It’s award season and Donald Trump has announced that he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump sees himself as a peacemaker and he feels that his efforts to bring peace to Gaza and a negotiated settlement for Ukraine qualify him for the Nobel Prize.
Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Seeing the carnage of war, Nobel felt responsible. To counter the view of him as a “merchant of death” and to strengthen peace initiatives, he created the Nobel Peace Prize.
You can’t just announce that you want the Nobel Prize, however, that’s not how it works. You are awarded the Peace Prize if, in fact, you deserve it.
Not everyone is eligible. Among other things, you have to be alive to qualify, the prize is not awarded posthumously.
You also need to be nominated, but in Trump’s case, that is no problem since he has been nominated at least 12 times, most recently by Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. The government of Pakistan nominated Trump for his work in brokering a cease-fire between Pakistan and India. In 2022, Péter Szijjártó, the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, suggested awarding the prize to Trump for the Abraham Accords. In the past decade, several American lawmakers have nominated Trump, some out of conviction, others to curry favor.
There are six Nobel Prize categories: physics, chemistry, medicine, economics, peace and literature. Some years, the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to an author, other years to a poet. “Song lyrics are also a form of poetry,” Clive Flatenbad of Swedish rap duo realPfft points out. “Therefore, Mutte and I as songwriters should also be eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature. We have released 140 songs. There’s probably some literary merit in our work somewhere in there. Huh, huh, huh?”
Fortunately for Clive, just because he is gauche doesn’t disqualify him for the Nobel Prize.
Clive’s argument is not completely outlandish since, occasionally, the Nobel Committee chooses a home-grown Swede for the Nobel Prize. “That’s me!” says Clive, whose father is Swedish and whose mother is British. “I grew up in Stockholm,” he insists. “Therefore, I deserve the prize.”
Competition is stiff and no motivation is off-limits. The band’s motto is “With realPfft in Modern Times,” a bastardization of Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf’s slogan “For Sweden in Modern Times.” (För Sverige – i tiden)
To bolster their argument, the boys point out that realPfft has received The Freilitzer Music Award from the district of Sjælland in Denmark in 2021, a grant from The Catherine C. Grant Foundation in the town of Bristol in England in 2022 and the Big Bellyacher Award for Good Housekeeping from the city of Tokyo in 2024.
Just as Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward qualified them for the Nobel Prize, the boys claim that the lyrics to their song Speed Hump qualify them for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Sample lyrics: Don’t insult him/ Don’t insult me/ Spending coin/ To put bumps in the roadway… Any love, any love, give me, give me/ Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! / Papa done me, si si dumb need/ Papa done me, si si dumb needy… Pick me up, pick me up, give me, give me/ Pick me up, pick me up, give me, give me… In the roadway… Coin/ Spending coin… etc.
“Mutte has created many an audio effect at the mixing console. Give us the Nobel Prize in Physics,” Clive suggests, using a scatter-shot approach to the awards. “I’m a cough drop addict. Medicine! We have good chemistry. Chemistry! I know how to add. Economics! The cards are stacked against us, but the problem, as I see it, is too few categories. Where is the Nobel Prize in Choreography? Where is the Nobel Prize in Fashion Design? The Nobel Prize in Dumb Jokes? It’s like the Oscars. We could win an Oscar for videos by my younger brother Tim in the category Best Original Short Visual Representation of a Musical Composition by a Swedish Rap Duo Out of Uppsala, Sweden. Easy-peasy, we could win that Oscar! Hands-down.
“We finish every day’s struggle in the studio by making a ‘V for Victory’ sign with both hands, shouting to one another ‘Peace, brother!’ That alone makes us worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize,” according to Clive.
“If Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize without creating peace,” reasons Clive in an open letter to the Swedish Academy, “we deserve the Nobel Prize in Literature without creating literature.”
Note: Since you need to be nominated by a public official in order to win, I, blogger Kevin Feingold, officially nominate songwriters Clive Gunnar Flatenbad and Mutte Anders Fjutt for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2026. May they live to be 100 years old! (Ja, må han leva i hundrade år, the Swedish version of “Happy birthday to you.”)
Standing on a street corner under an overhanging white-painted tin roof pockmarked with rust, Antonio of the Barrio was tired. Not bone-weary or battle-weary tired, but irritated, after spending all morning vainly trying to hook up with Carlos Fuentes, a bearded drug kingpin in the los Hipopótamos cartel. Also known as los Hipos, it was difficult to say if they were better known as hippos or hiccups. It made little diff in the drug world they dominated with curt, violent death. No policeman or circuit court judge in the vicinity of the barrio said “¡No, gracias!” to a greasy, sweat-drenched roll of Mexican pesos, when the alternativa was certain death.
II
Sitting on a cracked, wobbly cane chair in a smoky room loud with voices, trussed up in rainbow-colored frou-frou regalia, Valentina batted her eyelashes at him. A pale beauty with startling black hair and eyes as dark as gun barrels, she smelled of oregano, with just a touch of cinnamon. “Where you been, Antonio?” she asked in fluty, accented Spanish. “I ain’t seen you in maybe a month.”
“Ridiculous! I was in here yesterday,” he protested. “Nobody gets nothing for free around here.”
“¡Hola!” she exclaimed archly, hiking up her skirt.
“Muslos dulces,” he muttered, silently accepting a drink from the bartender. Muslos dulces, sweet thighs. Reaching across the counter, he brushed an orange cockroach to the floor with the back of his hand.
“¡Pendejo!” Valentina swore softly, twirling an unlit cigarette between her fingers flirtatiously and toying with a silver-colored lighter. She was calling him a jerk, an idiot.
“Venga conmigo,” he demanded, dropping bills on the counter. Come with me. “¡Vamos!” He led her out through the doorway to the street. There was a breeze and it was perceptively cooler outside, the sun an orange globe hanging in a sky as drained of color as a head of cauliflower. Everything smelled of dust.
He kissed her cheek as she pointedly turned her head away. “I’m no slut,” she exclaimed.
“When did I ever say otherwise?” he asked, a paragon of innocence.
III
He said buenas tardes to Valentina’s mother. She was built like a tank, with Valentina’s black hair, slaving away in their tiny kitchen, wearing a dirty apron. It never hurts to be polite. Besides, they liked each other. She was more forgiving than her daughter. The country had a woman president, Sheinbaum, a Jewish woman president. First they had Peña Nieto, then Obrador, now Sheinbaum, but nada had changed. Life as portrayed in telenovelas.
The gringo president was on the tele. “We are warning Canada and Mexico today that we are introducing a 240% tariff on fentanyl imports to this great country of ours,” he threatened. “A big, beautiful tariff that I dare say will steer our addicts toward consumption of home-grown Class Two substances. American substances for Americans,” he harrumphed, looking grim.
What could Antonio say to that? This could throw a real monkey wrench into the local economy. Where was that jerk Carlos when he was truly needed?
“Give me some money and I’ll get you guavas,” Valentina’s mother offered.
“They have guavas?”
“Sí, just now they have guavas,” she confirmed. Antonio gave her some money.
It was dark by the time he left Valentina’s hovel. At least they had given him dinner.
Still no Carlos.
Sitting in his own shack, Antonio was thoroughly fed up with Mexico, but where was one to go? Honduras? Colombia? That was just asking for trouble. Maybe Cuba if the Cubans weren’t such hardasses politically. There were some breath-takingly lovely women in Cuba. Poverty was the same everywhere.
¿Dónde estaba Carlos? Cabron.
