My number one New Year’s resolution for 2026 is…

Last week’s blog I wrote how I don’t take New Year’s resolutions seriously got me thinking despite my beliefs on the subject there are a few things I have been needing to do the past several years but never had the energy to begin much less complete them.

As I came up with that list of things to complete for 2026, I came up with what should be my one and only resolution for this year. Read on if you wish to know what that is, if you even care.

Here are nine things I plan to complete in 2027 and one resolution I will follow. A few of these I’ve already started.

1) Attend church services again every Sunday (or at least make an effort): I’ve attended church services off on this past year which is more than what I’ve done in previous years. Just not every Sunday like I’m supposed to. I’ve come to the realization, however, if I can’t find anything better to do on Sunday mornings then I might as well spend an hour in God’s house and pray I get through another week at work. Perhaps sometime this year I’ll go to confession. I haven’t been to confession since Christmas Eve 1994. My soul is pretty filthy to quote the nuns I had who taught me at St. Louise de Marillac school in La Grange Park, Ill. which closed after 62 years in 2020. I’ve a feeling my “soul” needs a major cleansing.

2) Blogging: I’ve always planned on doing a weekly blog addressing some topic I want to talk about and not what everyone in the country thinks is the flavor of the day. Time has gotten in the way of that. (I don’t get paid to blog you know!). I have been told by people the past two decades or more how my writing talents are wasted in my current job and continue to be so going on 30 years now though writing is an integral part of my work (I have to take good notes in the tickets even if it just says, “called person – went to voicemail – left message.”) This year is not only time for me to start blogging on a weekly basis but also put my writing where my mouth is and see if my talent takes me somewhere because I’ll be damned if I’m going to do my current job until retirement when there will be no social security for me to collect…which brings me to number 3.

3) Career Change: It’s not too late to make a change no matter how old I am. Money don’t buy happiness. All money does is make you do things you don’t want to do. The secret to enjoying life is doing something you enjoy doing even if it doesn’t pay well. I have no idea what my destiny is, but I know it’s definitely NOT what I’m doing now. It’s time to get a “real” job where I don’t feel like I need to take a vacation from!

4) Classes: I have tried numerous times over the years to take classes but have rarely finished. It’s hard to balance four classes and a 40-hour-a-week job I’m burned out on and yet I am not married with children, nor do I have a girlfriend in state. Yet the classes I’ve attempted to complete feel like I am working an additional 40 hours just to do the classwork. I am registered for four classes again this spring semester. I think the difference now versus previous years is I am more determined to finish my classes this time around and perhaps in the next two years or less get a degree as backup that is in addition to writing/blogging. Those of you, however, who work, are married and/or single with kids and taking four classes or more I have only one question. How the f--- do you do it????

5) Drain the Swamp: When it comes to worldly possessions you don’t take this crap with you when you die. Unless you are an Egyptian who believed like the pharaohs did and had all their possessions buried with them in the pyramids to take to the underworld. I’ve started draining the swamp already. If I can’t get my hands on a lighthouse, which will probably cost me five times more to refurbish than it will be to buy it (I may just have to settle for the LEGO one for $299) I can do with living in a “tiny home” which are equivalent to those trailer parks tornados have intense love affairs with.

6) Eat out less: Not only am I finding eating out is ridiculously expensive but is also overrated. The service half the time sucks. The food looks nothing like what is advertised. Remember the breakfast scene in “Falling Down” (1993)? Hell, the appetizers cost just as much as the meal itself. I’m finding it is cheaper to either eat at home and/or bring your lunch to work. I think this year if I’m going to continue sending my blood sugars skyrocketing and the a1c to stay in the double digits which makes me a viable candidate for a stroke or heart attack I’m going to make it worth my while. In other words, I’ll eat “real” pizza. Cicis, Domino’s, Papa Johns, and Pizza Hut is not “real” pizza. Olive Garden is “egg noodles and ketchup” and I now call Subway “Jared’s.” Do your own research if you don’t know who “Jared” is.

