than her. He never seemed all that into her, despite her raving about how she hoped he would propose soon. She would continue saying that for 7 years, but never when actually in his presence. One of the last conversations G and I had before we broke up was about how someone could be that out of touch with what's actually happening in their relationship. 

Breaking up with someone you're so interconnected with can be complicated, and especially in this era of social media. Despite the fact G and I rarely speak anymore and have been unfriended on all platforms for a couple of years, I still get suggestions from her friends list. Most of the suggestions are friends that I had no real issue with. A couple that have come up have moved me to click on their pages and see what they're up to. Earlier this year, Q popped up in my suggestions. I made mention of it to G who informed me that Q's now ex-boyfriend unceremoniously dumped her only after she found out he'd had someone on the side a couple of years. She's been single ever since and now that she's north of 40, she's desperate to get married and have kids. Since that's not happening anytime soon, she spends her time shopping, working and pushing Trump conspiracy theories on her social media pages. It did not surprise me when I clicked on her Stories and found 15 (FIFTEEN!) slides about Trump. This was back in, maybe, March. It was about "China Virus" being a hoax and "Liberals" this and "Fake News" that. As election week wound down to its conclusion, I thought of her again and wondered how she would handle that her cult leader had lost. The answer was not surprising. She posted a whopping 23 stories about Jesus willing Trump to victory (eventually), and screenshots of her barking back at people who called her a conspiracy nut, and random podcast quotes about how Liberals have tried to steal the election. Much like the rest of the cult, she's not coping, she's denying. Looking at her stories is like a journey to some alternate universe. I felt bad for her, not because she's an idiot but because I can't imagine being that fucking delusional. She and others like her are the base that has elevated Trump and put us in this hole.

Q is a college graduate, but never struck me as particularly...smart. Despite living in such a diverse, urban environment for a few decades, she still seemed quite sheltered. She's Evangelical and that tells her to follow blindly, don't ask questions, Jesus first in all things. She has many friends of color (G among them), but somehow does not see the damage Trump's faux presidency has done to them. I have no doubt she's one of those, "Oh, but he didn't mean you" types when it comes to his insults to various groups of people. Like so many Trump supporters, she picks and chooses what parts of him she reacts to. Children in cages? No reaction. Black Lives Matter? That's clearly salty Liberals blowing things out of proportion. Election fraud? Biden and company did that because they know Trump wants to outlaw abortion. Abortion is the big issue she, and a lot of Evangelicals, hide behind, despite the fact Trump has done absolutely zero about that issue in four years. Hell, the fact that he wanted his own daughter aborted (and has probably paid for more abortions than he can count) is of no consequence to these people. Everything is a conspiracy. Everything is fake news. Everyone and everything is conspiring against someone who they claim wants to ban what is, apparently, the only issue that matters to them. What do you call a group of people who follow a man whose mantra is, "Everything I say is 100% true and everything anyone else says is 100% false"? A cult. These Trump supporters can't see reason or truth because they need a deprogrammer. They're so deep in the mass delusion, they can't even see the light from the outside of that tunnel. The irony is Trump supporters calling everyone else sheep when they are the most gullible group of all. It's upsetting that over 70 million people decided Trump should have another term. It's distressing that so many people think the last four years of horror were just what the doctor ordered. But it's not surprising. 

You Say We've Got Nothing In Common, No Common Ground To Start From

I was already planning on writing a post about this topic when the above cartoon made the rounds on Twitter this morning. The idea of various kinds of relationships breaking up due to a so-called difference in politics has been out there for most of 2020. I recall seeing a social media post from someone a few months back talking about how you shouldn't cut any of your friends out of your life over this election because you'll need them long after the politics of this moment play out. And I couldn't agree less. What's happening now is NOT a difference in politics. If someone is still supporting Trump, especially if they are enthusiastically supporting him, they are racist. At the very least, they're okay with his racism. In my book, that makes you one and the same. In no universe is supporting a racist okay, I don't care what you mistakenly believe about him ending abortions or whatever shit the Evangelicals and Midwestern gun nuts are using to justify idolatry of him. Trump is out for one thing - money. He has profited off the Presidency. He will profit off of whatever comes next. He will burn this country to the fucking ground, no matter what happens tomorrow. This man is a fucking lunatic who is mentally ill, has absolutely no redeeming qualities and is only about himself. Make no mistake that he will throw anyone and everyone under the bus should the authorities come calling about all the shady shit that has come out the past four years. And that's the irony, isn't it? We all know he didn't think he'd actually win in 2016, he just wanted to stir shit up and prove he could hang. He was pissed a Black man had been President for 8 years and a woman would succeed him. We know he hates women, especially educated women in power. He and all the rich fucks he appointed to be in his administration had no fucking clue how government worked. He thought he could delegate the Presidential tasks to others, take the credit for everything that happens and profit off his new position of power. What he didn't expect was that people would call him on his shit and a global pandemic would show what a clueless coward he was. When people blow smoke up your entitled ass your whole life, you expect that everywhere you go. Countless allegations of all kinds came out prior to the 2016 election; his pedophilic comments about dating his own daughter, rape allegations of all kinds, his hate of anyone who is not a rich, white asshole. It was all out there, all well documented. His lies were out there too. Hell, the fact he was trying to buy an election via whoring himself out to Russia was front and center. But what swung the whole thing? Emails. Emails that were never found to be illegal. Hilary Clinton had one investigation into her, Trump has had several and many are ongoing. That right there told people all they needed to know and yet...it still happened. Four years later, shit is even worse than anyone could have imagined. Things were already a fucking mess prior to 2020, but a global pandemic has just been icing on a misshapen, disgusting cake. While Americans continue to isolate themselves from an increasingly unsafe world, get sick and die in droves, Trump lives in this faux reality he creates for himself where every move he makes is gold and anyone who doesn't think so is branded fake news or liberal or a nasty woman. The lies have come fast and furiously in this election cycle. With no crooked Hilary tagline, he's become increasingly unhinged and lied about having Covid (notice how he has zero of the lingering effects many others report, which is quite something for an overweight old man who dyes himself orange), then latched onto white supremacist supporters and instructed them to commit crimes in his name. If someone is coloring in that bubble next to Trump's name, all of the above is what you are not only voting for and endorsing, but also condoning. Kids in cages? That's fine, as long as he forces women to have all the babies. Every single thing he's done is validated with a vote for him.

