Category: Reclaiming the Family

Spidey Gets It Done, Mission Accomplished

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I went with my three youngest grandsons to see the new Spiderman movie; “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”  And shockingly, I actually enjoyed it.  We got there early enough to pick out good seats and let the kids buy mass quantities of popcorn and sugary drinks.  So reinforced by these provisions we took our seats and watched the half hour of advertisements and coming attractions for all kinds of useless products and awful movies.  Now it’s been a few years since we went to this theater and in the meantime, it went out of business and been refurbished by its new owners.  And they installed luxury pleather powered recliners instead of the usual crappy movie seats of yesteryear.  So far, so good!

So, I missed the previous Spiderman installment but I was told that in it another MCU character (Doctor Strange) performed some kind of magic-adjacent activity which eliminated knowledge of Peter Parker’s existence completely from the human race including all his friends and the girl (MJ) that he loves.  Now this seems particularly stupid but that is the situation.  So, one of the plots of this movie is Parker getting up the courage to tell MJ that she has forgotten that they were once in love.  Okay, that’s an even stupider plot element but let’s give the writers some slack to try and make that work.  Then there’s a plot element where Peter is having major problems with his spider powers.  His ability to shoot webs and other skills seems to come and go.  Okay, this is more of a standard superhero plot element so full speed ahead.

And finally, some telepath is able to take control of human minds and force them to attack a shadowy government agency called the Department of Damage Control (DODC) for some unknown reason.  I won’t give away any spoilers by saying that DODC isn’t a benign organization and the telepath controlling minds isn’t completely unjustified in these actions.

Well, before the end we have a whole sequence where Bruce Banner is telepathically controlled and forced to turn into the Hulk with predictable cataclysmic results and we find out that Spiderman has a quasi-working relationship with the comic book character “The Punisher” an Italian American New Yorker whose real name is Frank Castle.  Castle is a vigilante who doesn’t have as many scruples as Spiderman when it comes to using firearms to thwart criminals.  As an Italian American native New Yorker myself, I especially relished Castle’s extremely accurate Bensonhurst accent and vocabulary.  It felt like coming home.

Well, anyway, the plot moves along in a reasonably superhero-ish manner and naturally our hero comes out the other side with some progress in his personal problems but no permanent solutions so he can be just as conflicted in the next Spiderman movie sometime in 2028.  And that is all that can ever be said for a Spiderman movie.  Also, the special effects were especially deft and fun to watch.  So, the movie was quite entertaining and the boys enjoyed it thoroughly.  Or maybe it was the snacks.

Anyway, mission accomplished.  We returned home and Camera Girl loaded down a table with spaghetti and meatballs along with some biscuits that these grandsons especially love to dunk in a meat sauce.  What more could I ask for?

18AUG2026 – This’N’That

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Tomorrow, I bring some of the grandsons to see the latest Spiderman movie.  What is this, the ten millionth Spiderman movie?  Well, the oldest grandson is boycotting the film because he’s reached Marvel saturation.  And I can’t blame him.  I feel that no matter how many multiverse iterations they manage to shoehorn into the plot, I’ve already seen before what will be flashing across the screen.  But, regardless, I can’t pass up the chance to hang out with my younger descendants in their own element.  I can buy popcorn and their carbonated sugar water of choice and be one of the kids at least one more time.  What’s better than that?

And afterward, Camera Girl has promised them their favorite meal; spaghetti and meatballs.  We will gather around the dining room table and I’ll see what they have to say about Summer 2026 which ends for them next week.  And I’ll tread carefully because mentioning school would be highly insensitive.  I remember only too well how critical it is to forego the s-word this close to Labor Day.  But I am interested in hearing what they enjoyed most this year.  But I also want to just hear what’s on their minds.  They’re growing by leaps and bounds and I almost don’t recognize the little kids they were in the teenagers that they’ve become.  So, it’s important I keep some continuity in the relations so I don’t feel too disoriented by their rapid metamorphoses.