7) Follow a budget: I’ve never set up a monthly budget in my life…until now! Talk about a rude awakening! As the sayings go, it’s not only never too late to start a new career but also never too late to start a budget as well.

8) Go somewhere…anywhere: I’ve not had a “real” vacation in years. I am overdue for one. I need one that can last 1000 years or more. Any ideas other than a trip to “The Undiscovered Country?”

9) Take my health slightly more seriously: While five visits to the hospital since 2015 for diabetes and/or COVID issues have failed to give me pause others I’m sure would wonder if I have a death wish. Fine! I’ll take this “pain-in-the-ass” disease I got more seriously than I have since being diagnosed in 2006, but you know, diabetes is like cancer, HIV/AIDS or any other major life-threatening ailment. It’s a slow death sentence. The medications only work for so long. At least I am no longer a 300-plus-pound whale. I now continue to weigh what I was when I graduated high school in 1988 – 180 - enough to the point I got people asking me if I’m sick. Last week someone I hadn’t seen since the mid-1990s told me how she not only remembered me back when I was overweight but also had hair.

10) Just do it! Hence my number one resolution for 2026. Instead of saying I’m going to do these things on my list that I’ve meant to get to the past several years I’m going to stop saying that and just do them. In other words, JUST DO IT!

Stay tuned to 12/30/26 when I reveal if I completed ALL these things. Or maybe not. After all, nowhere on this list did I mention anything about keeping my promises.

©1/7/26

Ringing in the new year as pointless as the time wasted making resolutions

If there is ever a holiday I don’t believe in celebrating, it’s New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. I find it equivalent to celebrating one’s birthday except I see nothing positive about it since both days mean you are now a year older and, in some cases, deeper in debt.

Not only do I not know the lyrics to “Auld Lang Syne” but I have never actually seen anyone band together to sing it seconds after the clock strikes midnight. I have only seen it happen in disaster movies like "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) moments before the little boat in a bathtub was capsized by an immense tidal wave. And when Frank Sinatra and his rat pack buddies raided the safes of several Las Vegas casinos in the original "Ocean’s 11" (1960).

When you get right down to it, New Years Eve is nothing more than a petty excuse to go out and get plastered drunk with your friends or family. It’s a chance to watch whoever it is who now hosts the celebrations from New York’s Times Square as the lighted ball comes down at the stroke of midnight.

Perhaps if you are really drunk as a result of the night’s festivities, you might not remember the moment it became Jan. 1. Perhaps you are so inebriated that you ended up kissing a complete stranger and maybe even found yourself in bed with him, her or their pet the next morning.

Or maybe you forgot that list of New Year’s Resolutions already you made just hours earlier.

Yes resolutions – the kinds of goals you set only to break one or all your promises within the baby new year’s first few hours, if not days, weeks, or maybe months before that little infant grows up to be a grouchy old man.

Or do I have to bring up all those fitness commercials I see that air the month of December that urge one to start the new year off by creating the new you?

I can’t tell you how many years, and for all I know I have probably been hearing it since birth, how many times I have heard the statements, “You should make “that” your number one new year’s resolution” and “Have you come up with any resolutions you’d like to focus on for the new year?”

Perhaps the question which should be asked is how many of you as December comes to a close sit down to take less than 30 seconds, (all right a minute) to come up with ten goals or less that you’d like to accomplish in the coming year?  Don’t tell me you actually take such a trivial tradition seriously. I don’t. I don’t think I have ever wasted more than five minutes of my time taking a pointless stroll down memory lane the last week of the year to see what improvements I can make in my life.

Why should I take such a holiday seriously or resolutions for that matter? No one else does. According to a 1/3/11 article on time.com some of the top 10 commonly broken New Year’s resolutions which I have failed to follow on a yearly basis include lose weight and get fit, eat healthier and diet, get out of debt and save money, spend more time with family, and be less stressed.

There is only one reason why we celebrate the new year and no I don’t have time (nor the space here) to giving a history lesson about where New Year's Eve celebrations came from and the different traditions other countries have. You’ll have to do that on your own.

