It's What It Is

"You charge with a gun. With a knife you run." - Al Pacino starring as Jimmy Hoffa in The Irishman.

I have mixed feelings about Martin Scorsese's The Irishman after investing three and a half hours absorbed in it. That's not to say it's not a great work of art. It is. But that's what I've come to expect from the renown director, especially when the story concerns underworld figures. It's got a star-studded cast with most of the familiar actors playing mobsters straight out of central casting. The two headliners are Robert De Niro as Mafia hitman Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran, and Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa, a pivotal figure in American labor history. A strong supporting cast with previous Scorsese players such as Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel make this a very enjoyable viewing experience. I envision many Oscar nominations for the cast and crew. Best Picture, too.

Although I prefer the shared experience of watching movies in the theater, I streamed The Irishman on Netflix. My television is large enough that it didn't detract from the special effects which are primarily utilized for de-aging the septuagenarian actors. Really quite phenomenal what the technology does. Makes the players appear to be a lifelike 30 years younger. A main reason why I selected the Netflix option instead of going to the local cinema is the length of the film. Three and a half hours is a long time to sit without an intermission. Both Ben Hur and Gone With The Wind had breaks halfway through the productions. I don't have Attention Deficit Disorder, but needed to pause for ten minutes after two hours just to process everything.

Because of my age of 60, and because I have seen other movies that touch on the same time period and subject matter, I was familiar with the backdrop of the story. Thirteen Days, Hoffa, JFK and The Godfather Part II all come to mind because they deal with the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the labor movement, or President Kennedy and his brother Bobby. Although the film is about Frank Sheeran, Jimmy Hoffa is an integral part of the plot and is instrumental in moving the timeline forward. Remember when it was rumored that Jimmy Hoffa was buried in concrete in the End Zone of the old Giants Stadium? Jack Nicholson as the Teamsters leader in Hoffa met an entirely different fate than in The Irishman. In reality, his death is still a mystery to this day and Scorsese's epic just adds fuel to the fire.

There's a lot of subtle touches to the film from days gone by. Musically, the soundtrack sets the tone for the early 1960's - everything from the Santo and Johnny instrumental "Sleep Walk", to Bill Doggett's "Honkey Tonk". Plus, when they story moves to Miami Beach, the theme from The Jackie Gleason Show begins to play. How sweet it is! The location scout also gets high marks for including not only a Howard Johnson's motel, but a Lum's hot dog stand, too. Relics from yesteryear that sets the tone. Scorsese uses the screen like Vincent van Gogh works with a canvass. Although everyone in the story is on the take, and multiple mobsters get rubbed out, what sets the movie apart is the long awaited conclusion after Jimmy Hoffa gets killed. If it wasn't for the conclusion, this would have been a run of the mill gangster flick, albeit beautifully filmed.

Without giving too much away, the movie begins with Frank Sheeran in a nursing home, then the narrative is told through a series of flashbacks. It's the same story structure as Little Big Man starring Dustin Hoffman in the early 70's. But the last half hour of the film concentrates on Sheeran as an old man stuck in a wheelchair. De Niro's character is crippled both mentally and physically. He wrestles with the failed relationships with his daughters, particularly one subplot with the rejection of his daughter Peggy played by Anna Paquin. I just wondered how he as an actor dealt with playing a character that's not too far away from his advanced age. I know it made me think about my mortality including the isolation of the "golden" years. Things I don't necessarily want to contemplate.

Only The Paranoid Survive

Every breath you take and every move you make,
Every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you. - "Every Breath You Take" by The Police

CNBC's afternoon program "Power Lunch" recently featured an interview with Frank O’Brien, CEO and founder of Five Tier, an integrated marketing and media platform. At first blush, I thought the conversation was informative. After thinking about it for awhile, I considered it disturbing in a 1984 sort of way. Think about walking through Times Square with the multi-storied "cult of personality" electronic billboards engulfing the concrete canyons. Broadway stars, best selling beverages, Victoria's Secret models, and a flotsam and jetsam of pop culture loom five stories high. Subliminal seduction at its finest. I used to believe the images were selected based on traditional advertising placement. I was wrong. Industrial innovators persuade us to purchase goods or services based on real-time information extracted from our smartphones. It's called Surveillance Capitalism.

We all have a digital footprint, a data trail we leave while using the Internet: email communications, social media interactions, the works. Once you get in proximity to the electronic billboards, machines behind the screens snatch data from your cellphone. This could be an ID number, GPS information, salary, interests, age, race and gender. Anything that's stored on your smartphone, or in the applications on that communications device. There's nothing new about this in marketing. It's the "womb to tomb" information advertising agencies previously accumulated based on public persona such as your zip code. They can infer a lot about you knowing just where you live. It was big in direct marketing, but with the slow erosion of snail mail, the practice has become space-age. Much more precise. It's a form of geofencing, a location-based service that advertisers utilize to send messages to smartphones that enter a pre-defined geographic area.

Five Tier isn't the only company involved with this business trend, Lamar, JCDecaux and Adomni all have similar platforms. There's a terrific article in Consumer Reports by Thomas Germain: "Digital Billboards Are Tracking You. And They Really, Really Want You to See Their Ads.". To paraphrase, the article states that "these companies emphasize they don't learn identifying details such as the names, email addresses, or phone numbers of the people whose data is being targeted...Most of the information is aggregated - they want to know how many people of a certain target audience are present at a particular time, not who each individual is". This is so they can project an advertisement to the dominant demographic in any predetermined area near the billboard.

Sounds harmless enough, but the corporations always sugarcoat things. What they're saying now, and, what may be said next year are two entirely different subjects. If this goes on unregulated, they will bend the rules when the technology advances. These companies are creating information empires. Just look at the pinpoint accuracy facial recognition software has ascended to. Pro-democratic demonstrators in Hong Kong are wearing surgical masks in order not to be identified and imprisoned. They throw the book at you. In Hong Kong it's the communist government, here it's the corporations. It's only a matter of time before these advertising firms compile personal dossiers on us, too. Like Five Tier's CEO Frank O'Brien says about what you can do to protect your individual information: "I don't think there's anything you can do about it."

To be fair to Mr. O'Brien, he states that the "Out-of-Home" advertising industry should be regulated. That's a tough task in a free market presidential administration. In my opinion, until regulation occurs, if it ever occurs, he will remain loyal to his backers, and take the data harvesting and extraction to the limits. If he doesn't, his competitors will crush him. That's the nature of the beast. Unless Uncle Sam intervenes, Five Tier will continue to mine more and more particulars because the CEO has lofty aspirations for his brainchild. Going back to January of this year, Bruce Rogers of Forbes, interviewed O'Brien, and the founder talks about going from the sideshow to the big-top:

"Raymond Kurzweil writes about the point of “Singularity”, when humans and robots become one. Someone's going to be at the center of that. Some company is going to come in and really bring that to fruition. There has to be someone that's sitting in the middle connecting all the dots. That's where I see our platform."

Somebody's got to do it. Technology augmented human life, anybody?

The Crown Jewel

“Every man's memory is his private literature.” - Aldous Huxley.

'Tis the season for Black Friday doorbuster sales with e-commerce companies bombarding you with banner advertisements featuring products you've recently searched for. Deep pocketed behemoths such as Walmart, Amazon and Target utilize predatory pricing with eye-popping deals in hand-to-hand retail combat. This is not the era for upstarts. It's just the opposite. An unanticipated dividend for consumers is that products or services may be had for a song. I recently gifted myself Apple News+, the magazine distribution app, and have been transformed into a news junkie of late. A great stocking stuffer. Much like on-demand streaming for cord cutters, you receive sequential print releases, or you can binge read your favorite periodicals. Some newspapers are included, too.

I'm always looking to make a quick buck in the stock market. It's difficult to do on a consistent basis, but I still scan the headlines on Apple News+ looking for articles that may enhance my bottom line. An article that recently caught my eye is from SyFyWire, "Tangible Holograms Go Beyond Anything Star Wars Ever Dreamed Of", by Elizabeth Rayne. The report begins describing a scene from Star Wars - Phantom Menace , "When R2D2 acts like a futuristic answering machine and beams a hologram of Leia pleading for help.". Although the movie was a disaster, the special effects were not. The hologram communications were a show stopper. Like many science fiction technologies in the movies, it can take years to become adopted for everyday use. A prime example is Uber.

The impetus for the formation of Uber was founder Travis Kalanick watching a James Bond movie in the early 2000's or thereabouts. During a getaway scene, 007 had a GPS enabled cellphone that allows him to escape his adversaries. In reality, there was no such thing as a smartphone or GPS at that time. Kalanick had the foresight to let the technology catch up with the movie magic. Just a pipe dream at the onset. It's the same thing with Elon Musk and vertical landings of SpaceX rockets. The Apollo rockets couldn't do vertical touchdowns because the gyroscopes, semiconductors, software and imaging systems weren't advanced enough. Almost every SciFi film in the 50's and 60's had reusable rockets. Remember Fireball xL5? Musk just waited and voilà, the future is now.

