My Personal Best Films: Airport (1970)

Airport ««««
G, 137m. 1970

Cast & Credits: Burt Lancaster (Mel Bakersfield), Dean Martin (Vernon Demerest), George Kennedy (Patroni), Jean Seberg (Tanya Livingston), Jacqueline Bisset (Gwen Meighen), Helen Hayes (Ada Quonsett), Van Heflin (D.O. Guerrero), Maureen Stapleton (Inez Guerrero), Barry Nelson (Anson Harris), Dana Wynter (Cindy), Lloyd Nolan (Harry Standish), Barbara Hale (Sarah Demerest), Gary Collins (Cy Jordan). Written and directed by George Seaton.

1971 Academy Award
Nominations

Best Picture

Best Actress in a 
Supporting Role - 
Helen Hayes - Winner

Best Actress in a 
Supporting Role -
Maureen Stapleton

Best Art Direction
Set Decoration

Best Cinematography

Best Costume Design

Best Film Editing

Best Music - Original Score
Alfred Newman

Best Sound

Best Writing - Screenplay
Based on Material from
Another Medium

Anytime I hear nothing but either accolades or negative opinions from everyone and their dog about how great or bad a movie was and how I should either see or not see it, I get very skeptical.

When that happens the comment real estate agent Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) said in "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992) comes to mind. Roma said he subscribed to the “law of contrary public opinion.”

“If everyone thinks one thing, then I say bet the other way,” Roma said.

I apply that train of thought to "Airport" (1970) which ushered in the disaster movie sub-genre that lasted almost ten years during the 1970s before audiences tired of the same formula of big-name stars typecast in perilous situations and what eventually became cheap feeble attempts to wow viewers with special effects eye candy. "Airport", the film, received almost as much negative press from movie critics as author Arthur Hailey’s 400-plus-page novel got from literary reviewers when it was published in 1968 according to an article on Wikipedia.

Literary reviewer Martin Levin wrote in The New York Times saying "Mr. Hailey is a plodding sort of writer, but he has just the talent to suggest the crashing ennui of airport routine, where only a mortal disaster can provide color." When commenting Hailey’s workplace type informative style of writing, another NYT book reviewer, Eliot Fremon-Smith, asked the question “With 'Hotel' and 'Airport' successfully absorbed, can 'Shopping Center,' 'Parking Lot' and 'City Dump' be far behind?"

Chicago Sun-Times film critic, Roger Ebert, opened his 10/18/74 review of "Airport 1975" writing that although the original "Airport" was never one of his favorite movies, he admired the slick, competent way it worked viewers over for two hours.

“Its clichés were ancient and its typecasting was relentless, but it didn't bore us,” Ebert wrote.

Notable film reviewer Pauline Kael who was never one to shy away from voicing her scathing opinions of movies she loathed called "Airport" “An empty reshaping of Grand Hotel, held together by disaster in the sky.”

Even executives at Universal Pictures who distributed the film expressed no hope in seeing it blossom into the unexpected box office hit it became. Like Hailey’s mammoth read which spent 64 weeks on the New York Times best seller list, "Airport" – the film grossed over $100 million at the box office on a $10 million budget in the United States and Canada according to Wikipedia.

Much to everyone’s surprise in particular critics and executives at Universal Pictures who expected the movie to flop, writer/director George Seaton’s screenplay adaptation of Hailey’s novel received one of ten Oscar nominations in 1971 that included Best Picture and a Best Supporting Actress win for Helen Hayes for her kindly portrayal of 80-year-old stowaway, Ada Quonsett. More on her in a moment.

If I had been in my late 20s or early 30s when Hailey’s book and the film adaptation were published and released in 1970, the deal breaker that would have sent me to the box office would have been the ten Oscar nominations the film received. I have no doubt critics who loathed the disaster picture expressed their displeasure at the news saying the only reason for the nominations was because it was a hit with audiences and saw it as another attempt to draw television viewers when the Academy Awards aired.

The picture is the kind of movie that could be touted as an overhyped weekly nighttime soap opera in the tradition of TV’s "Dallas" (1978-1991) for one of the big three prime-time networks in the day (CBS, NBC, ABC). Yet, such a suggested workplace drama series would be short lived. Viewers would find the situations so mundane that having a disturbed passenger and an 80-year-old stowaway as recurring characters would be a last-ditch effort to increase the series’ low ratings.

