Month: May 2026

So now it is the Fourth of May
And I know what some of you will say
It’s one of those red letter days
When people say a certain phrase
But I’ll admit I have a gripe
That one franchise gets all the hype
If some of us could have our way
There’d also be a Star Trek day

Today I saw some truly great theater. It reminded me all over again that live theater can take you places that a recorded experience like a movie could never reach.

As we enter this age of ever greater reliance in A.I., it is good to know that one of our most beautifully ephemeral forms of artistic expression will always be with us, because it can never be replaced.

When I was a boy, Get Smart was one of my favorite TV shows. If you were a little kid, Don Adams as the bumbling agent 86 was one of the best things ever to show up on television.

And the show was only getting better when it was cancelled after its fifth season. Although he looked far younger, Adams had actually just turned 47 when those last episodes aired.

If the cast and crew had thrown him a birthday celebration back then, what would have been written on the cake? Possibly the number 86 followed by the age of the birthday boy.

But what would happen if you came across an image of that cake today and posted it online?

Would you believe .. you could get arrested for high treason? Yes, you guessed it: The old “hiding a violent message on a cake 56 years ago” trick.

Even so, I think a lot of people today, if they were to find that birthday cake photo online, would definitely be reposting it. And loving it.

Sorry about that Chief.

May 1 is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s the day around the world when people who actually work for a living push back against the entitled rich (like our current president and his cronies).

The United States government actually tried to make its citizens forget the significance of May 1, by designating a completely time of year (the first Monday in September) as “Labor Day”. Ironically, the tradition of Labor Day was started in the U.S. (in Chicago in particular, in 1886 — you could look it up).

To this day, May 1 is celebrated by workers all around the world. And this year, that celebration has also been taken up by millions of Americans, possibly because the U.S. government has recently become so openly hateful and contemptuous toward its own citizenry.