My impression is that holograms are just like television in the late 1920's - a technology in its infancy, but will eventually become mainstream. According to the SyFyWire piece, a prototype hologram projector has been developed with speech and tactile effects, making the 3D images seem closer to reality. I'd call that first mover advantage, but we've got a long way to go. In a decade, this technology will be the hottest ticket in town. From bit player to bankable star. It's an area of scientific expertise I am going to monitor going forward.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere with the Silicon Valley conglomerates commanding the lion's share of the market. They claim their monopolies are for "the greater good". That remains to be seen. But the easy money has been made in the Googles and the Facebooks. One technology segment I like is Augmented Reality. The 2002 movie Minority Report features Augmented Reality in the form of a hologram. Although the film is set in 2054, some of the tactics and technologies the PreCrime police utilize in the film will become mainstream in just a decade from now. Wall Street has taken notice and bets have been placed. There are a few pure plays that trade, primarily headset and laser companies, but most of the action is taking place with the venture capitalists. As a retail investor, you're out of luck if you want to get in on the ground floor.

I'd like to hit it big, but investing in individual stocks can be a cautionary tale. I learned the hard way. You see commercials from the discount brokers where a trader has a Eureka moment huddled over a stock chart in the middle of the night. That's not the way the smart money bets these days. They buy S&P 500 index funds. It's too difficult to beat the market. However, that doesn't stop me from looking for patterns in technology. What young company is the odds on favorite to become mainstream? The ninety-nine thousand dollar question. That's when you make all the money, investing in the Microsoft IPO, or, Apple after the introduction of the iPod. You need a disruptive product that's adopted by the masses in order to make a killing.

Luck Be A Lady

The Good Liar is touted as a sophisticated scam caper, but comes off more like a rallying cry for the "Me Too Movement". Originally, I was drawn to the movie for its star power with Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen cast as the principal players. They pull off command performances in a cat and mouse confidence game, squaring off in a battle of wits. Just when you think you've figured out the plot, the tables get turned. Throughout the film, you don't know who's blowing smoke - who's the mastermind and who's the dupe. That said, it's a dark tale and although the ending is unexpected, the story left me cold. I can see why many critics are lukewarm towards it. The Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes was much more favorable, and I can see that, too. It's a story that needs to be told. Nevertheless, it doesn't stack up very well with previous bunko artists on the silver screen.

If you're of a certain age, 1973's The Sting is probably the most noteworthy flimflam film. It starts Paul Newman and Robert Redford at the height of their popularity and won Best Picture that year beating out American Graffiti and The Exorcist. I can still remember the line in the movie, "You don't know shit from Shinola.". It took the nation by storm being nominated for 10 Academy Awards. Adjusted for inflation, box office sales make it one of the highest-grossing films in United States history. $800 million in today's dollars. I watched it more than once and that's the highest compliment I can give to any movie. It left a lasting impression on me and my contemporaries. Just as much as any early Jack Nicholson showcase such as The Last Detail or Five Easy Pieces. However, it's not my favorite con artist movie.

1990's The Grifters is by far my preferred motion picture production highlighting the big bilk. It doesn't have the cultural impact that The Sting did, but it left a big impression on me. Most notably because the screenwriter, Donald E. Westlake, and Jim Thompson, who wrote the novel the movie is based on, were influential in my writing. Jim Thompson "The Dimestore Dostoevsky", experienced a big revival 30 years ago. His most famous work is The Killer Inside Me. I devoured his books, including 1963's The Grifters. Both the movie and the book begin with a bang - Roy Dillon, small time confidence man gets mortally wounded when he takes a blow to the gut by a disgruntled mark wielding a baseball bat. You have an instant time-lock. Only 24 hours to tell the story. There's no Hollywood ending, but that's Jim Thompson's style. He always goes for broke. Thompson died in obscurity, but lives on in cult status.

Unlike Jim Thompson, you could fill a book about the accolades Donald E. Westlake received during his illustrious career. Three time Edgar Award winner, he primarily wrote comic capers under his real name. However, under the pseudonym of Richard Stark, he penned a series of pulp novels with the infamous protagonist Parker. I read every book in the series published during the 1960's. Many movies were made from the Parker stories with the most renown being 1967's Point Blank starring Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson. The Split with Jim Brown and The Outfit with Robert Duvall are also lesser known celluloid adaptions. Taut, well crafted stories that come right to the point. They wouldn't fly in today's Hollywood, but you can occasionally catch them on Turner Classic Movies. Nothing like a plot.

But back to The Good Liar. One thing that drew me to the movie was the age of the lead characters. Helen Mirren plays Betty McLeish, a 78 year old widow. Most women in their 60's would die to look like Helen Mirren. She's an outlier, or had a lot of work done, but maybe it's just genetics. Whatever she's got, they should bottle it and sell it. Would make a fortune. Ian McKellen stars as Roy Courtnay, a weathered octogenarian scam artist. They appeared to have good chemistry as the story unfolds. I wanted to discover what life may be like for me in 20 years where relationships are concerned. They say you make it past 65 and you're good for another two decades. As the plot progressed, it moved away from potential intimacy, to a caper, which is probably a no brainer. Come 2040, I'll have to find out myself what it's like being in the twilight of my life.

In any event, without giving away the ending, it didn't work out too well for Roy. Didn't work out too well for The Good Liar, either. It's too convoluted and has been a disappointment at the box office. There are many con artist movies, and if you want to see an excellent one in the modern vein, I'd suggest Matchstick Men, Catch Me If You Can, or any of the David Mamet productions such as House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner. However, for a payback film in the "Me Too" era, The Good Liar may be exactly what you're looking for.

The Wrecking Crew

The overarching themes for this blog concern transitions. The first is my passage from mid-life to old age. Secondly is our societal metamorphosis from an analog era to the digital century. Sometimes I talk about "being in the future", but that's from a reference point going back to the 1950's. The Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury future is here. At least from my vantage point. I read all the comic books and saw all the SciFi movies. Read some of the speculative fiction, too. Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek gave us The Communicator and Tricorder. We use them every day. Warp Speed and The Transporter Beam are going to get here sooner than you think. As advanced as today's science is, we're still a technology backwater.

Google, a member of the digital cabal reared its ugly head this week in a variety of ways. The cabal consists of the usual suspects, household names that make our lives easier: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and the aforementioned Google. They have a chokehold on our individual "private" data. But the company that made the big headlines this past week is Google. Full disclosure, I utilize Google's cash cow, the search engine, plus Google's Chrome browser, and I write these posts with Google's Blogger. Life wouldn't be the same without them. It's as if I have Stockholm syndrome, which causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors during captivity.

The first article that came to my attention is from Forbes which stated: "Google secretly tests medical records search tool on nation's largest nonprofit health system.". This is Project Nightingale, and the name makes it sound altruistic, with an homage to Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. What Project Nightingale really does is collect data on patients and feeds it into an Artificial Intelligence machine. According to The Wall Street Journal, The data includes: name, date of birth, address, family members, allergies, immunizations, and the rest of your history of medical records including medications and medical conditions. This is exactly what you don't want the insurance companies to have on you.

Although it does have some benefits, such as suggesting treatment plans, it could give insurers carte blanche on what they deem as appropriate care. Or even worse, what they don't deem as appropriate care. You couple this with Google's recent acquisition of FitBit, insurance companies will have you tethered to a treadmill. Exercise is a good thing. But not when it's being dictated like in the "Nanny" state. A Google tango with the insurance companies would give them too much information. You'd be forced to knuckle under. They'd tell you to put that in your pipe and smoke it. The Brave New World.

Two days after the Project Nightingale enlightenment, The Wall Street Journal published an additional article stating Google would continue its expansion strategy by offering checking accounts:

"The project, code-named Cache, is expected to launch next year with accounts run by Citigroup Inc. and a credit union at Stanford University, a tiny lender in Google's backyard."

If you opt for this service, Google will have access to all sorts of financial information that was previously privy to only your bank. Direct deposits, bill payments, and whatever else you do with your checking account. You can see where I'm going with this. It's like a scorched earth policy, but Google is not alone. Most of the members of the digital cabal with the exception of Netflix, have aspirations to extend their tentacles into the health care and financial industries. Apple recently launched a credit card, Facebook is experimenting with digital currency, and Amazon is everywhere. It's industrial warfare with high barriers to entry. They fight tooth and nail. These technology behemoths became renown for building a better mousetrap, and flourished with creative destruction. Now they're so big, smaller companies can only hope to be bought out instead of unseat the incumbents.

I discovered this the hard way. Seven years ago I bought shares of stock in many small upstarts that appeared to have forward thinking technology to combat the more established Silicon Valley companies. Storage, data bases, programmatic advertising, you name it, I was looking for that 10 bagger. I did have some winners, but for the most part, was sold a bill of goods. The digital cabal had gone unchecked by the feds for too long, and remains so to this day. They have too much power and lord it over you. Facebook is like one big infomercial. Google likes to make you think they're an ideological crusader, but they're just as bad as AT&T or Standard Oil 100 years ago. We need a trust buster.

Currently, it's not the Federal Government that's going after Google, but the States' Attorney Generals. Forty-eight states along with Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico are investigating Google for antitrust violations in their advertising business. This is purportedly expanding into search and the Android operating system. This is a double-edged sword because of the China impact. Although it would be beneficial for companies in the digital cabal to pay their fair share of taxes, and have less of a stranglehold on their dominance domestically, it may put them behind the eight-ball in Artificial Intelligence. As I've stated in earlier posts, the more data you have, the better the A.I.. We're currently running neck and neck with China for dominance in A.I.. The country with the superior technology will benefit economically as well as militarily. They seem to go hand in hand. In other words, it's good for America. Whoever dismantles the digital cabal will need to do so with the United States in mind.