So, I’ve sold over four hundred copies of my book.  Hmmm.  Not exactly a national best seller by any stretch of the imagination.  And in the last ninety days I sold a little more than ten thousand pages on Kindle Unlimited (KU) which equals about fifty full books.  And based on the royalty data that means a book equals about a dollar of royalties to me.  Well, all I need is nine hundred, ninety-nine thousand six hundred more sales and I’ll be a millionaire.  In your face Elon Musk!  Seriously, it apparently takes a lot more than what I did in order to market a book successfully.  It’s a little humbling but I still want to pursue finding a larger audience for the book so since the ninety-day window of Kindle Unlimited ends today, I’m going to suspend KU so that I can include “The Sniper” on the next Based Book Sale.  Getting the book in front of right-leaning sf fans seems like the right way to grow its audience.  We’ll see how that works out.  But regardless of my lack of millionaire author status. I think I’ll start the sequel after the summer.  I have had some complaints that I need to provide closure on a number of plot and character situations.  I think the biggest complaint is that Mel needs to be explored to find out how this AI came about and where she leads to in the story and in Cutter’s life.  Personally, I’m more intrigued (and befuddled) about how Connors is going to stabilize his organization after the events of the nuke attack on his underground facilities.  I think I’m going to devote considerable thought to how he decides to influence the future shape of social/commercial/political life in the radically altered American landscape.

Well, that’s enough.  Enjoy Tuesday.

Blow-Up Godzilla and Highway Mayhem

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The Third of July was a busy day.  We had to get the pool vacuumed before guests arrived and then there were chores around the yard.  And then we had a good summer cookout with burgers and potato salad, corn on the cob, sausage and peppers and watermelon.  No wonder losing weight is such a slog!

And it was a good visit with reminiscences about summers up in Maine when my kids were young and other trips.  And I had an interesting conversation with Princess Sack of Potatoes.  She said something about how useful mothers were.  So, I mentioned to her what fathers were useful for.  I asked her if she ever got tired while out somewhere and her father carried her around like a sack of potatoes?  Or what exactly would happen if the car got a flat tire far away from a tow truck?  Or if suddenly traffic stopped on a crowded highway in the middle of summer and after an hour someone would have to get out and walk up the road to see how long the stoppage would be.  And this caused a yelp from Princess Sack of Potatoes’ mother.  She remembered that day very well after all these years.  And she was still upset by it, remembering how certain she had been that I would never come back alive.  We all got a big laugh out of that.

This was shortly after I had moved out of New York City but I was driving into Manhattan to attend a wedding in SoHo.  It was a science fiction themed wedding with a blow-up Godzilla in attendance.  We were on the FDR Drive when the traffic screeched to a halt and nothing happened for about forty minutes.  So, since it was very hot that day and my car’s air conditioning was non-existent, I shut off the engine and started walking between lanes of traffic to see what was going on.  And about a half mile up the road there were police, fire and emergency vehicles blocking the road in both directions.  And along with several crashed cars there was a very fancy sports car that was upside down and wrapped around a light pole and some other parts of the highway infrastructure.  The firemen were cutting away what was left of the frame to get at what was left of the driver.  It looked pretty grim.

The good news for us was that our direction on the highway would be released as soon as the ambulances got their patients stowed away and headed to the hospital.   The other side looked like it would be stuck for hours.  So, after satisfying my morbid curiosity for a few minutes I headed back to my car with the news that we would be moving in less than another half hour.  And my youngest daughter looked so relieved when I managed to return before the traffic had started to move.  She was convinced that if I hadn’t gotten back before it started to move then of necessity I would be squashed like a bug in a cartoon.

It’s funny, up until today I hadn’t thought of that day in thirty-some-odd years.  Funny what stuff just pops into your head.

To the Marriage of True Minds

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So, I was at one of those parties today and I met a bunch of nice folks and spent time with some old friends too.  And one of my friends was telling a story about a relative of his who had a job that involved a lot of international travel including Europe where he met his future wife.  And because of his desire to build up some equity in a home he bought a house in a town where he did not necessarily want to eventually settle down when he returned permanently to the US.

