Weekly Mail January 22, 2017

Hey:



       So I got to watch some of the inauguration on Friday, we were able to catch President Trump's swearing in, and some of his speech. There were parts of the speech I liked and parts I thought he could have avoided.

       But more importantly, I always feel like Inauguration Day is one of the great days in America. I know there are plenty of Trump haters out there who thought this was the worst day of their lives, and his administration may turn out to be. But I'm always fascinated by the transfer of power, the graciousness of both parties (I know Michelle Obama grimaced and Trump took shots at Washington DC in his speech, but he also said the Obamas were "magnificent") and just the pageantry of it all. The music, the parades, I find it amazing. I know other countries have bloodless transfer of power, I still think we do it better than anyone.


NEWS ITEM: Evil in the Cabinet


      My general rule of thumb when it comes to Presidential appointees is that to the victor goes the spoils.  It annoyed me when Republicans would vote against Obama's nominees for his cabinet and the Supreme Court. As the opposition party, you are not going to agree with the philosophy of the person being appointed. Well that's too damn bad, next time win the election. (And this is coming from someone who voted against Obama in 2008)

      My feeling is that the job of the nominating committee is to weed out someone who is egregiously unqualified for the position. I didn't like that Sonia Sotomoyor said A wise Hispanic woman is better than a white man", but one quote should not have disqualified her from SCOTUS. Same thing with Obama's cabinet picks. Lord knows I couldn't stand Hillary Clinton, but if that's who Obama wanted to be his Secretary of State, than I had no issue with that.

     But man,  the blowback I've been seeing about President Trump's pick for education Secretary has been something else.  I mean he's gotten some well deserved grief about most of his choices, but this one has people going nuts! Probably because so many of my family and friends are educators.

     Another general rule of thumb is that someone going for a cabinet position should have some experience in that field, or else be super successful in another field that you can show an ability to learn on the fly. This lady seems to have neither of these qualities. Therefore if I was voting in the Senate, I'd have to give her the gas face.


     **BOOK REVIEW **BOOK REVIEW **BOOK REVIEW **BOOK REVIEW**

Altamont-The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day
By: Joel Slevin

I kept seeing this book at my local library and was reluctant to take it out. I had seen Gimme Shelter several times and thought I was fairly knowledgeable about what had happened.

But I didn't know the half of it.

To review:  After the success of Woodstock in August 1969, people wanted to put together another free concert on the West Coast. A number of great bands had come out of the San Francisco area, and the idea was to put those bands together along with the Rolling Stones. With the Beatles falling apart, the Stones were poised to become the World's biggest band, and Mick Jagger saw this as a huge opportunity to do so.

The lineup for the show was to be Santana, Jefferson Airplane, the Flying Burrito Brothers, The Grateful Dead and the Stones. It was to be at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on December 6, 1969. When the promoters were unable to get a permit for Golden Gate Park, they were forced to move the concert to Altamont Speedway, a failing race track on the outskirts of the city.

The Stones had given a free concert at London's Hyde Park a month before Woodstock, and they had employed the Hells Angels as security. They had no idea of knowing that the Angels in England weren't the bad a$$es the ones in America were.

Larger than expected crowds, lack of adequate facilities, bad drugs, poor sound quality, no space between the stage and the crowds, and the Angels, drunk and high, kicking the crap out of everybody, led this concert to be an unmitigated disaster. Slevin sets up the San Francisco music scene in the late 60's, details the planning and some of the shady characters that were part of that, the disastrous idea of having the Angels serve as security, and the concert itself.

When I was younger and someone would be reading a Steven King novel, they would say, "The Book is so much scarier than the movie." I don't watch horror movies and I don't read horror novels, so I didn't know what the hell they could possibly be talking about. Now I know.

Because no matter how many times I've seen Gimme Shelter, nothing made me feel like I was there, in front of the stage watching the Hells Angels clobbering people like this book did. I couldn't believe how sucked into the story I got.

One of the concert goers, an 18 year old African American kid named Meredith Hunter, was stabbed to death by a Hells Angels member named Alan Passaro. The book goes into his murder trial, and the rest of the aftermath. It's a horrible story about a horrible day in rock and roll history. But Slevin did a masterful job telling it.

4.5 Auggies

**MOVIE REVIEW **MOVIE REVIEW **MOVIE REVIEW **MOVIE REVIEW

MOVIE: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
STARRING: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, Forest Whittaker
SAW IT AT: AMC Fantasy 5; Rockville Centre
SAW IT WITH: Timmy

I hate reviewing anything that has to do with Star Wars because someone inevitably didn't see it and all hell breaks loose with spoilers and $h-t. So if you hadn't seen it yet, don't read between the stars.


*******************************************************************************


You remember in Episode IV  A New Hope (or as I call it the Original Star Wars) when the Rebellion said they had found a fatal flaw in the Death Star? Well, this is the story of how the fatal flaw was designed and the effort to go and recover the plans.

Felicity Jones is the daughter of the man who designed the Death Star against his wishes. The Rebellion came looking for her in order to track him down. Since he had been taken by the empire when she was a child, she honestly told them she didn't know where he was. And it goes from there.

It took me a while to figure everything out, and I kept asking Tim if he knew what was going on. Thank goodness he said he did cuz dammed if I could explain it to him. Once I got it straight, it was pretty entertaining.

4.5 aces.

******************************************************************************

I hope everyone who marched on Saturday stayed safe, and were able to get some satisfaction. The numbers from what I saw were staggering. Millions of people from across the country and around the world. I know this: Saturday's march will be talked about for years. And since there was little to no violence, it will be talked about for all the right reasons. I could have done without Madonna threatening to burn down the White House, but one idiot out of millions of marchers should not ruin the strong and positive message that came out of the march.

As always hang in there

and Have a Great Week