The Social Network

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Hey, Big Spender: Part 2

Spoiler Alert: Don't Read If You Don't Want To Know.

Terminator: Dark Fate had a lackluster performance at the box office opening weekend. Produced for approximately $200 million, it grossed $123 million worldwide in its first few days of distribution. $29 million came from the United States and Canada. They got my ten bucks. Should have saved my money. Many reviewers reported it was the best Terminator movie since T2: Judgement Day, and that may be true, but it still wasn't a very good movie. Although full of eye candy, and it did pull some of the loose ends together from the previous Terminator narratives, it left me flat. It was like watching The Godfather Part 3 after two outstanding prequels. Wasn't a bad popcorn movie, and it was a decent time filler on a cold November afternoon, but I expected more. Perhaps I've seen too many SciFi movies. They're like The Westerns of 50 years ago. Too much of a good thing.

Although the film started out strong, it lost me early on. In one of the first action scenes, Sarah Connor saves protagonist Dani Ramos and her guard Grace (an augmented human), from a REV-9 search and destroy cyborg. Once the lead actors are safe for a split second, Sarah Connor says "I'll be back", with a wink and a nod to the classic tagline from the original movie. It was too corny and left me cold. The pioneering Terminator and T2:Judgement Day are taut, SciFi noir thrillers. The newest installation in the franchise is a predictable action film.

I would be remiss if I failed to discuss the Governator. The Arnold Schwarzenegger T-800 Terminator role really mellowed out, which was another turnoff. The android developed a conscious after his mission to murder John Conner was complete. It seemed like he was acting for Pumping Iron instead of Conan The Barbarian. Schwarzenegger received second billing to Linda Hamilton, and that in itself is a shame, taking nothing away from Ms. Hamilton's acting chops. Schwarzenegger made the franchise, and was one of the biggest box office attractions in the 1980's and 1990's. He deserves better.

There are some good aspects to the production. Most notably, strong female leads which should be positive role models for teenage girls. Linda Hamilton, Mackenzie Davis and Natalia Reyes, were all armed to the teeth and more than proficient in martial arts. Especially Mackenzie Davis as Grace. I'd like to know what kind of firmware she was using. I need a little help in the Dojo. All three actresses exhibited good character development, but maybe to a fault. It seemed like a cookie cutter script.

The story is set in contemporary times, but moves around with flash-forwards and flashbacks going twenty-five years either way. When the movie jumps into the future, we're told a military neural network gone rogue is on a mission to wipe out humanity. In reality, if this would come to fruition, that would happen in my lifetime if I live into my 80's. I just don't envision that. I'm not wary of the United States armed forces, it's the conglomerates in Silicon Valley that concern me. I keep driving home this idea. It haunts me. In Fahrenheit 451 the authorities burned books and made reading illegal. In contemporary times, disenfranchised youth and a lot of adults opt out of reading anything larger than a Tweet. 280 characters. Alternative facts and fake news. In an information rich world, this seems counter-intuitive, but it is what it is. Graffiti abounds. The handwriting is literally on the wall.

Hey, Big Spender

In 1981 director John Waters released Polyester to much more favorable critical reviews than his previous productions. This is the movie that catapulted Waters to mainstream acceptance after a string of campy films know as the "Trash Trilogy" which included: Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living. To me what sets Polyester apart from many movies of that era is the gimmick coined 'Odorama' where theater goers were given a 'Scratch and Sniff' card with a series of numbers printed on the card. When a digit was flashed on the movie screen, you were instructed to scratch the corresponding number and voilà, you'd be able to smell what was going on in the production. Or this was what was supposed to happen. In any event, it wasn't a very sophisticated plunge into olfaction.

What is a futuristic push into olfaction is brought to us by Google. According to Wired magazine, "Google researchers are training neural networks with new techniques to predict how a molecule smells based on its chemical structure.". Although in its infancy, machine learning algos in what are referred to as 'graph neural networks' will enable the robots to have a sense of smell. With the rapid advancement of A.I., this could come quicker than you'd think. It's November 2019, the same year and month the neo-noir, sci-fi thriller Blade Runner takes place. I'm not going to go deep into the movie, but back in 1982 when Ridley Scott directed it, the thought of bioengineered beings known as 'Replicants' seemed like a far fetched idea. Now I wonder.

Another film from the same genre and era is 1984's Terminator which needs no introduction. This weekend Terminator: Dark Fate opens at the box office, and from everything I've read, it's much better than most of the other Terminator productions. Terminator 2:Judgement Day was a good movie, but you can keep the rest of them: Rise of the Machines, Salvation and Genesis. I am trying to keep an open mind about the new release because I am planning on seeing it on Tuesday when Regal Entertainment has their half priced popcorn promo. Don't want to get too down on it before I see it, or, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some movies are designed to be seen in the theater, and this is one of them. I am looking forward to it.

A movie I am anxiously anticipating is Martin Scorsese's The Irishman. I have been a big fan of Scorsese since Mean Streets which I saw on HBO in the mid 1970's. I just really liked it. He wasn't a household name then, and I didn't know a lot about directors in those days. Unless you were John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock, you went unnoticed to teenagers 45 years ago. Things are different today. Teenagers are more informed and media savvy. They know all about creative content and the metadata that accompanies it. I enjoy Scorsese stories so much, I just signed up for Netflix so I can watch The Irishman when it begins streaming on November 27th. Would have preferred to see it in a theater, but the closest screening is 40 miles away. In an era of conspicuous consumption, I have to budget myself, and that includes a subscription to Netflix. I was a customer of the service two years ago, but cancelled because I wasn't utilizing it enough. Especially during baseball season. I am going to give it a second chance.

According to Ad Week, about 25% of U.S. households will completely cut the cable cord by 2022. If you include the cord-nevers (people that have never paid for cable or satellite service), the number of households that forego traditional PayTV is even higher. I joined the streaming revolution and haven't looked back. I save close to $1,000 a year by cutting the cord, and that includes subscriptions to Netflix, HBO, MLB.TV and a basic television package through Spectrum TV Choice. That's a big savings for me and I'm still overwhelmed by all the viewing options. There's only 24 hours in a day and you can only watch so much television. Plus, if the impeachment hearings come to fruition, all eyes will be on the news channels such as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. The nation will be locked in on their news channel of choice. It's like Watergate. What a freak show. What's old is new again.

Little Man With A Gun In His Hand

Ithaca Confidential:

I enjoy reading our local weekly The Ithaca Times, and increasingly rely on it as our daily newspaper The Ithaca Journal becomes less relevant in scope and size. If it wasn't for the obituaries, I would have little interest in "The Journal". Plus, Internet only Ithaca Voice is also jockeying for position in breaking news. The Ithaca Times publishes their annual "Best of Ithaca" survey, and this year included a category of 'Best Political Activist' which went to The Grady family. A great way to perpetuate the Ithaca stereotype when we are growing as a small city. This is a few weeks before Clare Grady, member of The Kings Bay Plowshares 7, was found guilty of conspiracy, depredation of government and navel property, and trespassing, according to many regional media outlets.

In English, Ms. Grady and her cohorts broke into a nuclear submarine facility and vandalized military property. They could do up to twenty years in prison. Orange is the new black. Full disclosure, I went to high school with members of the Grady Family, and they are nice people. My political leanings are also left of center, although not to the extreme where the majority of Ithacans seem to reside. Do you remember the protesters at Hillary Clinton's fundraiser before the 2016 presidential election? She wasn't a socialist or radical enough for the town proper. That's Ithaca for you. We could have had a woman president, but Ithaca wanted the Green Party or some crazed socialist from Vermont. Concentrating too much on identity politics is a great way to lose an election.

But back to Clare Grady. In my opinion, she's fighting a war that's been over for a long time. She reminds me of Hirodo Onoda, the last World War II Japanese soldier to surrender back in 1974. He crawled out of the Philippine jungle thirty years after the war ended. I just don't believe that The Pentagon is our enemy. Maybe it was in the Vietnam era. That was eons ago. The madman in the White House and the Ayn Rand devotees in Silicon Valley are what I'm worried about. We all know that nuclear waste cannot be disposed of. I understand her concern. I also don't believe it's in our best interests to have inferior military power. If she lived in Russia, she'd be in a Gulag by now. It's a shame that all the time and energy Clare expended protesting military installments wasn't channeled to the current war. The war against a fascist at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

"Get out of my life. Don't come back." from The Rolling Stones "Respectable".

Tompkins County has long been associated with a hippie vibe. Perhaps because it's fondly referred to as the Humboldt County of the East Coast. Something about the climate and soil conditions. However, I digress. Ithaca is experiencing rapid technological and social change like the rest of the country, and the positive aspect about this is we seem to be a benefactor. Upstate is rotting, but our little town cracked the code in economic development. Ithaca College and Cornell can be thanked for this. Boutique biotechnology and software firms are flourishing. If you go to Elmira or Binghamton, all you get is decay. This may be a temporary folly, but it will take more than a concerted effort to get the Southern Tier back on its feet. I am happy to be living in Ithaca, and I am also happy to have Svante Myrick leading us to new horizons.

