Colorful writing.

I have a brilliant idea for a one-act play, a drama of romance with four characters. I have only gotten to the notes stage of fleshing out the idea, but I hoped you'd be interested. Maybe you have a billion dollars hanging around and have always dreamed of producing a great play. Well, dream no more! 

This one's got it all -- drama, pathos, comedy, and babes. You couldn't ask for more colorful characters. I call it...

Toner: A Love Story 

Curtain up, and we meet our four players:

🖶 Black, tall, dark, and handsome

🖶 Cyan, a young man with sky-high optimism

🖶 Yellow, pretty but shy and retiring

🖶 Magenta, one hot chick

Cyan and Magenta have been dating for a while, but Magenta is trouble. They met at a Deep Purple concert, and seemed to hit it off. But now she's always running out. He doesn't want to try to control her, and knows he can't, but she doesn't seem to care about his needs. Meanwhile, Black (called Big K) is a little tired of his girl Yellow, who dotes on him but is not exciting. They've gone so far as to ink a prenup, but no wedding date is in sight.  

As the play progresses, we see they are all in one jam or other. Big K is having trouble at work; Cyan is blue because he thinks Magenta is cheating. 

One day Big K meets Magenta and is totally imprinted. "Hey, baby, I'd love to get your portrait," he says. 

"I think you want me in landscape, big boy," she teases.

"Yeah, girl, once you've had Black you never go back." 

“Ooh, baby, you can drive my cartridge.”

Yellow is scared that her boyfriend might be straying, especially when she gets a call from her friend Dot that Big K was seen collating with some floozie. 

Cyan, meanwhile, goes looking for Magenta with laser-focused intensity. He hears about Big K, and goes to the man's apartment, only to find Yellow all alone. 

Cyan and Yellow talk, and realize their romantic partners are probably cheating on both of them. They are green with jealousy. Suddenly Big K arrives. Cyan accuses him of stealing his girl. Big K tries to throw him out. Black and Cyan fight until they are black and blue. 

Suddenly Magenta shows up. She says she's had it with both of these men, and runs off. Yellow scoffs: “Who shot her out of a cannon?” Big K calls after her, saying "Black loves matter!" Cyan storms away in anger and Yellow follows him. 

Cyan and Yellow cool off in the park. She says he should get some Epsom salts on his bruises. He says maybe they should hook up to spite the cheaters. They go back to his apartment. He makes some food (steak with HP sauce), but she's a vegetarian. She turns on some romantic music -- but it's Michael Bolton (Cyan: "I hate that guy!"). Nothing works -- they just have no chemistry. 

Meanwhile Big K finds Magenta, drowning her sorrows at the Copycat Lounge. She confesses that she really loves Cyan, but she knows she's no good for him. She's a bloody mess. He sees there's no future with her, so he leaves. Everybody is low. 

The next day, Big K goes to Yellow's place, begging her to take him back. She agrees, but she's more bold now and demands respect. Meanwhile, Magenta goes to Cyan's place to tell him she loves him, but it can never come out right. They have nothing in common. He points out that they're both in love, both enjoy classic rock, and both people of color, and he believes they can make it work, even if the margins are slim. 

At the end, in a real Kodak moment, everyone embraces. Curtain! 

Pretty awesome, right? I think we can get some backing and a theater to give this a go. And if not, see how long Playbill lasts with only blank pages. Mwah ah ah!

Yippie dippie dippie!

You know the feeling you get when you have an assignment or another type of job to do that you're really dreading, and you put it off because you despise or are actually afraid of it, and then you're told never mind, they don't need it after all? Great feeling! 

Well, here is another: 

I thought the loan for my wife's car was a six-year loan, but after this month's payment they sent the lien release. It was a five-year loan! We're done! Five hundred bucks a month back in our pockets! WOOO!!

all ours!

Now, you can—and probably should—point out that this so-called found money is entirely the fault of my stupidity or forgetfulness or both. If I had bothered to check the account or had remembered the terms set out in 2019, paying off the car would be pleasant but not a surprise. And you would be correct.

On the other hand, my stupidity and forgetfulness usually bring me bad surprises. “That was TODAY?” “I agreed to this?” “We still owe six grand?” So to have a good surprise instead of a bad one is like Christmas morning.

Next week I am planning to take a drive to visit old friends, and my wife will probably tell me to take her car, which is newer and less likely to have trouble. And I will refuse. Because bad surprises still lurk out there, and I am not going to tempt fate by driving the just-paid-off vehicle through Jersey. Besides, I just dropped a grand on tires and repairs to my car. It owes me. 