So, when he and his new wife took up residence in this home, he had his eyes open for his dream house which would include a huge garage that would accommodate his hobby of rebuilding classic old cars.  And one day he found it.  It had everything he wanted and was in the part of town he liked best.  So, he informed his wife of his find and that they should get ready to sell their house and move to the new location.  What he didn’t realize was that since moving back his wife had put down roots in the neighborhood and made friends and after moving to a new continent she would be devastated if she had to pull up roots again and start from scratch.

So, he stayed and had to forego the dream garage.  And my friend finished by saying that he had always been extremely shocked that his relative hadn’t insisted that they move in order to get the garage he really wanted.  So, I said to him, “But aren’t they still happily married?”  And he said “Yeah.”  “Well,” I said, “what’s harder to find, a good wife or a good garage?  And what are the chances of finding a second wife as good as the first?”  He chuckled and said, “I see your point.”

Now mostly this is just an amusing story.  The whole reason that his relative didn’t demand a move is that in any halfway decent marriage there is always a whole continuum of tradeoffs and negotiations that go on between a husband and wife.  We all have our “garage” that we want badly and also a laundry list of things that come ahead of it in the calculus of family life.  The kids’ braces come before that man cave you lust after.  A minivan has to be financed before the fishing boat you’ve always wanted.  Sometimes by the time it’s your turn to buy your heart’s desire, your heart no longer desires it.  Or you’re too old to put it to good use.

But managing to raise a family in today’s society and still being married to someone you like at the end is something of an accomplishment and I guess that was what I was trying to say.  It’s a trite saying, “Happy wife, happy life.”  But if you’ve had a happy marriage, it rings true.  Now before I get too sappy, I’ll append the classic answer that Art (Deputy Marshal in “Justified”) gave to the criminal when asked if he loved his wife, “Well, most of the time!”  But even that limitation admits to the fact that (mostly) happily married men recognize that even if a marriage is fraught with feminine annoyances the alternative is much sadder and lonelier.

Wheelbarrows and Ogres

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We had Princess Sack of Potatoes over today.  She’s finishing off her Spring vacation from school.  And we haven’t had much of her time in a while.  Sure, she was here for Easter but her cousins were also here so I didn’t get much chance to spend time.  But today we had fun.  I’m installing a 270-gallon pond liner for Camera Girl, so I’m digging a big hole in the ground and working with a shovel, rake, pitch fork and a wheelbarrow so it’s like incredibly exciting for a little kid.  She wants to help and I have to find something that isn’t dangerous or too hard for a little girl but seems useful to her.  So, I told her to rescue earthworms from the pile of grass turf that I stacked up.  Perfect!  She can get her hands covered with dirt and give Camera Girl some worms for her hideous African Clawed Frog and I’m free to move some rocks and dirt.  After about an hour she had enough and went inside to bake chocolate chip cookies with Camera Girl and I continued on until lunchtime when I finished for the day and took a shower.  So, after lunch she wanted to watch the “Minions” movie which I’ve had enough of.  So, we went our separate ways.  But after that she wanted more movie time so Camera Girl suggested “The Princess Bride.”  The little girl agreed to watch it and I decided to join her to see how she reacted to this time capsule of a movie.

And it was pretty funny how her initial reaction to the movie resembled the behavior of the “grandson” played by Fred Savage when his grandfather (Peter Falk) began narrating the story.  Both the real and fictitious grandchildren were annoyed by the story beginning with a love story introduction.  And her reaction also resembled the child character whenever it seemed that the “heroes” of the story were losing to the bad guys.  There was a sense of outrage and the desire to quit the story.  It was only with great persuasion that I convinced her to hang in there after Wesley had been killed by “the Machine.”  And so, I was immensely pleased when by the end of the movie she was very satisfied with the happily ever after ending.

And after the movie I discussed her opinions about the film and she declared that her favorite character was the “Ogre.”  I corrected her by saying that Fezzik wasn’t an ogre but a giant.  And that André the Giant who played the part was a professional wrestler.  She was very interested in how he did some of the stunts.  I explained to her that the “holocaust cloak” wasn’t real and he was never on fire.  And I said he didn’t really have to climb “The Cliffs of Insanity.”  And the reason she liked him best was because he seemed very jolly.

