Friday, November 11, 2016

It may not seem as respectful as a salute, but here's a great big hug for the men and women who are veterans in these United States. Thank you for your service and sacrifice.

Hi everyone...

If anyone wishes, please, I'm giving one hour psychic readings for a half hour price.

This is truly a Hail Mary pass to save a horse that I love very much.

It may be impossible to raise all the money required but I thank you most sincerely for helping by going to..

www.realbrettbutler.com

Any comments and queries sent to that website will be addressed. And yes, we'd rather answer personally than post any more than this on FB.

Thank you for your understanding.

Hey. Maybe after the 17th when that mighty colorful episode of How to Get Away With Murder airs, all kinds of work will flood in. Stranger things have happened to stranger people. And so be it.

BUNNY FOO FOO IS BACK!

All this excitement about a tiny bunny? You bet your sweet ass, honey... We're grabbing signs from the darnedest places these days...

Tom Q sent this picture of our wascally wabbit from Wochester NY a while ago and we agree with him that it's a very fine thing to see, indeed...

Sending some fellow earthling light to those who are worried about brothers and sisters under the kooky dome where we all abide together - for the time being.

Here's to us staying together.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Rest in peace, Leonard Cohen.

Thanks for showing us all just how cool a chill cat could be.

https://youtu.be/ttEMYvpoR-k

Because Carl Reiner asked folks to post this, I'm obeying.

My favorite version of my favorite Cohen song.

It was supposedly LC's favorite, too.

Betcha angels are topping it right now. If you're corny like me and totally believe such stuff.

https://youtu.be/P_NpxTWbovE

Love Trumps Hate

This is from the Washington Post daily feed, and we apologize that we were unable to find the photographer's name to give credit - or the sign maker's name, for that matter.

The takeaway on this visual may not be the same for everyone, but we're posting it with emphasis on the first word in every way possible.

Period.


Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Van Jones.

Thank you.

It's not enough, but thank you.

#pedulumsbebitches

I love when people make art from the beauty around them.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

The Skye Lev Video

A few caveats about this post...

#1. If you haven't seen the video, may I strongly suggest reading about it instead of watching it. It's a cliché, I know, but some things can't see unseen. The grotesque venom in it is still reverberating in my head. It was foolish of me to watch.

#2. Once again, I'm probably abusing what FB is about - my public career advancement page WOOT! - but I care about the world so : P

#3. If that last caveat pissed you off, please watch me on How to Get Away With Murder on ABC November 17, because it's the most acting I've gotten to do in one hunk in a long time and if you like me OR hate me, this role should prove delightful to you

Extra caveat for Mr. JS. and crew: If you thought my post from the other day wasn't funny, you definitely won't laugh at this. Then again, if I thought your giggle box could be turned over at anything less than the mass extinction of anyone not white and Protestant, perhaps I'd rue the day I lost you as a fan.

Dear Mr. Lev,

I saw your video. It was heartbreaking and infuriating to watch, but I felt I had to. I don't know how you filmed it. First of all, you're a young man, easily within that decade in your life where fury/testosterone lunges at slights to say nothing of profane, threatening tirades from crazy racists. Yet you kept your cool. There are guys at the top of Tibetan mountain peaks who strive for that kind of zen.

I don't want your calm to go unnoticed. Unappreciated. Unsung.

It's waaayy far down the scale, but, if I may, briefly, not at all by way of comparison, but to try to wrap my tiny head around your experience...

Just yesterday I wrote what seemed to be a pretty reasonable post about tomorrow's vote. That I merely mentioned the hate factor in this election - more evident by the minute - seemed to daunt one of our readers who took the time to convey his dismay. (And I definitely discussed the fact that BOTH candidates are appalling in different but wholly horrendous ways.) This commentator didn't state any point with which he took umbrage, btw. Instead, he opted for insult, the cheapest trick in the bag. Next to "neener keener neener", that is.

