That is a 200-gram firework “cake,” a multi-shot repeater that shoots 20 aerial bursts in about 24 seconds. We just ordered a case of 18 of those — $154.90 wholesale, but with the 25% Early Bird discount, we paid just $116.18 to add 360 shots into our Fourth of July finale.
After publishing the “Big Yellow Button” post Sunday morning, I left it “sticky” at the top of the page for three days, and am grateful to everyone who hit the tip jar to contribute to our purchase of eight cases of fireworks — including 168 mortar shells and two beautiful zig-zag cakes called “High Stepper” that fire 200 shots in 25 seconds:
Among the contributors was a young Virginian named Jonathan, who attended last year’s show and helped with the final set-up. Thanks also to Mr. McCartney; Robert in Oak Brook, Illinois; Charles in Teaneck, New Jersey; and Mr. Schmidt in San Francisco. Gary sent $25 and the message, “Make it spectacular!” (We will!) Mr. Yoder from Pennsylvania contributed, as did Mr. Dodge and Mr. Miller, both of them from the good part of Maryland. Mr. Heath from Texas kicked in, as did Mr. Spear, who shared that he enjoys reading updates about my Army son. Cheryl gave the patriotic sum of $17.76, as did William and Irvin, both of whom expressed their admiration for Mrs. McCain (and her bikini).
Finally, we got $25 and a message (“Blow shit up. Buy McBurgers.”) from someone named Kevin in Nye County, Nevada. Seems suspicious.
Anyway, the order has been placed and will be picked up tomorrow or Friday by one of my sons and, perhaps you might ask, “Is this enough fireworks?” Friends, there is no such thing as “enough fireworks.” Eight cases is a nice start, but with the clock ticking down to the 4th of July — a mere 80 days away now — we continue our quest to acquire the quantity of pyrotechnical awesomeness required to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our independence. By the way, all of y’all are invited to come see the show in Berkeley County, West Virginia; if you’ll be in the vicinity, be sure to get in touch. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far to our celebration, and to our other readers, I once more remind you that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:
LOUISA, Virginia — It was a lovely 150-mile drive to get here for today’s “VOTE NO” rally at the Louisa County Courthouse. A sunny spring day, with the trees turning green, and the picturesque scenery of central Virginia, adorned with signs that the Old Dominion ain’t dead yet.
The courthouse crowd was friendly, and my biggest problem today was that my deadline for the American Spectator was 6 p.m., which meant that when the rally ended at 4, I had to race over here to the McDonald’s, set up the National Desk in the corner booth and get to work. Cranking out 1,000 words in two hours? Yeah, I used to do that routinely during the years when I was a roving campaign correspondent, but I was younger then, and the deadline rush is more challenging now that I’m a gray-bearded senior citizen. That Filet-O-Fish combo cost $10.34, if any of y’all are thinking of hitting the tip jar, as I certainly hope you do.
Some of y’all remember how wild it was back in the days of the Tea Party, when I raced all over upstate New York in a rented Nissan covering the special election campaign that ended the political career of Dede Scozzafava, then turned right around to cover Scott Brown’s campaign to win Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts. For the final week of the 2010 midterm campaign, I drove all the way to Boca Raton, Florida, where I spent election night at Allen West’s victory party. There were a lot of victory parties that night — “The Republican Mandate,” I called it, after Ann Marie Buerkle was finally declared the winner in a New York district where she was outspent 5-to-1 by the Democrat incumbent she beat.
There’s a reason I don’t believe in quitting, because I have seen miracles with my own eyes. If you believe you can win, confidence is contagious, and a real grassroots effort can overcome even the most formidable odds. Such are the odds facing Republicans in this Virginia referendum battle, where the GOP has been outspent at least 3-to-1 by the big-money Democrats (including, of course, George Soros). The key point is that this is a special election with nothing else on the ballot except this godawful gerrymander, and polls indicate that at least 25% of Democrats don’t want to vote for Spanberger’s Monster, as we might call it. If Republicans can get any kind of grassroots energy going, they can deliver a punch in the nose that will make Democrats regret they ever tried to inflict this scheme on the Commonwealth. There are some hopeful signs.
