Monthly Archives: October 2017

After looking forward to the binge weekend of “Stranger Things 2” for most of 2017, I have to say there was one thing that surprised me. I did not expect to flip over to a Dodgers-Astros World Series quite so often. Sorrynotsorry, there were plenty of pleasant plot turns in the second installment of “Stranger Things.” I’d say most of it was…tubular. This is not the place to read a plot summary. You want that, you go find recaps on […]

Birthdays matter. They pop up in fiction all the time, because they’re shorthand for “here’s a celebration and reminder of who this person is.” Most kids like thinking about birthday parties, even ones not their own, and it’s not just cake and games: they like celebrating their friends (and themselves) and reminding their friends (and themselves) who they are. But what if you don’t know it’s your birthday? Doesn’t that suggest that you can’t celebrate yourself or remind yourself who […]

Now don’t get sore, shweetheart. When my friend DP brought the Humphrey Bogart Film Festival to my attention a few years ago, it was a “someday” thing. Somehow and someway, someday became October 18 to October 22, 2017, at the Playa Largo in Key Largo, Florida. DP and I each shelled out $500 for the all-inclusive Bogart Pass plus more smackeroos for the related hotel resort and the airfare from California. A week later, Hurricane Irma “destroyed” the Florida Keys. A day later, DP texted me, […]

Martina Maciel couldn’t decide who she was more furious with, her mother or her sister. Her mother knew for months that she was outnumbered and outgunned, and had had to play a few long shots. But the resources she devoted to the Texrom battery dump – including the Ten-Percenters – could have been deployed in higher-percentage scenarios. I mean, fooling the A.A. into flying to Olympus Mons to restock energy? Back in the Galileo Room, her mother defended the idea […]

Uh, Dar had a birthday on Sunday. His IEP was Tuesday. I will have more to say about it next week.  Until then, I’m just going to knock your socks off with IEP verbiage. This is to make parents of kids with IEPs go “Oh, thank God I’m not alone” and parents of kids without IEPs go “Oh, thank God that’s not me.” Forthwith: FROM THE AAC SPECIALIST: [Dar] Smith-Rowsey is an engaging 7-year old boy enrolled in Ms. Anita’s […]

Longtime readers know that I sometimes fill this space with ideas for film/video projects. This is just such a summary treatment for a film called BUNKER. BUNKER: A comedy about a White House reporter stuck in the President’s bunker after a nuclear Armaggeddon. At a White House press briefing, our heroine, a confident black woman named AVA, asks probing questions about the worsening North Korea situation. She gets platitudes, not answers, from the heavy-set white woman at the podium, who […]

This week’s normal blog entry about my life with my autistic child has been interrupted by the Atlas Fire, which CNN just called the most destructive wildfire in California’s history. A school where I teach has been turned into an evacuation center; my father’s retirement facility is on notice for evacuation. So I’ve been a bit distracted. Nonetheless, Dar’s IEP will happen this Tuesday, and I’ll probably have updates about that next week. Until then, here’s some autism news that […]

I’ve heard the news about mogul Harvey Weinstein, and I’m outraged. At the hypocrisy on the right and the left. Despite my cute name in the title, “Hurricane Harvey-Harassment,” the facts of this case aren’t even a little funny. Sexual predator Harvey Weinstein, who paid settlement hush money to “at least eight women,” does not get one ounce of my sympathy. I’ll go further than many and say that if Harvey Weinstein was truly as sorry as he says he […]

  The mood in the war room was glum, to say the least. Colonel Oltman had positioned a satellite above the Tharsis Bulge, so that all of them could watch the live video feed of the mothership floating above Olympus Mons. It seemed to be powering up. “Madam Prime Minister?” called Chee from his jet. “How are you doing?” “How am I doing?” Norine Maciel almost laughed. “How are you doing?” “We’re fine, Ma’am,” Chee said, answering for the thousand […]

I don’t plan these weekly columns very far in advance. But if I did, I certainly wouldn’t have been planning to write about having to wipe down Dar’s iPad, restart his entire communication system, and begin rebuilding it from scratch. In the last 48 hours, I’ve spoken the following words so many times that it almost comes as a peculiar relief to type them. Monday, while at work at St. Mary’s College, I got an email from Dar’s special-needs supervisor […]