What makes "Airport" stand out from the less-than-a-handful of big budget catastrophic star-studded spectacles released ("The Poseidon Adventure" – 1972; "The Towering Inferno – 1974) soon after is it plays out more like a workplace soap opera. The subplot involving a desperate out of work husband and father (Van Heflin) with nefarious plans to blow up a jetliner is not the film’s selling point.

I can summarize the story with barely a complete sentence calling the film “a night in the life of an aviation supervisor (Burt Lancaster) who battles multiple crisis inside and outside the workplace.” When Lancaster’s Mel Bakersfield isn’t stressed out wondering if TWA’s top airline mechanic, Joe Patroni (George Kennedy), can get a stuck Boeing 707 off his only runway during the city’s heaviest snowstorm, he is warring with his soon-to-be ex-wife (Dana Wynter) on their disintegrating marriage. As the saying goes, it's always something. Bakersfield must put up with the criticisms from his sister’s husband –veteran pilot Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin) who never wastes a moment citing Bakersfield’s ineptness on how he runs one of the nation’s busiest airports calling the agents and ground crews “penguins.”

I won’t argue that much of the dialogue the characters speak are what I would come to expect from actual supervisors and employees in any workplace. Despite headlining the film Lancaster called  "Airport" "the worst piece of junk ever made" and only took the role because Universal promised to finance upcoming film projects the Oscar winning actor was interested in according to IMDB. 

What makes Airport’s characters entertaining, however, in a daytime soap opera kind of way is how they deliver their lines so convincingly that not once did I get the impression they only chose this project for the money.

A few like George Kennedy’s Patroni act like they know everything about the world of aviation mechanics and don’t make the role look as though it is just another acting job. In one scene when he gets disgusted at a captain’s hesitancy to apply full power to get the stuck 707 out of the snow, Patroni lectures him on how much he knows every inch of the plane.

“Take the wings off this and you could use it as a tank,” Patroni says. “This plane is built to withstand anything except a bad pilot.”

A majority of the characters exhibit a brief moment of emotional weakness that make them believable. Martin’s Demerest - in a role the actor said was one of his favorite characters he played according to IMDB, develops moral scruples, if not, a sense of urgent responsibility, at the unexpected news he gets from a stewardess (Jacqueline Bisset) he has been having an affair with. 

Even Heflin’s’ Guerrero, who despite being the villain I almost felt a small twinge of sympathy for the guy when he lets his guard down for a few seconds upon learning the folks on the ground are onto his plans to blow up the jetliner he is on as a means for his wife to collect the insurance money. His role reminded me how I’ve often heard that the only way an actor would sign on to play the bad guy is if the character exhibits one or two positive traits that might him slightly likable.

As for Helen Hayes Ada Quonsett, while I have yet to read Hailey’s book which is still available in print and not just online through Kindle, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hayes interjected some of her own dialogue for her character.



When an airline representative asks Quonsett how she got caught sneaking aboard a flight, the stowaway disdainfully blames a fellow passenger she confided her secret to who turned her in.

“They really should wear their security uniforms otherwise how is a person supposed to know,” Quonsett says.

While I’ve seen most all the disaster movies made since the 1970s I don’t consider myself a fan of the sub-genre. What attracted me to "Airport" and the laughably bad sequels the original inspired in 1974, 1977 and 1979 before directors Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker parodied the franchise in "Airplane" (1980) was my fascination with any mid-air disaster movie that featured crews and passengers in distress. Quality never mattered to me. If the movie featured a jet I’d be interested in seeing it whether the film as is gripping and hard-to-watch like "United 93" (2006) or as bad as "Snakes On A Plane" (2006) where the most memorable line comes from Samuel L. Jackson’s law enforcement character that’s filled with a couple “f” words I won’t write here despite being my own editor of this blog.

In the five decades since Airport’s release I’ve often asked myself if the film can be remade today. The answer is yes and no. No from the standpoint of studios not wanting to risk boring audiences with a soap opera like drama that "Airport" was even if it does headline today’s top stars.

Like the 70s sub-genre that lasted barely ten years, audiences today have tired of the same formula. The catastrophic box office honeymoon that was "Twister" (1996), "Independence Day" (1996), "Titanic" (1997), "Armageddon" (1998) and "2012" (2009) that brought crowds to theaters dwindled in the wake of director Roland Emmerich’s latest 140 million sci-fi disaster release, "Moonfall" (2022) that was gone from movie houses before the month of its theatrical release ended. 

