Tag Archives: faith

And So It Goes

Today is Monday, December 15, 2025. When the news cycle couldn’t get any worse – with the death of two university students at Brown University and the shocking murder of 15 Jewish individuals in Australia this weekend – there comes the equally shocking news of the murders of celebrated artist Rob Reiner and his wife Michele in their Brentwood home Sunday morning. I heard about this early Monday morning when I turned to MS Now a little after 1.m. after watching a tense thriller on Tubi called Next of Kin. I couldn’t believe what I was reading on the screen: that Rob Reiner, though being 78, and his wife, Michele, 68, were found dead in their Brentwood home Sunday afternoon. At that time, no suspect in their double murders was not identified as of yet.

In the wake of this horrible event, the sitting idiot in chief decided to release his own vulgar comments on the death of Reiner, portraying it as the wrongful result of his liberal policies and his obsession with Drumpf. He referred to people accurately hating him as “Trump Derangement Syndrome” on his vile “Truth” – what a joke! – Social platform. I won’t go into the substance of his disgusting remarks, but I hope with this post after the murder of one of Hollywood’s and this nation’s most respected humanitarians, that this dummkopf has finally reached the lowest point of respect. How dare him post such abominable tripe when someone as respected as Rob Reiner is killed by his own son, as the news has later reported. His post was a sneering rebuke of Reiner’s true legacy as a talented writer, director, and actor. He hated Reiner only because Reiner called this dummkopf out a myriad of times for his being the stupidest man on the planet and for his horrible character and vileness. All of it true, of course!

Finally, I’m now reading a score of cowardly repugnicans have struck back at this subhuman for his disgusting remarks about Reiner. This stupid president when confronted with his acid remarks on his ridiculous platform actually double downed on them, saying, “Well, I wasn’t a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned,” thus using the absurd habit of the third person here when talking about himself. Isn’t that a bit looney on its own, even?

I truly hope this madman loses more support among those voters out there for posting such unpresidential, uncultured, uncivilized, unhinged remarks that paint him as truly deranged himself. When he called Reiner “deranged,” of course he was discussing himself as usual, using the defense mechanism of projection, which is his fucking modus operandi for his miserable 79 years.

Despite Grump’s words of nonrespect toward Reiner’s death, Hollywood itself is posting condolence after condolence on the passing of the beloved director/actor and his wife, who was a photographer in her own right. I’ll just say that Dump’s remarks have spurred an immediate outrage against them – even as far right as the hosts of The Charlie Kirk Show who condemned the president’s comments.

This unlikely condemnation coming from a far-right host of the late Charlie Kirk’s eponymous show is covered in a RawStory article entitled “‘Delate that!’ Charlie Kirk Show joins outrage over Trump’s ‘disgusting’ Rob Reiner attack,” by David Edwards.

Thus hosts of the program condemned Demented Don’s attack on Truth Social following the murder of the liberal Hollywood director.

Cohost Blake Neff said about the remarks that have traveled around the world but not in a good way, “It’s terrible politics. It’s a free country. And he [Rob Reiner] was allowed to believe what he wanted. That doesn’t mean it’s okay for him to get stabbed to death by his son. And it’s disgusting [really pointing a finger at Dump] if anyone is celebrating this.”

Then Neff went on to read the “president’s” commentary, saying that the toddler in chief should delete those comments. Another cohost, Andrew Kolvet, reminded listeners that Reiner responded to Kirk’s death by saying “it should never happen to anybody,” words that this idiot leader couldn’t bring himself to say in his own post. Reiner went on to say, “I don’t care what your political beliefs are. That’s not acceptable.”

Kolvet insisted, “That is the only correct response . . . whenever anyone dies.” And here, I have to agree with this conservative podcaster.

I’m hoping that everyone on the political spectrum now comes out to excoriate this insane president for his disappointing and totally unacceptable comments. I also hope that support for him erodes even more after this abominable display of uncouthness.

