Five reasons why audiences thought "The Godfather Part III" sucked 30 years ago and five reasons why I say it didn’t

Thirty years ago, this week on Christmas Day, Oscar winning director Francis Ford Coppola released the third and final chapter of the Corleone crime family saga 16 years after the second film titled "The Godfather Part III." Despite earning seven Oscar nominations in early 1991, the third installment lived up to the disappointments many critics and disenfranchised viewers had with several sequels of such beloved franchises past that include the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, James Bond, Rocky and countless others combined.

In short, "The Godfather Part III" joined that continuing growing list of sequels that proved there is no such thing as the perfect movie franchise, especially when the second installments turned out to be better than the first. "The Godfather Part II" (1974), "Dawn of the Dead" (1978), "Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), "Superman II" (1980) and "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" (1982) along with "Aliens" (1986), "Terminator II: Judgement Day" (1991) and "The Dark Knight" (2008) left viewers thirsting for more. All of them failed to deliver when the third installments came out leaving a bad taste in many fans and viewers’ mouths. Movie critics don't count. Their so-called commentaries, 99,999999 percent of those written today are press releases, don't control a film's box office success.

Looking back at "The Godfather Part III" on the eve of its thirtieth anniversary, here are five reasons why audiences thought the film sucked and five reasons why I say it didn’t.

1) Sofia Coppola: In my 2000 review of "The Godfather Part III" I referred to Sofia Coppola as the film’s “Jar Jar Binks.” Jar Jar Binks was the off-world alien character from "Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace" (1999) who was meant to provide the film’s humor but became more of an annoyance and embarrassment to the Star Wars movies than anything else. The character was so hated that creator Mike J. Nichols took matters in his hands and created an edited version of Episode I called Star Wars Episode I.I: The Phantom Edit in 2000. Nichols cut a majority of, if not, all of the Bink's character that in turn, not only shortened the film’s 133-minute running time but reportedly made the movie better.



To date I haven't wasted my time watching that version on YouTube. I had no issues with the Binks character when I first saw "The Phantom Menace" in 1999 and the character didn’t stop me from watching the first movie several times in theaters and on disc since. (I can just hear the imaginary gasps from those reading this blog as a result of my saying that). Nor did I have an issue with Sofia Coppola’s performance playing the daughter of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in Part III (I can now hear readers getting out barf bags as they are unable to finish reading this blog).

If Part III had been released this week, with the help of the Internet (the net was not around in 1990), Sofia Coppola would be the Donald Trump of film the way “fake” news has attacked the president the past four years. If Trump had found a cure for cancer, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Director Coppola cast his daughter, Sofia, then 19, in the role in Part III after actress Winona Ryder quit before production started citing exhaustion issues. At the time Sofia had zero acting experience making the attacks on her by the fake news media more justified in their biased minds.

"When the film came out, the bullets that Sofia got were meant for me, just as in the story, ironically," director Coppola told the Hollywood Reporter in a recent article. "My wife was very upset.”

“Because I didn't want to be an actress, it didn't traumatize me,” said Sofia in her response to the negative criticism in a quote on IMDB.com. “It hurt me to be attacked by the press...but the scars were not permanent. It was painful, but it wasn't devastating.”

And yet, Sofia said she still wanted the part.

“I was game. I was trying different things. It sounded better than college. I didn't really think about the public aspect of it. That took me by surprise. The whole reaction. People felt very attached to the Godfather films. I grew up with them being no big deal. I mean, I understand they're great films but... I dunno. I'm not surprised. It makes sense that people would have an opinion about it but I got a lot of attention I wasn't expecting. I was going to art school anyway so I was able to get back to what I was doing. It was before the Internet so magazines would come out but then the next month they were gone. There wasn't even as much paparazzi around then.”

Andy Garcia, who played Vincent Mancini, the illegitimate son of Sonny Corleone (James Caan) who died in the first movie, and whose character develops a love interest in Sofia’s Mary in Part III told The Hollywood Reporter he “thought a lot of things were unjust about (the film), especially how Sofia Coppola was treated.”

Chicago film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel also differed on Sofia Coppola’s performance when they reviewed the film in December 1990.



"There is no way to predict what kind of performance Francis Ford Coppola might have obtained from Winona Ryder, the experienced and talented young actress, who was originally set to play this role,” Ebert said. “But I think Sofia Coppola brings a quality of her own to Mary Corleone. A certain up-front vulnerability and simplicity that I think are appropriate and right for the role."

Siskel said the film’s problem was the casting of the director’s daughter.

“(Sofia Coppola) is out of her acting league here. She's supposed to be Andy Garcia's love interest but no sparks fly. He's more like her babysitter."

That’s where the movie critics and any naysayers against Part III were wrong. The Godfather films, while the women characters who played Michael’s love interests like Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) and Apollonia (Simonetta Stefanelli) and in the case of his daughter, Mary’s relationship with Vincent, in Part III, were a part of his life, the love stories were never the prime focus.

2) George Hamilton: If audiences and critics had such hatred for Sofia Coppola, what did they think about George Hamilton being cast in place of Robert Duvall? Duvall’s absence was the result of his asking for more money to reprise his role as the family lawyer since Pacino was offered twice as much.

I can understand Coppola’s decision to casting his daughter, but George Hamilton? At the time of the third Godfather’s release in 1990 could anyone remember what movie Hamilton starred in? "Love at First Bite" (1979)? The "George & Alana" show (1995-1996) with his ex-wife Alana Stewart?

3) Read the history books! "The Godfather Part III" begins in 1980 and ends assumably in ‘81 or ‘82 considering how old Michael is when he dies, years later. The problem was the subplot surrounding the deaths of Pope Paul VI (1897-1978) and Pope John Paul I (1912-1978) which did not happen in 1980. Both died in 1978 two months apart from each other. The subplot involving the death of John Paul I was intriguingly, if not cleverly told and his untimely death after being pope for just one month in 1978 has been the subject of conspiracy theories since (author David Yallop’s 2012 book, "In God’s Name" explores the subject). At least director Oliver Stone got the dates of the JFK assassination, and the Watergate burglary correct in "JFK" (1991) and "Nixon" (1995).



4) No Tom Hagen. There is no debating the absence of Robert Duvall’s Tom Hagen, the only other character to survive the previous two films hurt Part III, something director Coppola even admits in a quote from IMDB.com.