People here are offended by what Spanberger and the Democrats are trying to do to them. This county would be shoved into a district that looks like a bad sketch of a lobster, the tail reaching all the way up to the Potomac River more than 100 miles away. All we can do is hope that their indignation is sufficient to inspire an overwhelming turnout that overwhelms the foreign scum currently occupying Northern Virginia.
Anyway, that’s getting ahead of the game. My column in the American Spectator should be online around midnight, and I’ve still got a two-and-half hour drive to get back home. Maybe you could cover that $10.34 Filet-O-Fish combo, or $4 for a gallon of gas, but as always I remind you that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are still:
Today is my 65th birthday — old enough to qualify for Social Security, but still working. It’s been four days since I updated the blog, but my day job kind of interfered with the blogging schedule this week. Also, I keep doing that thing where I begin an article, write hundreds or even thousands of words, and then abandon the draft because some news event interrupts. Do not accuse me of early-onset Alzheimer’s — I’ve always been somewhat scatter-breained this way, before they had such terms as “ADD” or “multi-tasking” to describe my modus operandi.
My greatest joy in journalism was the years I spent, from 2008 to 2012, in a blur of frenetic travel, doing shoe-leather reporting on the campaign trail. Being on the scene, reporting what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, provided infinitely more satisfaction than the mere quote-and-comment stuff of blogging. But the rigors of the campaign trail take their toll — it’s a young man’s game, and I was something of a senior citizen in the traveling press corps even when I was not yet 50. Nowadays, it seems, the business of covering campaigns is done mainly by kids fresh out of college, no doubt as a cost-saving measure by financially strapped media organizations.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s been so long ago that I was careening around upstate New York covering the Doug Hoffman campaign, furiously ratting the tip jar to pay for my gas and the rental car (that got ambushed by a deer one foggy night). That grassroots populist Tea Party campaign against the GOP Establishment (remember Dede Scozzafava?) was, as those of us who witnessed it predicted at the time, a template for the 2010 midterms, when Republicans recaptured the House in a historic landslide (see “The Republican Mandate,” Nov. 25, 2010). And, when you look at it in retrospect, one can trace a direct path from the populism of the Tea Party movement to the campaign that put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016 and which now, less than a month before Election Day, bids fair to return Trump to the White House again.
Excuse the nostalgic reverie, but you get to be this old and find that most of what you have to offer the younger generation is (a) fabulous tales of Ye Olden Days, and (b) advice that they will, of course, ignore.
Portrait of the Author as an Old Man
However frustrating it is to get old, however, it is still preferable to the alternative. Merely being alive can be considered an achievement, at this point and, like Carl Spackler said after telling his story about the Dalai Lama: “So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.”
Speaking of old guys, it’s a great misfortune that my old blog buddy John Hoge died last year. As you know, Hoge was an alumnus of Vanderbilt University and yesterday, the Commodores upset the Alabama Crimson Tide, the first time in 40 years that Vandy beat ’Bama, and the first time they had ever beat a team ranked No. 1 in the country. Why did this tragedy strike the Tide, which was riding high after knocking off Georgia a week earlier? My brother Kirby could preach you a sermon about what’s wrong with Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe, but you probably wouldn’t want to hear that sermon. However, having received total consciousness (thank you, Dalai Lama), I view this world-historic event — Vandy beating Alabama — as a timely omen of November 5.
Maybe it’s just me who sees it this way, but if lowly Vanderbilt can triumph over the top-ranked team in the country, isn’t it possible that Donald Trump can achieve something no president has done since Grover Cleveland, winning the presidency in two non-consecutive terms?
What did I gain from that experience? Well, not total consciousness (again, thank you Dalai Lama), but merely walking across Harvard Yard has a mystical way of imparting the spirit of elite enlightenment, and from that experience I obtained a crucial esoteric insight that, to celebrate the occasion of my 65th birthday, I will now share with readers, i.e., the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON
When my son told us we were going for a hike Saturday, my first thought was, “We’re going to get eaten by bears.” A quick Google search (“thunder bird falls + grizzly bear”) turned up several results, including a recent story with this quote:
“Bear encounters can happen anywhere in Anchorage, in Alaska,” Fish and Game Assistant Area Biologist Cory Stantorf said. “So regardless of where you’re at, whether it’s a viewing deck or the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, Kincaid, you always have to be prepared and ready for an encounter with wildlife, whether it’s bear, moose, wolves.”