The only reason why we celebrate New Years Eve every 12 months is because that’s how long it takes for the earth to go around the sun. If we lived on Mercury, a typical year would be 88 days according to the website, www.stardate.com. Imagine that! Less than three months, the world gets to party “like it’s 1999” as Prince spoke of in his rock song. If it turns out he or she didn’t keep up with their resolutions of less than three months ago, they can just save the list and try again the next three months. And we wouldn’t have to worry about any cold weather.

What if we lived on Saturn, however, where the time it takes for the ringed planet to go around the sun is 29.5 earth years or in this case 360 months? That’s a long time to wait for New Year’s Eve to come along but if there is any consolation, that’s more than enough time for one to complete his or her resolutions thirty times over. People will have waited to party for so long that they’ll probably want to rest the next 30 years and not worry about making a list of goals. Perhaps the entire world will just take one big, long holiday that lasts the next 29.5 earth years.

I have never accomplished a single New Year's Resolution I have made over the years. Perhaps I’ll start now. The best goals to set are the ones you know you can keep so my one resolution for 2026 which I plan to keep the rest of my life, along with my refusal to celebrate Dec. 31 is I AM NOT MAKING ANY!

Happy New Year!

©12/31/25

Appreciation: Siskel & Ebert at 50

Having lived in Chicago for over ten years before relocating to Dallas in July 1984, I can honestly say for much of the late 70s and early 80s, I grew up reading film critics Gene Siskel’s and Roger Ebert’s columns almost every Friday in their perspective newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times and watched their weekly film reviewing program, “Sneak Previews” (1975-1996) (the original title was called “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You.”)

 Chicago film critics Gene Siskel (L) and Roger
Ebert (R) as they appeared in the Nov. 
1975 pilot of their reviewing program
"Opening Soon at a Theater Near You."

I cannot say I agreed with every movie they recommended like "Howard's End" (1992), “Natural Born Killers” (1994), and "The English Patient" (1996). I cannot tell you how many films I've sat through critics liked (not just Siskel and Ebert) that had me wanting to scream at the top of my lungs as I stormed out the theater, "Da f--k is this sh-t?!?!?!"

I walked out of “The English Patient” (1996) twice and still have not seen one of their ten best movies of 1998, “Babe: Pig in the City.” My reading their reviews and watching “Sneak Previews” was not so my hoping the films I planned to see would be a movie they recommended. My reasons for reading their reviews are their unique writing styles and notable on-air disagreements.

It's the only reason why today, I still often download Siskel and Ebert’s review segments on YouTube to hear them argue passionately why one disagrees on a title the other likes, such as “Apocalypse Now” (1979), "Benji the Hunted" (1987), “The Doors” (1991), and "Full Metal Jacket" (1987).

If I had listened to their negative criticisms on their weekly show, I’d have avoided "1941" (1979), the "Airport" disaster movies of the 1970s, "Basic Instinct" (1992), "Batman & Robin" (1997), "Battlestar Galactica" (1978), "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" (1979), "The Black Hole" (1979), "Buck Rogers in the  25th Century" (1979), "Cannonball Run II" (1981), "City Heat" (1984), "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" (1992), "The Color of Money" (1986), "Crocodile Dundee" (1986), "Dune" (1984), "Event Horizon" (1997), ”The Final Countdown” (1980), "Firestarter" (1984), "The Fog" (1980), “Hangar 18” (1983), “The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1996), "Last Action Hero" (1993), "Police Academy" (1984), "Porky’s" (1981), "Psycho II" (1983), "Raw Deal" (1986), “Rhinestone” (1984), "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975), "Rocky III" (1982), "St. Elmo's Fire" (1985), "Showgirls" (1995), "Tommy Boy" (1995), “Toys” (1992), "Waterworld" (1995) and "Wyatt Earp" (1994).

To quote Gene, “Oh! The pictures I’ve seen!”