IV
Without so much as a “by your leave,” los Hipos came rolling into the barrio in a caravan of six vehicles, American convertibles from the 1950’s with huge fins up the back, their tops down, open to the night sky, pink Cadillacs, two-tone blue and white Plymouths, cherry-red Chevies, treasure from the drug trade, renovated to optimum splendor. Dressed in red shirts and shiny black suits, the bandidos carried automatic rifles over their shoulders and cradled in their laps. Grinning but vigilant, they paraded throughout their domain, the air filled with the roar of engines and the metallic stench of gunpowder.
Carlos had arrived.
“¿Cómo estás?” he shouted. Perched in the first car, he called jovially to Antonio who had come outside to see what the noise was about. Waving him over, he asked “¿Qué onda?”
“I’m scraping by,” Antonio admitted.
“Come here!” Carlos insisted, pulling him in close where he could pass him a wad of bills without the whole world witnessing this unusual act of kindness. After all, they had gone to school together in their youth.
“The gringos are fucking round with the drug trade,” Antonio pointed out.
“This is not news,” replied Carlos with a barking laugh totally free of humor.
“Big baby Carlos / Size ten boot / He shoots first / Asks later,” played on the car’s tape deck, the opening lines of Carlos’ narcocorrido, his drug ballad, commissioned from one of the country’s top folksingers.
Shots rang out from two cars back and instinctively, everyone ducked. “¡Qué chingados!” Carlos swore in Spanish through clenched teeth. What the fuck! Hunched over, he jumped to the curb and released the safety on his rifle.
“No pasa nada!” someone shouted out and people began to straighten up and look tough again.
“¡Chinga tu madre!” Carlos swore. Fuck your mother. “So, el amigo,” he asked, “what can I do you for?”
“I’m not involved,” Antonio insisted. He saw no reason to defend his job in construction. Secretly, he was proud of being a good carpenter, but he didn’t expect that to carry much weight among gangsters. “Call me Jesús,” he joked. “My toolkit is full.”
“Let’s roll!” shouted Carlos and waved to Antonio as they continued parading through the crowded streets of the barrio.
Antonio couldn’t fault his friend. When he needed a loan, Carlos always helped him out, with never a dream of repayment. Antonio went back inside his hovel and connected his phone, fired up his laptop and logged onto the net.
Cryptocurrency was a bitch, but it only worked if you got in at the very beginning. A ponzi scheme, later investors were the suckers who padded out the value of the mythological coinage. Even America’s president had a cryptocurrency called $TRUMP, a presidential meme coin. So far, Antonio had never managed to ride one of those waves onto the beach of good fortune.
Behold! The Boeing 747 jetliner “gift” from Qatar was originally a sales proposal. The Pentagon offered to buy the aircraft, but Trump announced that Qatar would give it to him for free and there went the ballgame.
The gang who can’t shoot straight, with 365 days to choose from, Trump’s Pentagon has scheduled the Army’s 250th birthday celebration and military parade on his birthday, June 14th, displacing the 32nd annual Vietnam Veterans Memorial Weekend, souring veterans across the country. There’s irony in a draft dodger’s parade displacing a memorial service for those who valiantly served in Vietnam. People at the Pentagon say that the Army had no idea that the Vietnam vets hold a yearly memorial service at The Wall on the day before Father’s Day. Well, d’oh.
President Trump has signed an executive order calling for the establishment of a National Garden of American Heroes consisting of 250 life-size statues in marble, granite, copper, brass or bronze to be completed by June 1, 2026, which is cutting it close by anyone’s standard. The government is offering $200,000 for each statue, no abstract or modernist designs accepted. With only 69 fine-art foundries in the USA, China is the country best equipped and staffed to fill the order for that many statues in the realist style. As for the list of 250 heroes, Louis Armstrong, Elvis Pesley and Frank Sinatra made the cut, but not Frank Zappa.
Having experienced in his first term the bitter limits of presidential power, Trump’s modus operandi in his second term is to “flood the zone” with so many executive orders and presidential decrees, his opponents have little chance to keep up, much less mount any meaningful opposition. Since January 20, 2025, the president has signed 157 executive orders and 62 proclamations. Trump has even had his staff prepare a stack of executive orders in reserve, so he can announce them to fit current events or his mood. When an angry Egyptian man visiting America on an expired tourist visa threw Molotov cocktails at pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado, Trump used the occasion to unleash a travel ban that had been sitting on a shelf in the White House for months. Presented as originally written, Egypt is not included on the list of over a dozen countries whose citizens are prohibited from entering the USA.
Antonio logged onto the website of minihaha.net, but in spite of the jazzy text, they weren’t offering employment. Storytellers. He could tell them a story or two! Spin a yarn with the best of them. Maybe write porno films. Whatever gets you through the night, as John Lennon said. It drove him nuts, waiting for his moment. He logged onto TikTok and recorded a video, handheld, jumping around the shack. “Hey, amigas, is your ol’ buddy Antonio of the Barrio here telling you that times ahead looking very bright for the well-endowed and we all know what that means, so don’ give up nothing and just keep plugging away because inna end, we gonna make it! Chin up, face forward and go for it! ¡Gen Z vive! See U later, alligator.” Okay, maybe it wouldn’t make him any money, but he was glad that he had said that. Give the gals some encouragement.
V
It was on a Friday afternoon as he took the bus back to the barrio from a building site downtown that his phone began vibrating. It was Carlos and he wanted to see him that evening. They met in the public park across from the Hall of Justice, a block down from the police station. “¿Qué pasa?” he asked, sitting down next to Carlos on a green-painted bench. A Mexican magnolia tree, yolloxochitl in Aztec, left stains on the sidewalk.
“I maybe getting tired of bailing you out all the time, so when I hear that A-rabs are gonna build an office tower in the city, I gonna hook you up so you got plenty of money,” Carlos explained, taking out a cigar from a suit pocket and slowly lighting it with a back and forth motion of his lighter. Blowing a cloud of white smoke, he asked, “You interested?”
“Yes, of course I’m interested.”
“ ‘Cause it ain’t what you think.”
“I assume it’s carpentry?”
“Carpentry, sí, but there’s politics mixed up in it,” Carlos explained obliquely, concentrating on his cigar. He blew a smoke ring and watched it dissipate in the wind.
Antonio laughed. “There’s always politics mixed up in everything, you know that. It’s Mexico!”
“Yes, okay, but I want to let you in on the secret from the ground floor.”
“I’m listening.”
“Good. When this building is finished, the A-rabs are gifting it to that President Trump. So he can put his name on it, lease office suites to Mexican businessmen and multi-nationals and make a ton of money.”
“Carpentry is still carpentry. Construction is construction. Commercial real estate—”
“ ’Cause we Hippos may plow some capital into the venture, too, you know. That’s where you could make a good bit of coin. You can be our gopher, our mule, carry freight for us between our people and the A-rabs. Big business is money laundering, not for the faint of heart.”
“I said I’ll do it.”
“¡Bueno! That’s a very nice decision on your part.”
As if he had a choice!
VI
It was a week later and the adamant honking of a car horn brought him outside where Carlos waited in a black SUV with tinted windows. Beckoning him into the vehicle, a gun tucked conspicuously in his belt, Carlos provided him with a briefcase on a chain, a handcuff, a key and an address. “The recipient’s name is Abdullah. Biblically, that means ‘Servant of God.’ Only not this hombre. Okay, pequeña piñata, my little piñata, deliver the goods,” Carlos suggested.