“Nothing to worry about,” said my son, as he loaded his .44 revolver and packed it into the holster strapped to his chest. “Just in case.”
By the way, notice how the Fish and Game biologist spoke of “bear encounters,” rather than “bear attacks.” Political correctness run amok. I expect this kind of euphemism from Democrats in Philadelphia (“Carjacking encounters can happen anywhere”) but this is Alaska, OK? We’re talking the Final Frontier, pioneers in the wilderness. When I “encounter” a gigantic omnivorous wild beast with fangs and claws, this is a bear attack, I don’t care what you call it. Anyway . . .
We headed up the highway to Thunder Bird Falls, which is in Chugach State Park. An interesting Alaska cultural note: “Chugach” is a compound word, from the native chu (“eaten by”) and gach (“bears”).
On our way to adventure.A helpful map near the park entrance, showing visitors where they can get eaten by grizzly bears (i.e., everywhere)
Thunder Bird Falls is on the Eklutna River, which is less than 12 miles long, tumbling down from the top of a mountain to the Cook Inlet in the Gulf of Alaska. The inlet is named for 18th-century British explorer Captain James Cook, who sailed into the inlet seeking the fabled Northwest Passage. Given the trend whereby Mount McKinley has been renamed “Denali” (because that’s what the natives allegedly called it), it’s probably only a matter of time before Cook Inlet gets renamed, because you can’t name stuff after white guys anymore. Meanwhile . . .
Another interesting Alaska cultural fact: Eklutna is also a compound word, from the native eklu (“food for”) and utna (“grizzly bears”).
If you’re getting tired of my dark sarcasm, imagine how my wife felt as I was cracking these jokes all the way to the park. Facing danger with a smile on your face — that’s just the way I roll. And because of my habitual sarcasm, you may think I was joking when I talked about my son strapping a .44 to his chest before we left the house.
See the revolver handle sticking out of the holster? In addition to being a Ranger-qualified Army Airborne sergeant first class, my son is also a serious hunting enthusiast, who is currently planning bow-hunting expeditions for mountain sheep (aoudad) this fall. On our trip to Thunder Bird Falls, he was telling me something about the state game laws that protect the bears, and I was thinking, “Shouldn’t the laws be about protecting people?” Fortunately, there is a loophole in the laws, so that it’s not illegal to kill a bear in self-defense, but because this is 2023, I’m sure some environmentalist version of Ben Crump would show up to lead a protest claiming the bear was an honor student who was just minding his own business when you killed it: “No justice! No peace!”
Anyway, my son had a pistol strapped to his chest, and a two-month-old baby girl strapped to his back, because he’s a badass that way.
Grandma and Eliza: Smile and say, ‘Bears!’
So now we had the family ready for the hike up the trail, and if I was (mostly) joking about the danger of a “bear encounter,” soon I encountered something perfectly calculated to inspire fear.
OH MY DEAR GOD! While I’d been clowning around about the prospect of being eaten by grizzly bears, it hadn’t occurred to me that this trail followed the edge of a deep mountain gorge. Exactly how high was that “STEEP CLIFF” the sign was warning me about? I don’t know, because I’m so afraid of heights I didn’t dare get close enough to look.
It’s weird how my acrophobia is selective. Like, I’m not afraid of every high-altitude situation. We’d flown over 3,000 miles to get to Alaska, and that didn’t scare me at all. And when I was a kid, it was nothing to climb way up in the biggest poplar tree in the neighbor’s yard. But put me on the edge of a precipice — no, I can’t stand that. It terrifies me. Any action-adventure film where the hero is dangling off the side of a skyscraper? Nope. Never see those scenes. Got my eyes closed.
That first sign, warning me how close I was to the “STEEP CLIFF” — plummeting hundreds of feet to my death — caused me to notice how narrow the trail was, and how crowded it was with tourists who seemed utterly heedless of their proximity to “DANGER.”