Anyway, considering I took pains to be anything but reactionary, I mused at the (im)potency of his response had I written my true feelings about this entire disheartening campaign season.

A hunch - oh, all right - and absolutely crazed curiosity - the same tacky trait that made me watch your video even though I'd been apprised of its contents beforehand - led me to my ex-fan's Facebook page, but then I chickened/logged out when I saw the face of a single country star discussing the Beyonce/Dixie Chick debacle. Plus, I knew I'd be annoyed at the attached video. Hell, his photo was telling enough: The guy's face was all red, for starters.

Because, by golly, nothing says, "I'm the least racist person you know" like a legion of fans wearing pillowcases on their heads with the eyes cut out. Mix them with evangelicals - you know, the folks who profess to love and worship Jesus Christ - it's definitely the most confusing party in town.

Anyway, back to your video: I could not even watch what I perceived as veiled racism much less what happened to you - in person, in ugly, ugly, raging person - beyond the pale racism Yet it's happening dozens of times a day all across the country.

Not by way of excusing him, but I think the guy who assailed you fancies himself a freedom fighter. While I daresay he has more issues than are immediately evident in his tirade, it was still astonishing to see the zero to sixty fuse of his ire.

Then he kept mentioning the Republican nominee for the presidency, which might seem odd in any other election cycle. Mr. Lev, your video star has been drinking the Kool-aid® all right, but light years away from the guy who dispensed it. (If DJT pretended not to know David Duke, he's sure as hell not going to claim the man in the video.)

I'm trying to imagine how you must've felt. Again, I know it's not even close, but, trying to relate in some way: I've been called "n lover" before. Considering the infected sebaceous cysts on the ass of humanity who elect to use such words, that might well be a badge of honor. And I guess if one wishes to be technical about it, in my case, it's true. But that crap hasn't ever scared me. As corny as it sounds, I simply felt really sad to know that anyone hates whole races of people with such completeness.

What was said to you today might've made many of us scared and furious to the point of reacting both forcefully and regrettably. But you rose above it in every way. And then somehow had the wherewithal to calmly document what this guy was doing.

The equally tragic truth is that no matter what else is in that man's life that is good and true, it's going to be buried beneath that tirade. For a very long time. And the woman in his life - in the video? She was spoken to like an errant canine. I think you probably couldn't help, as I did briefly, a bit of pity for her, as well. Collateral damage, I guess it's called.

So. The guy who didn't like my silly post yesterday? He wrote a veritable love letter compared to the hater in your face today.

A postscript, which is and isn't part of the issue...

The last few times I've heard someone use racial epithets, I spied American flags on their car and or person. Hell, lately, it's hard not to flinch seeing one just because a whole bunch of folks flying also it have Confederate ones nearby. What the f? It's like they get a pass even though the Confederacy is - DOH! - a separatist, terrorist organization which advocates the overthrow of these United States. Look. I'm just a corny old broad who loves that flag for what it means about all of us. We've had quite a run, this extraordinary democratic experience of ours. It'd be great to see it continue. (And kindly refrain from condescending semantics regarding republics, etc. Y'all know damn well what I mean.)

Yeah, I know. Two hundred plus years isn't very much time in the grand scale of things, but given the warp speed of "progress" on earth, that we're all not blown to smithereens is amazing enough. I'm talking Norman Rockwell America. We're still very much here. (Maaaaan. I'm really carbon dating myself, aren't I?) Come on, Donald. It's one thing bringing hate to the table: It's quite another to call it apple pie. Added to his disingenuous assertions that it's our "greatness" you seek to restore, it's obvious that the Pandora's box lid is ripped clean off. But then Pandora's box just had bugs in it...

Skye Lev, what I saw fly towards you today looked like the stuff in The Green Mile: a dark, fetid swarm of part plague, part devil's perfume. It's loose in the land and as ugly as any insanity of ISIL.

The antidote? You tell me. I'm old enough to be your grandmother, but that doesn't mean I'm not looking up to you on this day simply because you didn't throw it back with hate. You didn't even post the video to bring attention to your specific plight, but to exhort others to vote.