Antonio took a red, four-door taxi with a white roof to the address. The taxi smelled of garlic. In front of the building, a flash mob in striped yellow and black honeybee costumes was chanting “You can run, you can hide, but we don’t want your genocide!” They carried signs that said “No pests aside for your pesticide” and “Keep your greedy chemicals off my beeswax!” He didn’t make it halfway up the steps before a huge lummox with a brown moustache and bulging muscles, dressed in a Day-Glo yellow T-shirt, jeans and black leather boots, stopped him cold. “Are you with Agroquímica?” he demanded menacingly.
“Never heard of them.”
“Let’s see what’s in the briefcase.”
“Why do you think it’s chained to my wrist? This is more problema than you can even imagine.”
“Why? What’s in it?”
“Tons of money, sonny,” Antonio said, laughing. “I have an appointment with someone you don’t want to know. ¿Estamos de acuerdo?” Are we agreed?
So the brute let him pass.
Taking the elevator to the top floor, a security goon frisked him before leading him to Abdullah’s office. Wearing a flowing white robe and black headdress, Abdullah stood behind his desk, a rough hombre, his face as dark as a thunder cloud. Antonio wouldn’t want to meet him on a street corner. He uncuffed the briefcase, put it on the desk and pivoted it to face his host.
“Let us assume these are unmarked bills and liquid assets that by their very nature will not jump up and bite me on the ass,” Abdullah declared in boardroom English.
“I have no idea. I’m only the courier,” Antonio insisted. “Nobody tells me nada.” The last thing he expected was that Abdullah would refuse the money.
“Go back from whence you came and tell whoever sent you—”
“Carlos.”
“— that I beware of Greeks bearing gifts and other assorted improprieties.”
“You don’t want the money?”
“Go!”
Antonio went.
Standing in Carlos’ wood-paneled, gray-carpeted office suite on the eleventh floor of the Mercado Commerce Building, flanked by gun-toting goons on either side, Antonio got quite the dressing-down of Carlos. “It’s a simple enough process,” he explained. “You handcuff the briefcase to your wrist, you place the key in your shoe, you march to a taxi out front, you get in the taxi, you ride to the destination, you exit the taxi, enter the foyer of the office building, take the elevator to the top floor…” Apparently, nothing Antonio had accomplished up to now had been satisfactory. Listening to this near-endless litany of complaint, he considered the nature of their friendship. Antonio supposed that Carlos was charismatic, insightful, imaginative, discerning, broadminded, egalitarian, prescient, forthright, affable, chipper, somewhat baffling and quite possibly an admirable fellow. Antonio supposed. That didn’t make Carlos an easy boss.
VII
The man in the pin-stripe suit was a typical americano, very tall and slender with a scruffy beard. “I want what I want,” he insisted. A dealmaker, he had just flown in from Kuwait City.
They were meeting in Carlos office. When confronting gringos, Mexicans often feel vertically challenged. “Yes, s’okay,” Antonio stammered. “I can show you some great land on the Gulf of Mexico. It’s got—”
“Gulf of America,” the American interrupted.
“On the Gulf,” Antonio explained. “Rolling hills and the azure blue sea, ideal for golf and a sport center. Scuba diving—”
“Show me on a map.”
So Antonio got out a map, unfolded it and showed the coastline he had in mind. “I know it like the back of my hand.”
“It’s too far away!” complained the American. “For cryin’ out loud, I want something that’s convenient to the office tower. A five minute drive, ten maximum. You build something out in the boonies, people gotta fly in a helicopter to reach the damn place. Your poor people’s slum is a perfect location for urban redevelopment. Eighteen holes, beautiful fairways, sumptuous greens, low carbon footprint, goodbye to an eyesore. Everybody wins!”
“There’s plenty of fallow land further out, but still within city limits,” Antonio suggested. “It’s—”
“Exactly! That’s where all you people should move! We’ll keep the close-in real estate for high-end development,” exclaimed the American, ripping the map into quarters. “I’ve never understood why you indigenous people are so anchored to the land.” He seemed very pleased with himself.
VIII
“He talks of urban renewal, but what he wants is to bulldoze the barrio and build an 18-hole golf course,” Antonio complained.
“What a crock of shit,” swore Carlos, his face red with fury. “We’re nobody’s punching bag. We are los Hippies. Anybody fucks with us, he does so at his own risk.”
IX
It was a private petting zoo off the main highway. Zoológico demascotas said the sign, and if you didn’t know any better, you would think that’s all there was. Howler monkees swung from tree branches inside their enclosure. An aquatic tank housed stingrays you could pet. Three kinds of cattle mooed and meandered. Sheep and goats grazed the hills. There was also a blockhouse out back with rings set in the walls, chains, blood-stained chairs and a worktable containing many implements of torture.
“Listen, there was minimal damage,” Carlos babbled, driving too fast on the side road, kicking up a thick plume of brown dust. For 30 minutes, he had said nothing, and now this. “Are you listening? There was minimal damage.”
“How many people did you shoot?”
It seemed really important to Carlos that Antonio accept his version of events.
“Two. Security guards. We wounded the driver.”
“You can see where I’m not happy to be involved in this?”
“It’s business!” Carlos yelped. “Be a friend and help me out.”
“What do you need me to do?” Antonio groaned.
“What you always do best. Comunicación.”
“This thoroughly sucks!” complained the American as soon as he laid eyes on Antonio. “Even if you were going to kidnap me, at least put me up in a JW Marriott or a Holiday Inn. Someplace with a hot tub.”
“I’ll check on possible accommodations. How about a plantation out in the country?”
“Do tell!” swore the American.
Which was why they took him blindfolded for a three-hour drive to a hacienda well off the beaten path. “I want a hot shower!” roared the americano the moment they arrived, tearing off his blindfold and storming from the vehicle despite armed guards with rifles on every side. “I want a steak dinner with french fries! And I want my phone back so I can notify my wife that I haven’t run off with a hot-blooded señorita.”
“Cellphone traffic is hopelessly monitored by the americanos. Give us an email address and we’ll email her,” Carlos offered. “We have hackers who can ghost the return address.”
“Ass-holes!”
“Enjoy your stay!” Carlos replied, leaving instructions that the gringo was not to be harmed.
“I would prefer Club Med in Cancún,” insisted the American.
X
The Immediate Response Force of the U.S. military mobilized both air and ground units, utilizing the 82nd Airborne Division to conduct forcible entry assaults.
“This will be an excellent opportunity to deal a DEATH SENTENCE to the MEXICAN CARTELS who for so long have bedeviled America,” announced the president. “I am in constant contact with Mexican President Sheinbaum and there is no daylight between the positions of our two governments. We are in complete agreement regarding active force, regrettably necessary to free the hostage and return order to the region south of our border.”
He didn’t mention that the hostage was Don Jr.
American military personnel swept across Mexico, carrying out pinpoint raids at specific locations. Sadly, the cutbacks to America’s intelligence infrastructure made it extremely difficult for the armed forces to glean actionable intelligence.
“We just want a better deal on the golf course,” announced Subcomandante Insurgente Carlos for the Municipio autónomo rebelde Pancho Villa via Reuters and CNN. The American government immediately labeled the Rebel Pancho Villa Autonomous Municipality a terrorist organization.
Within a week, 100,000 Mexicans had been rounded up as potential suspects. Don Jr. was eventually liberated from his forced leisure and a relative calm returned to México.
XI
Sitting on the pitted concrete floor of a prison cell at CECOT Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo in El Salvador, jammed fifty prisoners to a cell, Antonio stared at the dull gray metal bars, waiting for Carlos to come spring him. And waited.
And waited.
Waiting for Carlos, who could be anywhere… or nowhere at all. ¡Cabron!