This is not to say I agree with everything Mayor Myrick is proposing. I vehemently disagree with him about his plan for public injection sites if it ever comes to fruition. If implemented, you'd have every junkie from Syracuse to Sayre moving here. The heroin problem is bad enough as it is. Besides, what hophead in their right mind would give that kind of personal information to the police. The addict would leave a trail for the heat right back to the dealer, and the dope fiend's life would be shortened after a quick hotshot. I don't care what they're doing in Amsterdam. It's a bad idea. Mother Teresa had her place in this world. I just don't believe it's Ithaca's duty to save everybody. You play, you pay. It's a minor point, but one I feel strongly about. "The Needle And The Damage Done" was written in the 1970's. Let's get on the program here. If this plan goes through, would I vote for Mr. Myrick again? Absolutely.

Another area that I really enjoy about Ithaca is the terrestrial radio stations. There's really no such thing as terrestrial radio anymore since most stations stream their content, but I'm old fashioned and use an antenna. Especially when I'm driving. I want to give kudos to WVBR for the recent format change from Classic Rock to Alternative. I can finally listen to something besides WICB without going crazy. Just makes the town that much stronger in the national music scene. I know it must have been difficult for WVBR to give up the ghost, but they were hopelessly outdated until the transition. You can still get your fill of the oldies on 'Rockin' Remnants' on Saturday nights, but the old format had to go in order to remain relevant. I am curious to know if their ratings have increased. As an Ithaca College grad, I am sad to report that I listen to WVBR now as my station of choice. The WICB DJ's play too much modern synth pop. Then again, it depends on who your DJ is.

If you are a religious person, I'd suggest to light a candle for Clare Grady. She's going to need it. We could have used her enthusiasm rallying against the Commander and Chief in the Oval Office. Instead, she's going to be a martyr. As far as Mr. Myrick is concerned, let's hope he can get the roads paved. He's got my vote.

2,000 Light Years From Home

Except for the lack of flying cars, it seems as if I've been living in a science fiction novel from time immemorial. In reality, it's only been about twenty years since the dawn of the digital age. Right about the turn of the century when the Internet went mainstream. The new showstopper is brought to you by CLEAR, a biometric screening company. Simply stated, you go to a CLEAR kiosk at participating airports or sports stadiums, scan your iris or fingerprint, and you're good to go without the hassles of long check-in lines by the TSA or security guards. The fast track. No tickets. No boarding passes. There's a registration process beforehand, and you have to relinquish a lot of personal information, but after the vetting, it's convenient and a time saver. Great for frequent flyers.

It's the type of technology only a Martian could engineer. Good old American ingenuity. CLEAR recently introduced an age verification and biometric payments service. Although the New York based company considers itself a Secure Identity Platform, this could be a big deal if the technology holds up, they don't experience a data breach and consumers are comfortable enough with the service to enable mass deployment and adaptation. CLEAR calls itself the ATM of identity. They've been around since 2003, but went under six years later. In 2010 they were back in business with fresh funding. Perhaps their time is now. I'd prefer to give these corporations as little amount of information about myself as possible, but that ship has sailed. In order to function in the modern world, your private life is now your public persona. In the Vietnam War era we had mission creep, now it's mission creepy.

Roughly 130 years ago, we went through another era of rapid technological advancement with the introduction of electricity to the masses. Hardwired human behavior, such as waking at dawn and going to bed at sunset were the norms of the old school. Then the national deployment of the incandescent light bulb changed everything. Inner cities became illuminated in a five year span. The Current War: Director's Cut, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison, Nicholas Hoult as Nikola Tesla, and Michael Shannon as George Westinghouse, documents the race to electrify and illuminate the United States from 1880-1893. Solid performances by the principal players abound.

Inspired by true events, it's received lukewarm reviews from the critics, and just so so applause from audience feedback, especially millennials because of Tesla's minor role. He's reached cult status in some circles. Ask anyone that works for Elon Musk. Although the story has faults, I liked it. It's not a blockbuster and the screenwriter utilized his literary licence by downplaying Tesla, but I learned something and was entertained. My big knock on the film was that the editing was a bit too fast for me. The story moved quickly to a fault. The Current War runs 145 minutes, and if they would have spent an additional ten minutes beefing up some scenes, it would have been a better product. Originally slated to be released in 2017 to much fanfare, it was delayed because it was produced by Harvey Weinstein who needs no introduction.

"It's a dirty story of a dirty man, and his clinging wife doesn't understand."

I'm not going to go into Weinstein's background, he's all over the news, but despite his fall from grace, he knows how to make a movie. That said, the casting couch didn't work out too well for him, and he may do hard time for sexual assaults. To the best of my knowledge, Weinstein is no longer associated with the movie. It's not my job to be judge, jury and executioner, so I am going to let the courts make their decisions. However, the former founder of The Weinstein Company went bankrupt, morally and maybe otherwise. That I understand. What I can't fathom is why financier Ken Fisher is being crucified in the court of public opinion for a sexually charged statement he made. Granted, he uttered a crude and sexist joke about the sales process, but he didn't do anything morally reprehensible. Let me be more clear.

During a public presentation, Fisher made a stupid statement that a sales pitch is akin to "getting in a girls pants". Or something to that effect. I just don't know because I have examined a triad of credible media sources: CNBC, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. All three can't get their stories straight about what Mr. Fisher actually said when he made the guffaw. Perhaps it depends on where Fisher Investments spends their advertising dollars. I do my best to parse out 'Fake News'. It would deeply trouble me if the most trusted content sources turned into scandal sheets.

The Gray Lady came down hard on Mr. Fisher. I expect more from The New York Times, especially when they appear to have taken the entire episode out of context. Sure, at 67 years old Fisher should have known better, but a simple retraction and apology would suffice. Not losing billions of dollars in assets under management for Fisher Investments. That's not chump change. I can appreciate political correctness, and most of the time it's a good thing, but sometimes it goes too far. We've come a long way as a country, both socially and technologically. Computational rigor enables companies such as CLEAR to pave the way for economic dominance for years to come. Nevertheless, we're taking steps backwards when the politically correct extremists limit our constitutional right of free speech. This weekend, Mr. Fisher made a public apology in writing that's posted on the Internet. Let's see how the "Woke" crowd reacts next week.

Didn't Frank and Nancy Sinatra sing "Something Stupid"?

Turn Around, Look at Me

October may be the best month of the year if you're a sports fan. NFL and college football are in full swing. Baseball season winds down with the playoffs and World Series. Hockey and NBA leagues are just getting started. That's my reality TV. No politics, no real housewives, no Kardashians. What more can you ask for? This weekend was bittersweet because although my New York Football Giants were annihilated by the Patriots, The Eagles and Cowboys lost, too. We're still only one game out of first place in the division. Thought the Giants would cover, being sixteen and a half point underdogs, but the Patriots still beat the spread. Shows you how much I know and I've been following the NFL since the Jets demolished the Colts in Super Bowl III.

I read a book, Smart Sports Betting, by Matt Rudinitsky. It's actually more like a booklet at 110 pages. Out of print now, but sells for $27 on Amazon. Probably because it's endorsed by ESPN betting journalist David Purdum. He appears frequently on "Daily Wager", ESPN's sports betting information program. Should have hung onto my copy. One statistic the author highlighted is that even a professional sports bettor will win only 55% of all wagers. That means you're losing 45% of the time. A thin margin and that's if you're a pro. Amateurs don't stand a chance. Plus, it's generally known that 95-99% of sports bettors lose money long-term. What the evangelicals call degenerate gamblers. Yet, the sports wagering industry is as big as it's ever been and getting larger.

The book also emphasized that the sports betting market is very much like the stock market. Below are paraphrased statements by Purdum on the parallels of the two:

• They incorporate everything that is public knowledge.
• They incorporate the thoughts of all professional bettors (the "hot" money, i.e., private knowledge).
• They incorporate the thoughts of many ridiculously complicated algorithms.

I believe the operative phrase from that short list is 'ridiculously complicated algorithms'. However, some algos are good. If it wasn't for the acceleration in the development of gyroscopes, cameras, semiconductors, and algos, we wouldn't have vertical touchdowns for SpaceX rockets. That said, predictive text is one step away from finishing my thoughts. Deep-Data Integration. Digital Performance Marketing. Individualized Performance Advertising. These are the current corporate terms used to describe ad targeting firms such as Criteo. Their computer science is the creepy, but useful cyber stalking technology that enables advertisers to bombard you with personalized advertisements wherever you go on the Internet. Mobile and desktop. They do this by dynamically matching your recent Web browsing history via cookies with predictive software algorithms.

For example, shop for laptops on an e-commerce site like Amazon, and you'll spend the rest of your browsing session looking at banner ads highlighting Amazon's best available computer wherever you go in cyberspace.

There is someone walking behind you
Turn around, look at me
There is someone watching your footsteps
Turn around, look at me

That's from The Vogues back in the 1960's. I always thought it would be a great intro to a stalker movie. However, I digress. The sophisticated technology relies on programmatic buying for relevant consumer options that benefit the advertisers as well. Programmatic advertising is the real time automated bidding, buying and placement of banner ads. Google, Amazon, and Yahoo do this, too. They're all in bed with each other. Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II is famous for saying: "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.".

We're not quite in Fahrenheit 451, or The Handmaid's Tale era yet, but it's creeping up on us. The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence is everywhere including your stock portfolio. It's so pervasive now that saying you have A.I. in your investments is like saying you've got corn in your Cornflakes. Digirarti guru Mark Cuban believes technological advancement in the next ten years will be swifter than the last thirty years with A.I. being one of the main catalysts. An oligopoly has formed in the A.I. arena. The same Internet companies we've come to depend on for our everyday technology needs devour smaller startups. The Google and Amazon of 15 years ago are no longer mom and pop shops. They are the IBM and AT&T of the 1950's, if not the Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1900. The Gilded Age redux. This ain't no picnic.