“I think the loss of Robert Duvall as a character made a difference,” director Coppola said. “As I look back on it, he was a very important part of that story. Clearly he was the most important character still living from the other movies. So I think ultimately losing the Hagen character was more than I was able to write my way out of so quickly. I could have done it had we not started shooting right away.”

Duvall tells the story differently as to why he didn’t appear in Part III, which in the end had to do with his asking price.



“I think everybody did it for money. I mean why wait 15 years to do a sequel or whatever you call the third one. They waited that long so obviously it must be for money because why wait that long? There’ve been a lot of stories. This is the way it happened. If they offered somebody five times what they offered me that’s totally unacceptable. If they offered them two to three times more which they didn’t that would be acceptable but not ideal. I would accept it. They didn’t do that. They offered five times and that’s unacceptable and that’s what happened. So it did boil down to economics."

"If they paid Pacino twice what they paid me, that's fine, but not three or four times, which is what they did. (Francis Ford Coppola) came to my farm, parked his car... went in the kitchen. (I) said: "I know you always wanted the crab cake recipe, let me cook it for you." Oh, he loves to eat, so I cooked the crab cake... and he wrote it down... and he forgot it, so he called twice. He was... more concerned that he forgot the crab cake recipe than would I be in Godfather III."

5) Audiences were not the only ones who loathed Part III: Director Coppola, Pacino, Keaton and despite his absence, Duvall had issues with the film. Pacino summarized the Part III's issue in a quote on IMDB.com.

“You know what the problem with that film (Part III) is? The real problem? Nobody wants to see Michael have retribution and feel guilty. That's not who he is. In the other scripts, in Michael's mind he is avenging his family and saving them. Michael never thinks of himself as a gangster - not as a child, not while he is one and not afterward. That is not the image he has of himself. He's not a part of the Goodfellas (1990) thing. Michael has this code; he lives by something that makes audiences respond. But once he goes away from that and starts crying over coffins, making confessions and feeling remorse, it isn't right. I applaud [Francis Ford Coppola] for trying to get to that, but Michael is so frozen in that image. There is in him a deep feeling of having betrayed his mother by killing his brother. That was a mistake. And we are ruled by these mistakes in life as time goes on. He was wrong. Like in Scarface (1983) when Tony kills Manny - that is wrong, and he pays for it. And in his way, Michael pays for it.”

Actress Keaton called the third film in a recent interview with Forbes a “failure beyond belief.”

“When the original The Godfather Part III came out…I remember seeing it and thinking, ‘What?’ I don’t know what to say. It was a disappointment, and that seemed to prevail,” Keaton said. “I only saw The Godfather Part III once, many years ago, and had no plans to watch it again."

Director Coppola said, "The Godfather Part III" “had a lot of good things about it.”

“It had good potential. I think it was made a little too rushed because it was made in one year and they wanted it out that Christmas. It was a big, complex, difficult story. I think if I had spent more time writing it I would have solved or defined some of the issues better, rather than doing it while we were shooting."

Duvall said in his 1991 interview that the third film was not as good as the first two.

“When I saw (The Godfather Part III) it was ok, but it wasn’t as good. The premise was very interesting. You know organized crime connected with the Vatican. It was a very complex and kind of a sophisticated premise to go from and it interested me to a point, but when I did see it I just felt that for whatever reasons I didn’t think it was good.”

Five reasons that made "The Godfather Part III" worth viewing

1) Al Pacino: Clearly the veteran actor knew this would be the final time he’d be playing crime boss Michael Corleone, and he wanted to go out with a bang, perhaps literally, which he didn’t, exactly.

Pacino summarized the role and where Part III took the character in a recent interview with Deadline.



“The trajectory was always there, from that scene in The Godfather when Michael says, ‘It’s my family, Kay, it’s not me,’ and then this smart, college grad war hero gets caught up in the rush after his father was threatened, and he has to live with something he couldn’t find a way out of. In Godfather III, he’s a guy trying to keep everything going. He had a natural ability for business and manipulation and a Machiavellian gift that made him the boss of a crime family even though I never felt he was comfortable being a stereotypical gangster. Now came an opportunity for redemption from the church, as well as this new outlet for his skills that would give his family the respectability he wanted. And then he’s constantly thwarted, even in the confession he makes about killing his brother Fredo, to that priest who’s soon to become Pope. Soon, he suffers a diabetic attack brought on by the stress of having been screwed by the so-called Church in a massive betrayal of inordinate size. And then, to lose his daughter, which Francis smartly set at the opera? Godfather II had tragic undertones, but of all the ways to lose your daughter, to do it in the arena of assassinations that he was part of, then lose his daughter because of him…it’s operatic and he’s completely broken.”

2) “No one wants another Joe.”: The Corleone family dealt with a number of nemesis' throughout the three movies and a few of them, despite just one line of dialogue and an extremely limited amount of screen time, those villains still made a lasting impression from Danny Aiello’s cameo as Tony Rosato who garrots Corleone henchman, Frankie Pentangeli (Michael V. Gazzo), in "The Godfather Part II" uttering just one line, “Michael Corleone says hello” to Moe Greene (Alex Rocco), the casino boss modeled after real life gangster, Bugsy Siegel, whose character just like Siegel, got a bullet in his eye in the first film.

In part III, Joe Montegna’s colorfully dressed mobster, Joey Zasa, is in only three scenes through the film’s first hour but he doesn’t waste a moment. When Zasa utters his contempt for the commission of mob bosses during a meeting in Atlantic City one could almost believe his threats.



“I say to all of you, I have been treated this day, with no respect. I've earned you all money. I've made you rich, and I asked for little. Good. You will not give, I'll take! As for Don, Corleone, well he makes it, very clear to me today, that he is my enemy. You must choose between us.”

3) If it ain’t broke don’t fix it: No Godfather film would be complete without the usual bursts of gun violence as the Corleone family metes out its own brand of poetic justice. Director Coppola and screenwriter Mario Puzo incorporated the same elements that made the first two so hauntingly memorable. Murders are planned out in a dimly lit hospital chapel in front of a large crucifix while gang leaders enact the sign of the cross the minute they step inside a church; as if the only other thing these murderers hold sacred besides honor and the family business is God and the Catholic faith. Hitmen are given a box of chocolates that hides a gun underneath the candies while conspirators dedicate their toasts to death. All this in between the family celebrations of a wedding, a baptism, a first communion, funerals and being honored by the Vatican throughout the course of three films.



