Bret Stephens, posted 11.18.24: “Through hubris, Joe Biden destroyed his single greatest accomplishment, which was the defeat of Donald Trump.

“Through diffidence, he failed to achieve what might have been the most impressive goal of his term, which would have been Russia’s battlefield defeat in Ukraine, thanks to rapid and overwhelming U.S. assistance.

“Through inattention, he allowed a preventable immigration crisis to unfold, along with a huge spike in inflation that was the predicted result of his reckless overspending.

“Through imprudence, he permitted the Justice Department to prosecute his predecessor in a way that did more to resurrect Trump’s political fortunes than it did to bury them.

“Through self-delusion and the dishonesty or silence of his close confidants, he covered up the extent of his mental decline.

“Through political malpractice, he anointed Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee instead of encouraging a more open process that could have yielded a better candidate.”

A riff about depression and escape from depression in the midst of the pandemic, originally posted on 8.17.20:

Yesterday it was hot all across the Southwest, Los Angeles included. Hot and somewhat humid. I showered quickly around 5 pm, and despite the air-conditioned living room climate I had to wait and wait for my hair to dry.

I needed a drive on the rumblehog, I decided. I went downstairs, turned the ignition key, revved the engine. I then decided on the spur that it was too hot to wear headgear. So I took off with my white helmet under the seat….”fuck it.”

With my faintly damp hair getting whipped around as I motored north through quiet, tree-lined streets, it was one of the most glorious sensations I’ve felt in months.

The angel on my right shoulder was saying “okay, you’ve had your fun, now pull over and put the helmet on.” But the devil on my left shoulder said, “No, don’t…this is way too pleasurable, let’s keep going.”

Block after block, slowly cruising, my eyes peeled for the bulls. I became braver and braver. I crossed La Cienega and ducked into another side street. I was ecstatic about the wind fluttering through my Prague follicles; the feeling of coolness and the scent of this and that…absolute heaven.

After a while I began to think that getting a ticket might not be so bad. Well, it would have been but I was so delighted to re-experience a portion of what it was like to be 16. It used to be okay to ride around without a helmet. California’s mandatory helmet law kicked in on 1.1.92. Warren Beatty rides his Triumph without one in Shampoo.

Posted eight years ago: One of the healthiest things you can say about anything that’s over and done with is “okay, that happened.” Unless, of course, you’re talking about a stretch in a World War II concentration camp or something equally ghastly. Otherwise you have to be accepting, past it. Especially when it comes to ex-girlfriends. We went there, it happened, nobody was right or wrong, that was then and we’re here now…let’s get a coffee and catch up.

All my life I’ve been friends with exes, or have at least been open to same. And they’ve been open to ease and friendship with me. Except for one.

She was (and most likely still is) a whipsmart blonde with a great ass, a toothy smile and a kind of young Katharine Hepburn vibe. She’d been raised in Brooklyn but always reminded me of a Fairfield County gal.

She’s married now and living in Pasadena; her husband — a slightly stocky, gray-haired guy of some means — doesn’t resemble me or her first husband (a doobie-toking small-business owner who owned a Harley) at all. Whatever attributes or nice qualities he’s brought to the table, he’s clearly a swing away from the past.

I gave up trying to be in touch with her toward the end of Barack Obama’s first term. She really wants to erase that part of her life — the first marriage (which began in the summer of ’96) and the affair with me that began in early ’98 and lasted two and two-thirds years, ending in late September 2000.

We last spoke in ’12. The most emotionally significant thing that happened before that was her friending me on Facebook, but what is that?

Our thing began at the ’98 Sundance Film Festival and finally ran out of gas in late ’00 when her husband found out.

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Do you want a truly affecting parable about otherness and suffering derision for being different?…a sad, affecting, human-scaled drama about a young green person bullied and ostracized for having shamrock green hair? Watch Joseph Losey’s The Boy With Green Hair (1948). Idina Menzel and Cynthia Erivo? Meet 12-year-old Dean Stockwell.

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“The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you touch with your hand, and the kind you feel in your heart, your soul…the spiritual side. And you know, the worst of the two is the spiritual.”

I used to constantly argue with myself which parent was the worst, dad or mom. They were both punishers, prison wardens…”no” was their mantra, their middle name.