MAGA! Magnificent Army Glorifying America. I’m stationed on the front line of the battlespace. We warfighters have a life expectancy of 15 minutes, but what do the statisticians know? They’d sign our death certificates without learning to spell our names. I’m in a Skyscraper Battalion. We use laser-guided slingshots to shoot down munitions-bearing drones before they can drop their dirty bombs on our primo targets. Fun in the sun!
The attack on the homeland sucked, as did our response: War, glorious war! Personally, I never had much use for San Diego. It was pretty, but also pretty useless. Tragedy beyond repair, a wall won’t stop this brand of wiolence. Troops, yeah. A wall? Not so much. The Atomic Age fanatics who blew away San Diego never even crossed the border.
So here we are. In the 1980’s, a punk band named D.O.A. sang the lyrics “Mesopotamia soup / Old meat pie / Middle East stew / I don’t wanna die.” C’est nous. That’s us. Dead On Arrival.
Shifting inland, we deploy in urban jungles where “Search and Destroy” means winging enemy soldiers. Next, we kill the wounded, douse their bodies in crude oil and use our butane lighters to light ’em up. A million miles from the Geneva Convention, burning the bodies is a standing order that takes up three full pages in the Soldier’s Handbook and includes color illustrations that look like they were drawn in crayon by a six year old. Brutality. Shades of Vietnam, I’m told. As the Sec State said to the Gen Assembly at the UN, “We’ll uphold Geneva next time we fight a war in Switzerland.” The bonfires are our version of Hindu funeral pyres: Cleanse the soul in fire, release it from the body and facilitate its journey to the afterlife. Which isn’t at all what the President and Vice President had in mind. Too bad. The billowing plumes of inky black smoke look totally awesome. Tip: Stand upwind and wear a gasmask.
Pill-popping madmen, the “emeny” is zonked out on the underground drug Captagon-C, “the Sword of Jihad.” Holy war. Their amphetamine of choice, Cappy makes them feel superhuman, but that’s mostly an illusion. It’s actually weaker than Adderall. There’s a huge black market in the multi-colored pills. Some say these secret labs hidden away on back streets generate revenue three times greater than the Mexican cartels, but the drug is so addictive, we steer clear, burying the pills in the sand when we come across them. There’s no quicker way to the brig than dealing drugs.
When not busy killing the enemy, we practice “Shop ’till You Drop” mercantilism. Clutching fistloads of the almighty dollareem, we purchase leisure wear in wholesale lots at the border— mostly Dnipro Brand sweatsuits and Floating Lotus Brand sneakers— which middlemen sell at retail prices around the souks. It’s “free money” in the sense that we don’t report our profits or pay any taxes. And nobody gets hurt, which you can’t say about the arms trade or drug pushers. “Sure beats working!” writes my mom, but her only experience of combat is when my dad worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He hated every minute of it and fought with my mom all the time. Our family life consisted of domestic combat, the stuff of daytime television soaps. Dead of a heart attack, daddy-o was a total loser. When he died, all I got was a lousy plaque.
“Loose lips sink ships!” they say, and that’s on a good day. Living in a statolatry, everyone worships the state.
Patriotic and a sucker for bling, I’d like to buy a Presidential Victory Watch, but I’m not payin’ $6,000. Sink that! I also find it amusing that when I go online and search “presidential signature watches,” I find thousand of people are unloading their used watch. War time austerity, aka poverty, is interesting that way.
Now that we have a centrally planned economy, a perpetual State of Emergency, military parades up the kazoo and mandatory enlistment, there is only a single luxury coupon on the last page of each red, white and blue ration book. Three inches by five inches, printed on pulp paper, it looks like it was ripped from the Sunday funny papers. My mom uses her monthly coupon to buy eggs.
I just got back from home leave and haven’t completed rotation, so I’m sitting in a “repple depple,” a resupply depot, waiting for transport back to my unit. Command may blackhawk me outta here at any moment. I am told that I’m a Holden Caulfield, but I don’t feel it. An inveterate diarist with diarrhea of the brain, I do want to put something into my laptop. Folks can read it aloud at my funeral: “He harbored a young man’s ambition. He dreamed the impossible dream. He wanted to have sex with J.K. Rowling.”
I bought my mom a porcelain nude filched from a sheikh’s palace by some sticky-fingered non-com and for sale at the black market in the poor end of town. Eight inches high, it’s a pearly white figurine of a spectacularly flat-chested lass reclining against a tree stump, satisfying her primal urges with a vibrator. War is known for unearthing the most peculiar vestiges of human behavior and this confab is no exception. I also bought her a 10-pack of boxed Swedish Safety Matches manufactured under contract in Nablus in the West Bank. She can use them to light the evening candles when the power goes out.
Four days travel and three days Stateside, there went my week’s leave. Anybody who knows me knows I had to come thousands of miles, crossing endless time zones, to visit Pollyanne, my hopeless love object. Bottle green eyes and chestnut hair, a face full of freckles and a Tennessee accent, her laugh sends shivers up my spine and dings my dong. A walking, talking clinical definition of an abusive relationship, she plays boys for idiots every day of the week. This has been going on ever since Middle School and she and I aren’t getting any younger. Also, I could die tomorrow. Having come halfway around the globe, I wasn’t surprised that Polly’s first reaction was to stand me up.
“Shit,” she said over the phone. “I got about a hundred of your text messages and emails while you were in transit and I thought, ‘What a funny bunny.’ I couldn’t wait to see you, but see, my gynecologist called and said I have a cyst, so I’m gonna have an operation and I’ll be laid up the whole time you’re visiting.” Giggle, giggle.
“Fuck!” I groan.
“Don’t swear,” she commands.
Why does this scenario feel so familiar? Life with Pollyanne is like looking for cracks in a tarnished mirror. She cares, but she only cares about herself. “What am I supposed to do?” I ask. “I brought you a tiara from one of King Hussein’s palaces. Should I come by and leave it with your mom?”
“A TIARA???” she guffaws, intrigued. “C’mon over, silly!”
So I get to sit on the floor at her feet while she curls up on the couch and fingers the silver tiara. A classic cockteaser, she laughs, wrinkles her nose, bounces her foot in my face, pokes fun at me and checks every few minutes to be sure I am thoroughly aroused. “I’d make out with you,” she simpers, confiding in a whisper, “but my mom is in the kitchen and she might think we’re being gross.”
“I’m sure your mom has seen plenty of teenagers make out,” I object.
Looking thoroughly cross-eyed, Polly replies, “But we’re not teenagers!”
Did I mention that she is 100% MAGA and mans a cash register at a checkout line at a local grocery? This girl gets around! At rallies, she is one of the cupcakes that T’s television people sit just behind the Prez to make it look on the TV screen as if his Supporters’ Club is composed almost entirely of 20-year-old mall chicks. There are wideos on TikTok of her glaring at the camera. Classmates claim that she wears tinted contacts, but I know for a fact that she’s naturally endowed. Her mama told me so and I’ve examined Polly’s eyeballs from the side and up close. And once she fastens those bottle green eyes on you, game over, you can’t look anywhere else!
“I’ll visit your grave,” she promises, “when they bury you in Area 51.”
“It’s Section 61 of Arlington Cemetery,” I correct her, only too aware that she’ll never make an appearance. My cock has swollen up like five pounds of salami.
Regional politics is not my specialty, I’m a grunt like everybody else, but I’ve picked up enough of the lingo to know that we are never going to win this war.
“I do love you,” she breathes, pulling me tight against her pointy little breasts as she French kisses me, her tongue down my throat, while ushering me out the front door. Was it worth the trip? Damn if I know.
