Rednecks Cryin’ In The Rain

“Trump is like a dying ember

And when just memories remain,
We’ll remember through the ages
Rednecks cryin’ in the rain.”

It was inevitable, of course.  The Universe (aka “Jim”) always strikes back.   And when a madman pushes his luck to the middle of the table, Whoomp! There it is, a downpour of biblical proportions rains frogs on his parade.  You might tug on Superman’s cape, spit in the wind or even try to pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, but you don’t mess around with Jim.

The madman is having a bad spell.  Amused by moving his toy soldiers into puny Venezuela to steal its oil, he thought he’d double his pleasure, double his fun by bombing miserable Iran to kingdom come.  Alas, a funny thing happened on the way to the surrender ceremony---as with the Hydra, when you cut off the head of the serpent, two heads grow back.  The new government of Iran said, Go fish.  “Stick and stones may break our bones but see what happens when we close the Straight of Hormuz, Cracker!”

Oopsy!  Now what.  Okay, war’s over, we were just funnin’ you!  Had you goin’ there for a minute, right?  We’ll just bring all our ships and planes home now and everything will go back to normal.  What?  Oh, you’re going to get petulant on me now?  Bad Sport!  Some people just can’t take a joke.  Hello, Pentagon---is this General Pete?  Listen, genius, the mullahs are pissed!  Maybe we could send a nice card?  Yeah, I’m in the Hallmark section right now, but I can’t find the right category.  “Have a nice after-war doesn’t seem appropriate.”

The footing is like quicksand out there for Captain Trumpy of the Horse Marines.  Every breath he takes, every step he makes, he’s deeper in the soup.  He’s out of options, all he can do is emulate the whiny kid in the neighborhood who takes his ball and goes home.  Now all the other presidents start to laugh and call him names.  They’ll never let poor Trumpy play in any diplomat games.  And Santa won’t be baling him out.  He has GPS now.

“So they gather at the graveyard
Filled with animus and pain,
And they send him off to Jesus,
Rednecks cryin’ in the rain.
There won’t be any bagpipes
On the hills of Dunsinane,
Just the whimpers of the sheepflock,
Rednecks cryin’ in the rain.”

There Was An Emperor Caligula

It all started well enough for Caligula as the third Roman emperor.  Unlike his predecessor, the paranoid and secluded Tiberius, Cal was young and charismatic, came from a famous family and began his reign by ending Rome’s despised treason trials.  He organized lavish gladiatorial games and chariot races, much to the delight of the populace.  The new emperor completed construction of several buildings started under Tiberius, rebuilt temples and began construction of new aqueducts to ensure water supply to the rapidly growing city.  He built a new amphitheater in Pompeii and improved the port infrastructure of the capital, allowing for increased grain imports from Europe.  But then, like some other emperors we know, he cast an eye toward lavish personal projects.  He expanded the imperial palace and constructed two massive floating pleasure barges for his personal use at Lake Nemi.  He had affairs with married women, male prostitutes and even his sisters.  Then he fell seriously ill, was bedridden with delirium and drifted into madness.

Caligula brought back treason trials, a convenient means of getting rid of enemies.  He executed many senators and New York Times reporters.  Tales of Caligula’s naming his beloved racehorse Incitatus a government consul, however, seem to have been invented by the Roman Democratic Party.  After a failed invasion of Britain due to mutinous troops refusing to fight (“We ain’t got no quarrel with them Limeys”), Caligula declared war on Neptune, god of the sea, and even had the waves whipped.  He also ordered legionnaires to collect seashells as the booty of war.  Eventually, as always seems to happen with these deranged  emperors, he declared himself a god.  As the centuries passed, Republican traditions faded away, replaced by autocratic rulers, eventually establishing the Dominate, where the emperor was a godlike king and the Senate had only a ceremonial rule.  Sound familiar?

Lost In Space

Much as history will malign its crazy emperors, the supporting casts should not be forgotten.  Herewith, our Political Hall of Blathery:

1. Representative Ted Yoho (R.-Fla.)  Ted was actually in Siobhan’s class in veterinary school, though nowhere near the top of it.  He called when he first ran for office, soliciting contributions.  We passed, so don’t blame us.  Yoho got elected anyway.  One of his early statements was “One side of our government, or two-thirds of it, is running one hundred miles an hour toward socialism.  Conservatives like me are like Fred and Barney in the Flintstone-mobile trying to stop that.”

And later, on opposing tanning-bed spas: “I had an Indian doctor in our office the other day, very dark skin and two non-dark-skinned people, and I asked, ‘Have you ever been to a tanning booth?’  And he goes, ‘No, no need.’  So therefore the tax is a racist tax, and I thought I might need to go get to a sun-tanning booth twice so that I can come out and say I got taxed because of the color of my skin.”

Oh, shut up, Ted.

2. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County, Ariz.  Joe forced inmates to wear pink underwear, served them rotting food and housed them in a tent city which he proudly described as a “concentration camp,” where temperatures once reached a toasty 145 degrees, which isn’t easy.  Arpaio denied Latina inmates sanitary products and forced them to sleep on sheets soiled with menstrual blood.  He once created an armed posse which included brain-dead Steven Seagal, alleged movie star.

A quote: “I needed a place to put the dogs.  The prisoners ruined the jail, so I put the prisoners in the tents and I had a nice jail to put the dogs.  We treat the cats nice, too.  And the horses.  If a nation is only as strong as its weakest link, then America may be in trouble.  Hawaii may be our weakest link.”

We knew it.  There’s something in the pineapples.

3. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.)  Claimed the Obama administration went after BP because the giant Gulf oil spill was “part of this sort of blame game society, in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault when a catastrophe occurs, instead of just, you know,,,accidents happen.”  Paul also warned that unchecked illegal immigration would lead to a “borderless mass continent” that used a conspiracy theorist currency called “the amero.”

A quote: “With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies.  It’s not an abstraction.  I’m a physician.  That means that you have a right to come to my house and conscript me.  It means you’re going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.”

We asked the janitor, Rand, and he was okay with it.

4. State Representative Gordon Klingenschmitt )R.-Colo.)  Representative K. bragged about performing a gay exorcism to relieve a woman of “the foul spirit of lesbianism.”  He was once a Navy chaplain, so he could do that.  He also tried his best to perform a long-distance exorcism on President Obama because of some issue with the NSA.  Gordon swears that Obamacare “causes cancer” and that Obama’s former FCC chairman was driven by the Devil to “molest and visually rape children.”  Disturbingly, however, he calls himself “Dr. Chaps.”

5. Marjorie Taylor Greene.  “They’re changing our kids’ genders and they’re also, I think, putting chemicals in the water that are turning the frogs gay.”