When I’d started out up the trail, my main concern was about the my-thighs-are-getting-sore steepness of the climb. Once I realized there was a “STEEP CLIFF” just a few feet to my left, however, my concern shifted to the fact that there were whole families of tourists, some of them with dogs on leashes, carelessly loping up and down this trail with utter disregard of the “DANGER” nearby. And the trail was barely wide enough for three people to walk side-by-side safely, so that when I’d see a cluster of tourists approaching, I’d get wwaaaayy over to the right side of the trail to let them pass. And, every 40 or 50 yards up the trail, there’d be another one of those signs: “DANGER! STEEP CLIFF! STAY ON TRAIL!” And I’d be muttering, “Yeah, you didn’t have to tell me twice.”
About a half-mile up the trail, we reached the “Gorge Overlook.”
Family members foolishly risk their lives.
It must be explained that I also have vicarious acrophobia — it’s not just that I’m afraid of heights, but I also get freaked out by seeing other people near the edge of a precipice, especially my kids. Like, when the boys were little, we’d hike up to Black Rock, and I’d be a bundle of nerves whenever they’d go to the edge of those cliffs. While I could control my own risk — I ain’t going anywhere near the edge, if I can help it — the children were beyond my control, and I was deathly afraid of them falling off. Wonderful irony that my son should have become a paratrooper, but “out of sight, out of mind.” I can ignore Bob’s death-defying career choices, because I don’t have to see it, and am therefore capable of blocking it out of my consciousness. Meanwhile . . .
Staying far away from danger
While everybody else was RISKING THEIR LIVES at the “Gorge Overlook,” I was on the other side of the trail, chilling out — and by “chilling out,” of course I mean, avoiding psychiatric trauma.
Should I mention that I dislike the word “acrophobia”? Because a “phobia” is an irrational fear, whereas being 300 feet above a river gorge is a real danger, and therefore my fear is perfectly rational. The crazy people are the ones who can stare down at the bottom of that cliff and not freak out, but the psychiatric community doesn’t have a word for that.
My daughter-in-law laughs at the danger
See what I mean? She’s standing next to a sign that clearly says “DANGER,” and she’s laughing at my (entirely rational) fear.
It’s Alaska. It’s about survival on the frontier — basically living inside a Jack London novel, and I’m pretty sure his protagonists never took any unnecessary risks, simply because life was so difficult they didn’t have time for cheap thrills. But nonetheless, we continued hiking up to the “Falls Overlook,” with me trailing behind so that I could navigate around the clusters of dumbass tourists who kept coming down the trail with no apparent concern about the “STEEP CLIFF” on one side.
As we approached the overlook, the path turned into a sort of wooden deck, with rails on either side. DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN! We were literally suspended over the side of the cliff by some kind of jerry-rigged cantilever construction that I’m certain would not pass a safety inspection in any of the Lower 48 states. The headlines were easy to imagine:
JOURNALIST KILLED WHEN OBESE TOURIST
CAUSES OVERLOOK WALKWAY COLLAPSE
Even if I’m not as skinny as I used to be, still I’m easily 100 pounds lighter than some of the tourists who were clomping around up there.
So the family went ahead of me to the overlook, while I hung back waiting for the crowd to clear out. Because if I’m going onto an overlook deck, I’m sure as hell not going onto it while it’s occupied by:
7 or 8 fat tourists;
5 or 6 of their clumsy low-IQ children;
and
3 or 4 dogs.
What is it with people taking their dogs everywhere they go? Like, it’s important for your dogs to have the cultural enrichment of travel? Perhaps most people don’t think about this, and maybe my misanthropic streak was aggravated by the circumstances, but COULD YOU IDIOTS PLEASE LEAVE YOUR DOGS HOME when I’m trying to walk a trail marked with “DANGER STEEP CLIFF” signs every 50 yards?
Finally, the crowd thinned out enough, and I was ready.
Smile for the camera!
You may notice in that picture that my left hand is very firmly gripped on the rail, because I’m surviving, like a Jack London hero. Also notice that I’m wearing red sneakers. Those aren’t my sneakers. I’d expected to wear my normal street shoes — tasseled loafers — for this hike, but my son insisted on lending me a pair of his sneakers, and boy, I’m glad he did. As bad as it was going up that “DANGER STEEP CLIFFS” trail, it would have been a thousand times worse if I’d been wearing slick-soled loafers instead of those sneakers. Grateful for every small advantage.