I don’t feel lust in battle, mostly annoyance that they are trying to kill me while I try to kill them. We live in a cock-up world. Our commanding officer has a theory: “This war is nature’s way to cull the population now that climate change makes the planet more and more unlivable,” he claims. “This war is Gaza on a grand scale.”
With new wars popping up all over the planet, he may be right. We’ll see.
The main ballroom is a sea of irresistible blondes. Only the constant clatter of helicopters overhead reminds us that this is basically a political gathering. I am the guest of Fred Limerick. Since Palm Beach County limits the number of country club memberships to 500, I am damn lucky to know someone who got in at its founding, when memberships cost a paltry $100,000 each. After January 20, the price for one of the four available slots will be a cool million. Fred, an investment banker par excellence, could pay even that amount without blinking, but for me, it’s flat-out great getting to see the ravenous denizens of Grumpworld up close and personal.
Who knows what may come of it? Fortune favors the bold. After all, Richard “Swinging Dick” Gates has become Grump’s choice for Attorney General and his chief qualification is his fawning adulation of El Grumpo.
Because so much liberal mouthwash is written daily about the 45th / 47th president, Fred has created a second persona for yours truly. Not “writer,” God forbid, but “Kevin who owns a jet ski franchise.” Interestingly, I even find myself taking orders for jet skis! I hadn’t realized how hot the jet ski market is right now. Since Kawasaki, Yamaha and Sea-Doo are manufactured in Japan, Canada and Mexico, they can all look forward to heavy tariffs in 2025. The situation will be even more dire for Chinese jet skis whose luxury and horsepower hit above their weight. Price quotes available.
“Mah name’s Pamela. Ah’m the guest of Franklin Pierce Jenkins,” a delectable blonde dish assures me, twinkling before my eyes. Me like!
Excitedly, I confide that “I have actually hung banners from highway overpasses together with a descendant of President Franklin Pierce.” I am careful not to reveal that the banners in question were for Kabala Hrdass.
“I expect to get appointed acting principal assistant under press secretary,” Pamela assures me, smiling ferociously and rubbing up against me. She smells of jasmine.
May the force be with us! May the odds be ever in our favor! Audentes Fortuna frivoli, in a world where Grump has nominated Tulsa Oklahoma as Director of National Intelligence, anything is possible. The president has 4,000 political appointments to review and fill, of which only 1,200 require Senate confirmation. A sordid game plan quickly forms in my head: There is an island in the Caribbean which housed a Swedish colony from 1784 to 1878 and maintains vestiges of Sweden even today. I want to be named ambassador to Saint Barthélemy!
A paid videographer takes our picture.
“Kevin! Duty calls!” Fred declares, leading me away. Having rescued me from the cheetah, he hands me a flute of champagne. “The man in the gray suit is Sandor Granger, chief headhunter for the Grump team,” he instructs me. “For him, you are a conservative speechwriter. Sandor! Here’s the dude I mentioned to you.”
Opportunity knocks. Mr. Granger and I exchange pleasantries and just as I provide a sound bite of serious commentary— “The deportation of illegal farm workers will drive up the price of fruits and veggies”— he abruptly hands me his empty glass and napkin, excuses himself and rapidly joins some people on the other side of the room.
Laughing, Fred comes over and says “Well, that could have gone better.”
I hand the glass and napkin to a waiter who is passing with a silver tray of bite-size canapés.
Fred and I went to college together. “Seriously, Kevin,” he warns me, “everyone here is on the make, so you really need to come up with a conspiracy theory or three that sing loud enough to be heard above the background noise.”
Shit! That’s gonna be hard. Going out to the lounge, I take a seat in an overstuffed chair, pull out my phone and google “Chinese malware.” I definitely like the sound of “CryptoLocker ransomware” from 2013. My adaptation: “The FuckYou virus is programmed to overload and shut down all cell phone traffic worldwide on January 22nd. It will replace your account with an AI-generated clone, running up your monthly phone bill ten-fold.”
Reentering the ballroom, I reconnoiter my surroundings. “Hi!” I greet a cluster of happy campers in tuxedos. “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help but overhear what you just said. The FuckYou virus is programmed to overload and shut down all cell phone traffic worldwide on January 22nd. It will replace your account with an AI-generated clone, running up your monthly phone bill ten-fold.”
“You’re kidding!” the ladies gasp. “Are you joking?”
“I got it direct from a source at the Pentagon and confirmed by yustyoking.com. The virus is expected to do $50 billion in damages and block Starlink until a heady ransom is paid to Black Bear, the Russkie hacker collective who have created it. If our government doesn’t pay up within 24 hours, the virus will unleash drone attacks on our infrastructure. Or so I’m told.”
“Sounds serious,” one of the men agrees, taking out a cigar and rolling it between his fingers. “We can make you National Science Advisor in charge of kinetic energy development. Now If you’ll excuse me, I’m going out on the terrace for a smoke.”
“Yeah, sure, great!” I tell him and suddenly, I am the life of the party, as more and more people come over to hear my predictions for the republic. “The Internet of Things is our future,” I instruct. “Repeat after me, I will not post personal data on TikTok.” Serving up platitudes and ever more outrageous B.S. by the second— latex space helmets, North Korean mind control, Eon Muskrat for president in 2028— I can feel the sweat droplets running down my back.
“Take me home,” a bitchy voice brays in my ear. Turning, I find it’s Pamela, guest of Franklin Pierce Jenkins. Standing next to me, she sparkles, laughing luxuriously. An easy way out of my new-found, risk-filled popularity, I ask everyone’s forbearance and march her to the hat check. “It’s a mink stole,” she exclaims, handing me her ticket. Pamela’s wedding ring is an enormous gold band encrusted with many diamonds. Impressive.
I tip the hat check girl behind the counter $20 and help Pamela into her stole. “Where duh y’all live?” she drawls, wrinkling her nose knowingly.
“I’m staying with a friend. George,” I tell her.
“Wish I had somebody named George offering me to stay over,” she replies meaningfully. “Where is this place you’re staying?”
“On the other side of the intracoastal waterway,” I tell her. Since Fred isn’t charging me room and board, I tip the parking attendant a cool $50. Taking the money, he grabs my ticket and hustles to deliver my late model rent-a-car.
“Ah’m vurry happily married!” Pamela chirps, hopping into the vehicle like a teenager.
“I’m glad to hear it,” I agree.
“Still, now that you’ve aroused my curiosity, I wanna see for myself where you’re stayin’.”
“This I can do,” I assure her, only to be stymied by the bridge which is up, stalling traffic. Brown and impenetrable, it looks as insurmountable as the Berlin Wall.
A local, Pamela isn’t surprised or annoyed. Turning in the bucket seat and draping a leg in my lap, she leans against her door and laughs, rubbing my crotch with her foot. “Take off my shoe,” she suggests.
I unstrap the shoe. Squirming, she twists her foot for maximum traction and velocity. Definitely fun AF, she has my full attention.
Eventually the bridge returns to Earth. Using the GPS, I drive us to Fred’s place and park on the street. “Why don’t you park in the driveway?” Pam asks.
“I want to avoid blocking the driveway. For when Fred gets home.”
“I thought his name is George.”
“George, Fred, interchangeable,” I suggest, making her laugh out loud.
“Show me the guest room,” she declares bossily.
For someone who looks like a Christmas tree decked in ornaments, her hair is like a Brillo pad and her skin feels hot and clammy. All this and we are not canoodling.