4) Focus again on family: The Godfather films have always been about family relationships and loyalty. Something which hovers over greatly again in Part III despite this being about a criminal empire. I have often heard of people saying how they wished their families were as close as this Italian crime family was to each other. Perhaps when it comes to large families, the Corleone's are like the Kennedys. Their stories are a combination of both celebrations and tragedies.



5) The last 30 minutes are a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock: Just as I said in number 3 how no Godfather film would be complete when it comes to the sudden bursts of gun violence the same goes for how all three end where those acts of vengeance play out in a montage of death scenes. The last 30 minutes of Part III where such sequences of poetic justice are meted out happen during an opera as the Corleone family celebrates the debut of Michael’s son, Anthony (Franc D'Ambrosio). Anyone who has seen Hitchcock’s "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956) will be familiar with what Coppola did here. By comparison, the montage of killings done in the Godfather trilogy is what director George Lucas used in "Star Wars – Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" (2005) where the Jedi Knights are wiped out on several planets when Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) gives his troops the order to “Execute Order 66.”

©12/23/20

Frankly people, I don’t give a DAMN about Gone with the Wind’s “racist” subject matter

“Rise and shine my fragile Americans! What silly nonsense are we offended by today?”

That quote was part of a few memes I saw on “Fakebook” a while back that showed actor Jackie Gleason on the beach without a care in the world asking America that question given how not a day goes by it seems that people in this country are not pissed off about something.

It also brought to mind a comment a friend and former supervisor for a helpdesk I worked for over ten years ago said about the night shift I worked.

“This night shift sure does have a college major in bitching,” he said one night in complete disgust. Some of us on that night shift held a Masters Degree in bitching. For a country where we should be happy we are allowed to express our opinions about EVERYTHING, we sure are an angry, unhappy bunch of Negative Nancys.

I thought about those Jackie Gleason memes in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a police officer, whose name I will not mention, May 25, that turned the country upside down with violent protests against law enforcement and the removal of historical statues from Christopher Columbus to Frederick Douglass. These dregs and thugs of society know less than zero about the historical statues they vandalize and are clueless as to what will happen if police departments across the country are defunded, but that’s a subject for another blog in the coming weeks, if time allows.

Then there’s how the entertainment industry stupidly caved into the pressure brought on by the “Black Lives Matter” movement. The country music group, Lady Antebellum, was so disheartened by the way their name referenced slavery since the band’s founding in 2006 that they decided to change their name to “Lady A” out of respect to the black community.



Episodes of long-standing comedies from "The Golden Girls" (1985-1992) and "Scrubs" (2001-2010) to "The Office" (2005-2013) and "30 Rock" (2006-2020) that featured characters in blackface were pulled from Amazon and Netflix’s streaming services. The reality police show "Cops" (1989-2020) and "Live PD" (2016-2020) were immediately canceled.



Even the LEGO company stuck their nose in the unnecessary controversy where it didn’t belong suspending their marketing of any plastic brick sets that included law enforcement figures along with the latest architecture set of the White House. I suppose the marketing decision makes sense given every socialist, anti-law enforcement, God---- America-hating liberal thinks the person leading the country in the oval office right now is also a racist, right? I suppose the fact I bought that new LEGO architecture set overseas on eBay since there is no telling when or if the set will ever be available here in the states also makes me a racist as well?



Then there was HBO Max’s decision to temporarily pull the 1939 Oscar winning Civil War epic, "Gone with the Wind", in early June from its streaming service, again, due to the film’s “racist” overtones concerning slavery as a means of political correctness. Just when I thought the film would never return to HBO Max in the future causing the price to buy the film on Blu-ray and DVD to skyrocket on Amazon and eBay, the picture was back on HBO Max’s streaming service before the end of June. This time, however, with a disclaimer and additional context at the beginning of the film.



"Watching "Gone with the Wind" can be uncomfortable, even painful. Still, it's important that classic Hollywood films are available to us in their original form for viewing and discussion,” said TCM host and University of Chicago cinema and media studies professor Jacqueline Stewart in a video preceding the film according to an article on CNN. “Watching such films can prompt viewers to reflect on their values, Hollywood history and what pop culture says about a previous era.”



Spare me your rhetoric BS telling me, “Uh...Joe…the 1970s was a different time. This is 2020!” I don’t have the time to listen to it and don't want to hear it! Would this blog of mine have become a reality if Floyd’s murder had not happened? F—k no! The only thing the country would be worried about is wondering if things will return to normal should the COVID-19 pandemic end. "Cops" and "Live PD" would still be on the air. Lady Antebellum would still be called Lady Antebellum. 

LEGO sets featuring plastic figures of law enforcement would be stocked on store shelves. I would have been able to get that LEGO White House architecture set in early June, several episodes of long-running television series featuring characters in blackface would still be available to download and moreover, "Gone with the Wind" would not air on HBO Max with commentary warning viewers about the film’s depiction of slavery in the south during the Civil War.

Such rushes to judgment brought to mind a line William Hurt’s cynical drug dealing character, Nick, in "The Big Chill" (1983) annoyingly said to his college buddy, Sam (Tom Berenger), as they watched a late-night movie.

“You're so analytical. Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you.”

I did not once think about the film’s slavery issue watching a combined 30 minutes of "Gone with the Wind" back in the late 70s when it aired on network television. I just wanted to see the burning of Atlanta my 7th grade teacher spoke about in history class.

The scenes I vaguely remember seeing besides the opening credits and the ending with that famous line Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler says that wound up in the annals of memorable movie quotes is where Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) throws a glass at the wall that wakes Butler up from a sound sleep on the couch. The other is following what I assume is the burning of Atlanta during the Civil War, O’Hara arrives at the remains of her southern plantation and kills an intruder shooting him the face. When O’Hara asks one of her “hired help” to help her remove the body, there is a shot showing a gob of blood on the floor. If I’m correct in that scene’s description I would think that clip would have been far more shocking to audiences who lined up outside theaters in 1939 to see the film than they were worried about how the south would be depicted when it came to slavery.

When I briefly watched the movie over thirty years ago though not in its four-hour entirety over the course of two nights, there was no such place as Blockbuster Video. Independent video store chains were still in their infancy. The Civil War epic didn’t even arrive on VHS on a double cassette until the late 80s when Blockbuster took over as the be-all, end-all “Roman Empire” of the video rental industry that sent the “little guy independent video store chains” packing.