Pistol Packin' Mama

Warren Buffett once said: "If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.". I walked right into this one, knowingly, but I still walked right into it. A little backdrop first. I've been using Google's Chrome as my browser ever since its introduction. When I fire up the software, I have elected to make AOL.com my splash page. This is because I've had AOL as my primary email provider for almost 25 years. Although I find the AOL portal useful, they tease you with a lot of click bait. Most notably photos of stars of yesteryear, what ever happened to them, what do they look like now. That sort of thing. This past week, I've been carpet-bombed with snapshots of Catherine Bell of JAG fame. Accompanying the pictures are captions insinuating after turning 50, she was either fat, a dog, or had a botched nip and tuck.

I should have used my bullshit detector. Instead, viewed the entire slideshow until I got to the 'Then' and 'Now' images of the actress. I used to watch JAG, so I had an interest in what happened to the cast as the years progressed. That said, just wanted to see what Bell looks like, not the show's minor characters. I have an infatuation for middle aged women, because let's face it, I'm 60. I can fantasize about every twentysomething in lululemon yoga tights, but that's all it is, a fantasy. In my mind, I'm 18. In my body, I'm old. A man must know his limitations. But Catherine Bell looked great. Unfortunately she's a Scientologist. Plus, she got divorced and now has a "partner" who is a party planner. You can figure that one out. Bummer. A total waste of 15 minutes of my life. The big nowhere.

Another fetching fiftysomething is Jennifer Lopez, aka, J.Lo. She's back in the news for two reasons. The first is being selected to headline the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show in Miami along with Shakira. That's a great move by the NFL brain trust. The ongoing themes here are: The browning of America, Miami morphing into The Latin American Capitol of the world, and the public's weariness of aging Rock & Roll bands. I'm a Baby Boomer, but our influence for dictating pop culture has expired (unless your talking about Viagra, Depends or Polident). Time to pass the baton. The two Latino superstars are the intermission entertainment for the biggest television event of the year, so you're appealing to a more broad based and younger demographic. I don't know if Jay-Z had any sway on this move with his new consulting position with the NFL, but it's a step in the right direction.

Secondly, J.Lo's name has been bandied about as a Best Actress candidate for her role in Hustlers. Like Saturday Night Fever, the production is an adaptation of a magazine article. A couple of critics described Hustlers as being like Goodfellas with G-strings, or Goodfellas with strippers. That's apropos, but the story is nowhere near the quality of Martin Scorsese's 1990 crime drama. Two films released this Fall are influenced by Scorsese - Hustlers and Joker. Scorsese has a three and a half hour opus opening in November, The Irishman. It's going to be in limited release, but it will also be available on Netflix. Don't want to be disappointed, but even John Ford got predictable. Let's hope it's a swan song. The Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer gives Hustlers 88% which is a high aggregate grade from the critics. The Audience Score is a mere 66%. I don't know about art but I know what I like. Stick with the audience on this one.

Despite great acting by J.Lo, the film left me flat. The only things that aren't flat in the story are the exotic dancers. To be fair, the first 30 minutes of the movie moved, but then it became dull and predictable. One thing that irked me throughout the production was the lack of Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx accents by the strippers. Granted, the movie takes place in Manhattan, but the girls were from the boroughs. The bridge and tunnel crowd if you will. Cardi B sounded authentic, but the role wasn't too far of a stretch for the Bronx rapper. She's a former stripper herself. The rest of the actresses sounded if they went to charm school.

Not to give too much away, but the entire plot revolves around strippers giving Mickey Finns to the sleazier side of Wall Street, then draining their corporate bank accounts. A payback for the all the worldwide financial damage they did during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Over ten years later, it's still fresh in people's minds. I was expecting a more elaborate scheme from all the hype in the press. But back to J.Lo. She has the chops to pull off the role. The athletic prowess demonstrated during her dance routine, pole and all, couldn't be done by most women 30 years younger. She just looked great and oozed the same sex appeal from one of her earlier movies, Out Of Sight. It's too bad she didn't have a better script with Hustlers, but Out Of Sight is based on an Elmore Leonard novel. You don't get better writing than that. You don't get better acting than Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers.

Baby got back.

All Hat And No Cattle

Sexting is so popular that as far back as 2012, it was included in the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. For the uninitiated, sexting is the exchange of sexually explicit images of oneself between communication devices. This includes smartphones, tablets and computers. Sending, receiving, or both. Take your pick. Much faster than using a Polaroid camera like we did back in the old analog days. Then they came up with revenge porn. Revenge porn comes after the breakup. When a sexting partner decides to distribute photos of your naked body all over the Internet. Payback. Of course this is non-consensual. Don't let your mouth write a check that your ass can't cash.

Now with the advent of Artificial Intelligence, the new thing is called Deepfake. Deepfake superimposes somebody's face on the body of another person. This can be done in a still photograph, or with video. It looks real. Very popular on pornography sites; especially with the face of a popular actress on an adult movie star's body. Like they need it. Most movie stars are under 40. Nevertheless, when the pixel police get their hands on these images, whether it be via sexting, revenge porn or deepfake, they go viral PDQ. All sensitive data can get hacked in an unencrypted communication. Black hats (malicious hackers) smell blood in the water and can do whatever they want with your images, too.

A.I. is everywhere. You just don't notice it creeping up on you. My favorite current crazy algo is the predictive text feature on my iPhone. Android has it, too. Makes writing emails much easier. Another area that A.I. is rapidly enveloping is the stock market. The Economist cover story this past week was: "Masters of the Universe - How Machines Are Taking Over Wall Street". It's a good article. Anyone with skin in the game should read it. However, there is a caveat. The first thing that came to my mind after finishing the story is, "What took them so long to write this?". It just seemed like old hat if you've been following the inner machinations of trading floors.

To be fair, The Economist is a general interest magazine with a business leaning, and the majority of their readership may not be versed in computer science. But Ed Thorp wrote Beat The Market in 1967 which unleashed the Quant Fund revolution. Computerized trading has been around a long time. The A.I. angle in The Economist piece is that humans previously programmed the algos. Now it's the algos programming the algos because they can decipher data patterns we humans can't see. The only thing the traders are doing is feeding data to the machines. From what I could infer, only ten percent of trades are now done by humans. So what are you doing by investing in individual securities?

As the world takes a few more spins, the stock market becomes more efficient. The Economist article emphasizes this. It's the gist of the entire story. Nevertheless, there's still a plethora of information on the Internet, in newspapers, in magazines, and on business networks touting the benefits of seeking alpha. It sells a lot of advertising. Alpha is the out-performance of a portfolio versus the overall market, or, the S&P 500. Just doesn't happen anymore. There's a lot of pump and dump schemes out there. Buyer beware. I don't want to spend too much time on the financial industry, but it's important to me. It's probably important to you, too.

Don't want to fight the technological advances, but do want to question them. How did my Apple and American Online calendars become populated on a Google calendar? Keep getting notices on Gmail for events I was unaware they had access to. Google probably has my permission. I am unaware I gave it. This has got to change. With the evolution of A.I., and the roll-out of 5G communications networks, we're going to see a lot of changes in the next ten years. Although telecommunications carriers are already advertising the speed and lack of latency on 5G smartphones, it's the machines that will benefit the most. The Internet of things. Robots. Autonomous cars. You name it, it's going to improve exponentially. This can only be good for the economy. And good for my portfolio.

HAL 9000 anybody?

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

"Pass the bottle. Wash the pills down, what went wrong?" From "Friday" by Joe Jackson

Joker broke box office records for an October opening. $234 million worldwide. I just contributed my $10 for a senior citizen ticket. Because of the box office bonanza, there's been a hot bed of activity in the press with thorough reviews from just about every major media outlet. That's why you won't get one from me. Nevertheless, I will make a few comments about my perception of the movie. In a nutshell, it's like Taxi Driver with a joy buzzer. And as with so many of Martin Scorsese films, it flows from beginning to end with a dark and gritty backdrop. Instead of Travis Bickle ("Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."), we have Arthur Fleck, aka, Joker, ("Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?").

Throughout the film, I kept wondering when the story takes place. That was a slight annoyance, but didn't take away from a great viewing experience. With a little detective work after the fact, I came up with the year. Primarily because a marquee of a movie theater in one of the scenes advertises, Zorro, The Gay Blade, which was released in 1981. Secondly, Gotham has a garbage strike throughout the entirety of Joker which coincides with a 1981 garbage strike in New York City. There are plenty of twists in the plot, and this is no spoiler alert, but if you're familiar with the Batman narrative, the ending won't surprise you. Even so, that doesn't detract from a great allegory of our times.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as the title character. When I think of Joker, the actor that's etched in my mind is Cesar Romero playing Batman's foil in the campy 1960's television series. Perhaps because I was so young and impressionable when that show aired. However, that all changed after watching Joaquin tackle the role. Not only did he give a great performance, but he carried the movie. Should at least get a swag bag for Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards. Too early to tell who will win, but he's got to be up for an Oscar. When you consider that Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger also played the Cape Crusader's criminal nemesis to much applause, that's a big compliment. Ledger won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Jared Leto was also cast as Joker in 2016's Suicide Squad, but I didn't see that movie. That was a flop.

