Going to Tampa on Friday

That’s the highlight of my week. I’m going to Tampa, a city I find tolerable in Florida, so I can see my mom. I think she’s getting into that really old place. Yes, she’s turning 83 but she’s not a spry, witty 83, she’s kind of blunted by the discomfort of a decade of neuralgia, various depressive episodes and the general isolation of Covid. My mom, the woman who I once watched outrun FARC Guerrillas in a 1976 Renault on the mountain roads outside Bogotá now gets confused by the menu at Macaroni Grill and intimidated by a flight of stairs. Why must life leave us so undignified? I mean really, the best case scenario is you lose everyone and everything you loved and then you die alone. Cheery thoughts. Cheery, delightful thoughts. It’s because I watched “Singing In The Rain” tonight. I’d never seen it. Musicals leave me feeling deeply depressed. I hate being lied to in the form of a song.

The animated series is percolating. We have a meeting at Amazon and another at Netflix. Well, actually we’ll be zooming in for the meetings. No one actually drives anywhere or meets anyone in person anymore. I wonder what’s going on in the Netflix building. I can see it on Sunset but I haven’t had a meeting there since before the pandemic. The walls of the lobby are floor to ceiling video screens, so while you’re waiting to be called upstairs the walls display sets from their various shows — kind of putting you on the set. I think if they displayed moving images it would result in too much motion sickness and you’d have people barfing all over the rugs of development executives on the forth floor.

Speaking of sets, last month Dean and I went to the Skirball to see the Star Trek ephemera exhibition. They had the actual bridge from the original trek. The most shocking thing about it, besides how shabby it looked (so much plywood!) was how small it was. It could fit in my living room. For some reason I’d always imagined the bridge to be much larger. I think the set looked like crap because it wasn’t well preserved. There’s not that much left of it — parts got reused over the years. My former colleague DC Fontana wrote for the original series and she was featured in several videos explaining how they developed stories for the series. Roddenberry even gave writers an exam they had to pass in order to be considered for the series. I miss thinking about the future that way. Tonight as Russia rolls into Ukraine, Texas terrorizes trans kids and Florida passes a “Don’t say gay” bill while Oklahoma is out in front of banning abortion — well it all feels quite futureless. The future is cancelled because we never figured out how to get along with each other. At least there’s the doomsday glacier which promises to put half of Florida underwater. But hey, at least their children were spared the “gay agenda.” Priorities.

I would like twenty two million dollars, please. Why that number? I don’t know. It’s just the number in my head. I could retire forever. I could retire on far less but I want to be able to take the Four Seasons around the world tour on their private jet. It’s like $100k per ticket. One time the Four Seasons sent me a catalog for the tour. I have no idea why they thought I was in the market for a $100K world tour but I sure did enjoy the catalog. It got me to thinking about all those countries where they have hotels where I’m not legally allowed to exist. Morocco sounds nice so long as you don’t wind up in a prison. Remember when Jamaica was a place people went? If I went there I’d have a good chance of being murdered. I mean, religion, right? It’s a crazy drug to be on. Jamaica doesn’t have a tourism industry left because they got religion and went all crazy. Now all they have is hate. Again, seems like the future is on hold. There’s a lot of bleak forecasting about the end of humanity but it’s always been the end of humanity. The anomaly was the brief period of post war prosperity and stability. That’s over for now. I frequently find myself muttering, “glad I’m old.” 

I figured out how to solve the coming crisis when the Supreme Court overturns Roe V Wade. In the Philippines they have a monster called the Aswang. The aswang can detach its upper body from its lower body and fly around at night looking for pregnant mothers. It has a ten meter long needle like tongue that can sneak around corners or under doors to induce a miscarriage. So we just need to capture a bunch of Aswangs and open up a Planned Parenthood branded “Aswang Petting Zoo for Unenthusiastic Mothers.” Listen, I know it’s a terrible and unrealistic plan — that’s why it’s likely to win over the American people.