Make no mistake, when people say they're voting for Trump, they are saying all the negative shit he has done is A-okay. And that is why this is not a Bob and Sally issue. We are so far from this being the every four years Democrats vs. Republicans showdown. This is literally a battle between pure fucking evil and good. This is a battle between democracy and dictatorship. This is a battle between hate and love. "A battle for the soul of our nation," is not just a Biden/Harris tagline, it is the absolute truth. If you still support the hate and racism and lies and overall disgustingness that is Trump, even after all he's shown you, I do not trust your judgement. I do not want, nor need you in my life. There was a time for giving some of his voters the benefit of the doubt, some people voted for him thinking it was funny back in 2016. But that time ended around the time he botched Covid-19 back in February. If you're still on his bandwagon, you're just as disgusting as he is. I've been quite fortunate to find that I've been mostly aligned with good people through all this. I've only had to cut a handful of people out of my life. I've been surprised by some acquaintances being so comfortable in their support of him, but acquaintances are far easier to cut loose. Will you need friends long after this season passes? Of course. But this season has shown you the true colors of the people in your life. When people show you who they are, believed them. This season, awful and crushing as it is, is a blessing, of sorts. It's a time to purge undercover toxic people from your life. And that's not because they're voting for one guy over another, it's because their values and beliefs no longer align with yours, if they ever did to begin with. "Oh, he's not referring to you when he insults Mexicans/African-Americans/Asians," is not a compliment, or a justification. Because these groups know he refers to all of us. He believes everyone who is one of those colors are whatever insult he's hurling at the time. All the Chinese people are to blame for Covid. All the Mexicans are racist. All the African-Americans are lazy. If you're using that line to justify, what you're actually saying is you think it's fine that he insults any racial group at all. You're saying you think he's right about those groups. And that makes me question how you actually feel about me as a Hispanic person, or my daughter as an African-American/Hispanic person. You're saying it's okay for her other parents and I to have to have that extra "talk" with her about how to deal with the police. And I cannot keep someone like that in my life and look my daughter in the eye and explain it. Keeping someone like that in my life is telling Miss N that's it's okay for people to think she deserves less than anyone else. Twenty years from now, world not ending permitting, there will be a lot to answer for. You either voted for the big ass, racist baby or you voted for someone who gives a full flying fuck about people. How you vote says so much more about you this election than in any other election in the past. Bob and Sally may have no self-esteem or backbone, or no problem having no common ground. But some of us do.

Watch How The Scum, It Rises To The Top, Don't You Wonder When It's All Going To Stop

Soooo.... Long time, no blog. Ironically enough, I started publishing less because life had finally stabilized. Then came the pandemic. And now there's enough chaos in the world to blog every damn day. Where to start? It's been...challenging living in a world that I no longer understand. A world that becomes increasingly unstable with every new infection, every political ad, every incoherent Idiot tweet. I looked back at some of my blog posts from the last Presidential election cycle and I could copy and paste most of what is in those posts and apply it to the 2020 election. Except now it would not be about what a world of hurt we could be in for if the Idiot wins. It would instead be about what a world of hurt we've brought on ourselves the past four years by electing him. Still, I don't think anyone could've predicted it would become this terrible. The corruption, the abuses of power were totally expected. The lies were a given. But a pandemic in which the so-called Commander-in-Chief proclaims it no big deal and calls himself invincible? Well, that was an unwelcome curveball.

