Rick Kinnaird

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Breaking News (as opposed to news? I dunno.)

I saw this earlier on Facebook and could hardly believe it. But now I have verified it.

The Portland riot that Kristi Noem saw from the top of the ICE building in Portland.

The following report is in conversation with myself:

Self 1 – Earlier today someone posted Kristi Noem looking down from the roof of the ICE Building in Portland.

And this is what she saw.

Self 2 – A guy in a chicken suit?

Self 1 – That’s right! Well, we can’t ascertain if it’s a guy. Could be a girl.

Self 2 – But a chicken suit?

Self 1 – That’s right!

Self 2 – And?

Self 1 – And what? That’s it. That’s the radical left or maybe Antifa.

Self 2 – The guy, or girl, in the chicken suit?

Self 1 – Yes. Yes. Now you’re catching on. guess what Kristi said?

Self 2 – I can only imagine.

Self 1 – “If the mayor of Portland isn’t ready to keep their city safe we’ll flood the zone with agents.

Self 2 – From a guy in a chicken suit?

Self 1 – I guess so.

Self 2 – How did the media report it?

Self 1 – Well, MSNBC showed her on top of the building. The camera person was sweeping the area  and went right past the chicken suit guy, but quickly came back to him.

Self 2 – The chicken suit guy?

Self 1 – As best I can make out. Yes.

Self 2 – Was that it?

Self 1 – Oh no. Fox got the real skinny.

Self 2 – Which was?

Self 1 – They set off a red smoke flare and went in and knocked a guy down the red smoke makes it look really dramatic. See.

Self 2 – And I see the chicken suit guy.

Self 1 – Yeah. He’s right in the middle of the riot.

Self 2 – Riot? You mean the red smoke?

Self 1 – Yes. Exactly. A lot of people don’t know this but if you set off red smoke or other such devices it makes things look really confusing.

Self 2 – Because of the smoke.

Self 1 – Yes. Because of the smoke.

Self 2 – And there’s the chicken suit guy.

Self 1 – Yes off to the right.

Self 2 – Did they arrest him?

Self 1 – I don’t know. I think they missed him.

Self 2 – In the red smoke?

Self 1 – In the red smoke.

Self 2 – How embarrassing.

Self 1 – What?

Self 2 – Imagine. They don’t have a riot. They have like one person, maybe two out there not doing anything. Well, I saw the chicken suit guy wave at Kristi.

Self 1 – Yeah. I saw that too. And smiling.

Self 2 – Exactly. So Kristi comes to town to look at the rioting in the streets that Donald said was going on and all they really have is a guy in a chicken suit waving at them.

Suit 1 – Yeah? So?

Self 2 – So what can they do? I mean the head of Special Outfits for ICE (SoICE) comes to town and this is all they’ve got. It’s embarrassing.

Self 1 – And they somehow missed the chicken suit guy.

Self 2 – I don’t think so.

Self 1 – What do you mean?

Self 2 – Okay. Look at it this way. They need a riot or a disturbance – something, and all they have is a guy in a chicken suit waving at them. So they set off a red smoke grenade, grab some hapless person standing next to the chicken suit and club him to the ground.

Self 1 – Why’d not the chicken suit?

Self 2 – Think of it this way. If they arrest the chicken suit guy and put him in a holding cell what’s that going to look like?

Self 1 – Trent d’aqua?

Self 2 – Yeah. Right. The dangerous Venezuelan gang that Trump and the rest of them go on about turns out to be a guy in a chicken suit? Not good optics.

Self 1 – Definitely.

Self 2 – So the best move is to not see him.

Self 1 – Yeah. Got it.

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

There’s an old joke where a guy asks a gal if she’ll go to bed with him for a million dollars. She says yes, and he says, “How about one hundred?” And she says, “What do you think I am a whore?” And he says, “We’ve already established that. Now we are only haggling over price.”

Okay. Okay. So this falls into the area of “brilliant things I wish I had thought to say but only thought of later.” In this case it’s not me but one of the Senators questioning Pam Bondi. At one point she said, “Are you calling me a liar?” To which a great response would have been, “That’s already been established. We are trying to figure out which of the two contradictory statements you made is true and which is false.”

