ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK BOX

“Where are we going? Do you know where we’re going, Dad?”

These words of daily doubt, so lovingly shoved in my face as a young Dad, came from my favourite daughter in the backseat. My pink Disney Princess in the cheap seats. She was the passenger. I was the driver. I was the chauffeur.

Das Über Dad.

“Do you even know where we are?”

My esteem evaporating in the locked car. OMG, someone left a Dad in a locked car on a hot day. How is he to breathe???? She might as well have been saying, “Do you know WHO you are?”

To the best of my knowledge, I was playing the role of Dad in what I hoped would be a long running joke. I am beginning to sense that wherever we “are” now, it may be getting closer to the end of the story, the end of the sentence.

Jim Morrison in black leather pants, locked in a Dodge Neon droning to the apocalypse with his words:

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

I knew precisely where we were and I know where we are now.

Clearly we are in the thick of it. The Alan Thicke of it. The David Icke of it. Bambi and Thumper in the thicket of it. A Pullup full of bumper stickers in a sticky Wicked.

This is not Kansas, and you and I are not Taylor Swift.

More like Swifty Lazar, the real Artist of the deal.

.

“Lazar also fears he will be made to look foolish. He cannot help boasting, but he is acutely afraid that he will sound boastful instead of distinguished. “Don’t say I told you that,” he is always saying to the reporter after recounting one of his triumphs. “Make it sound researched. State it as fact!” He tells her so again today; then he looks at her, shakes his head. “Oh,” he says, weary, “you’ll fuck it up.” Jennifer Allen New York Magazine July 18, 1983

We cannot even go to dinner with friends without having the conversation hijacked by the Fearless Leader, the Orange King, He Who Must Not Be Named. Orange Is The New - pot calling the kettle - Black. He is the common dominator, The Golden, Almost Crispy One bringing us a return to ersatz values, the Wild Boor in the China shop. the Batty Uncle in the Wet Market. He is the original Lab Leak. The original Russian prostitute leaking yellow journalism onto the face of Margaret Dumont- Well I Never!!!!

Orange is the Blah, Blah, Blah. It is impossible to be a satirist in a time of National Satire. Orange puts the pig back in Epilogue. The image that sticks is Orange bloviating on his real estate visions of beachfront property in beautiful downtown Gaza. His “plan” to move the inconvenient truth of the genocided Palestinians to a more convenient Arab ……Arab….. whatever, not even worth his time to commit to a full thought. Bomb them all and let God sort ‘em out.

Meanwhile, his Henchmaster, the South Afrikaner Musked Man, like some cartoon character, BRIC by BRIC, dismantles the Deep State. We are left to wring our hands, and swallow our pearls before guzzling corked South African wine, and reminisce for a time when a demented President slept in a crib, while the adults in the room masterminded the motorboated mayhem. Risk was more than a board game.

Who was running the show? Did it matter? The show was being run. The baby monitor did not go off. The black box was safe in it’s cradle of democracy.

Now Orange Is The New Black Box. Surprisingly, I sleep better, getting in a good 2-3 hours per night. Less time for bad dreams. My bladder acts as the referee in this nightly struggle.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Go to your corners. Get up and empty that thing. No—not in the corner! Stop me when I start peeing in the refrigerator.

We are renting a dog. Our back seat driver has her own place, and all of our much fabled dogs of yore are dead and gone. Actually rental is incorrect; it is more like borrowing a book from the library. Gently shake for bed bugs, and read in the bathtub. She is wonderful. A saucy little monster.

Hey 19! We have all survived 19 days of the Adventures of Fearless Leader. Even Moose and Squirrel had a walk on part. Yes, both Moose and Squirrel were walked on, sat on, and farted on by their Orange Big Brother. Did he make us cry?

NO. We kept our tears to ourselves, weeping in our non-alcoholic Labatts Blue, while we sang Tears Are Not Enough.

OK. That was a blatant lie. Labatt’s doesn’t even exist. Oh, they still exist, just not as an iconic Canadian brand of beer. Labatt is now part of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, which trades as BUD on the New York Stock Exchange. In the United States, Labatt brand beers are still sold under license by Labatt USA. You can buy a classic Canadian beer in the US. This Bud’s for Blue.

Even Molson is now Molson Coors in a case of reverse corporate merger. However we must disclose that Molson Canadian is still the number one beer in Canada. (Cue Shania Twain’s Still The One.) John Molson, an English immigrant, founded Molson Brewery in Montreal in 1786. It is the oldest brewery in North America. Canadian Loyalists brought down many Two-Fours to Washington DC when they burned down the White House in 1812.

Oh, come back, proud Canadians
To before you had TV
No hockey night in Canada
There was no CBC (Oh, my God!)
In 1812, Madison was mad
He was the president, you know
Well, he thought he'd tell the British where they ought to go
He thought he'd invade Canada
He thought that he was tough
Instead we went to Washington...
And burned down all his stuff!

Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie

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