I don’t regret watching any of the atrocities Gene and Roger loathed. Some I liked. Some I didn’t. The ones I didn’t they at least managed to be bad enough to the point it was a fun bad movie I loved to hate. Others were guilty pleasures. In short, IT'S ALL ABOUT BEING ENTERTAINED DAMNIT!

...and later when the show became "Siskel & Ebert
At the Movies."

What I remember most about Siskel’s written reviews in the Tribune in the 80s was how he came up with a phrase that summed up his overall opinion of the film. Those one-sentence phrases, usually in small boldface letters, were always above the credits. I remember the phrase he gave to “Superman III” in 1983, “Where is all the love?” The question fit the tone of what was missing from the third installment that to Siskel, was most present in the first two movies.

I did not start watching “Sneak Previews” until it went into syndication in 1978 on PBS. Back then the two recapped the movies they just reviewed with either a yes or no vote to each one. After I moved to Dallas, however, I did not catch the program as much. I always took it for granted thinking the two hosts would always be around until the show was canceled. Or they would continue to write reviews in both metropolitan papers until they retired.

According to a Feb. 20, 1999, article in the Chicago Tribune, the duo signed on with Tribune Entertainment in 1982, which expanded the number of stations that carried the show and changed the title to “At the Movies.” When Buena Vista Television took over the program in 1986, the title was changed again to “Siskel & Ebert & the Movies.” By that time, television audiences had already familiarized themselves with the Chicago critic’s thumbs up/thumbs down style to film recommendations.

Their popularity increased with occasional guest appearances on talk shows like “The Late Show with David Letterman”, “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”, “Regis & Kathy Lee”, and “Oprah Winfrey” and were even parodied in Mad magazine and movies like “Summer School” (1987) and “Godzilla” (1998).



“Now that I’ve inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones” Ebert wrote in his 1998 review of “Godzilla.”

“Godzilla” director Roland Emmerich and writer Dean Devlin created the characters Mayor Ebert, played by Michael Lerner and his assistant, Gene (Lorry Goldman), in response to the negative criticisms the two gave to their previous movies, “Stargate” (1994) and “Independence Day” (1996). Audiences embraced both sci-fi pics thus proving not everyone listens to movies critics. Those two blockbuster films were examples that critics don’t determine a picture’s fate at the box office. Audiences do - hence the word, “critic-proof.”

Just as I enjoyed getting two different perspectives in print, the best moments on their program were when the duo disagreed. There was Siskel in 1998 praising the Sandra Bullock/Nicole Kidman comedy, “Practical Magic” (1998), saying how the film gave some unique insight about witchcraft. Ebert retorted back saying the picture had nothing to say about witchcraft. To him, it was simply a dumb comedy.



When Siskel gave thumbs up to “Star Trek: Insurrection” (1998) in December that same year, he told Ebert the movie’s thought-provoking discussions about interfering with alien life were “more profound than anything Yoda ever said” in the Star Wars trilogy.

The duo’s yearly tradition was to list their personal best and worst movies. I remember in 1993 when the competitive rivals listed a title the other one liked calling it his number one worst. Ebert’s worst pick was Siskel’s favorite, “Carnosaur”, a cheap sci-fi/horror film that starred Diane Ladd as a scientist who creates a dinosaur. Siskel, on the other hand, who throughout his writing career did not like a lot of actor Burt Reynolds’ movies and with good reason listed Ebert’s favorite, “Cop and a Half”, as his personal worst. As the end credits rolled, the two were still arguing about how one could possibly like the other.

And as the series of shows evolved, the subject was not just on movies. Over the course of 24 years together. the pair hosted specials on the Oscar nominations and the early film careers of rising stars like Jim Carrey and even discussing Digital Video Disc (DVD) players.

What was especially apparent on television was how enthusiastic both were when discussing a film whether they embraced or despised a picture. I could tell they spoke from the heart. Siskel was so dedicated to his profession that I could not believe it when in May 1998, shortly after his operation for a brain tumor, he was back. Sort of that is, reviewing movies from his hospital bed phoning in his comments on a segment while Ebert spoke live from the balcony.