And as for voting, well, it is just a shame that "the lesser of two evils" might as well be a campaign slogan. Still. The difference looks greater than it did before you posted what making us great again might look like - up close and personal.

PS Several years ago, I watched a documentary about Westboro Baptist Church. They're a tiny bunch of very hateful people who think, apparently, that maybe sixteen people are getting to heaven. There isn't much that they espouse that won't make a decent man get a lump in his throat. In the documentary, the main haters were also shown engaged in loving, funny maternal moments with their families. The viewer is forced to do a Three Stooges big double take. This viewer, anyway. That was my cue to love instead of feel just about anything else I was feeling after watching them. Just give me a place to put my big foot in the damn door and I'll give it my best shot.

If we were were graded on WWJD? homework, I'd be held back a few years. But I'm more grateful to those of you who show me how it's done - especially when it seems impossible. And guys? When this is over, let's all go bowling together.

Love,

Brett

Monday, November 7, 2016

Eve of Destruction and Grouch Marx

Tomorrow looms like Fort Sumpter did long ago: There will always be that strident moron or misanthrope who will say that it begat the best of times, a holy war, ignoring the oxymoronic quality of such remarks. (Their karma is foretold.)

Since I have had decades to matter by now and have only done so in marginal ways - along personal lines, anyway - perhaps at this brink of calamitous days, I can do this. Recalling the gifts of my beloved betters, I can toss a time capsule into the fray...

Presenting an America that needed improvement, to be sure, but one progressing nevertheless. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you levity. Cut and paste, go forth and multiply - wit, that is.

These days will also pass.

In the twinkling of an eye.

Make America laugh again.

https://youtu.be/QwdIerTCNCQ

My. I'm Little Miss Controversy tonight.

A thousand apologies for posting anything from the horrendous Daily Mail. Alas, we could not find this petite video anywhere else and it's too

1. Darling

2. Important

3. Breathtakingly frequent behavior

4. Darling (yes, again) not to post.

If you're going to comment about a pit bull who ate someone you love, I'll have to insist on showing the scar on my leg from a very tiny vicious dog who didn't eat me as I pedaled past on my bike when I was nine, but who did put me off tiny growling canines for a long time afterwards.

#adingoatemyalibi

#yourenotallergictocats

#yourmomdidntlikethemandmadethatcrapup

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3910462/Adorable-video-shows-moment-American-bulldog-Belle-showers-baby-boy-affection-adopting-him.html

Stormy Tuesday or.. Rendering to Caesar

Garrison Keillor wrote, among other things, in a brief letter to Mr. Trump, that what he -Trump - would really say to his rallies, if he was capable of the self-knowledge this statement requires, is simply this:

"I love you to death and when this is over, I'll have nothing I want."

It was not mean, but was almost a painfully accurate glimpse of the perpetually striving person wearing that oh so awful hat. Granted, there is always the chance that I've read more into the words of this prophet than will most. I don't think so, only because he didn't go in for the kill. Instead, Keillor went in for the most ephemeral but real place that connects us all: the place in which all lies are exposed, all ambition not for the highest good of all obliterated beneath the harsh glare of unbridled ambition.

Sam Kinison used to do a great bit about the guy who worked at the donut shop being a potentially dangerous individual. Sam acted out a man at his breaking point slamming ingredients together as his clenched jaws spoke this phrase over and over, "I'm not what Daddy wanted. I'm not what Daddy wanted."

It got huge laughs. Comedy is truth taken to absurd levels and everyone could readily imagine, in the benign role of confectionery maker, a wild rage based on critical judgment from his earliest years. It was crazy. But, to steal a punchline from a totally opposite joke, we could see his house from there...

Putting those same words in Trump's voice, the madness escalates. Instead of donuts, imagine the fast conveyor belts of "Make America Hate Again" - oops, make that "Great Again". (Although, really, they might be interchangeable here.)