Attention Sheriff Thacker—please get this information to Froggy the Gremlin ASAP.  The ramifications are unimaginable.

Always Leave ‘Em Laughing!

Good advice to any would-be dictator.  A little pudding with the bread and water humanizes a despot, makes him look like one of the guys.  But a little advice to all you tyrants out there---make sure they’re laughing with you, not at you.

It was one thing when Ugandan overlord Idi Amin titled himself “Conquerer of the British Empire” and “King of Scotland.”  It was those love letters he wrote to Queen Elizabeth II that got him hooted out of town.

Jean-Bedel Bokassa declared himself emperor of the Central African Republic in 1977 and threw a coronation which cost one-third of the country’s GDP.  He had a solid gold throne shaped like an eagle that cost a mere $2.5 million, and 100 white horses pulled his carriage.  The 2000 guests at the party dined on peacock and elephant meat.  Alas, he pissed off the French, who overthrew him in 1979.  They gave the throne to Jerry Lewis.

Francisco Macias Nguema, of Equatorial Guinea, who had the pleasant nickname “The Madman of Africa,” didn’t like smart people.  He banned the word “intellectual” and anyone with glasses was suspect.  Frankie had his personal portrait on every banknote, even one-peso bills.  In 1978, he cancelled Christmas because he didn’t particularly like it, but relented two days later when the Pope scolded him. 

Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, however, was in a league of his own.  They laughed when he sat down to rule, but not for long.  First off, he decided to rename January “Turkmenbashi” after himself and April became “Gurbansoltan,” after his mother.  You can imagine the trouble singers had with April Showers.

Sappy also banned beards, opera, lip-syncing and all cars that weren’t white, also gold teeth (he had his own extracted to set a good example).

As dictators are wont to do, Saparmurat also built a 12-meter gold statue of himself which rotated 360 degrees so it was always facing the sun.  He also wrote a book, Ruhnama, or “Book of the Soul,” which every student, driver and government worker was required to read because there was an exam coming.  He said reading it three times would get you to heaven.  Hopefully, he followed his own instructions because he bit the bag in 2006 with a heart attack attributed to his heavy smoking, which, of course, he had banned for everyone else.

Anybody looking for a cheap rotating statue?  It’s gold, you know.  We’ll throw in a dog-eared copy of the Ruhnama for those dreary nights when you just can’t sleep.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com    

  

 

Standin’ On The Corner In Winslow, Arizona

This is the time of year Captain Travel reads his cards and letters from good little children out there looking for someplace to vacation this summer.  Now the Captain clearly recognizes that Juneau’s not for everyone and old people sometimes lose their teeth on rollercoasters, so there is no such travel thing as one-size-fits-all.  With that in mind, here are the best places to go in two of the better United States, each coming replete with an alternative for travelers who are difficult.  Happy trails!

1. Arizona---Grand Canyon.  Many visitors have claimed a visit to the Grand Canyon changed their lives, and indeed taking one too many steps backward for a photo on the South Kaibab Trail can do that to a person.  If you can’t tolerate a hike down into the canyon on the fairly roomy Bright Angel Trail, the South Rim Trail is a fairly flat, paved 13-mile path connecting Hermit’s Rest with the South Kaibab Trailhead, offering panoramic views and access to viewing areas like Mather Point and the Trail of Time.  Not interested in walking 13 miles?  The park’s free shuttle service will pick you up or let you off at several points along the way.

For more ambitious hikers, there are several trails to the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon.  Rookie hikers need not apply, especially in Summer when temperatures at the canyon bottom can be forty degrees higher than at the top (like 104 degrees on occasion).  It’s one thing to make the descent, another to climb back up the same day.  Fortunately, reservations can be made (well in advance) to overnight at the primitive Phantom Ranch, where the cabins are spartan and they don’t leave mints on your pillows, assuming you get pillows at all.  There is a good restaurant, however, and a nice creek to cool off in.  Extra Perk: If a nuclear bomb goes off somewhere in the world while you’re there, it will be at least 24 hours before you know about it.

Another alternative is a mule ride to the bottom and back up the next day.  Captain Travel made this very trip himself and he’s here to tell you it’s not for the weak of heart.  The ride takes approximately 5 1/2 hours in the saddle and no butt-soothing cushions are allowed.  Even if you make it down in one piece, you have to get back on that mule again the next day, so it’s 11 hours of ass-pounding glory.  As soon as the Cap’n got back to the top, he jumped in his car and drove straight to the kindly if criminally expensive Amara Spa in Sedona for tender loving care.

If you go, it’s expensive to stay inside the Park and rooms must be reserved months in advance.  The drive from lively Williams, Arizona is about an hour, traffic is decent and on a good day you might find a room there for $100.  If you have kids, or if you are a kid, they have faux gunfights on the main street most nights.  We always root for the dwarf. 

Alternative---Antelope Canyon.  Located just outside Page, Arizona, Antelope Canyon is that place you’ve been seeing pictures of for years with the smooth sandstone walls lit by sunlight shooting through cracks in the ceiling.   The canyon is actually divided into upper and lower sections, each offering unique views and spectacular photo opportunities.  The Upper Canyon is famous for its noonish light shafts, the Lower features a more adventuresome hike involving stairs and ladders and significantly tougher physical activity.

The Navajo tribe owns all of Antelope Canyon and all the guides are Navajos well-versed in the better photo op areas (they will be happy to take your photos and suggest the best places).  You will be driven to the canyon in the rear sections of bouncy trucks and find yourself wondering whether the Navajos have ever been introduced to shock absorbers.  Being a competitive tribe, they like to race their rattling vehicles to the destination, so don’t believe them when they tell you your seat belts are not necessary.

Stay in Page, there are plenty of reasonable hotels and barbecue joints, but be careful not to leave any champagne bottles in the trunk of your car.  Don’t miss the dramatic Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River just five miles south of town in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

Got another day?  Head for brilliant Sedona, stay at Sky Ranch and eat at the Mesa Grill snug up to the airport.  Views of the area from Sky Ranch are unsurpassed and the famous Airport Vortex is nearby.  Some say it will cure your lumbago and put added bounce in your step.  Others say you’ll skin your knees.

Got an afternoon?  On your way to standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, stop at the exciting Meteor Crater, a mere 18 miles east of Winslow just off Interstate 40 West.  The MC is the largest meteor crater in the United States, the grateful recipient of a kindly meteor carefully plunging to Earth in the middle of the desert roughly 50,000 years ago, leaving a 560-foot dent in the landscape.  It was a big hit, if you’ll pardon the expression, with Siobhan who has an affinity for large objects falling from the sky and leaving enormous holes in the ground.  You’ll need a t-shirt from the nice gift shop in the Visitor Center, which also features an 80-seat widescreen theater and Crater Trail access.  The trail winds around the perimeter of the crater and no, they will not let you go down to the bottom even if you’re a big tipper.