“I’m in a hurry to get well, because I don’t want Roger to get more screen time than I,” Siskel said.



Before the program ended, Gene asked Roger jokingly if anyone sat in his seat in his absence. In the months after his surgery, it was noticeable he was not the same. His speech was a little slower, but I expected that after an operation and the passion was still there. I thought for sure he was recovering and did not even know he had taken a leave of absence from the program in early February to recuperate until I read his obituary in the Tribune.

When Siskel died Feb. 20, 1999, at 53, Ebert was quoted in the Tribune saying he thinks the show will continue but it “will never be the same without him.”

It wasn’t. It took a while getting used to not seeing “the tall, skinny one” sitting across from Ebert in the balcony every week. Back then as I brought up both Chicago newspapers online, it felt like I was only reading one when it came to the weekly film reviews.

As the saying in Hollywood goes, however, “The show must go on” and the show did. Ebert featured revolving guest hosts in the balcony in 1999 before settling with fellow Chicago Sun-Times critic, Richard Roeper, in 2000 as his new co-host thus changing the program’s title to “Ebert & Roeper” which continued until the show’s cancellation in 2010.

In honor of Siskel & Ebert's pilot episode, “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You” which premiered 50 years ago this week, I thought what better way to celebrate than to watch a film the two disagreed on that I liked.

I watched “Career Opportunities” (1991).

©11/19/25

Did she or didn't she?

Indecent Proposal «««½
R, 117m. 1993

Cast & Credits: Robert Redford (John Gage), Demi Moore (Diana Murphy), Woody Harrelson (David Murphy), Seymour Cassel (Mr. Shackleford), Oliver Platt (Jeremy). Screenplay by Amy Holden Jones based on the novel by Jack Engelhard. Directed by Adrian Lyne.

Movie directors are sometimes synonymous with the types of films they make. Director Adrian Lyne is one such example.

If you were to look at Lyne’s list of credits, from "Flashdance" (1983) and "9 1/2 Weeks" (1986) to "Fatal Attraction" (1987), you would find the subject in every one of his movies has been about relationships, sex, and vice versa.

Lyne’s latest film, "Indecent Proposal", is no different. The movie’s title is a perfect line for a mystery thriller, but it isn’t. The revelation here is the picture deals more with the moral dilemmas people sometimes face when it comes to money than it is about sex.

Enter David and Diana Murphy (Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore), a young married couple of the 1990s who become victims of the Reagan/Bush recession.

David, a freelance architect, has found himself out of a job, while Diana hasn’t had much luck in the real estate business.

The problem with the Murphys is their marriage follows the rule of Murphy’s Law which is "Everything that can go wrong will.” With debts piling up faster than they can count, the couple head to Las Vegas in a last-ditch attempt to win enough cash to pay them off.

After losing all their winnings, the couple meet John Cage (Robert Redford), a handsome, mysterious, gentleman and high risks gambler who borrows Diana for a game of craps.

He eventually thanks the Murphys for bringing him luck by paying for their costly, lavish hotel room and makes them an offer they can’t refuse over a game of pool.

“I’ll give you one million dollars if you let me have your wife for a night,” Cage says to David.

What follows is a unique twist of fate where the three characters wind up getting hurt as they ponder the decisions they make.

Lyne incorporates a couple of clever aspects from his past films to flesh out the characters. In an early scene reminiscent to the knife welding sequence in "Fatal Attraction", Diana goes after David with a butter knife because he is so messy. She has almost the same sexual appetites Kim Basinger’s character in "9 1/2 Weeks" exhibited. Like Basinger’s character, who was sexually compromised by Mickey Rourke in that movie, Diana also feels used when she sacrifices herself to Cage.

Redford is probably one of the nicest looking bad guys you will ever see. He is like the Cary Grant of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. Watching him over the years, I have found it hard to hate the types of immoral characters he’s played from an outlaw in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) to a surveillance wizard in "Sneakers" (1992).

