farewell 2020
the year where someone scratched
the tone arm hard across the favorite record
with a rrrrrrrrrrrppppp sound
and everything changed
>
farewell 2020
the year where the Republican adage
government is best that governs least
proved to be a deadly lie
leave it to the states made everything worse
>
may 2021
be the year where we don’t read these words:
we don’t have 60 votes
full vaccinated immunity not until 2022
no federal charges filed against Donald Trump
What I liked a lot so far this year:
DA 5 BLOODS
RED, WHITE AND BLUE
KINGDOM OF SILENCE
THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7
SHIRLEY
MISS JUNETEENTH
BABYTEETH
TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL
NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS
FARGO SEASON 4
MRS. AMERICA
MEMORIES OF MURDER (Reissue)
Honorable Mention:
SOUND OF METAL
THE INVISIBLE MAN
THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND
POSSESSOR
BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM
LET HIM GO
SOUL
EDUCATION
THE SECRET GARDEN (2020)
THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY
BABY GOD
A TEACHER
Overhyped:
AMMONITE
THE VAST OF NIGHT
TOMMASO
BACURAU
THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW
THE NEST
In no specific order:
Paul McCartney—McCARTNEY III/FLAMING PIE reissue
Yusuf/Cat Stevens: TEA FOR THE TILLERMAN (2020 Re-recording)
Elton John: JEWEL BOX
David Bowie: CHANGESNOWBOWIE /METROBOLIST (2020 Mix)
The Killers: IMPLODING THE MIRAGE
Elvis Costello: HEY CLOCKFACE/ARMED FORCES Boxset
THIS IS TONY ALLEN Spotify Playlist
Richard Thompson: BLOODY NOSES EP
Martha Davis: I HAVE MY STANDARDS
Mickey Guyton: “O Holy Night” (Amazon)
Johnny Cash: THE COMPLETE MERCURY ALBUMS 1986-1991 Boxset
Sparks: A STEADY DRIP, DRIP, DRIP
Bob Dylan: “Murder Most Foul”/“I Contain Multitudes
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: LETTER TO YOU
Various Artists: ANGEL-HEADED HIPSTER: THE SONGS OF MARC BOLAN & T-REX
cannot cancel weddings
will not close restaurants
must reopen strip clubs
fear makes people dance to death
wearing economic panic like an Elizabethan Collar
as Steven and Mitch slice a pittance of personal stimulus in half
>
watch glossy old fashioned Christmas on Hallmark
stay home, wait for your vaccination turn
think of loved ones for the rest of the year
instead of joining the covidiots determined to
stay on the ocean liner, denying it is sinking
Inspired by Neil Young’s 1974 farewell to Richard Nixon:
Goodbye Bill Barr
You tried to be Trump’s Roy Cohn
And now you’re gone gone gone
Outside near the White House lawn
Telling Texas Governor Greg Abbott
I’m all through debasing our nation
Wear your mask and ask for an early vaccination
What I liked a lot so far this year:
DA 5 BLOODS
RED, WHITE AND BLUE
KINGDOM OF SILENCE
THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7
SHIRLEY
MISS JUNETEENTH
BABYTEETH
TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL
NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS
FARGO SEASON 4
MRS. AMERICA
MEMORIES OF MURDER (Reissue)
Honorable Mention:
THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND
POSSESSOR
BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM
LET HIM GO
MANK
THE SECRET GARDEN (2020)
THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY
BABY GOD
Overhyped:
AMMONITE
THE VAST OF NIGHT
TOMMASO
BACURAU
THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW
THE NEST
get on board
get on board
there’s nothing you have to answer for
such a shame it ended in Year Four
get on board
get on board
you did what you had to do
use it to raise money for term two
get on board
get on board
count on short public memory
rewrite your legacy as autobiography
get on board
get on board
After days of advance notice, here’s Los Angeles County trying to balance controlling the increased spread of Coronavirus and continuing hospitalizations plus deaths with the no doubt forcefully stated reluctance to return to springtime closures from various businesses. Essentially, much of this requires people to be on the honor system between November 30th and December 20th. Given what looks to be a post-Thanksgiving uptick in infections and deaths plus Trump/Fox News-turbocharged encouragement of recklessness in the cloak of observing traditions, Los Angeles County is in for a rough three weeks.