From a personal standpoint as someone who has tried his hand at screenwriting, I’d find it easy for me to adapt "Airport" to today’s times. I’d have my version take place a year after 9/11 with the aviation industry still reeling from the nation’s terrorist attacks. Much has changed in the five decades since the film’s release. There’s no smoking aloud on flights by passengers and flight crews as seen in the 70’s drama. The jets today are so technologically advanced with computer software they can practically fly themselves. The pilots are only needed to take off and land. Whereas the Boeing 707 in "Airport" was the star of the film, the known multimillion jetliner manufacturer is no longer seen as the corporation that prided itself on airline safety in the wake of two crashes involving their 737 MAX that killed a combined 346 passengers and crews in 2019.

There is one thing, however, I would keep in my updated screenplay that Hayes’ Ada Quonsett uttered in the 70’s film. When Quonsett is given a lifetime of first-class tickets on any Transglobal flight, the elderly lady takes note of how adventurously easy it was for her to break the law. In my remake, as my Ada Quonsett hands the agent her first-class ticket she’d sadly glance at the long lines of perspective passengers waiting to be screened at the security gates before they are allowed to check in taking into account how much things have changed since 9/11 and tell the travel agent, “You know, it was much more fun the other way.”

"Airport" is streaming on Netflix in May.

©4/30/25

My Top 10 Christmas Songs I Can’t Stop Listening During December (IN MY OPINION – NOT YOURS)!

Every year around this time ever since youtube’s birth in 2005 I’ve always uploaded several Christmas videos to listen to throughout the month of December until Christmas Eve.

In what is probably my second shortest blog post since the one I wrote in 2015 about what I’m thankful for on Thanksgiving here are ten holiday songs I never tire of hearing that help keep me to some extent from morphing completely into Ebenezer Scrooge. (Still waiting to be visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve).

Alex Khaskin - "It's Christmas Eve" from "A Christmas Horror Story"



Vince Guaraldi Trio - "Christmas Time Is Here"



Barenaked Ladies, Sarah McLachlan – "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman/We Three Kings"



Michael Bublé – "All I Want For Christmas Is You"



Josh Groban – "Ave Maria"



Josh Groban – "O Holy Night"



John Lennon – "Happy Xmas – (War Is Over)"



Barry Manilow & Exposé – "Jingle Bells"



Dean Martin – "I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm"



Trans-Siberian Orchestra – "Christmas Canon"



©12/11/2024

What Lionsgate’s AI generated “Megalopolis” trailer finally proved about film critics

If there’s one thing Lionsgate’s latest trailer that promoted director Francis Ford Coppola’s controversial $120 million pet passion project he’d been working on since 1977, “Megalopolis”, using reported AI generated and fabricated quotes from notable reviewers of decades past bashing the filmmaker’s previous classics, it is that movie critics don’t matter.

Even if the negative pull quotes from notable reviewers Vincent Canby, Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris among them featured in the trailer were truthful critiques of the filmmaker’s classics “The Godfather” (1972), “Apocalypse Now” (1979) and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992) doesn’t mean everyone agreed on their assessments.

I don’t listen to the film critics. Not once in my over five decades on this planet had I ever read a review hoping the supposed know-it-all reviewers would like a movie I was planning to see.

What attracted me to the reviews from such renowned writers Richard Corliss (1944-2015) of Time, Roger Ebert (1942-2013) of the Chicago Sun-Times, Pauline Kael (1919-2001) of The New Yorker and Bruce Williamson (1927-1998) of Playboy (there was more to the risqué periodical than just the pretty pictures) was their unique writing styles.

Same reason why today the only two critics I read on occasion are Stephanie Zacharek of Time and contributor Ross Douthat of National Review.

If I had paid attention to the vitriol the critics spewed out in their columns about the following the past five decades, I’d have avoided "1941" (1979), the Airport disaster movies of the 1970s, "Alexander" (2004), "Armageddon" (1998), "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" (1979), "Cannonball Run II" (1981), "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" (1992), "Dune" (1984), "Eternals" (2021), "Event Horizon" (1997), "Firestarter" (1984), "Gigli" (2003), “The Invasion” (2007), “The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1996), "Last Action Hero" (1993), "The Marvels" (2023), "Police Academy" (1984), "Porky’s" (1981), "Raise the Titanic" (1980), “Rhinestone” (1984), "Snakes On a Plane" (2006), the Star Wars prequels (1999-2005), "The Swarm" (1979), “Toys” (1992), and just about everything director Zack Snyder’s churned out before entering and exiting Warner’s DC superhero franchise known to what either fans or the fantasy filmmaker himself calls the “Snyderverse”.