Four years ago, I remember settling in to watch the results of the election with friends and family. We were all a bit nervous but I don't think many of us had a lot of doubt that Hilary would beat the wanna-be dictator. Early on election night, I had the worst feeling in my stomach for just a moment. It was after some random state had been called for the Idiot and somehow I just knew. I knew he was going win and there wasn't a damn thing that would be done about it. The rest of that night, and the next month, really, were just surreal. The kind of stuff you see on TV, not the kind of stuff you want to live in reality. The past four years have truly been nightmare years for America, both on home soil and for the perception of our country abroad. Once revered for the "American Dream," America is now looked at as a bunch of fucking idiots for electing the Devil himself to run the country into the ground. The horrors of this illegitimate Presidency are many; putting kids in cages, forcing hysterectomies on women, trying to take healthcare away from Americans with no plan to replace it, 215,000 lives lost and counting. The list goes on and on. And it all traces back to one coward who sold himself on, "draining the swamp" and instead has proven to be the scum on top we all knew he was. And on and on it goes, unchecked. Nothing is a surprise anymore. Not that he's broke. Not that he's owned by Russia. Not that he (allegedly) had Covid-19. Not that he's selling himself as a miracle after (allegedly) beating Covid-19. The news cycle went from his impeachment, to his taxes, to his poor debate, to his illness, to his recovery, to his irresponsible campaigning. I'd bet there will be 30 more controversies just between now and November 3rd, each one as unsurprising as the last.

Four years ago when there were rumblings about Joe Biden running for President, I said I couldn't in good conscience vote for him. Joe always struck me as a fun uncle, but maybe not someone who should be running a country. However, there's no other alternative this time around and I do believe he truly wants to fix the mess we're in now. I can't imagine working in public service all your life, serving your country in the second highest office in the land, only to watch someone with no experience, no empathy and no respect for the military come to power. I received my ballot a few days ago and was furious to see how many candidates are running for President. In such an important election, I have zero respect for anyone running who knows damn well they aren't anywhere close to winning. You're running only to divide the vote. That is handing a vote to the Idiot, regardless of what you tell yourself. We saw what happened when the circus decides to throw its hat into the ring and enter a Presidential election and we got what we deserved for voting for that clown. But here were are, a nation even more divided than we were to begin with. A division that will only grow, most likely violently, if the Idiot is re-elected. 

This time around, I'm not counting on anything when it comes to the election. Polls show Biden way ahead, and that's great news. But polls showed that for Hilary four years ago. It is the secret Idiot voters, the ones who are not as vocal about their support. It is the people of color who will secretly vote for him, despite the fact he has no problem getting them killed, be it due to police violence or a pandemic where they are among the most vulnerable groups. One thing I've learned the last four years is that you really cannot reason with Idiot supporters. They pick one issue important to them; abortion for the religious, no gun control for middle America, and they ignore anything he does that they don't agree with. Sure, he put kids in cages but that was only because he couldn't find their moms and dads. Sure, he's having rallies after having Covid, but the pandemic is a Leftist ploy anyway. Sure, he said all Mexicans were rapists, but he didn't mean you (I can't tell you how many times I've heard that last one). The very promise that one thing these people don't like might be outlawed or not outlawed completely overrides their common sense. Or maybe they didn't have common sense to begin with. It's the same with all the Republicans who vowed not to follow him, who called his election illegitimate, only to fall in line and follow their leader through all the bullshit. There are so many people who deserve a share of this blame for running the country into the ground. Power corrupts and it's done a hell of a job the last four years, both on politicians and voters. I lost my patience with Idiot voters long ago and I have zero respect for anyone voting for him. I don't care what their reasons are. He is a racist. He is on the path to dictatorship if he isn't stopped now. If you vote for a racist, you are racist, period.

I am hopeful that Biden/Harris will win this election. There is nothing I want more right now. But there's always that chance they don't and the thought of that is crippling. This pandemic continuing to go unchecked will become even more unbearable to live with. The Idiot will see a re-election as a validation that he can do whatever he wants and never have to pay for it. A Biden/Harris win will, hopefully, see his ass thrown in jail for any of the crimes he's committed. And that's the kicker. The people who worship him and continue to support him do not see that everything he does comes from fear, not leadership. He wouldn't allow his tax returns out because he was afraid he'd be exposed as the broke con man that he is. He wouldn't get ahead of Covid-19 because he didn't know how, because he is not a leader. He wouldn't stay in the hospital while sick because he didn't want to appear weak, even though that's how he's viewed by those not bathing in his Kool-Aid. He says he won't accept the results of the election if they don't favor him because he's afraid of what being out of office will mean for him (jail, etc). He's out holding rallies while diseased because it's a last ditch effort to try and win people over, he's afraid he's already lost the election. His followers call anyone who doesn't follow him sheep and leftists and fake news, but they've hitched their wagon to the fakest fuck in the history of the world. Hell, even the Nazis knew when it was time to ditch Hitler and save their own skin. This blind adulation of the Idiot is something I hope we never see again. I am hopeful this election will go the right way. But I am preparing just in case the horrors continue.