2. Utah---(tie) Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park.  They’re like BBQ potato chips, it’s hard to devour just one.  Fortunately for you, these two are a mere 80 miles apart and can be reasonably explored in a single week.  Don’t make us pick just one.  Bryce has its brilliant hoodoos, which you’ll find nowhere else.  Zion has The Narrows, a fantabulous 16-mile hike between 1000-foot canyon walls in and along the north fork of the Virgin River.  Bryce has Ebenezer’s country music palace and a nightly rodeo, but Zion has more hostelry choices, better restaurants and a death-defying hike to Angel’s Landing.  If you want to let attendees tilt the scales, Zion National Park draws five million visits annually, while Bryce gets two million.  Zion is massive, with a greater variety of things to do, benefits from a lower altitude, is closer to Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, and its bedroom community of Springdale offers all the amenities.  But as far as we’re concerned, the two go together like a horse and carriage.  As dad was told by mother, you can’t have one without the other.  Ask the local gentry and they will say it’s elementary.  Had enough?

Alternative---Monument Valley.  How do we love thee, Monument Valley?  Let us count the ways.  We love thee to the depth and breadth and height our souls can reach.  We love you in the morning sun and when the day is through, we’ll be looking at the moon but we’ll be seeing you.

Captain Travel is not prone to label a destination “spiritual,” but Monument Valley is the exception to the rule.  There’s just something about it that wakes up the echoes and haunts you long after you leave.  Merle Haggard famously sang, “If God doesn’t live in Colorado, that’s where he spends most of his time.”  We beg to differ.  Glorious as the Centennial State may be, we think Merle was off by about 90 miles, which is understandable.

You know you’re in for something special just approaching the place from the south.  The long entry on arrow-straight Route 163 feels like driving into an epic Western film.  The flat horizon slowly transforms as towering red sandstone buttes and mesas gradually rise from the desert floor.  The landscape shifts into vast sweeping vistas framed by spectacular 1000-foot geological formations.  You get the feeling you’ve been here before, and you have---as a child watching John Wayne in Stagecoach, The Searchers, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.  You wondered as an eight-year-old where in the world this magical place might be but never expected to find it.  Now here you are.

Looking out from your balcony at the Navajo-owned View hotel---and you will stay at the View hotel---you don’t see a landscape, you view a painting, set up on a colossal easel in the distance.  You know right away it’s a work of art because no natural scene could be so splendid.  All the hotel rooms face east, looking directly into the heart of Monument Valley and the iconic sandstone buttes, surrounded by endless cinematic desert.  Just after we arrived, dark clouds danced across the stage, followed by thunder, lightning and a hard rain.  No more than ten minutes passed and the sky lightened up and sent forth a brilliant rainbow.  “Is this just for us,” I asked Siobhan, “or does everybody get the Big Show?”   In late afternoon we went outside with several other amateurs and a few pros and took photographs as the setting sun lit up the monuments of this holy place.  Eventually, the visitors dissolve into the haze and you find yourself alone with the profound silence, isolation and vast dramatic scale of Monument Valley, and you know deep in your soul you are in a place like nowhere else.  The nuns were right after all---Heaven exists.

With Timmy of the Navajos at M.V.

That’s all, folks

bill.killeen094@gmail.com   

Old Friends

My old gym pal Robin Martinez was ten years older than me, thus in a prime position to point out the approaching ravages another decade would present.  She promised my seventies would be a transitional time when hikes would shorten, ambitions temper and a few plates taken off my leg press machine.  All true, but at least I held off til the latter 70s.

The 80s were another thing entirely.  “It’s a revelation when you get to be eighty,” she moaned.  “Every day when you wake up it’s some other body part in trouble.  It’s like you look left and right at the intersection, then a piano falls on your head from above.  I have arthritis and a few other ‘itises’ as well.  I can’t get down on my knees to wax the kitchen floor.  When I do, I can’t get up.  My eyes are going on me and I can’t drive at night any more.  The other day I fell down, so now I have a big stick.  I don’t think I’m gonna get out of this place alive.”

She did, though.  Robin made it down the rocky road to Nonagenaria, succumbing to immobility and Michigan at 91.  I wonder what she would have said about 90?

One poignant thing Mrs. Martinez left off her list of depressing outcomes is that the 80s are the years the big trees fall---the old friends you’ve prized and relied on for moral support are dropping by the wayside in alarming numbers.  If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, the road to 90 is littered with friendly corpses, not to mention the also-eligibles sitting in the highway oases waiting for a break in the traffic.  Every death is a blow, but some of them are TKOs.  Several Mays ago, we had our turn.

Stuart & Leslie with Bill at Christmas in Massachusetts

Stuart Bentler: He Was A Friend Of Mine.

Once upon a time, a University of Florida Architecture Department student named Stuart Bentler stumbled onto the newly-opened Subterranean Circus and said to himself, “This is good!”  Despite his straight-arrow appearance and respectable background, Bentler was like a kid in a candy store, shuffling through posters, meandering wide-eyed through the blacklight room, taking note of the hippie girls in tiny halters and diaphanous dresses.  Straight-laced architect or not, Stuart was not immune to fun, and this looked like big fun to him.  He bought a lid from someone in the parking lot and went off to see what he could see.  In a couple of days he was back, inviting us all to his duplex on Fourth Avenue just off Thirteenth, close to campus.  He promised he had “more music than anybody,”  He did, too.

Stuart had a reel-to-reel setup which allowed him to play any song he wanted almost instantly.  He had a lovely wife named Leslie who provided food treats.  He had Lite Brite games and luminous electric yoyos and an endless stream of enthusiasm for whatever the psychedelic onslaught offered next.  Nervous as he was (and a bit of a control freak), Mr. Bentler proffered one night that he might like to try some LSD.  I decided to abstain because rookie acid-takers were notorious for going off the trail and into the wilderness, requiring sober guidance.  Good thing, too.

In those days, most of the available acid was aided and abetted by a little speed, so after the user peaked it was miles to go before he’d sleep.  Stuart had a wonderful trip to the top of the mountain, but when he got off the ski lift he insisted on immediately retiring to a bed & breakfast.  We explained to him why this was impossible, but he kept looking for the shut-off switch.  “I think I’m going crazy,” he worried.  “Somebody take me to the emergency room!”  Nobody volunteered, of course, and it was hours later before he settled down.  You’d think the average Joe would take a lesson from the experience, calm down, take baby steps.  Not Stuart.   Despite his angst, the smitten architect came bounding up the Circus stairs the next day with a giant smile on his face.  “That was GREAT!”  he said.  “I want to do it again!”

