ONE of my most memorable scenes from the movies is Largo and James Bond playing “The Domination Game” from “Never Say Never Again” (1983), though, watching the news, it could have just as well been 2022 — https://youtu.be/wUT5CpgYXMM?t=24. On the other hand, in all fairness, one should look at the situation from the opposite perspective — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jj-PaqFrBc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Vuib3G7FM — including ongoing peace negotiations — https:/...

WELL, as the real “The Last Bookstore” in Los Angeles, California states on its incredible website, “We’re not really the last bookstore – thank goodness – but we are the largest new and used bookstore in California. Plus, we’re the only one that’s 22,000 sq. feet with a record store, comic book store, 5 art studios, an epic yarn shop, a famous book tunnel, a mammoth head, and unexpected nooks of funkiness. Also we are in a hundred-year-old bank building, so we have vaults and...

I hear a lot these days about how “unfair” autocratic folks, foreign and domestic, feel they’re being treated these days. The popular saying, “truth hurts” as well as Khaled Hosseini’s famous quote: “better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie” say it all. In my opinion, the best defense against autocracy is truth, exactly what U. S. President Biden seems to be doing to defend against a Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

The problem, even in countries relatively i...

FIRST, it’s important to establish a few assumptions. Number one: The world isn’t necessarily fair. “Shit happens.” Number Two: This is especially the case when money and power are regarded as sin qua non. Thirdly: Humans are all basically the same in terms of impulsivity, intent, actions and responsibility. Finally: All actions are the inevitable result of outside causes-and-effects (“I had no choice”), though in the epitome of this style of thinking — violation, war and “no-...

LONG-SUFFERING. As if there isn’t enough of that going around as a result of political extremism, COVID, business aggression and organizing crime in the world! How about some long-enjoyment for a change?

Valentine’s Day yesterday helped. It hopefully reminded people that our charge in life is not to decimate the world and all that’s in it, but rather through responsible stewardship to help life thrive, develop and evolve. After all, I don’t believe today’s humanity is the evolution...

ACCORDING to the History.com, “the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

“To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacr...

Yep! That’s what I’m mostly up to these days. Recently finished filming for the K. Simmons Production of THE MALTESE COLLECTION, practicing while waiting for my part in the Kurt Ken Kaminaka Production of THE PERFECT ILLUSION, and waiting with bated breath for the screenplays for the K. Simmons Production of both FINDING KATE and FLICKER, both in which I hope to have a major role.

In THE MALTESE COLLECTION — “I can make people feel aroused, by a word. I can make the hairs on their ne...

AT least for another day. Still, I see so many commonalities with the 1938 Nazi Anschluss Österreichs. The Communist Russian desire for re-unification seems based on Putin’s desire to re-incorporate as many Ukrainian “Russians” as possible into a “Greater Russia” reminiscent of the former USSR. Russian civil and military agents appear to be cultivating pro-unification feelings, while seeking to undermine the Ukrainian government. All that’s left is an attempted coup resulting in ...

HEY, we’ve already had two and survived, supposedly better for the experience. At least, that’s what I’m often told. But, hey, we’re better today. More experienced. More technologically advanced. More mature. And, the world’s overpopulated, anyway, and we who are doing the overpopulating just can’t stop. So what’s so bad, really, about another world war? After all, it would definitely be good for the world’s worsening financial situation. Always was, supposedly always will be....

Oops, a tiny misspelling there. Should read “designer genes” or, as they’re frequently called today, “epigenes.” Conrad Waddington is said to have introduced the idea of epigenes, which, according to MedlinePlus are control genes that modify (typically turn on or off) other genes without affecting the organism’s DNA. In other words, epigenes are genes that regulate the activity (expression) of DNA. Epigenes themselves can be affected by time, as well as intracellular or external c...

THERE is something faster than the irritating “Fast Eddies” — con men, women and children (see yesterday’s post) — playing so prominent a role in contemporary society. Emotions.

Before I go on, I would like to make a critical distinction between emotions and feelings which are too often lumped injudiciously together. By “emotions” I mean the body’s release of circulating chemicals either in a local blood vessel plexus or the general blood stream. Okay, let’s call them what ...

THIS is a gripe: Whenever I travel the highways nowadays, everyone seems to be speeding except me, creating a definitely dangerous situation. I mean, when the sign says “Speed Limit 55 mph” does that really mean minimum speed? What’s with the need to speed far in excess of the speed limit not just on freeways (hey, is this really Germany and the Autobahn?) but in urban and even suburban areas. Is it really a 3 year olds responsibility to watch out for speeding cars? Or is everyone on sp...

OKAY, cheap play on the word “weight,” which everyone seems to want to lose and “wait” which is what most people seem to be doing these days. The Big Question is, “Waiting for what?”

The sense of waiting all one’s life and the Big Question aren’t new. They’ve been haunting people for millennia, causing some of the greatest literary works the world has ever know. Still, there’s something about having to wait for one’s eventual demise that’s…demeaning? Antithetical? I...

YEP! If you’re literarily inclined, it’s definitely so! Writers (people who record things for themselves) and authors (errant writers who write professionally for a target audience) both know the Big Three C’s: Clear, Complete and Concise. Clarity is a given and always takes first billing. Completeness is next, and, while one of the Big Three C’s deserves second-most attention, is more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule (the whole mystery genre is based on almost but not quite c...

THERE are so many aspects of authoring versus writing that it can feel like a unscalable chasm separates the two. And yet…one thing that they have in common is the sometimes exciting, sometimes inspiring, sometimes relaxing, but always appreciated edge-of-consciousness sounds of moving creative new ideas from within, to resilient but editable, enduring publicly shareable stories as books, ebooks, audiobooks, screenplay-novels, screenplays, manga, animations, television programs and/or motio...

AS you probably know, I’m an inveterate social, performance and competition dancer in the International-style ballroom and Latin American alongside my lifelong dance partner, Setsuko Tsuchiya — https://youtu.be/ync4vCUxEoc. But also being a former U.S. NAS/NRC Senior water reclamation research scientist assigned to NASA-Johnson Space Center and later NASA-Ames Research Center, I’m particularly enticed whenever I find an example of the marriage of the humanities and sciences, especially ...