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Ukraine War Diary

The world is a tiny place of intimacy that informs a greater expanse of suffering. My new friend, Alexander Grushchansky, lives in Ukraine. Before the war he was a jeweler. Now he fires a machine gun. Alexander is also an NFT Artist who raises money with his Art to help pay for the fight against Putin’s illegal war. Alexander and I became friends through his Art, and we have subsequently stayed in communication via Discord where we have held public conversations about the war, and shared private thoughts about the real meaning of a war on a people. Here is Alexander’s story, in diary form, in his own words, processed through translation software. Embedded video was also uploaded by Alexander for publication. All of this is to set forth to tell the truth about what’s really happening in Ukraine, right here, right now.

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How to Write A Lifetime Network Murder Movie of the Week

In my work as a Script Doctor, I take dramatic stories for television, the movies, and the stage, and I make them structurally better. That sort of work isn’t formulaic, but there are common touchstones that must always be considered and then incorporated — what I remember the great Joseph Campbell loosely calling, “the natural rhythms of human storytelling shared with the reliability of a heartbeat” — and that’s what I do; I provide an unpacked redirection of the concentric condition that we are all innately accustomed to sending and receiving in a performance communication dyad, in the acknowledgement of, and in the often unwitting acceptance of, “The Holy Triad.” The Creator, The Object and The Observer.

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Advice for 2020 Democrats

Today, let’s offer some friendly advice to the Democrat nominee nation based on the results of the first debate, and inspired by things to watch for in the upcoming second debate. First, I was born in the middle of the country surrounded by waves of Republicans. I currently work on the East Coast and on the West Coast — and a lot of Democrats pay me a lot of money. I have experience flipping on both sides of this national dime, and the Democrat Party has a long way to go to defeat an anachronistic, charismatic, President who feasts on the gruel of the worst in humanity.

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Autopsy of a Viral Tweet

On December 4, 2015, my Social Media world got tossed as I innocently, but rightly, Tweeted the astonishing fact that MSNBC had doxed someone — revealing identifying information about a living person — on live television during an impromptu terror tour of a suspect’s home. The person in question was Rafia Farook — mother of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook. Rafia lived in the same townhouse as her son, his terrorist wife, Tashfeen Malik, and the couple’s six-month-old baby girl. Here’s an image of the Tweet I sent after my photographic capture of the MSNBC live feed:

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Don’t Drone Me, Dude!

“Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” will soon be out-hollered by us all in a new plea against the machine: “Don’t Drone Me, Dude!” — completely performed in the outcry of public theatricality that now passes for national security. Where once our shoes had more dangerous derring-do than the hovering skies above us — today, we are forced to realize our ordinary, everyday, overlord drones are blackening our city skies and that they are inherently more dangerous than all the guns in heaven.

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Jersey City Salutes Police Officer Melvin Santiago

Rookie Jersey City Police Office Melvin Santiago was assassinated on Sunday responding to a call at a local Walgreens.  Yesterday, over a 1,000 people lined up outside a funeral home to salute an officer who gave his life in service to a city in the hard, urban core.  Officer Santiago was 23 and — during his wake — was promoted to the rank of Detective and given the Medal of Honor in death by the Mayor of Jersey City.

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The Eggshell Generation: No Freedom for Danger Children

Life has changed for modern children.  When I was growing up in the Midwest, you sought freedom — and if it wasn’t granted with a bicycle, then you found other, more nefarious ways, to run away and play far away from your doorstep.

It isn’t that way any longer.  Today, kids are protected and driven and supervised in organized sports and cultural events.  There’s no spontaneity now because there’s fear of the unknown and danger in the creative.  No sandlot baseball.  No football games with self-set boundaries and special scoring.  Everything is regulation.  There can be no divergence from the norm.

We’re creating a society of young people who are risk-averse and too frightened to set their own agendas and follow their own, unblazed, pathway. Fun is the new mysterious stranger. “Do what you want” is the new monster under the bed.

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