Stuart with Irana Maiolo in Lauderdale

Adventures In Bentlerville

Stuart and Leslie got married, moved to Tampa and started a very successful architecture firm.  Patty Wheeler, my then-girlfriend and I visited and Stuart insisted on an LSD romp.  We wound up somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, playing disembodied heads.  You can’t do that with many people.  A year later, my pal Art Johnson and I were traveling to Red Sox Spring training games and we wound up in Tampa at midnight to discover a bowling tournament had usurped all the hotel rooms.  There are few acquaintances you would wake up under the circumstances, but I knew Stuart wouldn’t mind, and he took it as a lark.  “You have amazing friends,” said Art.

And quirky ones.  Stuart had friends, but then again he also had “pallbearers,” eight of them, who waxed and waned in his evaluation.  These were his best friends at the moment, the ones he wanted there to carry the box at his funeral.  One day, I moved up from Triple-A to the big leagues.  “I think you’re one of my pallbearers now,” he told me in a rare serious mein.  “What are the perks,” I asked.  “The pallbearers get first dibs on Leslie,” he said.

The Bentlers had two children, a boy and a girl, perhaps so Stuart would have someone to play with.  The boy, alas, was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, but won Stuart’s heart.  Before Stuart Jr. died in his late teens, he and his father traversed the country on a weeks-long pilgrimage to everywhere in Stuart’s spiffy sports car, keeping an incredibly beautiful journal full of pictures and postcards and handwritten musings on their discoveries.  No dinosaur gardens or putt-putt courses were spared.  It was the ultimate road trip all of us dream of, but it was also The Last Roundup.  Devastated at his beloved son’s death, Stuart Bentler abdicated to Europe for six months.  By then, he and Leslie had gone their separate ways.

Stuart visited often on his drives to and from Atlanta, where Leslie had settled.  In those days, cocaine was his constant companion, but his true love was alcohol.  Once opening his refrigerator, I found nothing but beer and Gatorade.  He asked Siobhan and I separately if we thought he was an alcoholic.  “Ya THINK?” answered she, in her own inimitable fashion.

We were there for daughter Katherine's spare-no-expense wedding and we got to meet Jan, Stuart’s new inamorata.  They moved together to Phoenix, where Stuart had a big new job, then later to Fort Lauderdale, where the partnership ended.  Since we were racing horses in Calder almost weekly, there were regular visits to the Bentler digs.  In my experience with the dwellings of architects, I have always admired their fixation on neatness and order.  The wall photos are always straight and everything is where it belongs.  Stuart carried this to anal extremes; the coathangers in his closets were spaced equally apart and his underwear and socks were neatly folded in their separate drawers.  Despite his questionable habits, he daily ran on the beach and kept himself fit and attractive.  And always good-humored.  Stuart was invariably effortlessly funny.

One night, Siobhan and I were waiting for him and a possible new girlfriend, who were arriving separately at a Las Olas restaurant.  Exactly one minute past the appointed hour, Stuart, impeccably dressed in sports jacket and his regular fedora, cruised by slowly in his convertible, suave as hell.  When he came in and realized his date hadn’t yet shown up, he went back out, circled the block a couple more times and repeated his entrance, this time to an audience of three.  I gave him a major eye roll, but he was unmoved.  “Presentation is everything,” he said.

Stuart Jr. gets a horse ride with Siobhan

Storm Clouds In The Distance

Stuart called from California one day while tending to a recently deceased aunt’s estate.  “I nodded off at a stoplight and bumped into a bread truck,” he confessed.  “Shit happens,” I told him, but it seemed odd because Stuart was an impeccable driver.

“That’s not all,” he relayed.  “I’ve been having all kinds of trouble.  Headaches.  High blood pressure.  Stomach problems.  I’ve seen three different specialists in two weeks.  I got a lot of tests.  They said everything is fine.  The last guy told me to see a psychiatrist.  I was on my way when I hit the bread truck.  Anyway, I called to ask if something happens to me, can I have my remains spread at your place?  I love it there, I always feel at peace.  It’s pretty and it’s quiet and you’re not moving anywhere.  Whattaya think?”

Jeez.  Are we overreacting?  “Come on, Stuart, you aren’t dying.  Something would have shown up in the testing.”  He said that’s what he kept telling himself.  The psychiatrist eventually prescribed drugs to get Stuart to relax.  They didn’t work.  I told him our graveyard was occupied by several animals and Siobhan’s step-father, but there was room for one more.  “I’ll be honored to be among them,” he said.  I told him to knock it off and check in at the Mayo Clinic.  “It’s the NFL of medicine,” I told him.

By the time Stuart Bentler returned to Florida a few weeks later, he was 50 pounds lighter and fading fast.  The Mayo doctors diagnosed amyloidosis, which attacks various organs indiscriminately and is virtually always fatal, especially when left undiagnosed for twelve months.  Siobhan and I visited one day and Stuart tried his best to regain his usual good humor.  “So you’re hinting there could have been wife-swapping, Leslie for Patty Wheeler back in the day?” he wondered, interest piqued.  “Not up to me,” I answered, getting a big last laugh from my old pal.  “How come nobody told me about it” he bellowed as we sadly marched off down the corridor     

Stuart repaired to his home in Fort Lauderdale, nursed by his stricken daughter Katherine, who refused to leave his bedside.  Aware of her tenacity, one day he told her he was feeling better and she should return to her place in Phoenix to attend to loose ends before returning.  As soon as she left, he stopped eating and drinking.  Not long after, the inimitable Stuart Bentler called it a day, passing off to that great Adventureland in the sky and leaving the world a far less hilarious place.  He left me his prized electric yoyo.

The Fellowship Of The Hats

It was a magnificent July day in Greater Fairfield when friends and family gathered to pay their respects and bid adieu to Stuart Bentler, cultural icon, father and child in adult’s clothing.  Guests poured in from Oregon, California, Arizona and even Boca to recount past experiences and trade Bentler stories.  Three large tables were laid out by Katherine, complete with floral enhancements, each containing enormous boxes of photos of the earlier Bentler years and the allies he had accumulated.  Tiny children flashed around the perimeter, discovering lizards and screaming their delight at frog encounters.  Mules were ridden, friendships renewed, tears and laughter shed.  Finally, there was the Ceremony of the Hats.