Before Joker started, there were the usual previews of coming attractions, plus an advertisement for the 40th anniversary screening of Ridley Scott's Alien. Four decades is almost half a century, and I saw the original. Watched all the sequels, too, and some of them were good, but you can't get any better than the first from 1979. Many of the popular feature length serials such as the Terminator series or Star Wars franchise originated in the late 70's and early 80's. I was fortunate to be able to see them in the prime movie goer demographic of 18 to 25 years old. During the past ten years, I've tried to keep up with the prequels and sequels, especially for Star Wars, but they just seem dumb and trite.

I wouldn't necessarily call Judy, the Judy Garland biopic, a comeback role for Renée Zellweger. After all, she never went anywhere, just stopped making movies for awhile. But in today's world, you're either on top, or you're a nobody, so maybe it is her comeback role. Rotten Tomatoes gives Judy an 83% on the Tomatometer and 87% for the Audience Score, so it's a good story. What sets it apart from other productions is the Oscar worthy performance by Zellweger. You'd almost think it was a documentary, not a drama the way she portrayed the Wizard of Oz star. She just looked like her. Tinseltown buzz has Renée as a shoe-in for Best Actress nomination at the 2020 Academy Awards. I agree. I was fixated on Zellweger throughout the entire production. Not because she was beautiful, but because she wasn't.

There are many similarities with Judy and Joker. First, the acting is not only extraordinary, but the eponymous title characters hold the movies together. Secondly, they are both dark stories. I would argue that Judy is much more disturbing than Joker because it's not only about a real person, but a person we looked up to growing up. Judy Garland. She was Lady Gaga before Lady Gaga and Barbara Streisand before Barbara Streisand. Only this time she wasn't in character as Dorothy Gale with her little dog Toto. She was portrayed at the end of her short life - 47 years - as a suicidal, pill popping booze hound. Broke, too. Whenever Dorothy got in trouble, she kicked the heels of her ruby red slippers together and repeated, "There's no place like home". Judy Garland tried that and it was a one way ticket to the boneyard.

Judy and Joker are worth watching. They're both sad and sadistic stories, but that's what good drama is all about. This is a great time of the year to be going to the movies. I just hope I don't end up like Arthur Fleck - a crazed clown in a mental asylum.

For A Few Dollars More

"The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." - from "Dragnet".

I have Amazon's Kindle app on my iPad and desktop computer. Barely ever use it. Prefer the feel of a book in my hands. Hardcovers, Trade Paperbacks, Mass Market Paperbacks; you can throw in newspapers and magazines, too. Although I've embraced the digital world, there are some aspects of the old analog ways which just seem better. However, when vacationing, you need an e-reader or tablet instead of hauling around a small library. Plus, some small publications are only available in digital format. I really tried to like e-books, primarily because they're less expensive, but no go. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. However, for those that travel frequently, the Kindle app, or the Apple Books app is a necessity. But hear me out.

iPhones comprise forty-five percent of all smartphones in the United States. That means domestically about 100 million people are in the Apple ecosystem, and once you're in the grips of Apple's tentacles, it's difficult to escape. You may have to pony up a little more for an Apple product, but they're extremely user-friendly and have a very sticky platform. Like The Hotel California, you can checkout anytime, but you can never leave. Although the iPhone is Apple's main source of revenue, it's slowly transitioning from a hardware company to a service based organization. In the third quarter of 2019, the services sector accounted for 21% of sales. Like a full fledged dreadnought, iPhone is still the main profit driver with 48% of the pie, but services are growing at an impressive 13% clip. Familiar products such as iCloud and Apple music contribute to this segment, but in my opinion, a newcomer at Apple is going to accelerate the services statistic. That upstart is Apple News+.

If you're young, you're probably already familiar with Apple News+. After all, keeping ahead of the technology curve is the cool thing these days. Plus, if you're under 40 years old, there's a slim chance you're reading these missives from an old man. If you're at an advanced age, computer science is a confusing and frightening aspect of today's modern world. Let's face it, we're in a mashup amalgamating the digital and analog worlds. Assimilate or become a has-been like so many shot fighters. I taught Internet surfing for seven years at the local library. The one underlying theme from all my pupils was the belief the computer would explode from clicking the wrong icon. In a way, they were right. Many SNAFU's can happen when just downloading and saving a file if you don't know what you're doing. That said, although it's still remains difficult, the use of computers has gotten easier over the years. Especially with Apple products. So if you're old, read on.

Apple News+ is the $9.99 per month subscription service which turbocharges the Apple News app. If you own an iMac, iPhone, or iPad, you're probably already familiar with Apple News. Along with social media, the news aggregation app makes it easy to be locked into your portable infotainment system all day long. Apple News app is free, plus you can manage your subscriptions with it. Now with Apple News+, you can read over 200 magazines, plus a few newspapers for a mere ten dollars a month. Apple previously commandeered the music and telephone industries. Now they're up to it again with magazine distributions.

Full disclosure, I'm not an Apple fanboy. But, like Amazon and Google, Apple has made life much easier and cost effective for me. Like Amazon and Google, Apple is also compiling a significant personal dossier about yours truly. Credit card number. Location specific information. What books and magazines I read. The music I prefer. Telephone records. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Think of those security questions you need to provide just to open an account. A digital mise en scène of my life. Is this a bad thing? Not really, it's the world we live in. It's tough to embrace at times, but we're here and have been for fifteen years. It's just tough to imagine after being weaned on rotary phones. You better hope nobody goes data mining for your personal information.

But back to Apple News+. I'm having a lovefest with it. The Atlantic, Consumer Reports, Billboard and Time are all on my 'Favorites' feed. That's just a small sampling. I browse hundreds of magazines during down time. All for a sawbuck. When I'm on the go, I read them on my iPhone. But at home, I use the iPad. A much better reading experience, which goes without saying. With 80 million iPad users stateside, Apple News+ should be a big hit. In the 2014 Sci-Fi mystery movie Ex Machina, Stanley Kubrick's film A.I.Artificial Intelligence, and the HBO television series "Westworld", humans are having sex with robots. I hope it doesn't come down to that, but with the speed that technology is advancing, you just never know. It's tricky.

Lost In The Supermarket

This conversation is being recorded for "Quality Assurance".

For most of us that reach our 60's, the elephant in the room isn't the old cliché about an unacknowledged social taboo. It's our excess weight. Although I hit the gym six days a week, and ride the exercise bike for at least thirty minutes each session, I still can't get rid of my gut. Counting calories. That's all I do. Only allowed about 2,000 a day. Sometimes I'll diet for a month and drop five pounds, but with a slight slip-up, I'm back to square one. Pizza. Burgers. Ice cream. It comes on quickly. Not to go existential on you, but it's like The Myth of Sisyphus. As soon as you push the boulder to the top of the hill, it rolls back down to the bottom, and you have to start all over again. It's a vicious circle.

There's many different diets to chose from: South Beach, Keto, Atkins, Weight Watchers, Nutisystem, Paleo, Vegan, and Jenny Craig. And those are just the most renown. Volumetrics, Flexitarian, Engine 2, and Ornish are relatively new and highly regarded. A multi-million dollar industry. I don't follow any of them. Too expensive, or, too complicated. Being Greek, I've somewhat been on the Mediterranean Diet since birth. Primarily sensible eating with the foods I prefer. Always believed it's calories consumed vs. calories burned. You see Hall of Fame athletes hawking nutritional supplements on television. Shannon Sharpe promoting Tru Niagen to increase energy and stamina. Frank "The Big Hurt" Thomas endorses Nugenix which supposedly does the same. Those guys are about ten years younger than me. They can claim whatever they want, but it's not going to do me any good. I got old.

Once you get past 40, metabolism slows, muscle mass decreases 10% per decade, and a sedentary lifestyle becomes common. There are three main body types:

• Mesomorph - Lean and muscular simultaneously.
• Endomorph - Stocky build, Wide body.
• Ectomorph - Long and lean.

The triumvirate of anatomical structure. If you weren't born an Ectomorph, it's very tough to be lean and mean in your later years. Most of us aren't that fortunate. Nevertheless, people of all shapes and sizes still exercise, and as a society, our life expectancy has significantly increased from 35 years ago. In the mid 1980's, you worked, you retired and in a year or two, you died. On average, people now live into their late 70's, early 80's. Granted, that number has dropped somewhat because of the opioid epidemic, but for most of us, lifespan has increased. Some of this actuarial development can be attributed to improved diet and exercise, but a lot of it has to do with advanced medical technology.

I'm a prime example. My primary care physician suspected cancer ten years ago through routine screenings. It was soon confirmed by a specialist after examining the biopsy results. That same cancer diagnosis twenty years prior would have been a death sentence. I elected a robotic operation with the Da Vinci Surgical System. No chemotherapy. They removed an aggressive and enlarged tumor, plus the surrounding lymph nodes. I'm still going strong today. But two of my close friends didn't make it. Esophageal and pancreatic cancers. I owe a lot to MD's. Most notably, my life.

Because of the HITECH Act of 2009, the medical profession has moved quickly into the digital age. This can be exemplified by the numerous Electronic Health Record (EHR) Companies. Epic. All Scripts. GE Healthcare. Cerner. Athenahealth. If you follow the stock market, you're probably familiar with these names. At times they've been good investments. But what about the next generation of EHR technology, the microchip implant? A subdermal RFID semiconductor. Veterinarians incorporate this technology to track lost dogs if a pet owner utilizes Tractive, an injectable GPS device. It would be beneficial for Alzheimer patients, but I am wary of its use on the general public. Frank Sinatra once sang "I've Got You Under My Skin". He had no idea. Get a knee replacement, pacemaker, microchip implant, and now you're a Cyborg.