Playing Cage as a cunning, debonair gambler is something Redford has done before in films like "Havana" (1990) and "The Sting" (1973). Cage is a lot like Rourke’s character in "9 1/2 Weeks." He is wealthy, never tries to draw any attention to himself, and stays in the background, never revealing his past.

Harrelson, making a break into feature films now that NBC’s "Cheers" (1992-1993) officially ended its 11-year run, has the potential to be a dramatically promising actor. His portrayal of David as a caring, concerned, and jealous husband is someone I felt sympathy for.

The clever, sometimes witty, script takes into account the shady moral values people sometimes have. When Diana asks David about taking Cage up on his offer, she casually says, “Well we had affairs before we were married. Besides, look at all the things this money could do for us.”

In another scene, David calls his lawyer (Oliver Platt) to negotiate the deal Cage has set up.

“Don’t you know that you never set up a deal without your lawyer,” he says. “I know we could have got at least $2 million for her.”

The one thing I have noticed in all of Lyne’s movies is the way he choreographs the love scenes. The sequences always have an alluring, seductive nature to them. He continues that trademark here; maybe even going a step further since Moore’s body, (or her double), exhibits a great looking tan.

Lyne also does one thing I have never seen done in other card playing films. Using different camera angles and close-ups, he manages to hold the viewer’s interest and turns a game of craps and roulette into something exciting to watch. It’s almost as if he wants the audience to root for the Murphys to win.

"Indecent Proposal" redefines the familiar statement, “Money cannot buy love and happiness.”

It is also one of those rare love stories where the end song, “A Love So Beautiful,” sung by Roy Orbison, fits the tone of the entire movie.

Originally Published: ©4/7/93

Iryna Zarutska, Charlie Kirk, and my ever increasingly tense hatred of social media

The unsettling news last week of how social media users couldn’t get enough watching the uncensored “snuff” videos of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian woman stabbed to death on a subway train in Charlotte, North Carolina and the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a rally at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah brought to my mind how users couldn’t get enough viewing another “snuff” video the minute it aired live on such platforms as Facebook the morning of Aug. 26, 2015.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same loathsome pieces of s--- who watched Zarutska and Kirk’s violent ends were the same ones who watched WDBJ news reporter Alison Parker, 24, and photojournalist Adam Ward, 27, being shot and killed during a live television interview along with Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce in Moneta, Virginia, who was wounded in the attack ten years ago.

Seeing the video at the time in which the killer - a fired WDBJ reporter and disgruntled employee filmed on his cellphone and immediately posted it on his Facebook and Twitter accounts solidified the negative opinion I already had about social media before the shooting happened. I just couldn’t find the right words to describe my intense hatred.

That is until Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called social media last week what it is today – a “cancer on our society” in the wake of Kirk’s assassination.

At the time of my publishing the Parker column on Sept. 2, 2015, the viewing numbers of that clip on YouTube upon my search for “Alison Parker” or “reporters shot” ranged in the six and seven digits on several user accounts that replayed the barely two-minute interview and aftermath in its entirety.

Almost immediately after the disgusting segment aired online, a comment from a group called “The Comical Conservative” posted a smiling photo of Parker and Ward together saying, We won’t post that sickening video of these two getting shot. We WILL post this…a beautiful picture of both of them. Let’s remember them at their best. They deserve better from all of us.

At the time I wrote the column, not only was I “outgunned” (no pun intended) so to speak but the editorial staff at the campus newspaper I published the column at wrote an editorial defending that the video be viewed in its entirety.

“It will sound horribly callous, but I think that video needs to be out there so that people understand just how awful and real this was. And maybe – just maybe – that would help usher in meaningful discussions and laws on gun control,” said a friend of mine who replied underneath my Facebook post of the picture. “Unless people are confronted with the horrible reality, it allows them to avoid the real issues at play here. I don’t like suggesting it because I know for the families it would be absolute torture but perhaps if we all put ourselves in the victims’ shoes for a moment, it tilts the conversation.”