When Fred gets home, he finds us in the kitchen, drinking red wine. “Oh, yeah, you again,” he observes, only slightly amused. Later, when I prepare to drive her home, Fred tells Pamela “Once is plenty enough. Don’t come back.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she huffs angrily.
I cannot say the two of them like each other.
Not among the chosen for a cabinet position in the new administration, I fly home to Maryland the very next day.
BEATLES time! When Paul and Ringo, the last two of the Fab Four, released their latest (and last?) Beatles single “Now and Then”— featuring the ghost of John Lennon on vocal— fanboys Mutte & Clive in realPfft felt inspired. Mutte composed his take on the Beatles’ music while Clive donned his bowler hat. Say wot?
“Wow and When” follows the Liverpool lads from their early days playing the clubs and hawking their songs into the drug-fueled era of Sgt. Pepper, the yoga-influenced White Album and ending with the headaches and heartbreak during the documentary filming of the “Let It Be” album. As Paul said during the recording sessions, “It’s like ah’s. You’ll get it!”
Wow and When Lyrics
One, two, three, four
You’re listening to the World Service
The mayor is very excited to welcome the boys
They sing and they dance, fully clothed
That’s the way of it
Playing the cloob
Nyes, the boys… the band…
Fresh-faced boys playing music
Yes, that’s them. They’re clothed in suits
Stiff upper lip
They live on cheese butties and mustard bangers
Some say it’s rock & roll, others say it’s rhythm & blues
A fine line between the two
It’s dead easy, y’know. It’s like ah’s… You’ll get it
Not to worry, they’ll be toppermost of the poppermost
Sorry, ye cann go in thar, the fahr marshall says there’s 300 birds in the cloob
Hey, all!
Then they’re riding around in a Mick motorcar
Aye, ridin’ around in the van
Yes-s-s and why not?
Sorry, gulls, he’s no longer available
Yes, he’s all tied up in knots over tying the knot
Rooty tooty Judy
She says she doesn’t understand what they’re doing half the time
Welcome to the world of AI-generated sights and sounds! The Suno music app at Microsoft Copilot— based on the prompt “Create a song about a broken tooth”— generated a complete track, including a British Jamaican singer, musical accompaniment and lyrics. Sweet! The boys added a mad dentist on the left and a female dental assistant on the right.
Graphic artist Kuny used Bing Image Creator DALL-E for the artwork. Prompt: “Show a handsome man and woman kissing.” AI rules!
That was in March 2024. Never satisfied, Mutte & Clive decided on a glorious meltdown of a remix, incorporating Clive’s London narrator sitting in his fave armchair reciting a limerick about a pirate on the high seas and his pet parrot Meanie. “Squawk! Pieces of eight!” Lesson learned: Never let a live parrot into a recording studio.
Not to be outdone, Kuny solarized the record cover.
Love that funky music!
Kev
My Broken Tooth (Remix)
It tasted blood on my tongue
When our lips collided, something came undone
A rush of pain, a moment’s hesitation
But I couldn’t resist the thrill of your sensation (ooh-yeah)
You left a piece of you in my broken tooth
A bittersweet reminder of our reckless youth
Every time I smile, I’m reminded of the past
But I wouldn’t change a thing, those memories last (yeah-yeah-yeah)
If you think I am going to make a pitch for a charitable donation, surprise!!!
Fuhgeddaboudit!
It’s June, summer is here and we’re dancing in the street. Why would I put a pall on glorious summer barbecues, refreshing days at the beach, even pool parties, over something as selfish— and shellfish— as a request that you, dear reader, give up your hard-earned cash for me, your dear writer?
Not only a writer, but a friend.
As the French say, “Don’t visit France, just send your money.”
I say, keep your money, behalte dein Geld, I am making a pitch for a charitable donut. Maybe an elevator pitch for a feature film. Wassup? Two minutes of monologue to sell a concept to risk-averse film moguls. Harvey Weinstein lives! Maybe he’s a bad guy, maybe he’s a good guy, but I love his movies.
We at the Hinterland Relief Fund (often disturbingly confused with the Hitlerland Relief Fund, of which we are NOT affiliated) have asked Sylvia de Plathelovich— the Walter Cronkite of local news— to come out of retirement and join us poolside to paw through the mail, electronic posts and legal documents to HELP SAVE THE WORLD.
Nothing less.
Tanz im der Straße in German means “dance in the street.” But why limit ourselves to German? Tanz in Urdu means a sarcastic, mocking sneer.
Nothing less!
Shades of Afghanistan.
It might seem tone-deaf to solicit contributions for downtrodden peoples in Africa, Asia and the Far East when closer to home, the Homeland of the Jews is getting pounded by Hezbollah missiles in the north and the murdering rapists of Gaza in the south. Who gives a flying banana over global warming, drought, starvation, tsunamis, political oppression and the near extinction of the armadillo when the Children of the Book are suffering ten times more? Even little climate activist Greta Thunberg has parked her Strike for School Lunch placard, donned a keffiyeh and marched in Malmö, Sweden for the eradication of Israel.
Nothing less!
Here’s the method behind my madness: Once a month, I tear open the collected solicitations from charitable organizations that come in the mail. My mom was a Certified Public Accountant who wrote tax code. When paying her taxes, she took advantage of tax deductions for charitable contributions. Giving to thirty different charities, she honed it to an art form. Now that she is no longer with us, the solicitations continue to weigh down my mailbox.
By the time I finish glancing through these appeals, I am ready to scream! Their dripping sincerity, bogus friendliness and the urgent summons made to our better nature, leave me clawing the walls.
To maintain my sanity, I end up writing a scathing blog in self-defense.
Meanwhile, the college students are marching.
I say: From the river to the sea, no Palestine for you or me!
“You waved to me from the train, all blond and blue-eyed, your pale skin ruddy from the cold.” This was my grandfather Mordechai as a teenager writing to Trudi, his one great love. His devotion to her overshadowed the love he felt for my grandmother. Indeed, it overshadowed his love of anything else in life. I liken Mordechai to a radio receiver that could only receive one frequency. In his case, the other-worldly signal from Trudi’s brain, an electric motor that generated a signal strong enough to give some people actual headaches. It’s all in the love letters which she and my grandfather wrote to one another.
I emphasize the Russian side of our family, but we are also Feingolds, aus Deutschland. People who came from Germany to Sweden and, eventually, America.
Rosa, my Mutter, passed away a year and a half ago. In liquidating her estate, I have come upon a lot of greeting cards with the kind of heavy, Jewish decorative art that I learned to abhor in my youth. Arthur Szyk is a modern example of the genre. Among other things in the safe deposit box, there was this crumbling stack of letters tied in brown string. Old, from the Second World War, with German stamps and postmarks from her side and Swedish stamps and postmarks from his, the letters are in Berliner Dialekt. Written in Fraktur script, the handwriting is decipherable, but a bear to get used to. Why mom held on to her father-in-law’s youthful indiscretion, I’ll never understand, other than that she liked Mordechai.
In Berlin on business in the middle of April— Spring in the air— I took the letters with me to a philologist named Siegfried who I found online. Dare I say it? You can find anything in Berlin. I emailed Siegfried a few weeks before my trip and was amazed to receive a ready and rapid reply. He would see me. He lives on the second floor of a tan five-story apartment house on Barfusstraße in Wedding, a block from Schillerpark. Spirited, with a glint in his eye, a white beard and a gnarled face, he is in his late 80’s, one of that strange breed born prior to World War Two.
“Your parents named you Siegfried,” I blurted, shaking his hand vigorously, feeling my face go red. That was the effect he had on me. “Your name means victory and peace,” I added.