Continuing with an ongoing theme in this blog are the negative consequences of technology unchained. What if we do reach the point of subdermal implants? If you look globally, some companies are employing it on a small scale to do manual tasks like opening car doors. It may make some things easier, but I am concerned about getting hacked or tracked. This is especially true where your medical information is concerned. Most notably, because medical records are tethered to your Social Security number. Once a rogue agent has your Social Security information, all bets are off. That's the conduit to your entire being. Womb to tomb. It could happen. Walk through a WiFi HotSpot, and a hacker could theoretically load you with a drive-by software infection. Some sort of extortionist malware. Once they receive the pertinent information, they can do some credential harvesting. With a little social engineering, there goes your bank and brokerage accounts.

I prefer to remain a paranoid android.

Nobody But Me

The big conversation starter in the recording industry this week was high-profile producer Mark Ronson came out as a sapiosexual in a television interview. At least that's how social media interpreted it. I've never heard of such a thing. There's an old joke from the 80's about being a quadrasexual. If you lived through that pre HIV era, you probably know what I'm talking about. No need to get into specifics with outdated jokes. But I drew a blank with sapiosexual. Lucky for us, Google's at our fingertips in the ubiquitous smartphone era. According to the dictionary: "A sapiosexual is a person who finds intelligence sexually attractive or arousing.". That's part of the package, but drop dead good looks count for something, too. What ever happened to, "I might like you better if we slept together.".

If you're an older person, you probably aren't familiar with Mark Ronson. Maybe Mick Ronson. He was David Bowie's guitarist and a 'Spider From Mars' on Ziggy Stardust. But Mark Ronson is a heavy hitter. A big influence on the music industry. What makes the Hottentot so hot? Seven Grammy Awards including record of the year, twice. The Amy Winehouse single "Rehab" and Bruno Mars with "Uptown Funk". He's also worked with Lady Gaga, Adele, and Miley Cyrus. His résumé is worth it's weight in gold with a net worth estimated to be $20 million and counting. He can say whatever he wants.

Others that speak their minds and seem to get away with it are the hedge fund managers. Masters of the Universe. They're constantly featured on the business networks. Bloomberg. CNBC. Fox Business. They fill a lot of airtime. I find this outrageous because they tend to underperform the market, yet charge exuberant fees. Once in awhile a guy like George Soros or John Paulson makes a mint on one big bet, but those are few and far between. Plus, after they make their killing, they end up losing most of it with subsequent investments. Confirmation bias up close and personal. Network anchors call them out on the carpet for poor performance, but they keep coming back. There's got to be major financial incentive for the money managers to take that kind of punishment. Buyer beware.

Money is always important, but once you hit retirement, it's really important. I watch CNBC sporadically throughout the day and monitor the balance of my stock portfolio to a fault. Financial Planners will tell you to check the bottom line once a quarter. Fat chance. There's too much riding on it in the high-stakes game of equity investing. With the advent of cellphones, it's difficult to remove yourself from the minute-to-minute gyrations of Wall Street. In the digital age, the real world has integrated with the virtual world, and we're all avatars now. Ghosts in the machine. This is especially true in the financial industry where over 50% of the population have a vested interest. Pensions, IRA's, 401-K's and individual investments.

Television commercials from discount brokers bombard us with incentives to sign up for their services. E-Trade. Charles Schwab. Fidelity. Interactive Brokers. TD Ameritrade. They all do it. I've had a discount brokerage account for three decades now. One of the few smart things I ever did. No regrets. There was no Internet when I started. You executed your trades via the keypad on the telephone. You had to think about it. Now it's a click of the mouse or press a button when you're mobile. This can be dangerous. The thirty second spots touting derivative trading perplex me. Commercials from the discount firms seem to advertise the same theme - trade options, it's child's play. This couldn't be further from the truth with 85% of options contracts becoming worthless. But usually in the ads you have some smug corporate denizen bragging about how it's a piece of cake and how he made a fortune. No fuss. No muss. It's not that easy. Although the discount brokerage companies are on the up-and-up, you still have to be careful. Don't let them sweet-talk you.

But getting back to Mark Ronson, he eventually walked back the sapiosexual statement. Said it was taken out of context after the negative spin cycle in the press and on social media. What else could he do? If you watched the interview, it was no big deal, and he didn't go hog wild with the sapiosexual comment. Just said he could identify with it. He won the Oscar this year for Best Original Song for "Shallow," in the latest remake of A Star Is Born. He's got clout, is probably left leaning, and trolls still crucified him. What the world needs now is a new Frank Sinatra.

Love And Rockets

"Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo. Now don't tell me I've nothin' to do." From "Counting Flowers" by The Statler Brothers

Besides football, one of the best things about the Fall is that Hollywood begins to release their Oscar worthy, adult movies. Not Adult Films, you can get those 24/7 on Pornhub, but productions geared towards people over 25 years old. More story-line. Less body-count. I have nothing against the Summer Blockbuster season, but I've had about enough of the Marvel characters: Spider-Man, Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Wolverine. And the list goes on and on. DC Comics, too, except of course for Joker which comes out next week. But that has a plot. The last time I enjoyed a superhero movie was Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy starring Christian Bale. All three were great. It's been said that the Caped Crusader triad is to the millennials what The Godfather movies are to the Baby Boomers. You can't do better than that.

Bela Lugosi's Dead

I usually attend Tuesday matinees at Regal Cinemas with the ongoing half-price popcorn promo. Kick in the Senior Citizen discount, and you've got a bargain. Enjoy the shared experience of seeing a movie in the theater, plus, most films are supposed to be seen on the silver screen with surround sound. It doesn't matter how big your flat panel TV is, or how crisp and rich the fidelity is with your home audio system, the best way to watch a movie is in the theater. At home, my premium streaming subscription is limited to one movie channel, HBO, and that's primarily for Bill Maher. Most of the films broadcast on HBO or Showtime or Cinemax or Netflix don't interest me because I've already seen the ones I want to watch at the cinema. Sure, all those networks have some interesting original programming, but I can only watch so much scripted television. In addition, it gets expensive with multiple subscriptions. I've seen enough dragons, zombies and vampires.

Ground Control To Major Tom

This week I saw Brad Pitt in Ad Astra. I'd call it science fiction, but it's set in the near future and with the rapid evolution of technology, we'll just call it imminent fiction. If Elon Musk has his way, SpaceX Falcon rockets will be colonizing Mars next year. One reviewer described the movie as an amalgamation of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Although that's an apt description, and Ad Astra is a very good movie, it's not in the same league as its predecessors. Those are all-time classics. Besides the well crafted story, it's Pitt's solid acting that makes Ad Astra a winner. He should be disappointed if he's not nominated for "Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role" at the Academy Awards. The last time Pitt was nominated for Best Actor was in 2011 for Moneyball and he should have won that year.

Helter Skelter

Another recent Brad Pitt role is Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. The Quentin Tarantino flick is much more uplifting than Ad Astra, that is, if a story about the Manson Family can be a mood elevator. But it isn't the usual Tarantino splatterfest. Yes, there's a few violent scenes, but not where you have to look away like you did in Reservoir Dogs. I realize it's all make believe, but gore is gore and sometimes it's hard to take. Tarentino has made a career of it. Pitt plays a down on his luck stunt man, and I'm not sure if he'd be nominated for Best Actor for his excellent performance. Leonardo DiCaprio has the lead and will probably get the nod, but they both ate up a lot of scenery. Pitt will undoubtedly have to settle for the nomination for "Best Actor in a Supporting Role". With both Ad Astra and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, it's a great acting year for Brad Pitt. I hope he's nominated and wins. He's long overdue, but so is Leonardo DiCaprio. Interesting decisions for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences next Oscar season.

I run hot and cold on Tarentino movies. Artistically, most of them are brilliant, but some of them are art for art's sake. Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. That's more than a career. Pulp Fiction could have won Best Picture in 1995, but was edged out by Forrest Gump. That was a good year for films. Quiz Show and The Shawshank Redemption were also nominated. No participation trophies on Oscar night. Something had to give. Although Uma Thurman is one my favorite Gen-X actors, I couldn't get into the Kill Bill series. Still don't understand why it's offensive to refer to Uma as an actress. But Martial Arts movies aren't on my wavelength. That includes Bruce Lee, Sonny Chiba and Chuck Norris. When I saw Inglourious Basterds, I totally lost interest in Tarentino even though it wasn't a bad picture. I just expected more. Too much gratuitous violence. He's won me back with Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. I'll have to stream Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight if I ever go back on Netfix.

One thing I enjoy about Tarentino productions is his obsession with popular music from the 1960's and 1970's. Some of it's kitschy schmaltz, but most of it's just gold old fashioned AM Radio hits. I was weened on that music. Before 1970, there was very little FM Radio. After Album Oriented Rock (AOR) was introduced on underground FM stations, AM fizzled out, but I still listened to it on my transistor radio. Now the AM Band has been hijacked by Alt-right zealots - Deutschlandsender - the Nazi propaganda machine back in World War II. Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood pays homage to one of my favorite bands from the 60's, Paul Revere and the Raiders. They were big time on American Bandstand with hits such as "Kicks", "Hungry", and "Good Thing". I'm not talking about a one hit wonder, but a string of Top 40 chart toppers. They even had their own television show "Where the Action Is". Used to watch it on Saturday afternoons when I was in elementary school. This was pre "Monkees".