If any “meaningful discussions” took place at the time of that incident I didn’t hear any. Much the way I have yet to hear any “meaningful discussions” about what Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk experienced. But I’ve read some of the commentaries and took note of one in particular from media personality Khloé Kardashian on Instagram who shared posts from a Dr. Raymond Nichols, a Greenville, South Carolina-based chiropractor.

“A woman is stabbed to death on a bus. A man is killed in front of a crowd. And people record it…like it’s just another trending video. Those videos go viral. And we just keep scrolling like it’s normal. Like this is life now,” Nichols said in his post.

“We don’t have a violence problem. We have a numbness problem. Evil became content. Death became a trend. Humanity became scrollable,” Nichols wrote. “People don’t flinch anymore. They don’t cry anymore. They just comment. We’re losing the one thing that makes us human: the ability to feel. This isn’t politics. This isn’t left or right. This is about your soul. Because if you can watch life slip away in front of you and feel nothing…you’ve already lost yours.”

I haven’t viewed the Parker/Ward killing video clips since it aired that day ten years ago. I have not searched for it, nor do I know if it is still on YouTube. A part of me likes to think in the years since that maybe some higher up at the video platform developed a conscience and put themselves in the same horrific situation as Parker and Ward and choose to pull them out of respect to the victims and their families. I already know the answer and it’s not the one I want.

If such grisly incidents in which you watch “life slip away in front of you and feel nothing” whether it’s George Floyd, pictures of dead kids gunned down outside a McDonald’s by a mass murderer or watch souls jump to their deaths from the World Trade Center that for a brief moment fail to leave a sickening feeling in your stomach then you really have lost the one thing that makes you human. A soul. 

Want to debate me? Bring it! In the words of Charlie Kirk - "PROVE ME WRONG!"

Last week's killings make me shudder to think how many videos I'd find on the internet and YouTube upon my typing in such searches as "Iryna stabbing" or "Kirk shooting" let alone the hit numbers they've since generated on repeated viewing.

“The (Kirk) video is all over social media. It’s kind of hard to avoid. And you can just kind of stumble right into it,” Democratic Senator Mark Kelly told Politico. “You usually don’t see these mass shootings as graphically as this one. I hope some of these social media companies can scrub this off the internet because it’s not good for kids to see this.”

To quote one character in the deplorable sadomasochistic trash pic, “8MM” (1999) “There are some things that you see, and you can’t unsee them.”

It’s true. I can’t “unsee” the atrocities I’ve already seen but I can choose to not only avoid uploading them but also dump social media all together.

I’ve debated since 2015 whether to take a long break from social media and go silent or delete my accounts from several platforms all together and go off the grid. You want to find me, here’s something new to try – pick up your f------ god---- cellphone and call me! And no, I don’t respond to texts!

I’m all out of love for these “cancer on our society” platforms like Facebook and X.

Last week’s latest uncensored “snuff” films and social media’s never-ending bloodthirsty quench to watch them over and over proved it was only a matter of time before I quit social media all together.

The question now is no longer “when” but “how soon.”

©9/15/25

Mourning the loss of larger-than-life icons completely normal

Ever since Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car accident in August 1997 at 36, I found it embarrassing to mourn the life of someone I didn’t know but only through news stories and the tabloids. Yet, the day of her funeral the following weekend in September, I called in sick. All the result of my being subjected to all the media and tabloid outlets reporting on her early untimely demise. I couldn’t function emotionally.

I felt the same way when attorney, journalist and magazine publisher John F. Kennedy Jr. died, along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren Bessette in a plane crash in 1999. Both Princess Diana and JFK Jr. were lives unfinished. I still saw the 38-year-old JFK Jr. as the three-year-old son who saluted his father’s flag draped casket at President John F. Kennedy’s state funeral in November 1963. Even as I write this blog, I get teary eyed thinking about hearing the tragic losses of both JFK Jr. and Diana over twenty years ago.