Tomorrow I’m going to meet a colleague from my school for lunch, ironically, in the same area that Elliot and I found ourselves in on Saturday night: the Upper East Side.

I’m not sure what I might do after our lunch on East 70th Street. I could stay out, even though I’m going to a meeting of my Turner Classic Movies fan club on Wednesday at 5. This is being held at the Tick Tock Diner, on West 34th Street. I might not be here on Wednesday either.

Oops, I will be out on Thursday also. I’m finally seeing the hottest show in town, Oh, Mary, at 7:30. I’ve heard it’s not such a long play, so I should file a blog that night as well, if I’m not too tired. I snagged a ticket on the Today Tix app that I have on my phone last week.

Have a good Tuesday.

And so it went!

This is the playbill from that play we saw on Saturday.

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, October 2, 2025. I’ve survived another 25-hour fast with the ending of Yom Kippur tonight at 7:21 p.m. I’m happy to report that I had no twinges of hunger that entire time, even though I did look longingly in pizza parlors and the like as I walked through the neighborhood in the afternoon.

Yesterday Elliot and I attended Kol Nidre services at Temple Beth-El in Jersey City for the first time. This synagogue was the shul where Elliot’s deceased Aunt Esther attended for many years and one in which Elliot and his coexecutor of Esther’s estate have donated thousands of dollars to the building over the years. Thus Elliot preferred to attend services there last night instead of having me go to 34th Street to attend services at the Jacob Javits Center at the gay synagogue by myself, which is what I usually do. This time I had little interest in traveling once again on the subway since our recently deceased friend “Larry” attended services there with his spouse, “Jeff.” I can wait a year – or whatever.

So we left at around 3:30 to take the F train to 34th Street where we hopped on a PATH train to Grove Street, where we had dinner at Luna. We made very good time without driving there this time. I think we were in New Jersey in little over an hour.

The restaurant was quite empty when we walked in since it wasn’t even 5 yet. Services began at 6:30 and we had over an hour to eat. Since this amounted to my last meal before fasting, I pulled no stops. I had meatballs as an appetizer and pesto gnocchi as my entree. We then had creme brûlée and coffee for dessert. I thus began my fast around 6 p.m.

I then called for an Uber to take us to the synagogue on John F. Kennedy Boulevard. We got caught in rush hour traffic and just got to the synagogue around 6:30. We couldn’t help but notice the police cruiser standing outside as a form of law enforcement deterrence.

The synagogue looked old to me and not so well lit. There certainly weren’t thousands of worshippers here as you would see at the Javits Center, that’s for sure. However, the setting and atmosphere was certainly more intimate and you didn’t have good-looking young men with yarmulkes as a distraction during the service here. There were people of all ages sitting in the pews here.

Since this is a reform synagogue, there was more reading in English, which is not what I was accustomed to growing up. It was very easy for me to follow the prayers since the prayer book did not have so much Hebrew on the page.

The rabbi’s sermon was delivered with real folksy charm. She relayed her experiences over the summer on an Alaskan cruise and how she decided to take a Bible class being offered instead of the usual chazerai (game shows, bingo, art auctions, etc.) She recounted how many of the people doing this were Catholics and she was reluctant at first to say that not only was she Jewish, she was also a female spiritual leader. She went on for a considerable time tying this willingness to do something different into a treatise on being tolerant of others with different opinions than yourself. In this age of division, this is what we need more – a willingness to come out of our entrenched bubbles and get to see how the other side lives. Her message was certainly very apt for this time in history.

By 9:30, the service was finally over. Elliot decided to go up to the bimah and say hi to the rabbi. At first, she didn’t recognize him since they have only communicated generally by email. When she realized who he was, her expression brightened immediately and she kissed and hugged him. I sheepishly went up to greet her and she did the same with me.

Now it was time to call on Uber again to take us to the Journal Square PATH station. The wait didn’t take long; a driver pulled up on Montgomery Street where we were standing within minutes.