Oh, how my mind wonders on the mass amounts of man hours I wasted watching what critics considered celluloid junk when my time could have been spent elsewhere. It’s enough to make me wake up in a cold sweat!

No. Not really.

Seeing movies is not only all about being entertained but also in my case following the “law of contrary public opinion” Ricky Roma spoke of in "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992)

“If everyone thinks one thing, then I say, bet the other way,” Roma said.

I don’t regret watching any of the atrocities the critics 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.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat through movies the top reviewers and audiences couldn’t stop raving about only to find myself, whether at home watching such overhyped pictures on the flatscreen or at the theater that made me want to scream at the top of my lungs the minute the credits rolled shouting, “Da f--k was this s--t?!?!”

You want examples? Here’s a few: "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), "The Crying Game" (1992), "Howard’s End" (1992), "The English Patient" (1996), “Avatar” (2009), “Deadpool” (2016), "Black Panther" (2018), "Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood" (2019), “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022),"Top Gun: Maverick" (2022), "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (2022), "Barbie" (2023), “Oppenheimer” (2023) and "Poor Things" (2023).

Coppola shouldn’t be upset by the false advertising Lionsgate used to promote what I and most everyone assumed at the time would be his swan song (he’s reportedly at work on two more films). The clever marketing ploy was the studio’s attempt to prove how wrong the critics have been on their opinions. They succeeded.

I, for one, loved Lionsgate’s promotional misfire which is still accessible on other YouTube channels but not from the distributor who pulled the trailer the same day it aired on the net Aug. 22. I haven’t been able to get enough of the “Megalopolis” trailer’s first 40 seconds as the falsified pull quotes raced across the screen to the tune of an updated instrumental version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” as longtime actor and collaborator Laurence Fishburne narrated the preview’s opening with the words, “True genius is often misunderstood.”

Rest assured I will not be reading, let alone relying on what the know-it-all critics say about the film, good or bad. I will not even be upset if the picture is not another triumph like “The Godfather” and is instead another commercial failure equivalent of the 85-year-old filmmaker’s 1981 musical, “One from the Heart” and the troubled mobster production/musical want-to-be “The Cotton Club” (1984).

I’ll decide for myself when I see “Megalopolis” on IMAX opening day Sept. 27 if the directing legend’s latest “fable” inspired by the fall of Rome is “A sloppy self-indulgent movie,” “a spectacular failure”, “a beautiful mess,” or “a triumph of style over substance.” Pull quotes seen in the trailer the critics wrote about in other movies they didn’t approve of but not Coppola’s.

“Megalopolis” may not be, as Fishburne narrated in the trailer, “an event nothing can prepare you for” but seeing it on the big screen will nevertheless be an event independent of itself.

©8/28/24

Ten reasons why after living in Dallas for 40 years, Chicago is still my kind of town

This month marks forty years that my family and I relocated from Chicago to Dallas. After being here forty years, I still prefer the “Windy City” over “Big D.” To quote actor Michael Caine who said decades ago the only reason why he did “Jaws: The Revenge” (1987) was for the money, the only reason by comparison that I still live here is the job market, hence the money.

Here are ten other reasons why to this day I still sing the words from that Blues Brothers' song, “Come on…oh baby don’t you wanna go…back to that same old place…Sweet home Chicago.”

The Bike Trails: Unlike Dallas where if you want to ride your bike you got to put it in your car or truck, drive to White Rock Lake and then get your bike out to ride the trails, I could go anywhere in the suburbs from my house on my bike using the Chicago trails. I could even if I wanted to ride my bike to Downtown Chicago. If we had bike trails here like Chicago does, I wouldn’t be overweight and diabetic.

The broadcasters of both TV and radio: Dick Biondi, Jack Brickhouse, Harry Caray, Mary Ann Childers, Bill Curtis, Joel Daly, John Drury, Fahey Flynn, Don Geronimo (Michael L. Sorce), Jimmy Piersall, Tom Skilling. These were the “brand” names of broadcast journalism, sportscasting and radio disc jockeys I often watched and listened to back when I lived in Chicago from 1970 to 1984.