Although I wasn’t a devoted fan of actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, 54, best known as Theo Huxtable from “The Cosby Show” (1984-1992), heavy metal pioneer and Black Sabbath founder Ozzy Osbourne, 76, and professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, 71, who died last week I understood the emotional tributes devoted fans and other prominent figures in the entertainment industry expressed on social media.



I grew up with those entertainers in the early 1980s as did most everyone my age. They were a part of my generation. Their passings like so many others we’ve known half our lives leave a gaping hole. Like as though it’s ok if we leave this earth as we’re not larger-than-life figures whose works touched millions. Icons like Jamal Warner, Ozzy and Hulk Hogan, like countless notable figures whether it’s in entertainment, journalism, music, news, politics and sports are not supposed to die!

It’s bad enough when a revered icon like Diana and JFK Jr. go before their time when they had their lives still ahead of them. It’s another when a notable reviewer, news anchor and songwriter leave devoted followers with the promise they will return doing what they did best following medical treatment. Like as though they already knew the end was coming but didn’t want to leave fans without hope.

That’s how I felt when Chicago Tribune movie critic Gene Siskel announced his taking a leave of absence from “Siskel & Ebert” on Feb. 3, 1999, the film reviewing program albeit in different forms he had been cohosting with Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert since the mid-1970s. Siskel was diagnosed with a brain tumor and underwent treatment the year before. Even Ebert didn’t know how terminal his partner’s diagnosis was until Siskel died Feb. 20 that month at 53.



“I’m in a hurry to get well because I don’t want Roger to get more screen time than I,” Siskel said. I was counting on him to be back at the balcony later that year just in time to hear his thoughts on “Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace” (1999) in May. I didn’t care if he gave it thumbs up or thumbs down. I just wanted to hear his opinion.

I took ABC news anchorman Peter Jennings at his word that on his “good” days the “James Bond 007 of news” would be back on “World News Tonight” when he delivered what was his final newscast April 5, 2005, and would begin treatment for lung cancer. Jennings died on Aug. 7, 2005, ten days after his 67th birthday on July 29.



I thought Canadian songwriter, singer, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen was just suffering from writer’s block when the 82-year-old legend told the New Yorker he wouldn’t be able to finish his vault of unfinished songs and poems. He was even more uncertain he’d be able to do a follow-up to his 14th studio album, “You Want It Darker” released in October 2016, barely a month before the artist’s death of leukemia.

"I am ready to die," Cohen said. "I hope it's not too uncomfortable. That's about it for me."



It goes without saying that every time we learn the news some noteworthy personality has passed, fans flock to YouTube in hopes of listening to their music videos, watch clips from their shows and interviews or check the streaming services to see if their movies and television shows are available. I did that when Jamal Warner died at 54 from accidental drowning while on vacation with family in Costa Rica watching early clips of “The Cosby Show” on YouTube.

I watched the often-hilarious commercials Ozzy Osbourne did over the past twenty years that documented his mumbling ordering at Starbucks, telling a taxi driver where to go and complaining to a waiter about his dinner. None of them could understand him. It’s almost as if he was playing, if not parodying himself. Finally, his only way of communication in those clever ads was texting on his Samsung cellphone.



I found Osbourne’s appearance on Conan O’Brien Oct. 18, 2001, who was brought in to cheer up the Late-Night staff following the 9/11 attacks echoed what’s been missing from late night television for decades and why “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was canceled. Late Night forgot how to be funny.



And finally Hulk Hogan. Most remember his days with the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling. I remember him more for his first big screen appearance in “Rocky III” (1982) as wrestler Thunderlips who fights Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) in a charity match.

 

All these images and memories are frozen in time.

Sadly, there is no end. We’re not reaching that age. We ARE at the age now where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away. In the coming days, weeks, months and years and the rest of our lives we’ll hear of a number of household names who’ve gone to meet their maker. Death and mourning is a part of life. We’re all mortal no matter what your status is. At least we got plenty of memories of such celebrities to fondly look back on appreciating the God given talents they gave us.

©7/25/25