We had to wait awhile for a PATH train, but we didn’t have to wait for an F when we got to the 34th Street station. We got home in about an hour. Now it was fasting time for me until the next day.

So today, I took an extensive walk in the neighborhood. I also sat in MacDonald Park to read my new book, Lake Success, by Gary Shteyngart. I picked up this book only about a day or two ago and I’m about 200 pages in it already. It was written years ago during the reign of Dump I – about 2016. It tells the uproarious story of one Barry Cohen, rich, Jewish, living near the Flatiron Building, in a million-dollar pad who flees New York City and his Indian wife, Seema, and his seriously autistic three-year-old child, Shiva, by taking a Greyhound Bus across the country meeting all sorts of people on the road. The book is very funny and well grounded in the American zeitgeist, I believe.

Anyway, I cannot delve into MAGA World today since I took a 24-hour breather from it. Tomorrow is a different story.

Hope everyone’s fast was as trouble free and easy as mine.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, September 21, 2025, one day before the official start of autumn. For those of you who are interested – and I know most of you aren’t – today marked the funeral and public memorial marking the canonization of far-right activist Charlie Kirk in Glendale, Arizona. The doddering president has been shown delivering remarks on the occasion of this spectacle, but I generally had no intention of listening to him. I’m more interested in an online article from Ok! by its staff entitled “Donald Trump Falls Asleep at Charlie Kirk’s Funeral and Memorial Service as Health Concerns Mount: Photo.”

The article mentions that the president was seen dozing off during the service in Arizona. After Kirk was shot and killed on September 10, Dump shared the news on “Truth” Social. I won’t repeat what the most un-Christian commander in chief posted on his media platform about how wonderful the late Kirk was.

Now it has been reported that the killer of Kirk, Tyler Robinson, often clashed with his father over their opposing views, his mother said. When Charlie’s Utah Valley University event came up, Tyler reportedly called it “stupid” and said Kirk “spreads too much hate.”

In the meantime, this is hardly the first time Dump was caught taking forty winks. Recently, the former reality star was observed napping during the U.S. Open finals, sparking a new round of questions about his condition.

Two clinical psychologists – John Gartner and Harry Segal – now claim the signs point to something more serious, with Chump showing physical and linguistic symptoms of “early dementia.” And who recalls that it was discovered that former President Ronald Reagan was suffering from the same ailment during his second term? And that his “Just say, no” wife, Nancy Reagan, was actually running the country for him? I wonder who is doing it in the case of this loathsome individual; it’s certainly not Melanoma, his wife. It’s probably Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff who is as just as loathsome as his boss.

And who can forget the many times Chump was caught dozing during his one criminal trial conducted here in New York? Back in July, cameras caught him struggling to stay awake as his team rolled out a new health-tracking system at the White House. Later that month, critics nicknamed him “Sleepy Don” after he seemed ready to nod off during an energy and AI summit in Pittsburgh.

ll I have to say about this matter is how the media would pounce on former President Joe Biden if he had ever done the same thing as Chump in public, no less. This guy appears to be suffering, actually, from early onset dementia in real time and our legacy news outlets somehow are shying away from reporting on it! This is not good for America.

Well, that wraps it up for me for the next three days. Tomorrow night marks the start of Rosh Hashanah and we’re either hosting our friend “Patricia” here at our apartment – only if the elevator is restored to its former glory during the day – or we’re going to Patricia’s place, toting all the food that Elliot prepared for the occasion.

On Tuesday, we head out to Cherry Hill to spend the holiday with “Harold” and his family. Since we just returned from an almost-two-week overseas trip, we’re staying only until Wednesday. And we also don’t want to leave Atticus for much longer than a day or so.

So for those of my readers who celebrate this event, let me wish you “L’shana tova”; may you all be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. I will either return here on Wednesday or on Thursday. It depends on when we come back from New Jersey and on my mental and physical state.

And so it went!

Ooh, my very first AI-generated image! Good heavens!