After that she joined her grandmother in several very competitive games of checkers and then it was time for her to go home with her mom.  After she left, I inspected several of the historical photos of the Princess festooning our refrigerator and looking at a noticeably younger me and a tiny little girl in one picture reminded me very powerfully that the clock is ticking at an alarming rate.  But it was a good day to be a grandfather.

Are We Up to the Challenge

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With all the strange things going on in our world it’s pretty easy to throw your hands up and say that there’s no hope for things to get better.  You hear about the decline in education and the challenge for young people to find jobs when corporations are using artificial intelligence (AI) to replace most of the work that entry level employees used to do.  And that doesn’t even include all the other madness that’s engulfed our society lately.  I mean, the litany of dystopian phenomena is staggering so I won’t just list them again.  Should we just give up?

No, we must do the opposite.  We must return to basics and approach life by concentrating on the essential aspects of life and avoid as much as possible the “noise.”  So, if all you hear about is kids degenerating into uneducated, psychologically unbalanced basket cases who lay around all day immersed in their cyber-world, then the thing to do is get involved in helping the kids discover what’s “real” in the world.  Teach them real skills; how to work with tools, how to maintain their cars, how to repair things around the house, how to prepare for a job interview, how to talk to a girl in real life.  Stuff like that.

There is no doubt that forces are at work that threaten the stability of our society.  DEI and other identity obsessed programs have done terrible damage to the work place but bewailing this situation isn’t an adequate response.  Young people have to be informed that “giving up” on life is not an option.  Every avenue for advancement must be explored in this most prosperous country in the world.  If only women and foreigners are allowed to be doctors and engineers then become car mechanics or carpenters or buy a small business and build it up yourself.  But whatever it takes young men have to show initiative and the willingness to struggle to survive.  Blaming “boomers” or global warming are just excuses and more needs to be done.  And the way to show the young that there’s hope is by encouraging them and helping them with their struggles.  Share whatever skills or expertise you have and help them discover how to persevere in a challenging environment.

I remember a movie where one of the main characters had a mantra, “Struggle and survive.”  Well, that’s very good advice for our present day.  Giving up seems to be what everyone says is the way forward.  The answer to AI is a universal basic income (UBI) where the government pays you just for breathing and no work is required.  Of course it will have to be the most marginal of existences.  You’ll probably have to live in a closet and eat whatever crap they want to feed you.  But the fact that this is being pushed by the Left shows that it’s a sign that they just want you to lay down and die.  And that is exactly the philosophy (nihilism) that we must eliminate from the young it is basically a death cult and it has infected our society.  And each of us involved in keeping our families alive will have to fight it.

Pass the Paschal Lamb

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Well, Easter has arrived and Camera Girl is killing the fatted calf (well, she’s serving beef anyway).  She’s going all out and in addition to the roast beast there will be lamb and a pasta course with the requisite meatballs and sausage, and various other paschal delicacies like stuffed mushrooms, rice balls and so forth.  So that means we’ll be stuffed to the gills by the time dessert is served.  She’s serving four different homemade cakes and various ice cream flavors along with Klondike Bars which are an especial favorite of several individuals (including me!).

All of this food will incapacitate some of the attendees (including me!).  Probably the girls will avoid the worst ravages as they are more moderate in their grazing and sluicing habits.  Whereas all three generations of men will be fighting over possession of the recliners in the living room to better accommodate their bulging stomachs and comatose brains.  I don’t assume there will be any great demand for movies from this tranquilized crowd but just in case I’m trying to decide what classic cinema I should have queued up for their viewing pleasure.  I think when I was a kid the choices were “The Ten Commandments,” “Ben Hur” or “The Wizard of Oz.”  Now “Ben Hur” is easily lined up with Easter.  “The Ten Commandments” also is linked since the Last Supper occurred on Passover and the movie chronicles the occasion of the first Passover.

But exactly what is the link between Easter and “The Wizard of Oz?”  I guess back in the 1960s the television networks must have had to pay top dollar to air that children’s favorite and they must have thought it would seem even more special if it happened when families gathered for a holiday.  I guess I can continue the tradition this year.  Well, unless the kids stage an insurrection and demand some vapid modern show.