Like those independent video store chains that, unlike Blockbuster, were not on the block of every corner, cable television stations that showed first-run movies, were also in their infancy and not all the suburbs had the service. If you had cable or owned a Beta or VHS video cassette recorder or a laserdisc player, you were considered in the eyes of your friends that you came from rich parents.

The airing of "Gone with the Wind" on network television was considered an event movie night for families and fell in that category of other “event” movies my parents allowed me to watch on a school night that included such classics as "The Alamo" (1960), "Airport" (1970), "Earthquake" (1974), "The Godfather" (1972), "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" (1966), "The Hindenburg" (1975), "It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963), "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), "The Towering Inferno" (1974) and "West Side Story" (1961). Other than the dreaded three words shown at the bottom of a few of these titles that said, “edited for television”, the network that aired "Gone with the Wind" didn’t post the warning you see at the beginning of the film today on HBO Max. What the hell did viewers care about the sensitive subject matter? They just wanted to be entertained, damnit! So did I!

There is no arguing that movies based on historically controversial sensitive issues like "Gone with the Wind" make for great starting points if you want to learn about the subject matter, but they are not the “gospels.” Complain all you want about how watching the Civil War epic makes you so uncomfortable that you are compelled to apologize to every African American you see on the street for how your white descendants treated them back in the 17 and 1800s before President Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 that freed the slaves beginning in 1863.

The bottom line is the romantic drama, based on author Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, is still just that; a four-hour “chick-flick” based on a work of fiction that just happens to incorporate history into the story which is still the author’s version of it, even if she did her research. If I want to read about slavery in the 1800s, I’ll buy a damn book!

So pardon me, on second thought, no I won’t! I’m not going to display a sudden change of heart and stand behind the “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police” movements. For the record, it’s not “Black Lives Matter” it’s ALL LIVES MATTER INCLUDING THE LIVES OF POLICE OFFICERS! NOT EVERY POLICE OFFICER IS EVIL DESPITE WHAT EVERY ONE OF YOU THINKS!

When it comes to entertainment, people, myself especially, do not want to see politics incorporated into movies, music and sporting events. They don’t want to see overpaid athletes take a knee during the Star-Spangled Banner. They sure as hell don’t want to be lectured about slavery or any other controversial “hot bed” when watching a movie.

Such is the reason why I have semi-retired from reviewing movies. I was so transfixed worrying about meeting deadlines and what I was going to write about a film in a review that I forgot what it was like to actually ENJOY a movie. Those days are “history” now. These days I won’t even write a review of a film I hated and wasted three hours of my life on. If I did, you’d be reading my negative reviews of "The Hunt" (2019), Netflix’s "The Last Days of American Crime" (2020) and "The Osterman Weekend" (1983) on my blog.

My attitude about "Gone with the Wind" today is the same attitude I got about everything else people can’t stop bitching about since Floyd’s death. I still laugh at the “blackface” episodes on "30 Rock" and don’t find them offensive. I still got Lady Antebellum’s songs, “I Run to You” (2009) and “Bartender” (2014) on my iTunes and still call them Lady Antebellum and not “Lady A.”

And I’m going to keep that LEGO White House architecture set in the box so I can, like every other dealer on eBay, set the bidding price starting at $2500 given the possibility the set may never see the light of day here in the states much like the architecture set that showed the Las Vegas skyline that included the Mandalay Bay hotel that LEGO pulled from release following the 2017 mass shooting there out of respect for the victims.

So if or when the time comes and my significant other, whoever that may be, if that even happens, asks me to choose some “chick-flick” for date night on a streaming service as we wait for the chicken wings to finish grilling while guzzling down pitchers of watermelon margaritas, and my five choices are either "Gone with the Wind", "Top Gun" (1986), "Ghost" (1990), "Titanic" (1997), or "Pearl Harbor" (2001) I’m going to choose "Gone with the Wind."

Not because of my hoping she and I can engage in an hour-long pissing contest about the “racist” overtones that lasts twice as long as the rage going in the country right now to pull episodes of long-standing comedies, and members of the “Hollyweird” elite like Tina Fey apologizing to African Americans in how she’s depicted them in episodes of "30 Rock."

The reason for my choosing "Gone with the Wind" that night, assuming my significant other hasn’t seen the movie, is in hopes we’ll both enjoy it and be entertained and as William Hurt’s character said in "The Big Chill", allow “art to flow” through us.

I hope, and hope she does as well, could care less about the controversial subject matter because unlike everyone else in this country who’s pissed off about everything and feels the need to show their displeasure on “Fakebook” as a means to make the rest of us miserable because they are so miserable themselves, I follow the words Rhett Butler said at the end of "Gone with the Wind."

“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

©7/8/20

The “Goodfellas” of Bishop Lynch

There is a certain sense of nostalgia I sometimes get but such fond memories only last a good five or ten minutes versus those days when I watch any movies from the 1980s (in what was the best decade and it wasn’t just the films from that era that made those years great) where my personal nostalgia lasts hours.

The kind of nostalgia I’m talking about is when I clean out the closet every few years and come across the yearbooks from 1984 to 1988 when I was a student at Bishop Lynch high school in Dallas. Those brief “nostalgic” feelings crept up again recently that made me think about the “goodfellas” I hung out with for four years at BL.

It brought to mind recently of a quote mobster Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, said in Martin Scorsese’s underappreciated crime epic, "Goodfellas" (1990), that SHOULD have won Oscars for best picture and best director at the 1991 Academy Awards ceremony and NOT for "The Departed" (2009) that Scorsese made almost two decades later.

“You know, we always called each other good fellas, "Like you said to, uh, somebody, ‘You're gonna like this guy. He's all right. He's a good fella. He's one of us.’ You understand? We were good fellas. Wiseguys.”

Most everyone knows that uneasy feeling they get when starting high school and have to begin a new chapter in their life that is nothing like the one they left behind in grade school in another state. Such was the feeling I had in mid-August 1984 Freshman year. For me, I saw it as something even more ominous; that impending sense of doom I am unable to stop from happening like when I watched "United 93" (2006) on Netflix in April this year that I hadn’t seen since its release.