Ta dah.

Okay. Okay. Remember in the movie Office Space where the guy who got hit by a truck and has his head in a giant skull brace has come up with a game called Jump to Conclusions? And then he goes onto say – Maybe you’ll get lucky like me (ie get hit by a truck, thus ruining your body, but you’ll get a big settlement? You don’t remember? Well, pretend you do. You didn’t see the movie? Philistine. Go to Walmart; in the big tub of cheap DVDs you’ll find it.)

So here’s the thing. We collectively everyone but a few in the U S of A has heard that Trump is in the Epstein files many, many times. That they were great friends for like ten years. Then Jeffy gets caught in Florida. Gets a super sweetheart deal. It blows up then he gets put away. Then he dies. Unfortunately, the tape that would show what happened is not to be found. But it’s declared a suicide. Okay. Okay. And now we’ve got raving Senators, right wingers, podcasters, etc. demanding the files be released. That the client list be released, etc. And some folks change sides on this issue when the investigations get close to a black hole I’ll call “Donald Trump.” 

For some reason it goes from “Release the Files” to “Who cares? I’m tired of talking about it.”

So I think it’s time to play – Say it with me:

Jump to Conclusions!

Okay. Okay. Here’s the thing that you can bet on. You can take it to the bank. And that is:

Anything that DJT says, utters, or insinuates is guaranteed to not be true.

Why do I say this? Look at his batting record – it’s 1000. 

There isn’t a statement he has made that is true. 

And add to that the corollary, Everything he touches turns to shit.

So if he says he didn’t  know blah blah blah about Jeff. He definitely did.

And if his minions say, “There’s nothing to see here.” There definitely is.

So let’s stop saying, “We don’t know what’s in the Epstein files.” We know.

And let’s start operating under that premise.

Lastly, Taylor. 

Okay. Okay. She released her new album on Friday. On Monday she’s on Jimmy Kimmel.

I got two observations:

She and Jimmy played three of her songs and she was asked about them.

When Jimmy played the song she did a swaying dance in her seat. It reminded me of what I think a Grateful Dead fan would do when the band hit the first chord in a concert. They’d raise up, sway, and light up.

But in this case the fans don’t light up. They repeat the lyrics. And they did! The audience was filled with women (mostly young, but not all) and they were swaying with Taylor and singing the lyrics with her.

I mean. The album dropped on Friday and by Monday they knew all the lyrics? OMG!

I still have a hard time understanding the words, and most of the songs sound very much the same to me. But there is no denying the impact of that woman: economically and on the (especially) young women. It is a phenomena never witnessed before.

Carry on. I’ll be out and about.

October 1, 2025

I’m sitting here watching a bunch of the leading Republicans stepping up to a microphone to talk.

The sound is off.

I know the schtick, “We passed a bill for continuing resolution, a CR. All the Dems have to do is agree.”

Hey, I got an idea. Why don’t you sign on to a CR proposed by the Dems?

Let’s review. Last time this came up the Dems gave you the votes. Then what happened? You did nothing to help the American people, like the Dems wanted. Instead, you started arresting Dem mayors, Congress people, and citizens – all without cause. You sent armed masked thugs into our streets to harass and beat up people.

Why would the Dems give you the votes?

No. The Republicans have not done their job. By the way, their job is to govern. There is a lack of understanding about what that entails.

I can understand why. They watch Fox and other outlets that spew falsities and fantasies. I guess they could argue – how could we govern? We have no idea what’s going on?

In other things (hardly news) the Secretary of Defense and the President gave incoherent rambling misogynistic racist word salads to our top military. The generals dilemma is this, “What do you do when your leader has a 7th grade understanding of the military and manhood?”

I think for both men they have a deluded sense of what our country is all about, and I’m being kind.

A few months ago when the Speaker of the House was saying he believed in two sexes like it says in the Bible, a biologist pointed out that in middle school or grade school you learn about men and women. In high school biology you learn about DNA and an extra Y chromosome, etc. And in college you learn about the psychology of being a man or a woman. This biologist pointed out that the Speaker was stuck in a grade school understanding of gender. (Oh, and a Biblical scholar pointed out that the Bible doesn’t say that about men and women.)