“It’s of no importance,” he assured me. “If it bothered me, I would have changed it, but it doesn’t bother me.”
“Oh, okay,” I agreed, watching him close and lock the front door before disappearing into the kitchen to make us coffee. In Germany, coffee is a must.
The walls of his study are filled with German expressionist paintings and woodcuts from the 1920’s. They must be worth their weight in gold! Serving the coffee, he read aloud from several of the letters, chuckling with amazement at their childish sentiments.
“They’re love letters by young people,” I explained lamely.
Siegfried gave me a fuller picture of Trudi’s train ride than I could piece together with my limited German. It was March of 1938. Trudi and her parents were leaving Berlin for Rostock, nearer the Baltic coast, where they spent the war.
Together with online searches, we could also deduce that Trudi’s father, Hans Schmitz, a somewhat overwrought Berliner, worked for the Reichsbahn, the state railway. So he never ended up in the Wehrmacht fighting on the Eastern Front. From his perch on the Baltic Sea, it was easy for Hans to turn a blind eye to the cattle cars loaded with Jews heading east to the concentration camps. A typical railway man, he looked upon politics as a disease and considered Hitler to be his own worst enemy. Hans turned down a promotion to Gauleiter, district chief, because it would have required him to join the Nazi Party. Trudi went to school, where they knitted socks for the troops, collected clothing for the Winter Relief and sent care packages to the front.
Quaint.
Rostock got bombed mercilessly. After the war, it became East Germany’s major seaport.
When Kristallnacht struck in November of 1938, the Night of Broken Glass, a pogrom against the Jews, the Feingolds signed over 95% of their possessions to the Nazis and decamped to Malmö in Sweden where my great-grandfather taught at the university. His expertise was ancient civilizations, which immediately put him at loggerheads with National Socialist mythology regarding swastika sun symbols and the qualities of the so-called Aryan race. The Nazis were only too happy to banish der Professor from the Reich. He was exactly the kind of intellectual Jew who made Hitler’s blood boil.
“DenTeufel,” sighed Siegfried.
“The Devil?” I asked.
“You are American.”
“Yes, that’s right, Swedish-American. Growing up, my parents sent me to live—”
“Of course,” he barked, as if broken families were as common as dirt. “What interests me is the current state of America. Do you feel that you are flirting with a devil by allowing Trumpf to run for a second term?”
“Ah… um…” I stammered, caught off guard.
“That’s why I agreed to see you!” he harrumphed, which was okay with me, but unexpected. I took a clunk of cold coffee and gathered my thoughts.
“It’s a case of domestic politics,” I explained carefully. “There are all these politicians pooping…”
“Yes?” he asked, amused.
Thinking in a jumble of German, Swedish and English, I was having trouble expressing myself. “These politicians are screwing around. Chiefly Mitch McConnell, minority leader of the Senate, but yeah, it’s a handful of people who are oblivious to history and afraid of getting shot by Trump’s supporters. Every opportunity they have to put a stop to Trump’s candidacy, like three blind mice, they don’t do it,” I ended with an embarrassed chuckle. Why did I have to bring up mice, for God’s sake?
“What about Biden?” Siegfried asked, making the name sound like two words.
“Megalomania,” I explained. “Egocentricity. Aware of his age, he promised in 2020 to only run for one term. He claimed he was a transitional president, a bridge to the younger generation. But when push comes to shove, his high regard for himself has convinced him that he can win reelection. A nice gramps, but really, really old and doddering,” I concluded. “It’s not that the Republicans are so strong, it’s that the Democrats are so weak.”
“I keep reading that in the German press,” Siegfried replied, taking out a meerschaum pipe and filling it with tobacco from a tin. “Do you identify as Jewish?”
“Very much so.”
“So, what do you think of the war?”
“A tragedy for all concerned, on the ground in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank,” I said, more sure of my opinion. “Hamas is playing the West for fools. First they murder the Israelis and then they stir up pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel sentiment among young people all around the world. They are winning the propaganda war, which sucks.”
“Let’s go outside. I want to smoke,” Siegfried insisted. Standing with me on the front walk, lighting his pipe with a fancy silver lighter and billowing clouds of white smoke, he asked if I had considered moving to Israel.
“I am considering it. I never expected the American public to turn on me, but I am a student of history. I see America reenacting all the same mistakes as Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.”
“I lived through one world war, I don’t want to live through another,” Siegfried declared, shaking his head. “The Russians are breathing down our necks. You Americans need to stop flirting with the Devil and get your act together.”
I don’t wish to intrude, but with so many highly-placed Republican vice presidential hopefuls trekking to New York to kiss Trump’s ring, I felt compelled by the Veepstakes to do even more: Now with Trump’s head on the chopping block in the Stormy Daniels trial, I too traveled to New York, but to kiss his ass.
Not wanting to arrive empty-handed, I watched as many of Stormy Daniels’ 169 videos as my eyes tolerated, read six books about the Trump presidency, immersed myself in the scandal magazine industry, perused the archives of several TV networks in New York and Hollywood, worked with U.S. government archivists to unearth as many related documents as possible, examined photographs, read seven scholarly papers, spoke with three historians who told me the court proceedings were a storm in a teacup, interviewed several lawyers who told me not to quit my day job, conversed with a half dozen dudes at federal prisons serving time for the January 6 insurrection, visited two museums and discussed family history over Zoom with purported Trump relatives at scraggly vineyards in southern Germany. Maybe they were bona fide relatives, maybe not. It’s always maddeningly difficult to nail down Trump connections to the Old Country.
I even consummated two trysts with sweet Black professional ladies from “the block,” Balto’s Red Light District, since extramarital sex appears germane to Trump’s case.
Since the journey is half the experience and ’tis better to travel hopefully than to arrive, I took a Zero Bus from Balto’s dilapidated Chinatown full of Ethiopian immigrants to Chinatown in NYC. Not surprisingly, seats on the bus were occupied primarily by Asians: Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Japanese and Chegroes. Sitting next to a pretty, 26-year-old Taiwanese, I considered myself lucky and spoke in a clucking English patois as close to Hong Kong dialect as I could muster. “Stop that,” she said. “Just talk ordinary English!” The damsel was not impressed. As the bus pulled into Chinatown in Philadelphia to disgorge and pick up passengers, I took advantage of the 15-minute layover to sprint across the street and grab dim sum take-out. Delicious!
Arriving in NYC, springtime in the air, I walked the 10 minutes from Chinatown to the Manhattan Criminal Court building at 100 Centre Street. Once on-site, I wasted no time in banging the drum for Trump:
“Trump who’s accused is not amused by being abused!
He’s got the Mar-a-Lago blues,”
I sang, loud enough to draw attention to myself but not loud enough to get arrested.
“Name’s Kevin Feingold. Can I become Vice President now?” I asked representatives of various news media. Dressed in my best dark blue suit and a red, white and blue striped tie, I also sported red socks imprinted with a black hammer and sickle, a left-over from the British rock scene of the 1980’s. I felt insanely envious of the broadcasters with their perfect hair and pearly white veneers. The networks’ assembled gear had converted Collect Pond Park across the street from the courthouse into a veritable Mars-scape of satellite dishes and high tech paraphernalia.
One-time presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy stood in the park, claiming the trial was an attempt to derail Trump’s reelection campaign. “Straight out of a Kafka novel,” Vivek complained. Meanwhile, I got a guard to let me in a side door of the courthouse to use the men’s room.