The city doesn’t shut down when two inches of ice and snow or less hit the ground! Anyone from Chicago laughs at Texas in how the residents are nothing more than a bunch of wusses when so much as an inch of ice hits the ground. For most of us Texas residents it means a few days off from work and no school when Dallas shuts down. Up there, they go to work, schools are open and if anyone from work calls in sick it better be because they’re dead. Now how does that make you Texans feel knowing the people up north see you as a wuss? You Texans boast about how you love your guns and ammo, Texas BBQ, your Dallas Cowboys and Republicans but a little ice and snow comes your way, and it becomes a scene out of that 1983 nuclear war TV film, “The Day After”, where everyone rushes to the grocery stores to grab what they can before the missiles launch! I mean when I went to Walmart a day after all the snow and ice melted, they were completely out of milk! Come on wusses!



Downtown: To quote Mr. Wilhelm, from “Seinfeld” who says to George Costanza (Jason Alexander) in an episode concerning his New York Yankees assignment that he needs “to go downtown. It’s all downtown. Just like the song says”, the same applies to Downtown Chicago. Like Disney World where it’s been said it takes a few days to see the whole place, I could spend a few days visiting all the museums near Lake Michigan that include the Museum of Science and Industry, the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, The Field Museum and Sears Tower. Yes, I know it’s now called the Willis Tower, but it will always be the Sears Tower to me.



Haunted History: The "Windy City" is rich with ghost stories from apparitions seen at Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery in Bremen Township, Cook County, Illinois to the souls lost in The Eastland Disaster in 1915 who reportedly still haunt Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios. I am more prone to believing the Chicago legend of Resurrection Mary about a vanishing hitchhiker who is picked up by motorists on Archer Avenue only to disappear once she is dropped off at the gates of Resurrection Cemetery as opposed to “Big D's” ghostly legend of The Lady of the Lake which sounds like some Texas “ghostbuster” stole the same aspects of the Windy City’s legend and called it their own.



The Italian food: Yes, I know with a little bit of searching the Internet and in my case, a heavy dose of patience to justify traveling an hour on my weekend off to Addison to get a Chicago style Italian beef sandwich at Al’s Italian Beef I can for a moment get a taste of Chicago. I don’t have to travel very far, however, to get the ethnic Italian food I could literally live on daily in the "Windy City." There is either a Giordano’s, pizza places (NO, I am not referring to CiCi's Pizza, Dominos or Papa Johns - I'm talking about "real" pizza) and Italian beef sandwich restaurants within a few miles of each other. Speaking of other foods and beer you can’t get here that are only available in Chicago, there are those Dean’s Ice Cream Cake Rolls, Maurice Lenell Cookie assortments and Old Style. Now if I can only find the name of those caramel rice crispy type treats my grandmother bought us that are no longer made anymore. Back in the day, I could devour an entire box after leaving them in the freezer for a few hours.



The Movies: Several movies were shot in Chicago that include “The Sting” (1973), “The Blues Brothers” (1980), “Ordinary People” (1980), “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (1983), “Code of Silence” (1984), “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1985), “Raw Deal” (1985), “Backdraft” (1990). Do I have to list more???



Svengoolie: As a kid in grade school among the things I did on Saturday afternoons was sit in front of the television while building Legos or playing with my Star Wars figures and watch Chicago horror host Son of Svengoolie (he is now called "Svengoolie". As played by Rich Koz, dressed in black vampire type fatigues and sporting a heavy black moustache and goatee, Svengoolie would come out of his coffin for two hours every Saturday to host another B-grade horror movie in between humorous skits and getting rubber chickens and fish thrown at him off stage. Today Svengoolie can be seen every Saturday night at 9 p.m. central on MeTV and has his own Facebook page, which as of this writing has an accumulated 65,428 likes.



Two Newspaper Town: One of the joys about living in a metropolitan city was the opportunity to get two differing perspectives from two differing newspapers. I don’t have to do any research knowing that the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune have battled financial problems over the years. The fact is “the Windy City” is still a two-newspaper town. Is Dallas? Sorry the Fort Worth Star Telegram does not make Dallas a two-newspaper town alongside the Dallas Morning News.



The writers: True my decision to pursue journalism began in 1991 but my inspiration to write film reviews and columns came from reading Chicago film critics Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert’s movie reviews and columnist Mike Royko.



I am sure everyone reading this will say there are plenty of things to like about Dallas and after 30 years it’s high time I start giving “Big D” a chance. There is nothing anyone in “Big D” can convince me that living in the Lone Star State is so much better than being up north.