It seems both Hegseth and Trump have a delusional sense of how the military works and is, based on – I don’t know – comic books? Saturday morning cartoon shows? Hard to say exactly. But it is less than a child in grade school knows about the subject.

I have to wonder if Trump or Pete interacted with any of the military brass afterwards? Like standing next to them at the urinal?

Or what would some of the generals be saying to each other as they left the meeting?

In the book Bagdad Without a Map there was an incident where some Saudi men were sitting in a C130 waiting for it to take off. A short, very fit, woman wearing military fatigues walked to the front of this huge plane and took it off. The men went crazy in their seats. I mean they were very upset.

I’d like to seat Pete in some really shit scary situation being bailed out by a woman in the military.

I can dream!

October 2, 2025 – Update. Now the talk is about the effect of the budget bill the Republicans want to pass on the lives of people dependent on health care subsidies. It appears that neither Trump or any of the Republicans realized that the health care costs were going to skyrocket under their proposed bill. One could argue they didn’t care, but that’s giving them too much credit.

If you haven’t Noannas, the movie, now available on Netflix, please do. What follows here gives away some of the key points of the Movie, read on at your own peril. This essay could have been called, “The Wisdom and Lessons Learned from Noannas”. 

First off, some of the great Italian actors and actresses of the last half-century are in this movie. The wife of one of the Sopranos (Drea de Matteo). She’s was the one who snitched on the family and the mob killed her. Rocky’s girlfriend (“Hey Adrian!”, Talia Shire. She plays a nun in Noannas.) The psychiatrist in the sopranos (Lorraine Bracco is one of the noannas. And I have a bone to pick – in the movie she’s in an old folks home, in a wheel chair and she tells Vince Vaugh she can’t cook for him because she’s too old. She say she’s 73. And here’s my bone to pick – I was 74 when I hear her utter those words. I’m 75 now. My thought? “Get the heck out of that chair! 73 isn’t old. Come on.) And lastly Susan Sarandon. She’s the pastry chef and the bombshell. If you don’t recognize their names you will the faces.

The movie is based on real life. It’s about a man who wants to honor his mother by opening an Italian restaurant in Staten Island and have Italian grandmother cook. His Best friend, a construction foreman, says you don’t know the first thing about opening a restaurant. to which he replies, “What’s there to know? You have menus, you have grandmas cook good food.” It’s super simple idea. But, as the movie illustrates: he had to learn a lot of things along the way. For instance, how do you deal with a crooked building inspector? How do you pay your bills? What is an ansul system? (Fire suppression, I just looked it up.)

It reminds me a lot of the movie The Founder which is about how Ray Kroc created McDonald’s as a nationwide chain. He ran into similar problems as Vince Vaughn did in Noannas and got bailed out at the last minute when someone appeard with the answer.

But there’s something else in the movie. Something more than overcoming hurtles to bring a project to fruition. The movie reveals simple truths about life. The most poignant was when the shy noanna, who had been a nun, (played by Rockie’s girlfriend) revealed she had left the Nunnery because she was in love with a woman. 

She asked the question of her fellow noannas:  how can you be who you are knowing it’s a sin? 

That brings up one of those questions that has plagued societies throughout history. Somehow, a civilization develops based on shared norms. However, not all these norms are shared by everyone. And what happens to those who don’t share those values? And what happens if the person believes, or is, intrinsically that the society is opposed to? What happens to them? How does the society act or react to those people?

This movie also makes me think about The Great Gatsby. When I first read that book I was in seventh grade. I wanted to skip the boring stuff get to the action. For Instance I asked myself – Why the big scene in the apartment in New York? I didn’t understand. It was boring. It got in the way of what was happening. I didn’t realize that the action was only a magnification of those problems. “The rich are different than us.” is as true today as then.

Saturday, August 16, 2025

Sixty years ago yesterday The Beatles played Shea Stadium. And so began the transformation of musical performance. No one was ready for it. The Beatles and everyone who was there said they couldn’t hear the music over the screaming. Now, I’ve learned they plugged their 100 watt amplifiers into the PA system. That was it. I heard Bruce at RFK Stadium 30-40 years ago and I marveled at the huge sound poles he had placed on the field. Now? Metallica brings 50-70 trucks and takes up the sod to erect sound and video poles, and a stage.