My son’s family.
Despite my advanced age, I out-hiked everybody on the way back down the mountain. It wasn’t even close. Smile for the camera — snap! — and then I set off at a blistering pace, because the faster I went, the sooner I’d be away from “DANGER STEEP CLIFFS.” By the time the rest of the family got to the bottom of the trail, I’d been sitting there 15 minutes, smoking a cigarette, smiling like the hero of a Jack London novel.
Throwing in The Big Yellow Button here because I hope you’re enjoying this tale of my Alaska adventures enough to hit the freaking tip jar. And don’t worry about the IRS, because of course, I’ve got plenty of tax-deductible business expenses from this trip. This is one of the beauties of being a Professional Journalist™ in America — anything becomes a “business expense” if you write about it. You write about travel? Tax-deductible business expense. You write about food?
Having survived the trip to Thunder Bird Falls, and to celebrate not getting eaten by bears or falling off a cliff, we headed up to Palmer, where we dined at La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant. This was the occasion of even more of my habitual sarcasm, because who else would travel to the arctic wilderness to eat Mexican food? And as we were heading up there, I already knew what I was going to order, because the menu in every Mexican restaurant has it — the #1 Combination Plate, with a beef taco, chicken enchilada, rice and beans. There is nothing more predictable than the #1 Combination Plate, which is why I always order it. And, wearing my Professional Journalist™ hat as a food critic, I can tell you that La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant serves excellent food in large portions. My wife ordered the vegetarian burrito and it was ENORMOUS! As soon as they brought it out, I was like, “Just go ahead and bring us a take-out box, because there’s no way she’s going to eat that whole thing.”
After dinner, we did a bit of sightseeing in downtown Palmer — the view of the mountains is breathtaking — then went for ice cream at The Big Dipper, which is also excellent, the Professional Journalist™ said.
Having survived the wilderness — in a thrilling Jack London way — I took a long nap when we got back, and now, after 2,000 words, I must remind you of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Remember the “Shoe Bomber”? In December 2001, would-be terrorist Richard Reid was aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami when he failed in an attempt to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his shoes. Because of this botched terrorist attack, all commercial airline passengers to this day are required to remove their shoes and send them through the X-ray scanners before boarding their flights.
More than 20 years have gone by, and if this safety protocol has apprehended or deterred a single copycat “shoe bomber,” I’m unaware of it, but it keeps TSA busy, on the taxpayer’s dime, inspecting us all just to make sure we aren’t some kind of Al-Qaeda sympathizer.
There’s lots of time to ponder things like that, here at the Firkin and Flyer Pub in Concourse C, as my wife and I await the call for boarding. Around us, other early arrivals are killing the wait by clearing out their work inboxes or dropping a few dollars at casinos online. What I hate most about flying nowadays is the security protocols. I’m old enough to remember when you just went straight to the terminal gate — no waiting line for security — and your family could meet you at the gate when you returned. But now any airline trip requires you calculate not only the drive time to the airport (leaving a margin for possible traffic delays), but also leave yourself a little extra time in case there’s a backup at security. You don’t want to be sprinting to the gate at the last minute for fear of missing your flight, and so the total time required for any trip must be extended to account for such contingencies.
Thank you, Islamic jihadists!
Just popped into this pub to update the blog before our departure, and also to consume my traditional pre-flight beverage, which cost $10.89 and I tipped $2.11 to round it up to $13, but that’s OK, because it’s a tax-deductible business expense. As a journalist, anything you write about counts as “business,” so by telling my readers that the Firkin and Flyer serves a tasty Bloody Mary, I’ve covered myself with the IRS, and I’ve got the receipt to prove it. Meanwhile, I must express my gratitude to Mr. White, a resident of Cook County, Illinois, who was the first reader this morning to contribute via PayPal in support of this expedition to Alaska.
Are you feeling thirsty all of a sudden? You could order Bloody Mary mix from Amazon, but as to the vodka, you’re on your own. Now, it’s about 15 minutes until boarding, so I’ve got to head to my gate. Remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
This afternoon, my wife and I will be flying the friendly skies, first to Dallas for a three-hour layover before heading to Anchorage. I’d told y’all about this trip earlier, when I thought we’d be leaving last week, but I was mistaken about the anticipated travel date.
