____________________________________________________________________ Back when I was a youth (yes, it was before TV, Taco Bell, and Twitter) when milk was delivered to our house by an actual milkman, we used to get our entertainment (and get out of our parent's hair) from the movie theatres. We'd walk over to the Ramona Theater on Gratiot and McNichols (6 Mile to natives of "The Strait") and catch the Saturday matinee, usually featuring a western where the good guys wore white hats (and were white), a serial where Commander Cody saved the world from creepy denizens of another country, and in between...

_____________________________________________________________________ FIN de SIECLE Two Thousand Eighteen was a year filled with both joy and sorrow; buoyed by success yet scarred by tragedy; suffused with hope but plagued by pessimism; our Future obfuscated by humanity's obsession with personal gain often at the potential risk of species Omnicide.  We have become the personification of an Ouroboros...obsessed with the Past, its lessons ignored, trapped by our own hubris in a repetitive cycle of self-annihilation.

____________________________________________________________________ Sunset is an angel weeping Holding out a bloody sword No matter how I squint I cannot Make out what it's pointing toward Sometimes you feel like you live too long Days drip slowly on the page You catch yourself Pacing the cage. --- Bruce Cockburn

Remembrance For Patrick Hickey I first met Patrick when we were both students at UCLA in the mid 1970's. At the time I was employed at the Film School as a graduate assistant, teaching a class in beginning filmmaking techniques called "Project One" in which undergrads learned how to make a film project utilizing Super 8 cameras and editing equipment while at the same time working on one of my own Earth-shattering "masterpieces" which would usually keep me occupied into the wee hours of the morning.

_____________________________________________________________________ Pins and Needles. When was the last time you got picked on for doing something you either didn’t do, or failed to do, or forgot to do, or did the opposite of doing, or actually did do but in your own mind felt justified in doing? Yeah, I know. This is a classic example of a martyr complex or guilt by dissociation; a self-imposed behavioral conditioning programmed by our socialization process that puts our ego at the center of our own universe vis a vis that of the “greater good”.