Of course I could go another direction altogether.  A double feature of mid-century science fiction (let’s say “Them!” and “The Thing from Another World”) or W. C. Fields’ “It’s a Gift” and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  Both of these options would provide entertainment that greatly exceeds what would typically be found on the cable channels today.

But maybe what we should do instead is even more revolutionary.  Maybe we should sit around and talk.  After all, how often does the family all get together in one place and find out how we’re all doing?  There’s a lot going on in the family.  Businesses are being started, students are entering the work force.  There’s even a romance that will be represented at the table I believe.  That’s a lot to discuss.  Maybe that’s what we should do.  After all, pretty soon those finishing school will start dispersing far and wide and since I’m getting up there who knows how many more times, we’ll meet face to face.  So, I should take the opportunity to spend some time talking to them while I can.  I think that’s what I’ll do.  Let’s see how that works out.

The American Path

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I was thinking about some of the comments on yesterday’s post “Persistence of Memory.”  It was about detachment, “… it’s the consequence of the rootless existence that has evolved to be the American path.”

And I replied, “You are correct about the path. We’ve atomized our existence. We’ve monetized our lives to such an extent that we almost don’t exist except as consumers. We’re just cogs in the machine. It’s inhuman.”  And that stuck in my mind.

And today I got a call from a friend whom I knew from high school.  He lives in Hawaii and only comes home to Brooklyn once a year at Christmas.  And we talked about meeting up next Christmas.  Now I haven’t seen him in thirty years.  I wonder if he would even recognize me.  And we’ve managed to speak on the phone every Christmas but we haven’t interacted other than that.  Well, I sent him a copy of my book and he called me up today and it was like a time machine.  He was laughing and saying how he always thought one day I’d write a science fiction story.  He was very complimentary and said he really liked the story and of course that was very gratifying.  But in the back of my mind, I was thinking what a strange world we live in.  Here was one of my best friends in the world and I hadn’t seen him for almost half a lifetime.

And so that conversation reinforced the statement, “… it’s the consequence of the rootless existence that has evolved to be the American path.”  Our way of life is somewhat related to the nomadic existence of herders.  They move to follow the grazing grounds of their herds.  There is no one home.  But our way is even worse.  Because the herders live in tribes or at least extended families that move together from place to place.  But we separate into at most nuclear families and often just single individuals, moving from job to job and city to city without anyone permanently included in their “tribe.”

I’m pretty sure that none of this is sustainable.  And maybe that’s why corporate America is backing a policy of wholesale immigration to provide a steady supply of new workers that Americans are no longer providing from their own descendants.  After all, how do you produce a family when all you are is a nomad living from job to job without a family to prop you up and give you help when things get tough or you need the resources to get married or buy a house or pay for expenses associated with children?

And this gave me an idea for my next book after “The Sniper.”  It should have to do with the smartest and richest guy in the world trying to fix “the American path.”  If someone powerful enough wanted to restore our country to viability, what would he think to do?  Maybe he’d redefine the partnership between communities and corporations.  Would it be a feudal system or a socialism?  Or neither.  I haven’t figured out what my “utopia” will be based on.  Maybe I’ll wave “artificial intelligence” around as my deus ex machina.  But I do want to think about it a little.  How do you go about fixing the world?

Cultural Pep Talk

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So, what’s the deal?  Are we reaching the end of the American Century and should we abandon all hope, we who enter?  Or is there any other way to approach the situation we are in?  Well, I would be accused of being a hopeless optimist if I didn’t admit that western civilization has fallen off a cliff at this point.  Looking around and seeing what passes for leadership and competency it’s impossible not to see a step change down from what existed a generation before.  Even the crooks are a couple of standard deviations below the level that used to operate in the last century.  Everything is diminished.  It’s undeniable.

Where do we go from here?