Video Killed The Radio Star

If you watch video clips of Paul Revere and the Raiders, they look absolutely comical. Decked out in white tights and pastel colored satin Revolutionary War garb, I tend to look the other way. They probably looked a little ridiculous back in 1966, too, but once you get past the optics, they rock out. Have quite a collection of their singles on my iPhone. They're out of style, but what do I know. I'm sixty years old. Things are tough all over.

Data Is The New Oil

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.” Joseph Heller from Catch-22

Operation Igloo White was an expensive and failed foray into semi-automated combat by The Pentagon in the Vietnam War. Eavesdropping microphones, motion sensors, and olfactory detectors that replicate the sense of smell were all utilized in 1970 to track the Viet Cong with dismal results. Fast forward half a century, and the military is still collecting data, but with much greater proficiency. Moore's Law and the network effect have turbocharged semiconductors and servers, ushering in The Internet of Things. Not only for soldiers, but civilians, too. Amazon Echo, Google Home, learning thermostat Nest (also by Google), and Apple's HomePod which includes Siri are all collecting data on you. Don't sleep on the Ring video doorbell and security cam, either. Forget Big Brother. Worry about the corporations.

A small sample size is Facebook's recent acquisition of Ctrl-labs, a company that utilizes wearables to coordinate brain and motion activity. What is referred to as neural interfacing. The overarching plan is to be able to control a computer with just your thoughts. I understand that we're living in the future, and although this technology is in its infancy, it's also inevitable. What bothers me is the monopolistic structures of the corporations engulfing our lives. The conglomerates claim they're doing this for society's greater good, like they're some altruistic entity. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

For instance, in February of this year, Ctrl-labs raised $28 million from GV (Google's venture capital kitty), and Amazon's Alexa fund. As a stand alone investment, this wouldn't irritate me, but in aggregate, it's as if Cyberdyne Systems from The Terminator has come to play. This is especially true when you consider Mark Zuckerberg's brainchild just scooped up the firm for between $500 million and a billion dollars. A drop in the bucket for Facebook, but Google and Amazon are also in on the action which makes it troublesome. Everybody is in bed with everybody else like a swinging singles orgy. What was once a technology oligopoly has become one big monopoly where finance and computer science from just a few firms are interconnected. Concentric circles with big blurred lines. It's all about the accumulation of wealth and control of our lives.

I've had an iPhone for over 10 years now. When I originally bought my first smartphone, I had a big dilemma. A Blackberry or the iPhone? Remember those days? Research in Motion was the hottest stock in the market, and Blackberry was the de rigueur communications device. They got crushed. I am entrenched in the Apple ecosystem and can't imagine switching to a competitor like Android for any reason. I don't care if Samsung phones cost less or have a technological edge. All I want to do is check my stock portfolio, send and receive emails, utilize text messaging, and once in awhile snap a photo or shoot a video. The GPS with the maps app comes in handy, too.

All my photos, applications, files and music reside on the iPhone. I've got over 500 songs in iTunes which I paid probably close to $600 for. My portable jukebox. Dick Clark said popular music is the soundtrack of your life, and mine sits right in my hip pocket. I'm not migrating to Spotify or Pandora or iHeartRadio. If I decide to fork over money for a music subscription service, it will go to Apple Music. I'm just not ready for that yet. Besides, how many songs do you need when you're buying singles? Although technology is still difficult, it's getting better, especially with iOs. Apple is the closest thing to plug-n-play we've got.

That's not to say Apple doesn't have its vulnerabilities. Just ask Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna, Kaley Cuoco and three hundred other celebrities whose nude photos were released in a data breach when iCloud was hacked a few years ago. Apple is also a big part of the surveillance state along with peers in what Jim Cramer dubbed the FAANG companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google). Even though their artificial intelligence tactics scare me, not only do they enhance my day-to-day life, they've also increased my assets by leading the S&P 500 to all time highs. I don't invest in individual securities, but buy index mutual funds, so I am vicariously investing in them. Maybe a bit hypocritical, but how else are you going to make a buck when savings rates are close to zero? Plus, I've always put money into the market. Even before the digital age.

Let's not forget, with A.I. the more data you have, the better the technology. Machine learning grows exponentially - data begets more data. In the olden days, there was disruptive technology by lean and mean start-ups that would dethrone the king. The smartphone killed the PC, just like the PC killed the mini and mainframe computers. There's still disruptive technology, but it's being acquired en masse by the digerati. Google, Facebook and Amazon. The chance of getting in early on a hot company are few and far between now. That's reserved for the rich. These huge monopolies are only going to become larger and more intrusive in our lives unless the government intervenes. And if the government doesn't, it's game over. That said, the books I ordered from Amazon are arriving this afternoon, and I look forward to doing business with them again.

Party Out Of Bounds

It's Football Sunday in America. At 4 a.m. ESPN and NFL Network analysts begin tweeting injury reports of players throughout the National Football League. FanDuel and DraftKings participants take note and make their wagers. I'm just waiting for the first kickoff. Usually one o'clock sharp, but this week the New York Football Giants don't start until four. The early televised games don't interest me, and the Sunday Night game between the Rams and Browns will be more than enough gridiron action for a day after watching the Giants. I watch a lot of football. September Saturday afternoons are spent watching college rivalries with national playoff considerations. Yesterday, Wisconsin shellacked Michigan. Wasn't even close. So much for the Jim Harbaugh era.

Pigskin weekend began with Friday Night Lights at Ithaca High School. What was once known as Bredbenner Field is now called Bredbenner Field/Joe Moresco Stadium. It's a fitting extension after the career Moresco had as coach of the Little Red from 1956 to 1983, compiling a 141-81-14 record in the Southern Tier Athletic Conference when the league was revered throughout New York State. Battles with Vestal coached by Dick Hoover and Union-Endicott under the leadership of Fran Angeline are lore in the Southern Tier. I suited up for the Little Red in the mid 1970's, the tail end of the Ithaca High powerhouse years. All I can tell you is that it was an honor and privilege to play for Joe Moresco.

By today's standards, Joe would be considered an antiquated pariah, but for the period I played, he was nothing short of spectacular. That's not to say he didn't have his detractors. He was our Vince Lombardi and in a liberal college town, his authoritarian methods didn't sit well with some of the townspeople. Both parents and students alike. However, we're talking football here. When you're young, it's just a game, but as you get older, you realize it's a violent sport. It took me almost 60 years to understand some people don't like football and Lacrosse players because of the violent nature of the sports. I played both. Sometimes you have to pick your poison, especially during those teenage years when hormones run wild. I relished the discipline, and it helped mold me as a person.

What distinguishes football from most other athletic endeavors is its militaristic structure. Essentially, you're given a set of instructions, and you're supposed to execute those assignments for the benefit of the team. No questions asked. It's like a computer program. Garbage in. Garbage Out. Like Mr. Moresco used to tell us, "You can't shine shit.". You took pride in your performance and like a seasoned actor, tried to hit your marks on cue. I took a leap of faith that not only Joe Moresco knew what he was doing, but all of my coaches in all sports I participated in did too. You notice the plural in sports. No specialization 45 years ago. Whether it be football or Lacrosse or Winter track, my coaches were looking out for my better good. Today's youth tends to question everything, and although that can be a great quality, it also has its drawbacks.

Joe ran a tight ship. Because of his emphasis on weight training and aerobic conditioning year round, you could go full-tilt from the first kickoff of the Fall. Ready to do battle. My senior year we were vastly undersized, so we needed every edge we could get. The entire team pumped iron before it became mainstream in high school athletics. We hit the gym for three years just to be prepared for the big stage of the varsity team. Sometimes we'd get 7,000 spectators a game. Moresco said we had a lot of 'moxie'. “It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.” No doubt a football cliché, but apropos for my teammates. We competed mano-a-mano against some of the top ranked teams in the state. Nothing to hang your head about.

I have vague memories of all the X's and O's, or the down and distance of important plays, or even the final scores of that senior year. What I do remember are the friendships I cultivated. I don't know what it is about football. Perhaps because you're putting yourself in harm's way, there's a camaraderie that you don't get in sports like track and field. Even Lacrosse to a lesser extent. Football has the infamous double sessions of training camp with full contact drills. Those I remember. Still sore forty plus years later, but it toughened you up. I keep in contact with some of my teammates and it's like time has never passed. We talk about all the sacrifice and struggle it took the be up to snuff for the Ithaca Little Red. It's been many years since we were dressed in full regalia representing our school. Now we're retiring and are becoming grandparents.

I try to attend an Ithaca High School football game at least once a season. What was once one of the best programs in the state is now a doormat for former equals. We're the team everybody schedules for homecoming because it's an easy win. You can't put the blame on anybody. It's not the coach or the players or the town. It just happened. Times changed. It doesn't make me sad that the program is in such disarray, and has been so for the better part of 25 years. What gets me down is knowing the current football players will never know what it's like to feel the power and the glory of making lifelong friends from a positive shared experience. You're not going to get that strong bond by losing. Nevertheless, I bought my senior citizen ticket Friday night and rooted the team on. They were losing 35 to nothing at halftime. Needless to say I didn't stay for the second half. Joe Moresco is rolling over in his grave. May he rest in peace.