Author: Mark Alexander

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Vote Like Your Life Depends On It

Vote like your life depends on it, because it does.

Because your grandmother’s life does.

Because people of color lives do.

Because the lives of the LGBT community do.

Because women’s lives do.

Because a woman’s right to choose is on the line.

And because I can not fucking take 4 more minutes of this batshit insanity,  much less 4 more years!

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Released 40 Years Ago Today

The Empire Strikes Back, 1980

Probably the most anticipated film of my young adult life. Like Star Wars before it, in Phoenix, Empire was showing exclusively at the Cine Capri. I remember rushing down right after work to get in the line that had already stretched around the building and well into the parking lot. I bonded with fellow movie-goers, and I remember some of us walked the mile or so to McDonalds at 16th & Camelback (when it was on the northeast corner of the intersection, not on the south side of Camelback where it is now) to bring back food while the rest of the group remained in line. This was of course long before you could order movie tickets ahead of time, so you had to physically wait in line and plunk down your $3.50 (yes, THREE DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS) at the window to get a ticket.

As I recall, we got in for the 7:30 or 8 pm show, so we hadn’t waited nearly as long as had been the custom for STAR WARS. When the lights finally dimmed and those famous words flashed on the screen “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” the theater erupted in screams of joy.

I didn’t see Empire nearly as meany times as I’d seen STAR WARS, yet it remains probably my favorite of the original first trilogy.

What are your memories of Empire? I know my readers tend to skew “older,” so how many of you actually saw it in a theater when it came out?

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Some Good News for a Change

From I Should Be Laughing:

Jake Bland is the operations manager at Hometown Hauling, a refuse collection company in Louisville, and he’s also on the truck picking up his customers trash. One day, during his regular route, he noticed that there was no trash out in front of one house, owned by an elderly woman; in fact, it had been a couple of weeks since she’d put the garbage out.

But rather than move on to the next address, Jake called his dispatcher, Bernice Arthur, and voiced his concerns. Bernice then called the 90-year-old customer and was relieved that she answered the phone. Relief turned quickly to grief when the woman told her she hadn’t put her trash out in a few weeks because she didn’t have any:

“She just didn’t have nothing to eat….and that’s why she had no trash to put out there.”

 The woman depended on public transportation to get to and from her local grocer, and because of a now limited public transportation schedule, and a fear of getting on a crowded bus with strangers—many unmasked—during a pandemic, she wasn’t able to get any food.

For ten days before Jake Bland came along.

Bernice said the woman told her that she had no family to help and Bernice cut her off:

“You have a family now.”

Bernice asked her to make a shopping list and, after his shift, Jake returned to her house and picked up the list, went shopping, and brought everything back to Mrs. W. And his company paid for the food.

Jake offered to help her put everything away, but Mrs. W told him to leave it in the garage to keep everyone safe.

Bernice and Jake have vowed to check on the many elderly and disabled customers that they have, and will continue to check on Mrs. W.

I wonder if all those people marching on state capitals because they want a beer and a haircut, or to get their hair and nails done, have given one thought to people like Mrs. W. Or are they too busy in their own little shallow worlds to think of others.

Luckily for several people, Jake and Bernice didn’t think like that.

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