A few years ago, I read a book by a culture critic named Rod Dreher called “The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.”  Now Dreher is a man of the right but he has had lots of fights with many other folks on his “side of the aisle.”  If I remember correctly, he’s not very fond of Donald Trump.  Oh, well.  But there was much in his book that I found interesting and helpful.  He talked about how our era had commonalities with 5th century A.D. Europe during the fall of the Roman Empire.  The Benedict in the title refers to Saint Benedict who at that time founded the Benedictine monastic order that began the slow painful process of restoring civilization to the human wreckage that existed after civil authority broke down after the barbarian hordes knocked over the Roman government.  Dreher’s point was that we no longer live in a society united under a common culture or religion.  But that doesn’t prevent us from forming our own communities to preserve the things we value and pass them on to our descendants.

And he’s absolutely correct.  Now admittedly, the left is doing everything it can to infect all areas of civil life with their Anti-American, Anti-European, Anti-Christian, Anti-western-civilization, anti-white propaganda and agenda.  But giving up because it’s difficult is the very definition of weakness.  If the things we want to see endure are worth saving then they are certainly worth fighting for.

So, I see this as the alternative to despair.  Look at the current state of affairs as a test of fitness for people and ideas.  If you’re not willing to fight for the things you value then maybe you don’t actually value them that much at all.  It certainly is a shame that the elites in this country valued the monetary advantages they could gain from globalism over the patriotic loyalty they owed to their fellow citizens and drowned our culture in third world “diversity.”  But just giving up is weak and defeatist and now that the globalists have been exposed it’s incumbent on us to support all individuals and organizations that work toward preserving the best parts of our traditional culture and do everything we can to reconstitute that culture and allow it to flourish again in this country.  Start rebuilding.

My Own Take on Super Sunday

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I had to postpone my trip to see “Iron Lung” with my grandson.  We got another six inches of snow between yesterday and today and had to spend the day clearing it.  And I really think the meteorological profession is retrogressing.  A couple of days ago they said we would get a “dusting.”  Some dusting!  And unfortunately for me the wind was wild.  I ended up with an ice beard and a frozen face.  But it’s done and tomorrow morning we’ll see what cosmic horror lurks at the bottom of an ocean of human blood!  I’ve read a bunch of reviews and what I’ve gleaned is that this is an homage to the video game of the same name and anyone who isn’t a fan of the game will find it a bit long (maybe quite a bit too long).  But that’s okay.  It will give me a chance to hang out with my grandson afterward and find out what he especially liked about it.

Basically, this movie is sort of the “Star Wars” of his generation.  Because it’s for them.  It’s a nerdy touchstone that they bond over.  So, I want to show deference to their choice of insider totem.  I want to get a sense of what they enjoy.  Should be interesting.

Going through the news is becoming goofier every day.  Apparently, Trump called the Obamas monkeys in some kind of video meme.  I think CBS was angry that Trump hadn’t apologized.  Well, calling Obama a monkey is kind of insensitive to monkeys.  As far as I know monkeys treat all humans equally.  Whereas the Obamas are anti-white racists, which I consider much worse than monkeys.  They’re awful human beings.  I hope Trump apologizes to monkeys for comparing them to the Obamas.

There was another article stating that Starlink has been shut off in Ukraine and now the Russians can’t control their drones.  The article made it sound like the Russians were cut off because they didn’t have legitimate accounts with Starlink.  So, does that mean that Putin was doing what most people’s young adult children do when they use their parents’ Netflix and Disney Plus accounts?  The idea that this war in which hundreds of thousands of men have been killed is being run on pirated GPS usage just seems a bridge too far.  Is this really what’s going on?  What’s next?  Will we find out that ChatGPT has been drafted by Putin and is running the battlefield strategy?

And of course, tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday.  I guess it must be at least seven years since I’ve watched a Super Bowl.  And honestly, I can’t imagine why I’ll ever bother watching it again.  And that goes for all of professional sports.  All the virtue signaling over race and homosexual identity have made all of it nauseating and I’d rather watch a test pattern than endure their nonsense.  I did see that Anheuser-Bush has put together some commercial for the Super Bowl that involves a Clydesdale horse befriending a bald eagle.  Well, the only thing I could think of was, “Which one is a stand-in for Dylan Mulvaney?”  I don’t think horses and eagles are going to get Bud Light their customer base back.  Enjoy your Sunday.