So It Goes

(I wrote this a few weeks ago but never published it. I don't know why.)

Kurt Vonnegut, great American author, playwright, poet, died a couple of days ago at the age of 84. (click the title of this posting to read his obituary) Some people may remember him from the 1986 film, "Back to School." He played himself. But he was really a novelist who never stopped being cool. "So it goes", as he said in "Slaughterhouse-Five."

He lived somewhere near my office in Manhattan and I used to see this shaggy, disheveled figure ambling around, sometimes sitting on a bench right in front of my building. He wrote some amazing, thought-provoking lines while not far away, I write lines that sell toilet brushes to consumers. So it goes.

No fan of our current moron-in chief, he once said, "the only difference between [George W.] Bush and [Adolf] Hitler is that Hitler was elected."

His last book came in 2005 was called "A Man Without A Country". It ended with a very pithy poem called "Requiem":

The crucified planet Earth,
should it find a voice
and a sense of irony,
might now well say
of our abuse of it,
"Forgive them, Father,
They know not what they do."

The irony would be
that we know what
we are doing.

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.

So it goes. Rest in peace, Mr. Vonnegut.

The 11th Plague

If Jews truly control Hollywood the way many morons would have you believe, then Gentiles control network programming. I've never been a programmer, nor have a met one, but it doesn't seem like a really hard job. I'll bet people say that about my job too. But I digress.

When I was a kid, the annual event that is Passover brought many traditions. One of them was the ABC presentation of the 1956 classic "The Ten Commandments". A biblical spectacular that retells the story of the Hebrew slaves and their exodus from Egyptian tyranny and ultimately leading to the holiday of Passover. While many religions and denominations may lay claim to the Bible, the story told in "The Ten Commandments" is exclusively Jewish. Except for the commandments part.

Over the past few years, it's been harder to find this movie on TV. ABC doesn't even run it every year anymore. But when they do, the choice of night is questionable. Like in 2007. Passover began on the night of April 3rd. It was a Monday. I could see a programmer not wanting to broadcast a 5 hour movie on a weeknight, especially a weeknight when many Jews wouldn't be watching. So how about the 2nd? Yeah, that would have been good. But instead, ABC ran it on April 7th: the Saturday before Easter. In fact, ABC has tied the broadcast event to Easter several times in the past. Yes, it's still Passover but that's not why it's on. Passover doesn't always coincide with Easter and when it doesn't, "The Ten Commandments" will be on TV on or around Easter.

Here's what you'll never see: "A Christmas Carol" in November. "The Passion of The Christ" on Yom Kippur. Some movies belong at certain times. A movie about a major Jewish holiday? A movie about something that happened years before there were Christians? Passover. There are 8 nights. Choose the Saturday or Sunday closest to the start of the holiday which it represents.

One thing I really love is the way this epic movie is summarized. All of your various programming guides need to sum up the plot of this thing in one or two lines. Tivo took a shot at it: "Moses leads an exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land, complete with parting of the Red Sea."

Goyim...

Oh, and then there's this.