Thankfully, that sense of dread lasted less than two weeks in the fall of 1984. It was when I first met Kelly Reed, whose locker was near mine. It was on a Thursday morning the second week of school and I was getting ready to head to the cafeteria to catch up on homework an hour before classes started.

He was having problems getting his locker open and asked me to open it. I was a little hesitant at first since school policy mandated that no one should give out their locker combination. I went ahead and opened the locker for him anyway. I would have continued on my way if he hadn’t introduced himself.

It didn't take long for the two of us to realize we did have some things in common such as movies, comic books and it turned out we were both in the same typing, health and speech classes together.

All through high school, the two of us would watch movies typecasting ourselves and everyone else from the class of 88’ in various films from the Mad Max trilogy (1979-1985), "Caddyshack" (1980), The Godfather movies (1972-1974) to the controversial foul-mouthed cocaine addicted, blood drenched underworld epic, "Scarface" (1983).

When watching the Star Wars trilogy, Kelly was Luke Skywalker. I was Han Solo. When we saw "Star Wars: The Special Edition" (1977) that celebrated its 20th anniversary in early 1997, at the General Cinema Northpark I & II theater in Dallas – a place that now exists only in memories, Kelly called the film’s ending our graduation ceremony.

In "The Blues Brothers" (1980), I was Joliet Jake, played by John Belushi and he was Elwood (Dan Aykroyd). The difference is one, you’d never see a light shining down on me from the Heavens while standing at the back of a church yelling, “I have seen the light,” and two, despite my now weighing what I was when I graduated high school (160 to 170 range down from the 300 I once was) I still cannot physically do cartwheels as Belushi’s Jake did.



You might have better luck seeing me dancing on those steps in Gotham City that viewers imitated on YouTube when they watched Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck in last fall’s depressing look at mental illness that masqueraded as a comic book villain origin movie called "Joker".



I have always believed most movie villains are the ones who have the most fun which is why I often typecast myself as the bad guy more so than the good guys when Kelly and I watched movies. To quote what Liotta’s Hill said in "Goodfellas" about mobster Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), “Jimmy was the kind of guy that rooted for bad guys in the movies.”

If there is one thing Kelly and I differed on was our taste in cars. Whereas he parked his 1971 Mustang fastback he owned during sophomore and junior year and the 1965 Malibu Super Sport he drove senior year in the school’s front parking lot, I parked my yellow rusted out 76’ Ford Pinto hand-me-down in the back of the school.

The issue wasn’t that I didn’t want to be seen in that “bright yellow banana” as seen in the 2010 action movie, "The Losers". No, I was not “embarrassed to be seen in an American classic” as said by a character in the film’s trailer. I couldn’t have cared less despite the fact the car had a broken passenger seat, no FM stations, no air conditioning and no protective gas covering. My issue was given my famous Italian/Hispanic temper that’s been known to go into overdrive since birth, I had zero patience for the after school traffic I’d have to put up with five days a week getting out of the front parking lot at 3:30 pm. That, and I was too cheap to buy a parking sticker.



For all the jokes I took from Kelly since getting my driver’s license the summer of 86’ during those high school years, I was able to prove him wrong one day during senior year thanks to an ice storm in early 1988 that canceled classes. Kelly came over for lunch and made me take the Pinto out in the ice since he didn’t want to take his Super Sport. Sure enough we got stuck barely a block away from my house. Between the back tires skidding and the Pinto going nowhere and my Hispanic/Italian temper beginning to kick in, I told Kelly to look at the speedometer.

“What is it you said how the Pinto will never hit 120 miles per hour,” I asked him.

Kelly’s eyes looked like they were about to go out of the sockets when he saw the needle past the 120-mile mark and yelled, “Don’t do that! You’re gonna blow your engine!” before I had him get out and push.

Barely a month had gone by that fall semester Freshman year before realizing that both of us together came off as troublemakers. Kelly and I would do anything in our power, for example, during the 85-86 sophomore year to get out of helping move furniture during gym class while everyone else was working. We'd hide and chat in the showers or the locker room throughout the whole period.

That was also the year when the two of us, and for all I know, were probably the only ones in the history of Bishop Lynch who failed Behind the Wheel with Coach Ed Stock. I don't remember what it was that Kelly messed up on the last day of class. What got me was the right turn Coach Stock told me to make except I did it from the left lane on a residential street. That alone took twenty points off from my score. I would have passed otherwise.

Kelly, being the rebel he often was, did such things as wear his army combat boots at graduation, sleep through health class and refuse to shave in the morning. I think at one point during senior year, he even got his ears pierced and wore an earring.

I was more of the rebel in a more unbelievable kind of way. “Unbelievable” meaning that because I was so quiet, none of the teachers would ever think it was me shouting the names "Andy!!!" and "Frosty!!!" during lunch period junior year; first names of whom belonged to that of the dean of students, Andy Zhilman and Frosty Leos, a theology instructor. My prank never failed. Both turned around almost every time in our direction and for four straight years neither could figure out who was doing it. It was plain and simple. If someone said, "Joe did it," the powers-that-be would never believe it and would have to pause briefly to investigate further utilizing all resources.

Zhilman and Leos would have never found out it weren't for two other friends I met freshman year whom Kelly knew, Joel Mathews and Tom Kelley. I learned back in the early 1990s that Joel told Leos at a homecoming game that it was me who yelled out his first name during lunch periods junior year.

“What movie had 42 people killed?”

Joel was the brain of our group who lived up to the reputation he would be the most successful in life out of all of us after finishing college and to an extent always took a lot of practical jokes from us.

When Tom asked Joel a movie question he got from a trivia game one day during lunch, “What movie had 42 people killed” adding a hint that would have made it easy for Joel to answer. “We watched it at Joe’s house.”

Joel shrugged like there was no point to the question and said, "Dawn of the Dead" (1978)?”

Kelly and I died laughing. Joel got the answer partially correct. We did watch director George A. Romero's "chomping" mall sequel, but it was at Kelly’s house. For the record, there were more than 42 “dead” people in that horror classic who played impeccably well-dressed cannibal eating, slow moving zombies. The one we watched where 42 people got knocked off that included the drug lord Al Pacino made famous was "Scarface."

This wasn’t the only time Joel had to put up with our jokes. When Kelly and Tom tried out for the football team sophomore year, Tom asked Joel why he didn’t try out. Joel’s response was “I don’t have any coins. Do you?” The comment was in reference to a football coin game the two played often times during lunch hour using less than ten pennies.