And So It Goes

ringwToday is Sunday, April 20, 2025. On this Easter Sunday, the madman in the White House issued his usual deranged, bizarre message of “good will” (it was mostly ill will, not good will) on this holiday. Normally, I wouldn’t have even read or paid any attention to his garbage, but since this is Easter Sunday, I decided to share some of it with you and I dare anyone to not come to the same conclusion that this man in the White House is not fucking insane. In his demented message, he bid Happy Easter to the “Radical Left Lunatics who are scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane [oh, he’s including himself here in this rant], and well-known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country.” Then he issued a Happy Easter to the “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue [yes, only because they have ruled against him, so he calls them “weak and ineffective.”] He even had kind words for his predecessor who “purposely allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country. Then he had the temerity to judge Biden the WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing.” Here the shitstain person in the White House regularly used the defense mechanism once again of projection in which he knows he’s the worst president in American and world history and just sloughs it off on Joe Biden who had the most impressive record of domestic and foreign policies which this gorilla just shredded in the three months he’s been in office. At the end of this cringeworthy rant, the Chump focused his one pea brain on the presidential 2020 election in which he lost by a considerable margin. He still can’t get this defeat out of his Neanderthal brain!

So there it is! Chump’s off-the-wall and bizarre Easter Sunday message to the nation. Forget previous rants he’s unleashed on the country in remembrance of other holidays like Mother’s Day or Christmas in which he couldn’t veer away from his own fucking narcissism and lack of soul or empathy toward people in more vulnerable situations. Damn him and those who kowtow to him which is primarily the entire repugnican party!

Well, it’s another week. I thought I would make this entry short today.

Have a good week. I’ll be leaving for Los Angeles on Wednesday, April 23, to partake of the TCM Film Festival, from April 24 through April 27. Then I’ll meet Elliot in Phoenix, Arizona, to stay with our cousin, “Joan,” in Scottsdale. We might take a side trip to Tucson the week I’m there. And it’ll be nice not to obsess over this authoritarian administration over the next week and a half.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Monday, April 14, 2025. Elliot and I were away for the last two days spending the beginning of Passover with my Cherry Hill lifelong friend “Harold” and his wife “Rachel.” As always, the two days flew by very quickly, considering that Harold and I attended synagogue services Sunday morning around 9:30, while both Rachel and Elliot lounged around the house to wait for our return. That morning, I had to set the phone alarm to 8 and get out within the hour or so.

We arrived at Harold and Rachel’s house around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday after leaving the apartment around 10:30, where we had breakfast in Jersey City at Beechwood Cafe. There we had a very nice prepesadik breakfast consisting of an omelette consisting of tomato, spinach, onions, mushrooms, and roasted red peppers for Elliot and a berry mix pancake for me.

But I cannot continue writing my little entry here without writing about the latest appalling attack on a Jewish governor’s residence in Pennsylvania by a crazed arsonist on the first day of Passover. I can’t believe this abominable incident of violence was not an antisemetic display of hatred perpetuated by a lunatic. The man, 38, set fire to Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro’s house early Sunday morning and set the fire with a homemade Molotov cocktail he fashioned from lawnmower gasoline and beer bottles.

Shapiro and his family were indeed very fortunate in that he, his wife Lori, his four children, two dogs, and another family were safely evacuated from the state-owned Harrisburg residence, which was significantly damaged by the conflagration, hours after the family hosted a Passover dinner. No injuries were reported.

The assailant was asked what he would have done if he found Shapiro home and he replied that he would have beaten him with a hammer. This sick response from an obviously sick man brings to mind the hammer attack on former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, a few years back.

The idiot in chief, when pressed to say something about this atrocious act of violence, just stupidly said, “The man was not a fan of Trump,” thus diminishing the true response of horror he should have uttered and the fact that he threw the fucking spotlight back on him, casting him in the third person which is just nutty altogether.

But who expected any words of true empathy from the convicted felon who is president. The action committed by Governor Shapiro and his family was unconscionable and should be condemned by everyone!