[Quoted from DEADLINE article]
Here are details about the stricter limits on L.A. County residents that will begin Monday as a result of a fifth consecutive day of 4,500 or more new cases of Covid-19:
1. The More I Ignore You
2. Rudy, Don’t Fail (Remix)
3. Losing Made Me Grey
4. I’m A Wrecking Machine
5. Drill Baby Drill (duet with Sarah Palin)
6. Scott Atlas Shrugged
7. My Fans Don’t Want A Concession Speech
8. You’re Fired!
9. I Pardon Myself
first it was the NBA championship then it was the World Series and there was also Halloween and don’t forget Trump scaring some of America including his MAGA followers into standing in long lines to vote and soon it will be Thanksgiving and how can some people bear to be apart from family members and later Christmas will come and how can some people bear to be apart yet again from family members and it’s just family members in the house and they’ll say they don’t need masks because they know everyone there and they don’t know anyone who has the virus and someone will mention the Governor too scared of temporary lockdowns and how he bent the rules he wanted others to obey and observe and someone else will say it’s God’s Will if they catch the virus and too many people will sit together, eat and talk for far too long and roll the dice with their own lives and whoever they come into contact with that isn’t family
my home town still has high school football games in the midst of the virus and from what I hear people aren’t wearing masks and it’s a small town in what they call Texoma which is where Texas and Oklahoma are separated by the Red River and maybe they justify no masks by not living in a city and choosing to live their lives and roll the dice and God’s will and all things related to that, though some of them go to the mall in the nearest city to shop and roll more dice on their and other people’s health since the small town has very few businesses to speak of
someone posted a meme on Facebook where Lady and The Tramp are glum and sad because their Italian restaurant has plexiglass dividers and Lady and The Tramp are both covered by plexiglass domes and they can’t share a strand of spaghetti and I think to myself THIS ISN’T FUNNY
we get COVID-19 fatigue which is another way to say we lack faith in a better future and aren’t willing and able to be considerate to ourselves and others until that future arrives
as I wrote once before, people made it through World War II with the rationing of food and gasoline and no new cars to buy and that lasted for over three and a half years
in 2020, we yell, we throw masks on the ground in parking lots and pack way too many people inside a house just because it’s easier to stick your tongue out at notions of sacrifice, survival, science and a kinder, more considerate world
he will yell his head off
but we don’t have to be scared anymore
he can challenge the results he doesn’t like
but we voted in such large numbers
he can’t undo the will of the American people
>
a rose breaks through concrete
a nation recovers from submersion
it’s Desperation Time
what’s a few more potential infections
it’s raining
maybe the raindrops will dilute covid droplets
I’m the good soldier
doesn’t matter about my sick staff
don’t want to cancel and go home
won’t make nice with The Lincoln Project
just want to be a stoic kinder gentler bigot
hold on to the MAGAs I secretly deplore
when I run for the top spot in 24.
getting too used to rebellion against common science
battle whine of I won’t live this way
getting too used to not caring about others suffering
no tears shed for the dying with only health care workers
being the ones to see them off prematurely
>
you’ll go ahead and invite your friends over
for a mask free living room jamboree
and snicker at the roommate who shelters in a motel
so he won’t risk missing work and losing pay
>
the long cold winter is coming
the end of this poem can only be written by you
(Inspired by Warren Zevon’s song Detox Mansion)
Well I’ve gone to Carson City
Sun is shining, crowd is pretty
Spreading virus like Johnny Appleseed
Giving suckers what I think they need
Playing Creedence’s Fortunate Son as warmup
Want the crowd to resent the Deep State
Wishing John Fogerty would STFU
About how I use his song to foment hate
Well it’s tough to be somebody
And the polls say I’m falling apart
In front of the mountainous backdrop
I refuse to learn lessons by heart
Well I’m done with Carson City
Closed my speech dancing to YMCA
Time to return to Air Force One
Rich and poor showed me love and cash today
Via Twitter:
OK, so from my interviews with a ton of epidemiologists over the last bunch of months, here's a pretty straightforward plan to suppress the virus and get the US to something like, say, 90% of normal life. Three steps!
1) Mask Up: Short of a national order (which strikes me as tough, enforcement-wise) getting all governors to issue state-wide mask orders would be enormously helpful. Messaging is vital. CDC data shows how important AZ's order was in suppressing its summer outbreak.
2) Bar Rescue: Have the federal government pay every last bar, restaurant, nightclub, theatre and concert venue to stay closed for the next nine months. You'd remove *enormous* pressure to reopen things that aren't safe, and it probably pays for itself.
3) National Test, Trace and Surveillance: This is the most complicated to [set] up, but one way to think of the goal is: what if every place people had to congregate was like the NBA bubble? A number of universities have used this approach and it's...worked!