The Beatles walked out from the 3rd base dugout to a riser on second base.

A few years after the Beatles played Shea I heard the Doors play on a baseball diamond with a snow fence strung from first to third base. They were on a riser at Home Plate and we sat in the outfield bleachers. Same place I heard Blind Faith. I heard Led Zeppelin play at the Wolman Ice Skating Rink in New York City.

They either weren’t very good or we didn’t understand. It was one of their first shows. 

I heard Janis perform at the Yale New Haven Bowl. She was in the End Zone facing the bleachers at that end of the stadium. I heard her again at the Baltimore Civic Center (now The Mariner Center). It’s basically a larger high school multi-use cafeteria with a stage. Except, the center part is a hockey rink. I heard her a third and last time at Cole Field House at the University of Maryland, performing on a riser.

When I went out west to look at colleges in ’68 I heard Steppenwolf play at The Avalon Ballroom. Now only remembered in the beginning of their Cheap Thrills album. You walked up to the second floor on a wide switch back staircase. Most people were sitting on the floor zoned out. There was a light show, which projected from the balcony onto the stage. It was a series of overhead projectors and people were using two sheets of transparent plastic material that they had squirted food coloring in between and were lifting and depressing the top sheet.

Felix Cavalierie of The Young Rascals was in the third base dugout that night at Shea. When I was in high school everyone was playing the Rascals music. Also, The Stones. Satisfaction was huge. I went to a dance (remember them? Sometimes it was a sock hop in the gym; sometimes a band on a cafeteria room stage). The band on the stage played Satisfaction. At the end of the song the crowd was stamping out the beat. The band wasn’t quite sure what to do. They looked at each other with that What do we do now? look. The bass player just began the bass line and the band played the whole song again. We went crazy at the end clapping and cheering.

This was before drugs had taken the grip they developed later. Yes, there were people who zoned out, and dropped out, but it wasn’t considered a huge thing. Free Love. Peace, and pot. It was tame compared to the stuff that can destroy you today.

I heard Eric Burdon and the Animals at The Philmore West. A huge flat hard floored room. Eric had a big tube billowing out smoke. The next time I was in that space was two years ago for a Van Gogh light show, and it was only in part of it.

I spent a lot of time going to New York to the Philmore East. a multi-tiered theater. I heard Sam & Dave, Ten Years After (for ten years after Elvis), The Super Sessions with Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, Arthur Brown (Fire!I), many more that I can’t remember at the moment (but I will!)

Music has changed. Or rather noise has changed. Rap? Eh. Taylor? Interesting because of her huge appeal. Some of her songs have stickiness in that they stay in your head, but range? Not so much. It’s okay. Same with Sabrina Carpenter. I prefer the powerhouse singers: Adele, Whitney, Christina. Beyonce tries, and her showmanship is great, but when it comes to the big note? No, she dodges it. 

I miss being able to go to a record store and thumb through the bins, flipping albums. Picking one up and looking on the back for the songs and maybe a bit more. Now? I’m not even sure where to find an album. I mean if it’s announced that someone has “dropped” an album I ask, “where? On the floor?”

If they are really really huge you might find a cd at Target or vinyl at Barnes and Noble. Yeah. It’s different today and I hear kids think the old man is out of it. They can’t dance. They don’t even know how to pay attention (“What?” is the typical response.) 

The beauty and the chaos of a James Brown show, or the Stones, is not around. Well, yes there’s Tay-Tay, and Olivia and you can go to hear thousand of screaming women screaming the lyrics. That’s a different dynamic than what I experienced.

When I heard The Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden in the fall of 1969 Mic was walking to one end of the stage and the first notes of Satisfaction rang out he leapt in the air and turned 180 degrees before landing to run back to the mic and sing the opening words, “I can’t get no…satisfaction.”

Or watching Alvin Lee of Ten Years After strumming his guitar, Big Red, while lazily having a cigarette in his mouth. How was he going to put that cigarette up and make it to the mic in time to sing? I wondered. The answer came soon enough. Two big strides and he screamed out the opening line. The cigarette shot from his mouth to a corner of the stage. Yeah. Those were different times.