Stuart Bentler was a hat fancier, had one for every day of the month, a fedora for all occasions.  His finest hat, of shiny black leather, was made in Italy by Borsalino and worn only on special days.  It was placed on a bed with 50 others by his daughter, and his friends were invited in to choose a hat of their very own.  Having first pick, I took the prized Borsalino, which has become a personal friend.  Years later, I wore it to my wedding.  It’s on my Facebook profile and will be returning to Europe this Summer when we visit Paris.  The other headcovers went off to their various destinations.

The event chairs are slowly stacked and the tables assembled and rolled back on the caterer’s truck.  The weary children drag after their mothers back to their cars.  A few couples linger to look once more over the site of Stuart’s final repose.  The Sun lowers in the sky and looks forward to its own interval.  A valued life has passed too soon.  Stuart Bentler, man of the world, is gone forever.  But the hats, the sacred hats, march on.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

Feature picture by Peter Kundra       

  

       

Pardon My French

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris.”---Oscar Wilde

Less than two months from now, my child bride and I will be in France, doing the things people who go to France do.  Strolling down the Champs-Elysees hand in hand while itinerant musicians play La Vie En Rose.  Clambering to the top of the Eiffel Tower for some bubbly in the champagne bar.  Looking for Louvre in all the wrong places.  To be on the safe side with the natives I’m learning to say “Woody Allen sent me!” in French.  Woody’s films brought more people to Paris than Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe and Brigitte Bardot combined, and the Paris Tourism Bureau owes him a small statue, at least. 

Don’t forget Hemingway, either.  Ernest was a big fan, his thoughts on France defined by his time living there as a young, struggling but deeply happy expatriate in the 1920s.  He called Paris “A Moveable Feast,” which meant that wherever you go for the rest of your life, the city and its magic will always stay with you.  “There are only two places in the world where we can live happy,” declared Hemingway.  “At home or in Paris.”  You’ll note that nobody ever says this about Rotterdam or Saskatoon..

I’m hoping things work out better than my first visit to Mexico, where I soon learned the buses don’t always run on time, people give you directions whether they know them or not and it’s a bad idea to get ice in your Margarita.  Fortunately, we have infiltrators to help us as niece Kathleen set out with a scouting party two years ago to get the lay of the land (she lives on the Left Bank; no, not Kathleen).  In any case, we’re ready.  We have our stash of euros for the public toilets, our Charles DeGaulle backpacks and our pickpocket-proof money belts and we’ve learned all the words to The Marseillaise in case we wind up with a bunch of hooligans at an international soccer brawl.  Oh, and we promise you---We Won’t Come Back Til It’s Over, Over There.

Getting There Is 1/16th The Fun

One of the reasons I have never gone to Europe is my antipathy for long flights.  That and my deep fear of running into a McDonald’s in Saint-Remy-de-Provence.  I remember being captured once by an airplane in Honolulu and hauled all the way to Boston, a cheery hop, skip and jump of 12 hours.  When I got to Beantown, I felt dazed from sensory overload and bruised as if beaten by cricket bats covered with foam padding.  After abstaining for years, I reluctantly flew to Anchorage, arriving in a fog at one a.m. to find my travel agent had given the wrong date to my hotel and rental car company. Talk about getting cold-cocked.

On the other hand, I haven’t seen my old pal Gilbert Shelton, a long-time Paris resident, for nigh onto 64 years, when both of us were stirring up a hornet’s nest with University of Texas censors while turning out monthly issues of the Texas Ranger humor magazine, and it seems like time’s-a-wastin’.  My six months in Austin were a revelation marked by daily epiphanies, a swirl of new friendships and colossal good times, which started with me living in Gilbert’s condemned apartment, engaging in life-and-death waterballoon fights involving hundreds of warriors, meeting crazed women and dining in venerable Mexican-town restaurants at midnight.  Shelton: “Try the enchilada plate, it’s only 88 cents.”

Gilbert left and rarely came back, opening a tiny workspace and studio called Art Kerblooey at 9 Rue Francois de Neufchateau in the 11th Arrondissement, wherever the hell that is.  This is not a retail store, I’m assured by nephew Gavin Shelton, so don’t trek out there looking for Fat Freddy’s Cat paraphernalia.  Even if you happen to find Gilbert there, remember he’s 85 now and subject to feeling grumpy, so you might want to bring along a peace offering of sweet tea and an enchilada plate.

Anyway, I’m told the airlines have outstanding perks these days if you’re willing to pay the piper.  For a grand extra, you get seats that fold out into a bed, for a thousand more a stewardess will bring wine and tuck you in at night and for another thou she’ll get in bed with you.  Oh, and don’t forget your compression stockings, we don’t want to be stopping at the Landspitali hospital in Reykjavic to take care of your ugly blood clots.  Other than that, bon voyage!  See you at Notre Dame.  What do you mean there’s no football?

Whatever Happened To Continental Capers?

Remember when we had these things called travel agencies?  Back in the real golden years they were scattered all over town.  You could pop in at a moment’s notice and plan a trip to Tanganyika or Detroit with the aid of skilled experts and all of it was free because the travel agencies were largely subsidized by the booming airlines.  Alas, one day at a Pan Am picnic, the CFO took a look at the payouts and screamed “Stop that train!”  In no time flat, the travel agencies found out what fade to black means.  Now we have to do all this stuff ourselves.  Oh sure, there’s AAA, but we stopped using them when Freida at the Need-a-Tow? desk who held your hand til help arrived was replaced by Clarence the Computer, who said they’d get to you in eight or nine hours if the traffic lightened up.

Though they are rarer than turtle teeth, travel agents do exist, hiding their shame in little duplexes or tawdry booths at the farmers’ market.  I was given a clandestine phone number for “Yvonne,” by an underground friend who prefers to go unnamed.  I called her and she gave me directions to an address on SW Second Street near downtown Gainesville.  “Knock three times and whisper low,” she said.  I went as close to the address as I could get, parked on the property of a deceased burger joint and started looking around, but there was no such number.  I foolishly asked a pair of convenient malingerers if they knew Yvonne, but they were high on Ashwaganda and slowly discussing their fascination with the color magenta.  I carefully drove around a couple of reclining derelicts and made a mental note to avoid downtown any time there was not a Flying Pig Parade happening.  Oh, well.  Sometimes you just have to reach down, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, uncork a bottle of Jameson’s Triple Distilled and call Delta.  Hopefully, you won’t get Ganesha.