And I have AAA, because life is full of bad surprises.

Friday night fights.

The Olympics had not even begun when the fighting started. 

Morocco fans stormed the field in a pre-Opening Ceremony match between their country and Argentina. 

Objects were thrown and invading Morocco fans were tackled by security on the field at Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in Saint-Etienne after Argentina tied it 2-2 with a goal from Cristian Medina the 16th minute of added time.

Well, the rioters got what they wanted. The tying goal was disallowed, and Morocco won the game 2-1. 

Were the Morocco fans right about the goal being offside? Maybe, but that's not the point. We know it and the Moroccan hooligans certainly know it. The point is, and we see it again and again in Western nations, if you riot, you get your way -- as long as you're protected by the weenies running the show. Otherwise you get hunted down and disappeared into prison for years. 

I'm not saying that the Moroccans were free to act up because they are Muslim, although Paris is home to the annual Carbeque, the cookout of vehicles and other destruction of property in the city's no-police zones. Soccer (I will not call it football) thugs can be found in any country but America and maybe Canada, and Morocco is an ocean closer to Paris than Buenos Aires. If there'd been an equal number of fans from both countries in the stands, it could have been a much bigger brawl. 

But were the "invading" fans really all Morocco supporters, or were they just local Religion of Peace™ adherents looking for an excuse to cause trouble? To ask the question is to commit a hate crime. 

I'll be grateful if the French authorities get through the next couple of weeks without serious bloodshed. The way things have been going, though, I have strong doubts. 

Comedy and shame.

So what does this 1984 film have to do with our current moment?

Eh, I don't know. 

No, seriously, hold on. First, I want to say that I have never seen any of the Police Academy movies, which is strange because when I was a teenager it was exactly the kind of movie that I would have been coerced into seeing, most certainly on video, on some random summer day when none of my friends had any better ideas. But somehow I dodged that bullet. Not to pick on the movie -- some actors and comics I respect were in it -- but I had always heard it was about a lowbrow as you could get. 

Here I am, writing about it all the same. What happened was, I was reading through some cinema history and found out -- which I don't think I knew -- that Alan Ladd's son, Alan Ladd Jr., was a movie producer. He produced Police Academy. Then he won an Oscar as a producer on Braveheart. He also produced The Brady Bunch Movie. Cinema is the weirdest business on earth.

That made me curious enough about the original Police Academy to go to Wikipedia and the entry on the movie. I also discovered that in 2016, Bill Clinton copped to loving the series, saying of his marriage: 

“We rarely disagreed on parenting, although she did believe that I had gone a little over the top when I took a couple days off with Chelsea to watch all six Police Academy movies back-to-back.”

I don't know how I missed this quote in 2016, but it might have gone over my head because I hadn't seen the movies. I just figured they were dumb fun. 

But it was Bill, so I should have known better. 

I knew full well that it was movie law in the early 1980s that every comedy had to have a hooker in it. So of course Bill Clinton would love those movies. In the first picture the Mandatory Hooker commits fellatio from inside a lectern on a man giving a speech before a large crowd. Twice.

And he watched this with his daughter? 

Picturing the heartfelt lesson there: "Remember, sweetheart, this is how a woman gets ahead. And the man she loves, too, come to think of it." 

Do you think those scenes were ever on Bill Clinton's mind when he was doing one of his heartfelt addresses to the American public? 

This was the man who turned the Oval Office into the Oral Office, let us not forget.

Which brings us to the present moment. 

First, I learned that the inspiration for the film came from an actual event in San Francisco, where a motley crew of academy cadets were trying and failing to secure a film site. Producer Paul Maslansky was told that the police academy had to accept all applicants, however ludicrous, and keep them until they quit or officially washed out. And that made me think of the current lawlessness in San Francisco and the desperation of our cities to get anyone to join the police force after so many experienced cops quit or retired during the Defund Police nonsense of recent memory. 

Also in San Francisco, although not as mayor until 1996, was Willie Brown, without whose help and guidance none of us would have ever heard the name Kamala Harris. And indeed, Ms. Harris seemed to take the role of Mandatory Hooker in this little comedy, using her wiles to advance her career as a prosecutor in the state of California. Ferocious ambition and courtesan skills are an odd but not unheard of combination. But even Willie thinks she's out of her depth. I say she's in so far over her head she'll need a bathysphere to speak at the convention next month. 

Anyway, there it is -- sex, politicians, hookers, poor parenting choices, bad police recruiting, and comedy. Many people have been saying that the 80's movie that we should be scared of seeing in real life is The Terminator, with all the AI stuff around. But it actually turned out to be Police Academy. 