Our Army son is stationed there with the newly formed 11th Airborne Division, developing America’s arctic warfare capacity. More importantly — at least for me — is that his wife recently gave birth to our newest granddaughter, little Juniper. So we’ll be spending a couple of weeks with little Juniper (and her big sister Eliza, of course).
While looking forward to seeing the kids, I’m dreading the long flights, and then there’s the matter of the time shift. We arrive in Anchorage at 11 p.m. local time, which is 3 a.m. Eastern, and I’m sure I’ll be disoriented by this experience: Working in the wee hours (locally) to get my dayjob work done by morning times on the East Coast, and did I mention it’s “Midnight Sun” season in Alaska? Oh, and there’s also the weather: High temperature tomorrow in Anchorage will be 59°F, with rain, but later in the week, it will get up to a sunny 62°F. Joy, joy . . .
John Wayne would never complain about the weather, of course. So I’ll endure my arctic excursion with stoic resolve, and perhaps I won’t even notice the conditions while I’m out stalking moose and bears with a Bowie knife . . . No, wait, that’s not on the agenda. Grandpa’s too old to be doing the Wilderness Survival thing. However, I did text my son to ask him to find me some kind of tavern or restaurant where I could blog with that “authentic Alaska” vibe — exposed wooden beams, moose head mounted on the wall, etc. He replied, “Every brew pub here, basically.”
We’re talking tax-deductible business expenses, see? Snap a few photos with my phone, post it under an Anchorage dateline, and it’s travel journalism. Save the receipts for the IRS, and no questions asked.
My wife just asked me, “Are you ready?”
“Honey, we don’t leave for another three hours.”
One of the secrets to a successful marriage is balance — I’m carefree and spontaneous; my wife is responsible and conscientious. So when it comes to a trip like this, I leave all the worrying to her. Why should both of us be stressed out? As they say in Alaska, “Hakuna matata.”
OK, that’s not authentic Alaskan culture, but the IRS isn’t going to notice the difference when I show them the receipts for all those meals and, uh, beverages at brew pubs in Anchorage — legitimate business expenses!
“Besides which, your honor” — here I’m imagining my testimony in a federal trial — “my son was serving his country in Alaska, and maintaining the morale of our troops is crucial to America’s combat readiness. So it was in our national interest that Bob and I had the grilled trout dinner and a few beverages. Don’t you love America?”
Just doing my patriotic duty, you see. So as I get ready to roll, I remind you of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
“There was never enough time. Every deadline was a crisis. All around me were experienced professional journalists meeting deadlines far more frequent than mine, but I was never able to learn from their example.”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL DESK
This morning, at precisely 6:09 a.m. ET, I created a Word document with the idea of whipping out a quick column for The American Spectator. When I took a break about 7:30 a.m., it was already more than 700 words long, so I sent the top to my editors with an inquiry as to when the deadline was for me to send over the finished product for online publication Thursday. Back in the day when I was campaign-trail road warrior, Wlady Pleszczynski was always the guy on the editing desk. Wlady’s a night owl, so my usual deadline was midnight, but even that was often a challenge, as for example my frenzied pounding away at 1 a.m. to file from the 2012 Republican National Convention.
Anyway, Wlady’s health has caused him to cut back his duties, so that he only works the weekend shift now, and The American Spectator now has two young women working as editors on the weekdays, so my habitual last-minute midnight blitz to deadline won’t do. Six o’clock, they said, and I thought, “Piece of cake.” Just finish up my work for the day job in the morning, then there’d be plenty of time to leisurely proceed to that evening deadline. The Journalism Gods laugh at my hubris.
Throwing in The Big Yellow Button because I suspect some nearsighted readers may overlook the regular-size PayPal button with the imperative verb “DONATE.” Otherwise, I’d have to entertain the possibility that you don’t enjoy my work as much as you used to, or perhaps the recent paucity of output perturbs you. Honestly, I do have a day job now, one I never discuss on the blog because . . . Well, the Cancel Culture mob is always looking to make trouble for us Thought Criminals. And since we’re now on the topic of crime, how about this dangerous felon?