Kathleen Ellison, D.C. Coordinator, Killeen For President campaign, 2019

Anticipation Always Trumps Reality

“At the age of thirty-seven she realised she’d never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair,”---Marianne Faithfull

Me neither, but a nice tour bus with a sack of baguettes will do.  Thanks to Woody and early James Bond, I feel like I know the basics of the City of Light and what I don’t know niece Kathleen will hip me to.  Kathleen Ellison, now the wife of Yaniv Barzilai, still appreciates me for helping to hone her driving skills on the interstate when all others fled in terror at the prospect.  A dermatologist by trade, Mrs. B. wound up in Paris after her husband drew the long straw at his State department job.  Not to say that Yaniv didn’t pay a weighty price for his plum posting---his previous stops were in lovely Azerbaijan, famous for its sterling waste management and exciting garbage floods and never-dull Kabul, home of Kidnapers ‘R’ Us.  Walk across a hot bed of coals for eight years, eventually you get a cushy spot with a view of the Eiffel.  Seems only fair.  We’re staying with the kids for a couple of days while we get our feet wet.  Knowing Kathleen, we won’t be bored.

On Day 3, it’s off on the Rick Steves 7-day tour of Paree with our new friends from Albuquerque, Duluth, Pflugerville and Roanoke.  We have not done much of this group touring sort of thing, although we did enjoy our Duck Tour in Boston in a bus that converted to a riverboat.  When we headed for the Charles, Mildred and Larry up in front jumped out because they didn’t know how to swim; we picked them up on the way back.  Forest Gump had tour groups figured out…they’re like a box of Dunkin’s, you never know whether you’ll get Nutella Croissant or Jelly.  The tour guide can make or break the day, of course, and we had a jolly lad.  Pulling up to a pub across the street from a tiny ancient cemetery, he told us “This is the only place in the world where you can drink a Sam Adams while looking at his grave.”  Maybe Marcel Marcel will have a few similar bon mots in his poche.

We’re Off To The Coxville Zoo

Sometimes Rick Steves gets a bit weary and gives you a little time to explore Paris on your own.  I think we’ll be passing on the famous catacombs and the Musee des Egouts sewer museum due to Siobhan’s allergies to intricately stacked skulls and femurs and her lack of interest in urban plumbing.  While on our own we’ll be guided by the colorful suggestions of my cosmopolitan cousin Beverly Mack, who’s been there and done that:

“We did the big things…Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, etc., but we more enjoyed the smaller venues like the Pantheon, the Grand Mosque with its adjacent Moroccan restaurant and walking along the Seine through the Latin Quarter past crowded Notre Dame and nearby Shakespeare and Company bookshop, then on down the Champs Elysees through the Tuilleries, past the Louvre pyramid.  Don’t miss the flower market.  If I could do only a few things in Paris, they would be: visit the Pantheon and the St. Chapelle chapel; have a meal at Jean Paul and Simone’s Les Deux Magots and visit the adjacent St. Germaine de Pres church.  And lounge at a local sidewalk bistro as often as possible, just people watching.”

Beverly is one of those wise women who trekked through Europe in her youth while we were haggling with Mexicans over the price of onyx in Puebla.  Perhaps a smarter choice, although we have funnier stories.  After all, nobody worries about the Evil Eye in Montmartre.

C’est tout pour aujourd’hui….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

   

Looking For The Guru

“Show them a light and they’ll follow it anywhere.”---Anonymous

Guru shopping ain’t what it used to be.  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has ascended into a higher state of consciousness, teenager Prem Rawat (aka “The  Baby-faced Bullshit Artist”) has rebranded himself as a humanitarian author, Jim Jones drank the Kool-Aid and was scattered at sea and Charlie Manson spent 50 years in prison and was shivved by metastatic colon cancer.  The real tragedy was the underrated Mr. Rogers, who passed at a young  74, leaving his followers shaving their heads and rending their garments.  Now what?

Where is Baba Ram Dass when you really need him?  In 1967, Richard Alpert, a cohort of Timothy Leary at Harvard, traveled to India and became a disciple of Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass, meaning “Servant of Ram.”  Alpert returned to the U.S. and in 1971 wrote the seminal book Be Here Now, which became required reading for all would-be hippies.  He also wrote or co-authored twelve more books on spirituality over the next four decades but it was the square blue gem Be Here Now for which he’s remembered.  The book resonated deeply with young people due to its immense cultural hype, unbridled hedonistic joy and the sense of shared community it provided during a defining moment in pop culture.  Readers and reviewers generally concede BHN is a transformative counter-culture bible that acted as a bridge between the psychedelic experience of the 1960s and Eastern spiritual discipline.  For many, it was a profound, life-altering and deeply impactful guide they carried with them into middle-age.  The New York Times said the book “captured the spiritual zeitgeist of the early 1970s.” 

Baba Ram Dass died on December 22, 2019, at the age of 88.  Since then, we got bupkus.  Deepak Chopra, a millionaire 100 times over?  Come on.  Eckhart Tolle?  We don’t think so.  Perhaps Self-help Sing, the comedic persona of Masood Boomgard is a more suitable guide for modern society.   Singh advocates “unmotivational advice” to help people lower their expectations and just chill.  He often advises people to quit, go home and sleep if they have a bad day, rather than trying to get blood out of a bad turnip.  Boomgard has already amassed 1.7 million followers on Instagram and is popular on TikTok and YouTube.  Check him out if you like.  We’re still looking.

Still Life With Tom Robbins

In 1980, a little-known author named Tom Robbins took it upon himself to answer the question of How to Make Love Stay in his new book Still Life With Woodpecker.  I was 40 years old at the time with the paperwork from a second divorce in my pocket so it was obvious I needed a little guidance in this area.  I was so taken with the book I bought a dozen of them for my twelve best friends.

That’s not to say Tom Robbins ever really answered the question, but his book was filled with enough sterling advice that it quickly catapulted up to #1 on everybody’s best-seller lists and sent Tom on his way.  For a while, Robbins became the Guru of Love.  Still Life was a philosophical but funny work which championed romantic individualism over social activism, arguing that Love is the ultimate outlaw that defies rules, and magic must be used to keep it alive.

The central question asks how to maintain the magic.  Robbins’ answer is not exactly a revelation (work like hell at making additional magic rather than just consuming the initial excitement), but his treatment of Love as an outlaw gadfly that refuses to obey rules and social convention, that slips and slides across the floor and out the door, is genius.  The author suggests that lovers should “aid and abet” each other in capturing this unpredictable free agent.  The book contends that people are never perfect but Love can be.  Robbins alleges that the world contains a set amount of good and evil and the goal is to keep things stirred up to prevent evil from solidifying, rather than to completely eliminate it.  Satisfaction often comes from being playful, rebellious and immature rather than cautious or overly responsible.  Criminals break rules, outlaws live outside them entirely.  The book’s famous last line suggests that individuals can reclaim their joy and innocence, overcoming past limitations:

“It’s Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood.”