The only thing Dallas and Chicago have in common is about aviation disasters. When an American Airlines DC-10 crashed upon losing an engine during takeoff on May 25, 1979, killing 273 passengers and crew and two on the ground and a Delta Airlines L-1011 crashed at DFW airport during a thunderstorm killing 137 and one on the ground, both jets had the flight number 191 assigned to them. Tragic coincidence or a cursed flight number? Call me superstitious but I wouldn’t fly on a plane with a flight number of a previous jet that crashed especially if it’s “191”.

©7/30/24

Why are we so fascinated by the evil that men do?

Why are we so fascinated by the evil that men do, so much so, viewers can’t get enough of the grisly, often unsettling, hour-long crime documentaries and cheap questionable made-for-cable-TV movies of the week on Lifetime. The stories about such real-life villains from Bernie Madoff and Alex Murdaugh to mass shooters and serial killers have been rehashed several times over. What new information could one say about these no-good pieces of shit that wasn’t already revealed when they first happened years or decades ago.

Is it to introduce a new generation to their atrocities so their tales of committing one, if not all the seven deadly sins live on in infamy? Or God forbid, inspire them to commit the same crimes?

I asked myself such questions after viewing the 2016 documentary, “77 Minutes”, which explored the mass shooting at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California July 18, 1984, that left 21 people dead and 19 injured before the gunman was taken out by a SWAT team sharpshooter.

Ironically the time it took for authorities to get the go-ahead to stop the gunman’s rampage forty years ago is the same amount of time police in Uvalde, Texas got the order to engage an 18-year-old mass shooter who during those same “77 minutes” gunned down 19 students, two teachers and wounded 17 others May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School. 

Not only are the comparisons eerily similar in law enforcement's failure to immediately engage both gunmen, let alone the time the massacres began to the time they ended, but the number of dead at Robb Elementary was the same number of those killed at the McDonald's.

The mass shooting, like so many that came soon after the past four decades, was another case where evil ALWAYS triumphed over good and though the good succeeded in eventually stopping the perpetrators, or the shooters cowardly took themselves out before battling police, the damage had already been done. Lives are forever ruined. No one from those who were there who lived to tell about it to the viewers who watched the aftermath on the news or on YouTube would ever be the same.

The unspeakable tragedies stay with us long after they’ve become distant memories we hope to never look back on.

In a perfect world the minute these no-good pieces of shit departed there’d be no more retellings of their despicable life stories much to our personal glee. They’d be doing their time in the fires of Hell prior to their meeting with the Grim Reaper and being denied entrance to the pearly gates by Saint Peter and the Almighty.

The reasons why we can’t seem to get enough of hearing about these perpetrators could be numerous. Perhaps it’s because just when we thought we’d seen all the crimes various individuals have committed against society that we question if not admit being a little fascinated looking for answers on what makes someone go off the deep end? That a person with such a hatred for the Hispanic community whose victims ranged from eight months to 74-years-old could, we hoped at the time, would only be an isolated incident. In 1984 perhaps the devil was telling us “normal” people who have a respect for human life, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

I haven’t dwelled on the McDonald’s massacre since watching the documentary in July nor have I bothered to look up the life stories of other infamous mass murderers the past four decades.

All these monsters are the equivalent of Satan and we’re Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden being enticed to eat the forbidden fruit. I just know crime enthusiasts are salivating over producer Ryan Murphy’s next 10-episode series called “American Sports Story” chronicling the rise and fall of football star, Aaron Hernandez, which airs on FX Sept. 17.

There’s no stopping the entertainment industry and the media from churning out what’s mostly regurgitated often times over sensationalized tabloid trash.

The question is how many curious viewers can keep themselves from a taking a bite of that big rotten apple.

©7/24/24

Reason former President Trump and me are still here has nothing to do with “Divine Intervention”

I shouldn’t be here today writing this blog.

Since 2015, I’ve been hospitalized five times. The result of not taking my insulin and checking my blood sugars three to four times daily before eating and allowing the numbers to exceed to the 700 to 900 ranges since my first diabetes diagnosis in 2006. In one incident, the sugars were so high in the four digits the nurse at the emergency room couldn’t get a reading on the glucometer.

As many times as I’ve been in the hospital over the past nine years now, I wonder if anyone who’d heard about my stints, or cared, would ask me, if not ask themselves, if I got a death wish?