Yet despite the constant ribbing, the one thing I believe the three of us will agree on about Joel is he’s helped us out on more than one occasion during and after we left high school. A couple years after we graduated when he was in town on Christmas break from Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, he bought us all framed movie portraits from a memorabilia store. He gave Tom a portrait of John Wayne, Kelly a portrait of Mel Gibson as Mad Max and a family portrait of the Corleone crime family showing Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan and John Cazale in "The Godfather" (1972). I seriously wasn’t expecting that!

“That’s life! That’s what all the people say…”

Tom liked hunting, the Texas Rangers baseball team, beer, food and was and I assume is still an avid reader on historical and political subjects. His screen idols were John Wayne and Orson Welles and his favorite movie character was Charles Foster Kane. Tom's interests in music varied from Frank Sinatra and country to Led Zeppelin and classical.

Up until him and I jammed to “Ol' Blue Eyes’” greatest hits one night driving to a press screening for the film, "Malice" (1993), the only three Frank Sinatra songs I had heard was 1965's "Summer Wind" and "Strangers In the Night" from 1966. The third was “I Believe I’m Gonna Love You” from 1975 on a 45 rpm single my dad played when I was growing up in the 1970s that today can only be heard on YouTube where the tune can be turned into an mp3 or mp4 for one’s iPod.

We listened to the Chairman of the Board’s 1967 single “The World We Knew (Over and Over)" several times on the way to the theater that night probably because I was hooked listening to it.

On our way home, however, Tom had the artist’s 1966 hit, “That’s Life” playing full blast in the truck to the point I don’t think anyone who might have heard it as we drove by wouldn't have minded the noise pollution. The way Tom banged out the lyrics read like a brief screenplay.

Sinatra: “That’s life!”

Tom yelling at me to sing the next line in unison: “That’s what all the people say…”

Sinatra: “You’re riding high in April, shot down in May!”

Tom yelling over the volume at me to sing the next line together in unison: “But I know I’m gonna change that tune when I’m back, back on top in June! I say that’s life!”

This wasn’t the first time Tom expressed himself with his “singing” voice though I don’t think he’d make it as a contestant on "American Idol" (2003-present). When I rented the 1972 musical, "1776", he sang every song by heart the moment the cast broke into song. Had the lyrics been posted at the bottom of the screen for viewers at home to sing along the way cable networks do for such beloved musicals like "Grease" (1978) and "Mamma Mia!" (2008) today, Tom would have had no need for them. At one point as we watched the film, Tom told me to join in. I didn’t.

Like Joel who dealt with our jokes and my putting up with Kelly’s jokes on me, I also took a lot of ribbing from Tom especially when it came to my “liberalism” during the early 90s, seeing since at the time I collected books on President Kennedy, the JFK assassination and the Kennedy family and yes, I voted for Bill Clinton in the 92’ presidential election and was even more ashamed I voted straight Democrat that November.

Truth be damned, however, I have been a closet ultra-hard-right wing/conservative my whole life. It just took foregoing my plans to major in biased “fake” journalism to fully realize it and getting the hell away from all the die-hard, bleeding heart socialist liberal/anti-law enforcement friends I worked with at the college newspaper at what was then called East Texas State University in Commerce, Texas from 1991 to 1994.

That didn’t stop me, however, back in the late 80s and early 90s following our graduation taking great joy poking fun at Tom’s fascination with conservative pundit, Rush Limbaugh. When the two of us dropped by Macys one Saturday to get himself a “Rush Limbaugh” tie, seeing the display of clip-on ties I saw displayed alongside the “Limbaugh ties”, I kept urging Tom to reconsider and get himself a couple clip-ons instead since I heard "Cheers" postal carrier, Cliff Clavin, swore by them. Every time I mentioned it Tom would stop what he was doing, give me a blank stare for a few seconds and then continue browsing the assortment of “Limbaugh ties.”

That wasn’t the only time over the years he displayed the same blank stare reaction. Tom did that when he came by at the most inopportune moments on Saturday afternoons when I was at my snarkiest working the registers at Dallas based Blockbuster Video (1988-1996). He’d stand behind the shelves near the registers staring at me without my noticing as I checked out customers herding them out the door like cattle in between arguing with some deadbeat telling them to cough up the $1500 bucks in late fees they owed. When I finally did recognize him after clearing out all the human traffic him and I would die laughing and then he’d ask me “what’s with all the people here?” My response to that was, “DON’T…GET ME STARTED!”

I don't believe Tom and I had a single thing in common other than the fact our favorite episode from the classic "Star Trek" (1966-1969) television series was "The Doomsday Machine."

Much the way Kelly and I typecast ourselves in movies we watched, we also cast Joel and Tom in various roles as well. Tom, for example, was Darth Vader and Joel was Peter Cushing’s Governor Tarkin in "Star Wars".

“Why am I always the one who gets killed,” Joel asked one time.

We weren’t the ONLY ones who used movie references. There wasn’t a day or a week that went by during sophomore year that I didn’t hear class of 88’ friend, Von Minor, call Tom “Ogre-D” in reference to the bulky beer guzzling football player in "Revenge of the Nerds" (1984).

Like Joel, who helped the three of us at one time or another, Tom bailed me out on a number of occasions throughout the 90s…more so than he needed to.

The Final Years

The only thing I can say about junior year (1986-87) is that I started counting down the months to graduation which was still another full year away. I was regrettably more Dr. Jekyll during the fall 86-87 and 87-88 school years than Mr. Hyde. Years before Kelly remarked that the ending of "Star Wars" was our graduation ceremony, my twisted vision resembled the musical climax from Alan Parker’s "Fame" (1980).

I think I hated junior year so much that when I hooked up with friend and fellow 88’ alum, Anne Marie Ross, on Fakebook (yes I know it’s called Facebook but it will ALWAYS be “Fakebook” to me), in 2016, I jokingly told her how, “You mean no one ever told you the tale? How because I was so high on psychedelic drugs that year the only thing I remember is drawing a picture of you with that big ball of hair and those striking blue eyes of yours during classes that when another student asked me who that was, I told him it was “Anne Marie Ross in the Sky of Diamonds?”