That’s sort of our motto around here.

James Hollis Knows Exactly Who You Are

James Hollis, Ph.D. is a prominent American Jungian psychoanalyst, author and public speaker based in Washington, D.C..  He’s best known for applying Carl Jung’s depth psychology to help individuals find personal meaning and purpose and to navigate life transitions, particularly in the second half of life.

Hollis has been listening to people in that second half for over 40 years.  He knows what you’re thinking and he’d just as soon you didn’t ask him, “Is this all there is?”  Somewhere between 35-65, most of us hit a wall.  The career, marriage, identity you built in your twenties and thirties stops making sense.  Hollis calls this the “middle passage” rather than a mid-life crisis.  He says it’s your psyche demanding you grow up again.  The first half of your life is spent adapting to the world.  The second half is about adapting to your soul.  And the soul rarely wants what the ego chased.

Hollis says “We are all living out someone else’s life.”   The middle passage is when you notice the script isn’t yours.  Anxiety often means you’re waking up to that fact.  Anxiety, depression, restlessness---these aren’t malfunctions.  They’re your psyche telling you that life is too small for who you’re becoming.  Hollis disagrees with almost everybody about what an individual wants most in life.  “The goal should be meaning, not happiness.  What is life asking of you now…not what do you want from life.  Flip the script.”

No Ten Steps for this guy.  And Hollis refuses to comfort you.  “You’re going to have to grieve the life you thought you’d have before you can live the life that’s waiting.  Growth requires necessary suffering.”  Then again, if you live in Septuagenaria or further down the road, that’s probably not a big deal for you.  Hollis’ life philosophy in a nutshell is “Shut up, suit up and show up.”  Whiners need not apply.

Still in a quandary?  Here are some suggestions:

1. Stop asking “What should I do?” and start asking “What’s being asked of me?”  Sit for 5 minutes each morning and ask “where in my life do I feel constricted, bored or anxious?”  That’s where the task is.  Symptoms point to the task.

2. Whatever dilemma you’re in, it’s your fault not someone else’s  Next time you feel resentment or immobility, finish this sentence: “The part of me I haven’t lived yet is ….?”  For instance---the part of me I haven’t lived yet is The Writer.  Then go spend 5% of the week attending to that deficiency.   Be careful if the answer is wine taster or motorcycle racer.

3. Hollis says “The second half of life is built on a thousand small surrenders.”   Try this: before bed tonight, ask yourself “What is one small thing I could do tomorrow that honors the person I’m becoming, not the person I was?”  Call someone you haven’t spoken to in months or years.  Throw away an old role.  Take a walk without purpose.  Bring Bill Killeen a nice pastry.  Small is sustainable.  You can do it if you try.  Oh, and cream puffs are always nice.

Elizabeth Gilbert Takes No Prisoners

You probably remember Elizabeth Gilbert from the book Eat, Pray, Love, which sold over 12 million copies or the Julia Roberts film of the same name.  The book chronicled Gilbert’s journey of self-discovery and spiritual healing after a divorce at age 33.  Now in her mid-fifties, Gilbert reflects, “I spent my twenties trying to be good.  I spent my thirties trying to be interesting.  Now I’m in my fifties and I just want to be done with my own nonsense. I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.” 

Where James Hollis asks “What does your soul demand,” Gilbert inquires “What would you do if you weren’t afraid of being embarrassed?”  Same depth, different delivery.  She calls it “stubborn gladness” vs. Hollis’ “necessary suffering.”  Elizabeth personifies creativity as a drunk fairy.  She wants you to “Stop waiting for courage, just do the thing while you’re scared.  Perfectionism is just fear in really good shoes.  Fear is allowed to have a voice, it’s not allowed to have a vote.  It can ride in the car but it has to sit in the backseat.  And it can’t touch the radio.  And it definitely cannot drive.”  Translation: You don’t eliminate fear.  You put it in its place like a cranky toddler.  Also, “Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours.  But seriously, who wants to win that argument?”

Gilbert’s forte is making depth accessible.  Hollis tells you to enter the swamp.  Gilbert hands you hip waders and an alligator joke, then shoves you in.  Same swamp, less drowning.  In an era when fake gurus live in penthouses, wear Armani and spout gibberish, she’s the wizard in the clown suit, standing on the corner handing out fliers.  Don’t be afraid to take one.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com  

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun…

Mr. Doublemint used to tell us that using his gum would cause our Happiness Quotient to burst into a nova, which might be the ultimate case of gilding the lily.  Until now.  Mr. D. has presently been grossly upstaged by one Dario Amodei, an Artificial Intelligence company CEO, who tells us we’ll soon be able to double our lifespan.  Nobody doubts that having AI churn through unfathomable amounts of data in search of useful therapies and maybe even cures is a logical notion.  Whether processing information on cellular senescence, telomere shortening, cancer, mitochondrial dysfunction, genomic instability or a legion of other causes of aging and death, research has shown that AI will be an invaluable tool.  But entrepreneur Amodei has bigger ideas.

What if Artificial Intelligence was more than a tool?  What if, instead, it was the lead author of the next chapter in human longevity?  The idea has led some technologists, most notably Amodei, wagonmaster of San Francisco-based goliath Anthropic, to the controversial conclusion that AI won’t just continue the longevity revolution, it will supercharge it.

“This might seem radical, but life expectancy increased almost 2x in the 20th century—from 40 years to 75—so it’s on trend that the ‘compressed 21st’ would double it again to 150,” Amodei wrote.  “There already exist drugs that increase maximum lifespan in rats by 25-50% with limited ill effects.  And some animals already live 200 years, so humans are manifestly not at some theoretical upper limit.”

Dario Amodie is not one to dawdle.  At the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he claimed that AI could double human lifespans in just five years, a mind-blowing timeline, but one he says is in line with AI development.  And he’s not alone.  Futurist Ray Kurzwell has stated that AI could push the pause button on aging as soon as 2032 in two ways.  The first is through the use of AI-enabled medical nanobots that can repair damaged cells and deliver drugs directly to the affected region.  The second is the ability to back up our brains to the cloud via AI, something much more dubious considering our limited knowledge of the human brain and how it works.  Dario Amodie, of course, is a lesser-known new guy with a dog in this fight and Ray Kurzwell is a noted optimist.  What does David Sinclair have to say?

The Sinclair Predictions

“The first person to live to 150 has already been born.”---D. Sinclair

David Sinclair, a Harvard University Medical School genetics professor and author of several books about aging believes that with current medical technology aided by Artificial Intelligence, startling upcoming breakthroughs are inevitable.  “It’s realistic to believe the goal is realistic for people currently alive,” he states.

