Mike O'Connell

I figure most Donald Trump-types are good for about 15 minutes of fame following the announcements of their presidential bids. You make a splash, the media fawns, then you get out of the pool.

But Donald Trump himself in 2015? This guy just keeps on going.

I’m not going to comment one iota on Trump’s politics. I’m not even sure what they are, really. I’m not sure he knows what they are either.

Who cares. The guy’s a breath of fresh air among the measured windbags of the political class.

You know why Donald Trump is going to step in it again and again over the next few months? He doesn’t think or act like a politician.

Thank God.

His latest flap? The one with the local hook that the national media hasn’t even found yet? He’s annoyed some local conservation group around here because the golf course he owns a few miles down the road from my house had to cut down a few trees from the swamp that existed previously.

Ha!

And you love the guy a little more.

Honestly I doubt Donald Trump could ever really get elected president. Then again, if you’d asked me a few years ago whether a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama would ever get elected president, I’d have said the same thing.

Hate to say I told you so…

Wait a minute, I love to say I told you so, and here it is again.

Baseball’s all-star game?

Knocked it out of the park.

Seriously, was that not the best Home Run Derby you ever saw? Looks as though they’ve got the formula down now, and I’d say for next year don’t change a God damn thing.

The game itself was no anti-climactic disappointment either. Relatively close game? Three home runs? NL pitchers ringing up 15 strikeouts? Uh huh.

Everyone who dismissed the All-Star Game over the past week or so can now sit down and you know what. The couple of days that are often a hole in the sports calendar produced, well…

a home run.

The other night I watched a documentary that had been in my Netflix queue since 2013: Smiling Through the Apocalypse. Alternately subtitled “Esquire in the ’60s” and “How Howard Hayes rocked journalism,” the film highlights Esquire magazine during the 1960s and how its editor, Howard Hayes, well, rocked journalism during that decade.

The film is written and directed by Tom Hayes, son of the famous editor who had little time for family and fatherhood while running a major magazine. Young Hayes resists making the predictable documentary of the famous man’s dark side and instead glorifies the old man, and if the film has any flaws it’s that the pendulum tilts a bit too much in this direction. The movie’s a self-congratulatory puff piece, but cool in a Mad Men meets Jack Kerouac meets The Rolling Stones sort of way. To say the film has a pro-Esquire (really pro-Hayes) bias is like saying the pope has a bit of a Catholic bias, but as one who likes the product, I digress.

Smiling Through the Apocalypse was the name given to Esquire’s compendium of the 1960s, a nod to the cheerful disposition those at the top may have taken during tumultuous times. No fiddling while Rome burned, but genuine cheeriness of those who celebrate life and man at his best. Truth is, the magazine did show the darker side of Camelot and that which followed, and gave its readers through Mailer, Talese, and Wolfe the real America which was neither Apocalyptic nor grinning unnecessarily.

I recommend Smiling Through the Apocalypse. It’s a period piece, and one with great journalistic star power (like the magazine itself). It’s also a story about family, work, personal relationships, and the bonds that bring them together. While smiling, no doubt.

This is how you spend July Fourth weekend if you live in the suburbs and have a one-year-old…

Friday night: celebrate all things great about America with pizza and s’mores.

(Silently curse neighbors with their fireworks going waaaaayyy to late into the evening.)

Saturday: doughnuts from a place called Duck Donuts. I was a Duck Donuts virgin until this weekend. Seriously, it’s worth driving past several other doughnut shops on your way there, including Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and the other two Starbucks.

Followed by…

Morning baseball. Seriously. Eleven a.m. start time? I’m in on that.

Gig 2-5 at a winery… outdoors in a rainstorm. Can’t win ’em all I guess.

Franklin and I played outside a bit in the evening when it stopped raining but he was asleep long before any fireworks began.

Fireworks on TV. I thought the lead up to the fireworks this year on “A Capitol Fourth” was pretty terrible, but passable with the sound off.

(Silently curse neighbors with their fireworks going waaaaayyy to late into the evening.)

Sunday: not a damn thing.

Perfect.

The article referenced here is about a month old, but I’ve got a baby and am therefore behind the times.

CNN headline from May 26, 2015: “Fashion, plus-size modeling and race: When ‘diversity’ isn’t so diverse.” Yeah, the folks who clamor for “regular”-looking people (read: overweight) to be featured in magazine ads are now upset that more, let’s say people of color are not used in said ads.

What we have here is proof of two things: 1.) Our opponents will never be satisfied; and 2.) Even with 2015 politically-correct sensibilities (is that an oxy moron?) in place, it still comes down to appearances and physical characteristics, doesn’t it?