All right! The drug reference is only half true and is part of a Beatles reference where lead singer/founder, John Lennon, revealed in an interview that the inspiration for the 1967 song, “Lucy In the Sky of Diamonds” was not the result of the “Fab Four” doing LSD but of a drawing his son, Julian, did. I’ve never done illegal substances my whole life. The only drugs I do now are the legal kind prescribed by the doctors for such “pain-in-the-ass” diseases like diabetes. Now that I think about it, I am not all that gifted when it comes to artwork either.

“The only guy that I know that can handle something like this.”

I haven’t seen much of the “goodfellas” in recent years.

The last time I saw Tom was in either 2004 or 2005 when we had lunch one day and he was studying to become a priest. He didn’t go to the 30th reunion in 2018. Only Joel and I went where I learned that Tom now works for the IRS.

The last time I saw Kelly was in 2006 after my diabetes diagnosis when he was still working for a local sports publication selling ads before leaving to start his own local sports publication called The Blitz Weekly. Thanks to him, albeit briefly, I got the chance to finally compose my epic page long film reviews for the publication he worked for as well writing film reviews (much smaller though – one big paragraph to be exact) and columns for his magazine before deciding to go my own way and blog whenever my mood hits in between working a 40-hour-a-week job at an IT helpdesk.

Kelly, who didn’t go to the 30th reunion in 2018 because of a family commitment, texted me on “Fakebook” that weekend how the four of us should get together for a trip to Las Vegas or New Orleans. That was before COVID-19 hit. If we went to Vegas today, we’d be wearing face masks.

Such a reunion, however, may be nothing more than wishful thinking. The kind of wishful thinking fans of the “Fab Four” hoped would happen in their lifetime after The Beatles broke up in 1970 only to have all that tragically end ten years later.

By comparison, perhaps the only possibility of us getting together again is when one of us leaves this world. The way my health has been since 2015 (three hospital stays now for diabetes) the first person to become one with The Force out of the four of us will likely be me. Still, it’s nice to know when I do depart, I will continue to be immortalized much like the picture of the street corner friend and also class of 88’ alum, Grant Stewart, posted on his Facebook page that displays his name. The difference with me is I’ll be immortalized in a clip called “Joe Stumpo” from the 2013 film, "Clear History", that starred Larry David.

Stewart was the one who told me about the infamous clip a few years back. I died laughing. So too did the powers-that-be at work to the point management considered playing the clip at an all-staff meeting were it not for that shocking “F” word. I think when my ashes are sent to space as the Electric Light Orchestra’s 1981 song “Twenty First Century Man” is playing in the background (I want to leave this world “literally” when the Almighty or 666 calls me home) in my will I will ask that my urn inside that rocket have the comment one of the characters in that YouTube clip says following the words, Here lies Joe Stumpo…“The only guy that I know that can handle something like this.”

Autograph prices start at 25 bucks!

©7/1/20

Things I’ll do WHEN I get COVID-19…not IF, WHEN!

Not a week, in some cases, a day goes by that I don’t hear the local news media talk about ways we can pass the time in quarantine inside our homes practicing social distancing in hopes of preventing one from getting the Coronavirus.

Here is my list of what I will do WHEN I get, assuming it’s only mild symptoms of COVID-19, and don’t have to be on a ventilator in a hospital’s intensive care unit. It’s not “IF” I do get the virus. It’s WHEN. As the second unappointed “Mayor of Realville”, I don’t care if you don’t want to read the truth or not. Bottom line: WE’RE ALL GOING TO GET THE VIRUS IN SOME FORM. Just depends how bad. Doesn’t matter how many face masks you wear outside or at the grocery stores or how much social distancing you practice.

Even if you don’t get it, it’s a good bet you will probably know someone who either got the deadly virus and lived to tell about it, or they succumbed to it. Being diabetic, I am on that list of potential candidates susceptible of catching it thanks to a weakened immune system. In fact I am convinced, regardless what the television medical experts say, why I haven't caught it is because I got my flu shot in November last year (medical experts claim a flu shot will not prevent you from catching COVID-19). So here is what I’ll be doing in quarantine at home when that happens. (I’m actually doing a majority of this already and I’m not sick…at least not from COVID-19 that is).

1) Catch up on my reading: As much as it pains me to quote the fictional TV father of the 80s, Dr. Cliff Huxtable, as played by actor-comedian and now convicted sex offender, Bill Cosby, from The Cosby Show (1984-1992), there is a line from one episode where daughter, Rudy (Keshia Knight Pulliam), tells dear old dad she can’t find anything to do. Cliff tells her he has a million dollars worth of books in her bedroom she has yet to read. By comparison, I’ve bought quite a few hardcovers I’ve set aside with plans to one day finally open up. Perhaps catching mild symptoms of COVID-19 might cause that?

2) Netfilx: Since becoming addicted to the streaming service Thanksgiving Day 2019 (I only got the app because I wanted to see Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese’s three-hour plus gangster opus, The Irishman), I’ve accessed a number of films on my account that say “Continue watching” from classics like The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Once Upon A Time In the West (1968) to such classic television series like Star Trek (1966-1969) and the WB’s Supergirl (2015-present). Like all those hardcover books I plan to read one day, I’m eventually going to finish watching those dozen plus titles I accessed since late last year, provided the streaming service does not pull them from access within a few months. Though I have noticed when Netflix does pull various titles, those same movies return to the service within a few months.
 
3) How about all those yet-to-be opened movies I bought sitting in drawers: Should the situation arise where I can’t find anything to watch on Netflix I can always go to that pile of unopened Blu-rays I have been meaning to watch (2019 films: Ad Astra, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Joker, Star Trek: Discovery: Season 1).

4) iTunes: Moving all my music from my old outdated iTunes account on my 10-year-old Apple computer that came with a CD burner (today’s $1500 plus Macs no longer come with them) to my new updated account has been an ongoing project the past month. Such is the one and only reason why I still have the 10-year-old Mac computer as nothing else works on it anymore. The desktop software is so out of date now that the latest browser versions of Firefox and Google Chrome are no longer compatible. I wouldn’t even be able to use the machine if I took online classes to take tests and do assignments. The real test, though, will come when I am finally done transferring all my music (close to 1000 songs, if not more) to the new account. Will all that data synch up upon hooking my Iphone 7 to my notebook let alone, if I get a new IPOD with the highest memory. To be continued…

5) Blogging: Personal issues since January 2019 have kept me from updating my two blogs (one with film reviews and the other with commentaries) on a weekly basis every Wednesday. It’s not a case of writer’s block. I just have too many things going on right now. I suppose I should thank the COVID-19 pandemic and working from home as this crisis has prompted me to churn out a few weekly blogs about the subject since mid-March.