And that's it! Those three things: masks, pay high-risk businesses to stay closed, massively ramp up testing. We could avoid tens of thousands of deaths and have something much closer to our normal lives.
It's not easy, but it's also not rocket science. It's doable and our federal government is actively choosing to not do it. And not just to not do it, to actually embrace the opposite approach, to promote actions and policies that mean *more* people contract the virus.
All of this impotent wishcasting at this point. Obviously, it's not gonna happen because Donald Trump is president and the Republican Party supports him and controls the senate and they very much do not care how many people die. They just don't.
200,000
Two Hundred Thousand
How many of these people
Would still be alive today
If this wasn’t an election year
If national plans preserving public health
Had been regarded as something
Worthwhile instead of violating
Republican orthodoxy about
Big Government, State’s Rights,
And Free, Unfettered Markets
>
You probably have relatives
Who still believe the Trump Lie
That his woeful response was better
Than doing nothing and maybe causing
An apocryphal figure of Two Million deaths
Thanks to their belief in the infallibility
Of The Donald, you’ll probably spend
Virtual holidays on phone, Zoom or FaceTime
Unless you give in and say you don’t know
Anyone who actually has Coronavirus
And you sit closely alongside family
Passing the Russian roulette pistol around
Between servings of turkey, stuffing and cranberries
Working on raising the casualty numbers to
Two Hundred Seventy Five Thousand
Or perhaps an even 300K
keep your mind turned off
relax and breathe maskless air
it’s the burning season followed
by the less cold than usual season
don’t believe those educated pessimists
don’t worry about within and without
just help us keep punching others for you
so you won’t have to think about
how much we take away
and how often we laugh behind your back
remember, loser and sucker,
you’re voting for the color of our dreams
be mindful of your aging friends/as they repeat all the things their parents and grandparents once said/know when to leave the room permanently when they won’t change/talking about lies and Trump and people who are smug because they know more than they do and global warming being a hoax and Black Antifa building public housing next door and again Trump and Joe Biden being the demon from THE OMEN shape-shifted into an old man and Trump again again as the straight-talking savior who kicks liberals to the ground makes them cry then tears out their balls in a way Ted Cruz would approve of
as you leave the room permanently/remind the people who are no longer your friends/how Ted Cruz had to lose his balls to support Trump in 2016/and that they are racists urinating toxins into the American bloodstream/and these toxins kill as deadly as COVID
don’t smell their smoke anymore/leave the damn room and drive and keep driving
hello Kenosha Wisconsin
stop assuming everyone Black is an armed criminal
tell the teen and adult vigilantes to go home or be arrested
remove the handcuffs and the leg irons from the severely wounded
and, above all, tell Donald Trump the following:
yes, you’re the President, but you don’t denounce the violence
of your followers and your presence here is unnecessary
and potentially inflammatory
thank you for reading this and giving it some thought
a concerned American who votes
Now available on Scribd in document form: https://www.scribd.com/document/472173443/Rites-of-the-Covid-19-Spring
but heeees my freeeeeennndddd say the female comics
it is hard out there if you want to be funny
bomb away on the open mics
eventually get paid a little bit
others get jealous
say you’re not all that good
the resentment you suck up
gets spit out in your standup set
those pain in the ass kids and women
who want you to pull focus from career career career
eventually you’re around long enough
people think you’re commenting on bile
when you’re just regurgitating it
here, female colleague, watch me wank
look at this as comedy fraternity hazing
damn this #MeToo stuff
made you shelve your movie
costs one million dollars in lost TV
you’ll do new act attacking correctness
drop in unannounced
keep the press from spoiling the set
wait long enough, someone will write
you’re aware of what you’ve done to be diminished
when you still think you’ve been screwed
by pious people who don’t understand
comedy is letting your demons wank
onto the audience in the same way
you once wanked on people who,
if they stood up to you,
would see their careers go into the tank
but heeeees my frieeeennnnnddd
says the male comic who used some of his
standup special time to middle-finger your accusers
comedy, as practiced by some, is not pretty
it’s the fastball whizzing past your head
it’s the punch smashing your testicles
it’s the emcee saying you’re going to get fucked with
it’s the joke that, too many times, leaves a stain
that can never come out, no matter how much you scrub
The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.Instead, we must go forward as one America, one nation working together to meet the challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are not opposing virtues; we must have both.
I believe our new, smaller government must work in an old-fashioned American way, together with all of our citizens through state and local governments, in the workplace, in religious, charitable and civic associations.
