Stray thoughts

By Paul Kandarian

A little of this and that to round out the end of the year…

I don’t watch the Today show, but my better half does so it’s on every day and I can’t help but notice they don’t talk on the Today show – they scream. They scream at each other, they scream with the screaming fans outside in the plaza, Al Roker screams the weather, there’s just a whole lotta screaming going on.

I liken this to kids on a runaway sugar high – bouncing off walls, screaming at and with one another, face to face, laughing and screaming, bug-eyed crazy screaming, like jungle-animals-aboutto-tear-each-other-apart screaming. It’s complete anarchy until there’s a somber bit of news to report, and then it’s like the parents opened the door and screamed “KNOCK IT OFF!” and then the Today team gets real somber and quiet and respectful and Al quiets right down after that segment even if he’s reporting the next planet-cracking bombogenesis superstorm about to consume the planet and blast ratings into the stratosphere because who doesn’t love weather so bad it makes you scream? And I was walking by the TV the other morning and heard “And now the third hour of Today!” which made me ask “What can they possibly talk about – I’m sorry, scream about – for three hours?” until it was pointed out I was wrong: there are FOUR hours in the Today show. I tell ya, Dave Garroway, J. Fred Muggs and the original NBC Peacock must be rolling over in their graves. Where at least they can’t hear the screaming.

Pot, not paranoia

It’s a total freak-out, man, that these days you don’t have to buy weed from a shaky dude in a dark parking lot over by the railroad tracks. You can just go to a store, man. A store! A freakin’ store! March right in, show ID, and boom, walk out with enough weed to float a hippy’s peace-painted minivan, man!

Seriously, back in the day it was a deep dive into paranoia when you were buying weed from your friendly neighborhood dealer. Now you go to any one of pot stores that are popping up like Dunks’ on the retail landscape and not only buy weed that’ll blow your head clean off like Dirty Harry’s Magnum, but where they have weed pros on staff to walk you through the mind-boggling choices you have to boggle your mind right and proper. Oh, and in edible form, too, meaning you don’t have to stank up your mom’s kitchen baking pot brownies you hope your parents don’t find and eat, though that would’ve been a hoot to watch

The times, and the buzzes, are a’changin’

In August 2019, Don the Con was holding a rally for no other reason than to have a bunch of Kool-Aid-stained fools show up and kiss his corpulent culo, when some protester caught his attention and made the Orange Baboon say this: “That guy’s got a serious weight problem. Go home. Start exercising. Got a bigger problem than I do.”

Flash forward past the next four years – and the four criminal indictments – to when the proud son of Fred and Mary Anne was allowed to self-report his height and weight and came in at an astonishing 6’3” and 215 pounds, the exact dimensions of the late great and in-shape Muhammad Ali and current film heartthrob and slab o’steel Chris Hemsworth.

Stupid and delusional takes many shapes, my friends, some even stacking up to a mound of presidential incompetence, all imaginary 215 pounds of it.

Unbridled Local Pride

The sheer talent of filmmaking folks in our area is astounding. In September, I shot a short film, Invisible, with New Bedford’s Ryan Nunes, an up-andcoming filmmaker, partly at the superbly picturesque Fort Phoenix in Fairhaven and the cozy confines of Marion, as beautiful and quiet a seaside community as you’ll ever see.

And in November, I’m slated to play the film version of real human William Rotch – he of the historic New Bedford home known as Rotch-Jones-Duff – in Sweet Freedom, an absolutely captivating story of Polly Johnson, born as what’s known as a Free Black in 1784 in Fall River. She went on to become the premier confectioner in New Bedford and an ardent abolitionist, who provided safe lodging to freedom seekers along the Underground Railroad, including Frederick Douglass and his wife, Anna. Johnson’s home was the first safe house for the Douglasses.

This film is being helmed by Alyssa Botelho of Fairhaven, an incredibly talented young woman whose first film, To Dust All Return, won regional Emmys for Best Short Form – Fiction, and Best Director.

People like Alyssa and Ryan and so so so many others in our area with their hearts and souls wrapped up completely in the arts truly make me feel younger. I am honored to know them, work with them, and tell the stories they ache to tell.

South Coast, you got it all goin’ on. I’m grateful to be here and living my best life.

Paul Kandarian is a lifelong area resident and, since 1982, has been a profession writer, columnist, and contributor in national magazines, websites, and other publications.