To those who've been serenading me with their hatred of either candidate, a question. Or two...

First, for Trump loathers. Look. I get it. I reeaallly do. But what solutions do you offer that aren't mirror versions of that hate? Or, equally disturbing, what solutions aren't condescending to the point of arousing abject fury? I'm talking to you, Podesta fans, et al.)

And to those who despise HC: Granted, it's odd - hypocritical, even - that I find one form of corruption more palatable than another. Yes, it's beyond ironic that I prefer her brand of grotesque treachery to his, but there you are. I have never pretended to be balanced.

It's moot anyway, where I'm concerned: I live in California which is pretty blue, as states go, so, technically, my vote won't even matter.

I recall being pissed, however naively, at people who voted for Ralph Nader several years ago, thinking they'd missed some giant point that now escapes me entirely.

Before that? The days of my innocence. Ah, youth!

Mama says I was born this way - to quote Madame Gaga - but I actually knocked on doors, passing out Andrew Young campaign buttons when I was eleven. Years-old. At 14, I sent my hard-earned babysitting money to George McGovern. Looking back at such earnestness, I love that kid.

Then, for years afterwards, I tiptoed to the left of that and did so organically, even adorably, especially considering where I lived, my lack of formal education, etc. I was a blue collar blue stater before we had labels for such things.

Now, with this nutty craving I have to love people exactly for who they are, no matter how scary or even ghastly I find their credo - it's hard to be strident about anything political, especially knowing how little differences really exist between the two supposedly different parties.

But this election year became toxic fast. An awful virtual bile, as thick as the stuff in the Brea Tar Pits bubbles up without ceasing...

Damn. And with the quagmire, a quandary: It's damned hard to love bigots, but unless I do, I am no different. Hating haters is stepping in the same pile of excrement twice and bragging about it both times.

Btw, my friends, please believe me when I say that the thoroughness of this conviction is terribly inconvenient. Just because I ask WWJD?? doesn't mean I high dive without shrieking into the deep end of loving my enemy as myself.

I owe this unsettling epiphany not to the bigots themselves, but to something that happened several years ago at a Hollywood party right before Obama's first term...

Some unctuous - sigh, yes, fellow - Hollywood liberals were murmuring about possible outcomes. Then I overheard someone fretting about other Democrats not understanding the importance of Obama being elected. It took me a moment to realize who they meant by 'other': They were talking about the unenlightened, dare I say it?/Those unhip Democrats living between NY and LA. As if people who regularly dined on Kraft Mac 'n Cheese (which I have yet to turn down in any quantity) were incapable of the depth, breadth, height of their own comprehension of that historic election.

I've often imagined any one of the New Testament authors wrestling with adding one sentence which would have added so much to that book: "Jesus laughed until big fat tears rolled down His face."

As Judy Tenuta would say, "It could happen."

When I think about the crowd He ran with, cuisine limitations notwithstanding, I'm pretty sure He would be right next to me when the macaroni and cheese was doled out. And somehow, despite what the horrendous, hubristic, sanctimonious religous leaders say He would do, I think, if asked who he'd vote for, He'd just smile and grab a Classic Coke to wash down the cornbread.

(And don't even tell me, He'd drink Pepsi. Some things are fighting words.)

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Best Awkward Family Photo. Ever.

It's like one of those near death experiences you read about that includes both heaven and hellish imagery.

(And let's not write the usual "Come on, I wanna LEI ya" comments. You guys are way better than that.)


I'd like to post a page that I hope a lot of folks will see for many reasons.

Scott Nathan posted this first and I'm going to try and find who these photographers are: He's right. Pulitzers need to be forthcoming.

In the far off creeks and back roads are where the sacred battles are being fought. I daresay there are some soldiers on one side who have to be wondering what's going on exactly.

Sending peace to EVERYone in the mix.

https://www.facebook.com/Standing-Rock-Rising-1131347910264898/

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