No one has to date.

God is not the reason why I’m still here. God and his angels didn’t send a subliminal message to mom telling her she should get my ass to the emergency room. Her medical knowledge and the fact she and any mother, for that matter, knows her own kid better than the kid knows themselves.



I just thought my moving slow, unable to swallow solid foods unless it was pasta or soup, moving blue spots, recounting certain moments in my life, gulping down three large McDonalds smoothies – one every 15 minutes, seeing traffic lights at night looking like distant stars, and sick to my stomach with an urge to barf every few hours were the result of a severe case of stomach flu.

“Jesus loves you,” said the nurse on my first stint to the hospital back in 2015 the night I was admitted. The nurse told me I was the talk of the floor who said how I looked like Death when I came in, but within a few hours I was almost back to normal - the result of the IV medication fluids.

Mom, not “Divine Intervention”, is the only reason I’m still here today.

Just like “Divine Intervention” didn’t stop the assassin’s bullet from what would have been a successful kill shot last Saturday at a rally held for former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. If Trump hadn’t referenced an immigration graphic, his head turned to the right side instead of directly facing the audience, the Republican Party, let alone the country, would be in as much turmoil as the Democratic Party is right now deciding President Joe Biden’s future as their democratic nominee in August.

As the self-appointed “Mayor of Realville” I don’t believe God and/or his angels kept me from “knock, knock-knockin on heaven’s door” any more than the notion the Almighty is watching over Taiwan, Israel, the Ukraine and America.

The notion God prevents tragedies from happening or keeps them from being worse than what the dire situation is already reminds me of what friend Michael Frazier commented on my Facebook page when I posted a picture of an angel hovering above the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in 2012 at a memorial service for the victims killed by a mass shooter.

"I believe there are Angels, and they are with us," Frazier wrote. "It is not outside the Lord's preview to perform miracles. I don't believe this is an angel any more than that picture of the twin towers had Satan's face in the smoke after the planes hit. Angels are spirits, not clouds. If they were going to appear to anyone, why would they be veiled in a cloud?"

Yet “God” and “Divine Intervention” was what lawmakers said saved the former president at this week’s Republican National Convention.



Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, said her late mother was watching over her father at last Saturday’s rally. Rep. Cory Mills said, “divine intervention” and the “protective hand” of God saved the Republican presidential candidate.

Would Republican lawmakers still be saying the same thing if Trump hadn’t survived the assassination attempt? Doubtful.

I won’t argue that God is everywhere 24/7. You just have to look. The Lord will always listen to your pleas whenever you need him. He doesn’t hold a grudge. He won’t say, “Hmm, you have not been to Sunday mass for months and years, and now all of a sudden you are asking for my help to bail you out of some personal crisis you are in right now?”

God is as much present in our daily lives as the Devil.

“Our God still saves. He still delivers, and he still sets free. Because on Saturday, the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle. But an American lion got back on his feet, and he roared,” said Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina.

Well, that “American lion” was not the Almighty. It was the former president who got back up after the bullet zipped past his right ear as secret service agents swarmed on top of him. Trump, the “American lion” not God, raised his fist to the crowd as he was whisked away off stage letting them know he was ok.



God didn’t stop “the Devil” from hitting his target. The spectators at the rally who saw the suspect perched on a roof top 150 yards away from the stage were the ones who alerted law enforcement officials minutes before gunfire erupted.

“Someone’s on top of the roof,” said one. “There he is, right there.”

“He’s on the roof!” said another. “Right here, right on the roof.”

A Secret Service sharpshooter, not God, took out the gunman.

If God really, really, really wanted to prove to humanity he is around, Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old retired fire chief of Buffalo Township who died at the rally shielding his wife and daughter would be here.

You are a born liar if you tell me you’ve never asked yourself why God took someone’s life, but spared another. I can’t tell you how many times I felt like pounding my fist through a wall after hearing the latest news of a police officer, newly married, with a baby on the way and just joined the force lost his life in the line of duty in Anytown, USA. It’s like asking why a tornado spared one house but wiped the home next door off the map.

The only answer I can come up with is, life’s not fair. It is what it is. It’s the nature of the beast.

Why horrible things happen to people and others are spared will only be answered when we go before the Almighty and ask him that question. I wouldn’t be surprised if, even in death, he or she won’t like the answer.

There’s only one, and ONLY one reason why I, and former President Trump are still here today.

It’s not our time yet.

©7/17/24