Declaring himself a proud Jew, Shapiro was defiant in the wake of this devastating attack against him and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He said he will not be “deterred” by the alleged attack. He told CNN, “If he was trying to terrorize our family, our friends, the Jewish community, who joined us for a Passover Seder in that room lsat night, hear me on this: We celebrated our faith last night, proudly and in a few hours, we will celebrate our second Seder of Passover.”

After writing about this hugely unpleasant incident in Pennsylvania, I’m finished with continuing the blog. Sorry, my attention has been distracted by this terrible event.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Friday, January 24, 2025. Authoritarianism was in full force, sadly, after Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde delivered a plea for mercy from the incoming autocrat sitting in the front pew, along with his wife, and his vice president and his wife on Tuesday, January 21. An online article in The New Republic by Parker Molloy entitled “The Price of Speaking Up in Trump’s America” outlines an abominable scenario arising from this succession of power that just took place on Tuesday, January 21. For those who couldn’t watch the proceedings, here’s a breakdown of what happened during her address to the devil who is now president of the United States. All she did was urge the Orange Turd to display mercy toward “those people who are scared now” that he’s become president again.

Budde then listed those communities who find themselves very vulnerable under a second Drumpf presidency: “gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families.” She went on to mention “the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals.” She recognized that these individuals may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, “but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.” [Try to pound this fact into the empty heads of far-righters who still believe the hogwash that all undocumented people are criminals.] All she asked of the president is to find compassion for these people.

Instead of simply accepting the message of true brotherhood inherent in the pastor’s speech, the response was swift and severe. The bastard himself on his social platform called her a “radical left hard line Trump hater.” He even demanded an apology from the courageous cleric. Chump told reporters that the service was “not too exciting” and that organizers “could do much better.” Is this deranged or not? The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh declared that “hell exists for people like Mariann.” Is this necessary?

With conservatives whipped into a frenzy over nothing, Budde herself says she has begun receiving wishes for her death.

“All of this – the full machinery of right-wing outrage – deployed against a religious leader who simply asked for kindness toward vulnerable people.” This kind of disproportionate response to a plea for mercy tells us exactly what this country will be dealing with over the next four years. Four years of cruelty from a pig!

When asked about the backlash, Budde told NPR, “I regret that it has caused the kind of response that it has, in the sense that it actually confirmed the very thing that I was speaking of earlier, which is our tendency to jump to outrage and not speak to one another with respect.” She has stood firm – thank God – about needing to apologize to the bastard. She won’t!

The whole irony about Budde’s sermon is that it was actually about unity. As she explained to The View, her responsibility “was to reflect, to pray with the nation for unity,” and her remarks were an attempt to “say we need to treat everyone with dignity, and we need to be merciful.”

This response to one woman’s words embracing true Christian values just shows what this country has done in voting for this tyrant and his party of MAGAts. There was one member of Congress, even, who suggested that the American-born bishop should be “added to the deportation list.” Shameful!

This whole incident can be viewed as a preview of how dissent with be dealt with under a second Chump regime. These dissenters to Budde’s message are not just disagreeing with her, they’re trying to destroy her for delivering the message in the first place.

So this shameful episode from January 21 should be remembered by all of us as we see how the machinery of government under Chump can be used to carry out a full-scale campaign of intimidation from the highest levels of government and media.

Another piece of nauseating news: Chump’s unqualified nominee for defense secretary was tonight confirmed in a very narrow Senate vote – with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. The country is in deep shit with this confirmation, I believe. Whatever it’s worth, Senator “Bitch” McConnell issued a searing “no” vote on Hegseth’s nomination for defense secretary. He noted how the position of defense secretary is even more important today “in the face of the gravest threats to U.S. national security interests since World War II.” Let’s hope Hegseth makes good on his promise to quit drinking now that he’s defense secretary. I don’t see how he can keep this promise, given how murderous the job is.

Oye! And so it went!