On Saturday, Michael Horwitz was arrested after fatally stabbing his father, Dr. Abbey Horwitz, at their home in Virginia Beach.
The 34-year-old, who identifies as a transgender woman and goes by the name Norah, has been charged with second-degree murder and stabbing in the commission of a felony.
According to the Virginia Beach Police Department, officers were called to the 1300 block of Wren Place just before 9 am Saturday. When they arrived, they discovered Dr. Horwitz, 68, suffering from “multiple stab wounds.” First responders performed emergency medical treatment, but to no avail. He was pronounced dead at 9:13 am.
In their release, the VBPD noted Horwitz’s full legal name, but added “Norah” in parentheses. Horwitz was also listed as female and authorities noted that “she” was being held in custody at the Virginia Beach Jail.
According to Reduxx, Horwitz appeared in court on Monday and was assigned a public defender after expressing that as a low-income worker, hiring a lawyer was too expensive.
Dr. Horwitz was a dentist and served as President of the Hebrew Academy of Tidewater and President of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater. The Art of Dentistry, Dr. Horwitz’s practice, said in a biography that he was married to his wife for over 25 years, with the two having three children.
Michael Horwitz was also a drag performer under the name “Menorah Horwitz” in Portland, Oregon. Horwitz wrote a series of stories for the Portland Mercury in June 2017 regarding Pride month.
In 2016 Horwitz performed alongside drag queen “Sharon Needles,” who was on the fourth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Horwitz also published a book titled “The Diary of Menorah Horwitz,” which describes his combination of “Judaism and a love of drag in all the wrong ways when he becomes Menorah, Portland’s premiere Anne Frank impersonator,” according to a synopsis of the book.
Don’t you feel sorry for him/“her”? He/“she” is now an orphan!
Sarcasm aside, the story of “Menorah Horwitz” actually turned out to be relevant to the topic of my American Spectator column, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise too much. At any rate, after wrapping up my day-job work and taking a shower, it was 4 o’clock before I headed down here to Sheetz, where I could use their WiFi and concentrate on finishing that column which, as always, took longer than I’d expected. How is it that after all these years, I’m still plagued by this problem?
Hunter S. Thompson never solved his Deadline Crisis Syndrome either, but I would hate to follow his example too closely, consider how that ultimately worked out. Anyway, I managed to file 1,900 words before 6:30 and the girls on the desk said that was OK, so it should be online tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ve been paying for coffee here at Sheetz to legitimize my use of their WiFi and, believe it or not, next week I’ll be blogging with an Alaska dateline, for reasons that I’ll explain once I get there, but that trip won’t be cheap, so for now, I’ll just ask readers to recall the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
For something like 15 years, I never missed the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), covering it first for The Washington Times, then for The American Spectator. And by “covering it,” of course I mean hanging out with all my friends and filing late-night screeds of semi-incoherent gibberish. The liberal media always feasts on CPAC as an occasion to pursue their endless search for right-wing scandals and controversies, while most of the conservatives in attendance have a great time at the event that I long ago dubbed “Mardi Gras for the Right.”
With the D.C. area in the grip of a draconian COVID-19 lockdown, CPAC decided in 2021 to move the conference to Orlando, and did it again in 2022, so that I’ve missed the event the past two years. But as soon as I finish this post, I’ll be packing up my laptop and heading off to National Harbor for CPAC 2023, and covering it in my usual gonzo manner. You wouldn’t believe what I’m paying for a hotel room, which is the main reason I’ve brought back the Big Yellow Button. Even though the PayPal contribution button is always on the page, sometimes I enlarge it for the benefit of near-sighted readers who may not have noticed it before.
Our usual request for tip-jar hits is $17.76. A 150-mile road trip to D.C. is quite expensive under Bidenflation, so if you want to chip in $4 for a gallon of gas, that would be appreciated. If you’re in the patriotic spirit, you might want to pay tribute to such great Americans as Andrew Jackson or even Benjamin Franklin, IYKWIMAITYD.
Helping defray travel expenses for my return to CPAC may be sufficient cause for most readers to kick in a few bucks for the trip, but as usual the most urgent thing is, keeping my wife happy.
Mrs. McCain likes it when the blog actually produces revenue, and keeping her happy is Job One, so once again I ask readers to recall the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