Fluff lies bleeding.

I haven't seen all the Toy Story movies, but if they wanted to do a real horror show, they should make one from the vantage of dog toys. 

Izzy does enjoy ripping the fluff out of toys. If it's got a squeaker, he's going to get it out -- and then the squeaker must be carefully removed from his mouth, or he will keep munching it until it stops making noise. Die, squeaky heart! He might swallow it, which would be bad.

We really don't want the dog to swallow the squeaker, but it's instinct. He's a retriever by breeding and nature, so his job is to go get the duck and, if the duck still shows signs of life, to break or chomp its neck and put it out of its misery. Since I'm not a hunter, he only gets to do this to his toys. And do it he does. 

He's not as bad as his late uncle, Nipper, the legendary destroyer of toys. Nipper was once known as the Alexander the Great of dogs by tackling his personal Gordian Knot the same way Alexander did his -- direct action and ruthless efficiency.  

Tralfaz was less of a menace to toys. He would destroy them, but just incidentally because he was so big and strong. A few he did not wreck; he was a bit attached to a crunchy Mickey Mouse toy that he would groom, licking and pawing it. Gotta clean up Mickey's act. We had to keep Mickey away from Nipper or he would rip up his brother's favorite toy. 

Izzy has the Nipper instincts, and most toys don't last long around him unless he doesn't like them. Still, I would hate to see what would happen to Woody and Buzz if Izzy got hold of them. It would make the weird neighbor kid's bedroom of toy horrors in the first picture look like a day at the beach. 

Mission: Forgotten.

Mr. Philbin inquired whether I was intending to comment on last week’s failed attempt to murder the former president. I believe everyone on the planet has already done so, and as more information comes out and the Secret Service looks worse and worse, more will comment again (and ought to). Feet must be held to fires; swords must be fallen upon. Justice demands it.

And yet, I suppose we’ve come to expect that justice’s claims will go unanswered. As is typical now. The government is loaded with people who not only don’t accept the buck when passed, they also use buck-repellent on their gold-plated rears to prevent the buck ever arriving—however properly it should. Harry Truman is long absent. 

It’s of a piece with a blog entry I posted earlier this month about our supposed elites and their stupidity. As has been pointed out with appropriate vigor in many quarters, the Secret Service has opted to show its stupidity by forgetting its mission and picking up lesser missions instead. Instead of protecting the presidents and other key figures, they seek to indulge in social justice and social engineering, hiring candidates based on their potential to be girlboss action figures rather than their capacity to do the job. We have seen some results of this mission misdirection.

A similar situation has been going on in reverse in women’s competitions, where men dressed as women are pulverizing girls at sports and even winning beauty competitions. The mission—giving women an arena in which they can achieve greatness—has been thrown aside for silly concerns.

This has been going on in fire departments for decades. It became more important to get women in the firehouse than to have firefighters who could handle the often extreme physical challenges of the job. To enable social change, physical requirements had to be lowered. 

I asked a buddy who retired from a Manhattan NYFD firehouse if one of the highly touted female recruits had ever wound up in his unit. He said they were never assigned any, but he worked with some when he was on temporary loan to other houses. And no, they couldn’t do the job—they were just not strong enough, however fit. So the department would shuffle them into desk jobs. They will get the same cushy pension and Cadillac health plans as guys who'd spent 30 years dragging adults out of burning buildings. The situation is worse now under Mayor Eric Adams’s highly politicized fire chief, but that’s a long story.

It seems like way too many people believe the fish-out-of-water stories in which totally unqualified persons are put in difficult positions or authority, but succeed because they are clever and mean well. This assumes no job requires any knowledge or expertise. Anyone can do it with the right attitude, so why give it to some old white dude who’s spent his life in the field? The mission will be accomplished. And if not, we tried real hard!

I'm not just blaming the women involved, mind you -- I'm blaming everyone for forgetting the purpose of the job. And having an all-men squad is definitely no guarantee of getting these jobs done. It was only in 2012 that Secret Service agents were found to be spending more time getting loaded and banging prostitutes overseas than focusing on their duties (“Wheels up, rings off”). And again, that’s forgetting the mission, just for different priorities. 

This is where we are in America right now: Everyone wants to do everything but the damn job that he's supposed to be doing. You'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask for any job, let alone one that prides itself on duty and honor, but apparently we're choosing to be too stupid -- not to mention too selfish -- to live. 

Finding common ground.