Mike O'Connell

Today is the final day of August, though as long as you don’t own a thermometer summer ended some time ago. It’s hard to still think it’s “summer” when you’re a full week into the school year, regardless of whether it’s 95 degrees out.

Today is the final preseason game for my hometown Redskins, with but a week to go before the NFL season kicks off for real.

Nice.

This weekend? Sweet, sweet college football, with some Top 25 matchups already on the bill.

This, my friends, is the greatest part of the sports year.

An article in last Sunday’s Washington Post describes the horrors that would be inflicted upon the art world were Donald Trump to become president. Yup, this was a news story. Theoretical imaginations of life under an authoritarian dictator. Good Lord. Trump? He sounds like a thug so he probably hates art. This is news.

Oh that I could actually find a politician who would cut public funding for the arts. Seriously. And I’m an artist. I think the greatest thing that could happen to the arts in general would be to have the government play no role in their creation or development. (The problem is, even with a no-nonsense president you could never get Congress to go along with it… too many people benefit from the current arrangement. And the thought that any president in 2017 could unilaterally censor private artistic display is patently absurd.)

Simply stated, “the arts” tend to flourish where freedom is embraced, not where so-called artists work for government grants and public sponsors. I’d favor a true free market of art, where buyers and sellers contracted for one another’s wares without the heavy hand of government.

Whether that government is blatantly thuggish or the thugs in sheep’s clothes we have now.

It’s always a bit of a letdown when the Olympics are over, no? What to do each night now that I no longer have the go-to thing to watch?

Baseball? Beltway series this week? I think this’ll do.

It’s in the news every so often: the possibility of the Washington Redskins football club moving to a new home when its lease expires at FedEx Field. It interests me because one of the locations discussed is my home county of Loudoun, Virginia. Governor Terry McAuliffe last week joined the band of drummers banging out that beat.

Already home to the Redskins’ training facility and corporate headquarters, Loudoun County offers an interesting option for the Burgundy and Gold. It’s Redskins territory, no question, and nobody out here cares about the offensiveness of the name, but I wonder whether this move to Northern Virginia would make the ‘skins undoubtedly a Virginia team, alienating fans in nearby Maryland (where the team’s current stadium lives). Marylanders have this other team up the road in Baltimore, one who’s actually had some success this century. I worry that moving to the wilds of Virginia would make this division complete.

Personally I’d love to have an NFL stadium up the road from me. Same reason I love that new Metro line they are (read: you are) building out here. I’m never going to use it, but it’s still going to increase my property value. I know, I know, I’ll have to pay for it; no stadium gets built without public money these days. But you’ll have to pay for it too! Ha-ha!

When sports and politics collide there’s always a few pennies here and there to ick up among the rubble.

The final member of our nonagenarian quartet joins the ranks tomorrow, assuming… you know.

For the past six decades our government has been assuming and anticipating this person’s demise, though no one has ever clung to life as the man from Havana: Fidel Castro. You’ve got to hand it to the guy.

Of course I am no fan of Fidel’s politics. Few people in America are, though an annoying number of them seem to be. But the tenacity with which this man has hung on to power is impressive if nothing else. Yes, I know, he technically stepped down some number of years ago, handing off the reins of power to his brother—classic dictator move—but he’s got the kind of job that as long as you’re alive, you’re still doing it.

This is why Fidel Castro is perhaps the most appropriate of our 90th birthday watch. (See “Royal Birthday,” April 20, 2016.) These are prominent citizens, all born in 1926, who have been at their jobs waaaayyy longer than anyone ever thought they would. They include a queen, a libertine, a singer, and a dictator. Can you name them all?

Castro’s invitation to our club (and my favorite trivia question) comes as our relations with Cuba are thawing after decades of antagonism. Do I think this is a good thing? I suppose. Then again, I would have been comfortable with this occurring about 50 years ago. Eventually it became sort of silly, didn’t it? As American President after American President just assumed Castro would go away it became more and more difficult to be the guy who backed down. Well, Castro is now laughing at his 11th president, and a part of me hopes he hangs on to see his 12th. Actually, at this point who cares if Castro lives forever, right?

And for the guy who’s made it this far, it just might be possible.