In the hallway outside the courtroom, after a fusillade of invective from Trump himself, House Speaker Mike Johnson called the trial a shame, a travesty and a partisan witch hunt. Other notables supporting Trump in a clump were North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and U.S. Congressmen Byron Donalds and Cory Mills, the latter two from Florida. “It is sad that we’re here today and not out talking to the American people,” declared Burgum.
“Who’s stopping you?” I wondered, at which point I myself went back outside and spoke to the American people.
“People will little note nor long remember what I say here today,” I intoned. Aiming for ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN or at worst Fox News, I ended up facing the single camera of the West Piedmont Intelligencer YouTube channel. I understand that they specialize in cooking tips: recipes for apple butter, corn grits, cooked possum and the like. Makes my mouth water just writing about it.
“We need a strong leader to get through these troubled times,” I declared. “That strong leader needs a strong right hand. I will be that strong leader’s strong right-hand man.
“Why listen to Senators Tommy Tuberville and J.D. Vance? Why listen to Representatives Andy Biggs and Eli Crane of Arizona, Lauren Boebert from Colorado, Matt Gaetz and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Nicole Malliotakis from New York, Bob Good of Virginia and all those other groveling Trump sycophants when you can listen to my groveling instead? They have all made the trek here to New York, their pilgrimage to Mecca, but my pandering is at least as sincere as their pandering. Mine is U.S. Grade A groveling. The groveling that can Make This Country Great Again!
“When you say ‘America First,’ I say ‘Yes! First in Thirst, Leader of the Free World in carbonated beverages!’
“Thinking back to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Mogadishu, to Grenada, to Lebanon, Vietnam, Korea, the Eastern Front, the Western Front, the beaches of Normandy, the Battle of Verdun, the Halls of Montezuma and the shores of Tripoli, I say ‘Honor our fallen martyrs! Honor the living as well as the dead.’ If elected, I will impose a high tariff on the import of tea cozies from Muslim countries. Let America find and fund its tea cozies locally, as we always have done, since the time of the Boston Tea Party.
“The libs may find me P.U., Politically Uncorrect, but I am proudly hetero. I like young girls! I like everybody else, too. Doesn’t mean I want to shag everything that moves. When I take stock of our country, our natural heritage, I want to admit more beautiful immigrant women to our shores, not less. Where is the ‘Erica’ in America? I wear my cred as a male chauvinist pig with pride: From mulatto matrons’ majesty to the fruitfully plain, I find all these women beautiful. Just beautiful. They are energizing the lifeblood of our country. We’re a beautiful country. Just beautiful. GAMA! Get America More Amazons!
“Currently, I am gathering signatures to appear on the ballot in Maryland and Virginia. This is my two-state solution. Jihadists have got me on the run! To prove my bona fides, I have hired Mustafa al-Salim as a political adviser. Mustafa has not a single good word to say about Israel. Left-wing radicals need to take a sabbatical. Visit the encampments on our college campuses and you’ll see that all of life has become a comic book. Identity fanaticism is our way of life. Each of us is an action hero starring in a movie inside our own heads. Damn the bangalore torpedoes, full speed ahead!
“It is time to deify the downtrodden hamburger. We Trumpists wear our victimhood on our sleeves. Witch hunt! Rigged elections! We seek humanitarian aid. We demand social justice for the martyrs of January 6th! I won’t shoot your dog or your goat— or even your mother-in-law on Fifth Avenue. But as Vice President, I am offering to plant swastika-shaped flower beds on the White House lawn and declare the resurrection of the 4th Reich. Long live Trump!”
Watching the videographer worriedly pack up his equipment and scurry away, I asked myself if it was something I said. Casting my eyes upon the multitudes, I didn’t see squat. Trolls we have, but where were the needy Palestinians now that I really needed them to fill out the frame?
“Wanna party?” a raven-haired young lady in incredibly provocative brown leather thigh boots, a pink miniskirt, a white blouse and black leather jacket asked me, eyes flashing jovially. I think she applied her eyeliner with a spatula.
“Uh, I’m here running for a political party,” I stammered, feeling my face go beet red. “Republican Party. Legacy stuff,” I babbled.
“We can have a party of our own,” she giggled, her tiny white teeth peeking from between her ruby red lips.
Me like. You come to New York City, you gonna see the sights. Grabbing a cab, we proceeded to a cheap dive in the Bowery and did further research.
Returning to the courthouse, I got back just in time to watch Michael Cohen, after his day’s testimony, get escorted to a black, armor-plated sedan by federal marshals.
I spent 20 minutes handing out campaign buttons. My slogan:
Find Gold with Feingold in 2024!
While in da city, I intended to plumb the law books in the library at Columbia, but I got chased off campus by angry anti-Israel demonstrators who mistook me for an Israeli spy. These things happen. I’m Jewish.
Instead, walking the High Line in the early evening, I got waylaid by a lady sitting on a bench with a tan Pekingese. Wrapped in a black leather trench coat that looked too warm for the season, she was an eyeful. Her fluffy dog had a flat face and the personality of a lion. I thought he was going to gnaw my leg off. “Don’t you like dogs?” she asked in a deep voice.
“I like you!” I joked.
“Fuhgeddaboudit!” she exclaimed, making room for me on the bench.
Her name was Suzanne. Long story short, after accompanying Bog the Dog back to her apartment and ordering Chinese take-out, we spent the evening listening to Arab pop music and watching YouTube on her wide-screen TV. Mostly “Boots on the Ground” pro-Israeli reports from Gaza. A secretary, when I told her about my vice presidential aspirations, she laughed and said, “If you try to grab me by the pussy, I’m gonna knee you in the balls!”
Wow! My kind of woman. I stayed over and, despite my forebodings, ended up with a friend in NYC.
Failing to make a dent with the Trump people, I was going to try to be Dr. Jill Stein’s vice presidential running mate in the Green Party, but I suspect that the war in Gaza pits me far outside the pale of Green Party orthodoxy.
My younger brother Tim thinks I am a libertarian, even if I don’t yet know it.
Music maestro Mutte Fjutt in Uppsala, Sweden and punk rocker Clive Flatenbad—a k a rap duo realPfft— continue their odyssey through the world of AI-generated sights and sounds.
Mutte accessed the Suno music app at Microsoft Copilot, using the prompt: “Create a song about a broken tooth.” AI generated a complete track— music, lyrics and singing voice— even if the music was fuzzy, the vocal only 37 seconds long and the singer forgot some of the lyrics. Mutte deconstructed the music and re-recorded it, adding flourishes, solos and final mix.
Graphic artist Kuny used Bing Image Creator DALL-E for the artwork. Prompt: “Show a handsome man and woman kissing.” AI rules!
Since March 2018, Mutte and Clive have been grinding out their quirky version of hit music. They started their collaboration doing political satire and have branched out from there into rap, hip hop, rock, pop, R&B, soul, jazz, bebop, K-pop and whatever else tickles their funny bone. “Everything we do is comedy,” insists Clive.
Sweden is joining NATO (my old stomping ground), Donald Trump is up for re-election, there’s heartache in Ukraine and headache in Gaza. Extreme weather plagues the planet and mass extinction looms on the horizon. Rarely have we been more in need of a laugh. Love that funky music!
Kev
My Broken Tooth
It tasted blood on my tongue
When our lips collided, something came undone
A rush of pain, a moment’s hesitation
But I couldn’t resist the thrill of your sensation (ooh-yeah)
You left a piece of you in my broken tooth
A bittersweet reminder of our reckless youth
Every time I smile, I’m reminded of the past
But I wouldn’t change a thing, those memories last (yeah-yeah-yeah)
yustyoking 
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