6) LEGOS: Have I told you that Lego building could be a means to keep a person sane? I have found myself at my calmest when building some new set, or an old one. I got plenty of unopened sets to pass the quarantine time. Trouble is finding the space when I’m done building them. The $700 Ultimate Collector Star Destroyer set I bought last year is one such example!

7) So maybe instead of Lego building I can work on a puzzle? I am not much into 1000 plus piece female fantasy jigsaw puzzles. The one I saw at a local comic book store last month, however, caught my eye so I had to get it. Perhaps I’ll put it together while jamming to all those 1000 plus songs I got on my new iTunes account full blast?

8) And the Oscar for best original/best adapted screenplay goes to: In addition to blogging, I have dabbled in screenwriting over the years. I still have an unfinished adapted supernatural screenplay I wrote back in the 1990s I have been meaning to get back to.

9) Paper shredding: Another ongoing project I have had on my To Do List. Years of old bills to go through. I’d put all that paperwork in cardboard boxes and take to the local UPS store to have them do the shredding but COVID-19 took care of that. I’m going to have to do this all myself. Jamming to my iTunes music while doing this comes to mind.

10) Walk doggie: Dogs love it when their owner takes them for a walk and my dog, Mikey, is no exception. Mikey knows he doesn’t get a walk every day from me so on those days when I drag out the leash he intends to make the most of that 20-30 minute stroll every minute. Amazing how a piddly seven-year-old, 20-pound parti yorkie pooch can physically drag a 165-pound man throughout the neighborhood!

©4/15/20

Welcome to the New Normal

Imagine a world from the Las Vegas strip to the museums of downtown Chicago empty. The list of vacated tourist attractions is endless. Everything from the Vatican and the streets of Paris to Times Square are almost ghost towns.

Students from grade school to college are forced to do classwork via web conferencing from home on their laptops. Community colleges and universities have moved all on campus courses to online. In some cases, school districts are not only canceled for the remainder of the spring semester but the entire year.

All events the public used to enjoy seeing on a daily basis are at a standstill. No baseball, basketball, hockey, or tennis. Bowling alleys are closed. Hollywood studios have either canceled all red-carpet movie premieres from Disney’s "Mulan" to the James Bond film, "No Time to Die" to "Wonder Woman 1984" or moved to late summer or fall, or in some cases to 2021.

No concerts. Turn on the morning news shows and instead of audiences cheering during various news segments or standing outside the studios of NBC’s "Today" and ABC’s "Good Morning America", we see the overpaid multi-million dollar talking heads anchoring via video conferencing from home or, if they are at the studio, they are practicing social distancing six feet away from each other. Any pervert hoping to catch themselves some hot nylon leg action on Fox News’ "Outnumbered" seeing the long-legged beauties in their over-the-knee skirts and seven-inch-heels on that huge couch will be sadly disappointed. They too must also practice social distancing voicing their opinions on five split screens.

Turn on the local news and you will see meteorologists doing the weather from the privacy of their homes now.

People going to restaurants for an overpriced meal are a thing of the past. Drive thrus and curbside pickups are the only options now to get your supposed “good food quickly.” Mass shootings no longer lead the nightly news. With everyone being required to stay home gun-toting psychopaths have no one to take their anger out on before dying by suicide.

Those who still have a job to go to work remotely from home now, in a majority of cases, indefinitely.

Gun shops are swamped with perspective gun owners lining up outside pawn shops in hopes of buying a firearm should the need arise to protect oneself. From Walmart to Target, grocers are seen wearing face masks, even the dogs. Malls are closed indefinitely. The travel industry is at a standstill.

AND MOREOVER…THERE IS NO TOILET PAPER IN STOCK AT ANY STORES!!!!

I can’t make this stuff up. This is not something out of all those end-of-the-world virus movies ("The Andromeda Strain" - 1971, "And the Band Played On" – 1993, Stephen King’s "The Stand" – 1994, "Outbreak" - 1995, "Contagion" – 2011). This is playing out in real time, and it began, for the city of Dallas on March 13, Friday the 13th of all days. All the result of what seems to now be an unstoppable flu-like disease that reportedly began in China called the Coronavirus, officially known also as COVID-19.

As the second unappointed “Mayor of Realville” I knew upon first hearing about this virus in mid-January this year that, like all the other countries, the United States was going to get hit. The question was how bad.

Barely an hour after city officials declared a state of emergency for Dallas County March 13, grocers headed to their local Walmart's and Target stores overloading their baskets with anything they could get their hands on.

“I got caught in that crap yesterday at Winco,” wrote friend Pablo Martinez on my Facebook page. “People must have 2-3 refrigerators because I don’t know where the hell they’re gonna store all that damn food they were buying. RIDICULOUS!”

The scenes brought to mind the clip from the 1983 nuclear war TV film, "The Day After", where grocers grabbed everything in sight, stupidly paying at the registers just as the missiles were about to launch. My dad and I laughed watching that scene 37 years ago. What the hell were the grocery stores going to do with that money after the bombs detonate?

The scenes also reminded me of how Dallas citizens senselessly panicked lining up at gas stations like as though we were in another gas shortage from the mid-1970s after Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas Louisiana coast in August 2017. I was among the lucky few who only had to wait 15 minutes in line to get gas that Friday morning.

Still some people out there managed to find humor in the pandemic. On rebrickable.com, a site dedicated to Lego enthusiasts, someone built a Lego version of the Coronavirus while the front cover of the Hollywood Reporter boasted a picture of the Death Star from "Star Wars" (1977) looking like COVID-19.

Today, those who attend Sunday mass, especially during this season of Lent with Easter on the horizon in early April, must temporarily resort to watching the services on television. If I died tomorrow, seeing since the last time I was at confession was Christmas Eve 1992, I would already know where I’d be headed for eternity; either Hell or Purgatory since confession in some churches is not an option right now.

Weddings and graduation ceremonies are postponed. Hospitals are packed. Metropolitan cities are declared “hotspots” for COVID-19. Family members are unable to visit the dying out of fear they could also get the virus. Convention centers across the country are turned into makeshift hospitals.

Such is our country and our world today. Welcome to the New Normal.

©3/18/20