“The epigenome, the software that tells cells which genes to use, can be reset to a more youthful state.  Partial cellular programming using a cocktail of molecules or gene therapy will be used to turn back the aging clock.”

Sinclair argues that instead of treating individual diseases like cancer or Alzheimer’s as they appear, we should focus on the underlying root cause of all of them, aging itself.  He clarified that his goal is not just to extend the time one spends on Earth as a frail, elderly person, but to extend the healthy vital years.  He imagines a world where 120-130 year olds are as active and healthy as 60 year olds are today.  Sinclair’s trials for reversing aging are in their early stages right now.

If David Sinclair is the adult in the aging room, Bryan Johnson is the whiz kid teenager running around the house with ants in his pants.  Johnson, a young 46, is the hottest longevity guru on the block with his $2 million a year Blueprint project to reverse aging and achieve a biological age of 18.  The optimistic tech entrepreneur uses extreme data-driven methods to achieve his goal, one of which is to consume 111 supplements a day.  He has a strict diet, constantly monitors his organs and even gets plasma donations from his son.  All this has allowed him to reach (by his calculation) a biological age of 21.  Unfortunately, instant replays of his achievement cannot be sent to SEC headquarters for verification.

Another contender for longevity guru of the decade is Peter Attia, a Canadian-American physician and author of Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity, a runaway best seller.  Attia is famous for his evidence-based podcasts and focus on healthspan and he has a booming clientele.

The Death-Defying All-Star Team

1. Elizabeth Bathory.  Lizzie has the Guinness World Record as the most prolific female murderer ever, with 650 scalps on her belt.  Nothing personal, though.  The Hungarian countess really needed the bodies to replenish her bathtub, where she regularly bathed in the blood of her young victims to maintain her youth and beauty.  Didn’t work.  She was finally arrested in 1612 and confined to her castle, where she passed away at age 54.  Nice try though, Liz.

2. Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard.    This Mauritian scientist gained notoriety for his unconventional methods and eccentric behavior in the world of hormone study.  He is especially famous for the Brown-Sequard Elixir, which he claimed could make people look younger and live longer.  Aging faster than he liked, Charlie began injecting himself with extracts from the testicles of guinea pigs and dogs, positing that these substances boosted his strength and enhanced his sexual performance.  You could argue that he succeeded, living to age 76 when the life expectancy for a male born in 1817 was 30-40 years.

3. Peter Thiel.  American billionaire Thiel has zeroed in on blood transfusions as a means to extend his life.  With an estimated worth of $9 billion, Thiel reportedly aspires to live until he is 120 years old.  He has invested heavily in anti-aging research since 2006 and admitted to ingesting human-growth hormone to maintain his bone and muscle health.  Currently, Thiel is focusing on parabiosis, the scientific term for rejuvenating blood transfusions, but is hedging his bets by taking steps to cryogenically preserve his body just in case.

4. Howard Hughes.  Howard had no magic amulets or wondrous elixirs, he was just hard to kill.  Hughes was a daredevil in the public mind and an innovator within the aviation industry who became famous for his experimental and often controversial ideas concerning airplane design and performance.  In May, 1943, he was practicing water landings in a Sikorsky amphibious aircraft and crashed heavily into Lake Mead, killing two of his passengers and sustaining severe injuries himself.  Three years later, while flying the experimental XF-111 prototype reconnaissance plane, Hughes crashed again near the Los Angeles County Club, destroying three houses before exploding into flames.  Howard managed to drag himself free of the plane despite suffering a crushed chest, which relocated his heart to the right side of his body; he also had several broken bones and severe burns.  His doctors considered his recovery a miracle, but Hughes gave the credit to fresh-squeezed orange juice.

5. Doulas Bader.  Bader was a somewhat reckless Royal Air Force pilot between the World Wars, known for undertaking aerobatic maneuvers which were both dangerous and forbidden.  In 1932, during one such adventure, Bader crashed and the injuries he sustained were severe enough to cause surgeons to remove both of his legs, one above the knee, one below.  After he recovered Dougie lobbied to be returned to flying status, arguing that his near-death experience gave him insights which would be invaluable to younger pilots.  He was denied until the outbreak of World War II created a demand for pilots.  Accepted, he became a flying ace over France, during which time he destroyed one airplane due to his error when attempting a takeoff.  Despite suffering an ugly head wound, Bader continued to fly, rising to the rank of Wing Commander.

Douglas Bader fought in the Battle of Britain and became one of the RAF’s most successful pilots before being shot down and captured by the Germans.  Despite the handicap of two artificial legs, his numerous escape attempts so annoyed the Nazis that he was sent to the allegedly escape-proof Colditz Castle, where he remained until the war ended.  Once freed, he returned to the Royal Air Force and lived to a sprightly 72.  

On Second Thought…

Sometimes, the idea is interesting but the execution has faulty pistons.  The startup Nectome was interested in preserving the brain’s “connectome” (all its memories and connections) by using a high-tech embalming fluid.  Trouble is, their process is 100% fatal since it must be performed on a living brain to ensure perfect preservation for future digital uploading.  As Emily Littela used to tell us, “never mind!”

Theoretical research suggests that an observer falling into a Schwartschild Black Hole could technically delay their inevitable death at the singularity by using a “momentary impulse” or “kick” from an engine.  The traveler still dies, but this strategy maximizes his “proper time”---the subjective amount of life he experiences before hitting the center.  Sorry researchers, nobody is paying any attention to your billboards.

Future medical concepts include nanorobots that crawl through blood vessels to manually destroy arterial plaque.  By clearing blockages without invasive surgery, these microscopic machines could theoretically act as a human life snooze-button, delaying death from heart attacks or strokes indefinitely.  But what if a nanobot or two goes rogue and decides to blackmail a subject in quest of a dacha on the Black Sea?

Medical professionals often observe patients who appear to wait for a specific event, such as a loved one’s arrival or a particular birthday or a Grand Finale before passing away.  This is attributed to the intense conscious effort required to maintain breathing during terminal illness; once the will is satisfied and “Happy Trails” comes across the Heartwood sound system the happy camper finally lets go.  Let’s hope it’s back at the hotel or the management won’t let us come back any more.

Some old-timers swear by lizard avoidance.  You must never let a lizard count your teeth or it’s curtains.  The ancients also thought you should turn over a shoe under the bed if you heard a dog howl at night.  And then there is the old favorite, making a deal with the devil, like Dorian Grey and Donald Trump did.  We all know what happened to Dorian, and our embedded D.C. reporters tell us the dreaded Tumbu flies are busily coalescing on the muddy banks of the Potomac.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com