The "Idle Janie" Journal - Days 21 through 25

Photo credit: David Bryan, Avignon, France October 2017

The “Idle Janie” Journal - Day 21

“Practice Patience, Please”
Dear Professional Member of the Performing Arts Community:
As you know, the federal stimulus money made available to those of your professional trade through the bipartisan 2.2 trillion dollar CARES act passed in March of this year, is set to expire next week. It is with heavy heart that we must inform you that there will most likely be no further economic assistance to help you during this time of unprecedented crisis.
The country as a whole has experienced severe economic hardship as a result of this pandemic, and we know that your trade has been hit in a particularly painful way. However, there is only so much we, your duly elected leaders, can do given the circumstances. Many Americans from many different walks of life are struggling to make ends meet, and we are doing our due diligence to assist the national recovery in every way that we can.
The issue at hand here is that, due to the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case — which finally and fully recognized the personhood of corporations — that we must also recognize these persons during this time of financial turmoil. And, although your membership numbers are impressive (in terms of those out of work seeking assistance), they quite pale in comparison to the vast number of corporations who are also in need of a stimulus bailout.
The federal coffers simply don’t contain enough cash to help ALL Americans right now. We are working on another stimulus package as we speak, and we feel confident that we will at least be able to bail out a high percentage of those corporate persons — who will then surely assist those hard-hit in your industry, through the time-tested trickle-down theory. We recognize that the next few months will be difficult for all of us, but we trust that you will somehow be able to pull yourselves up by the bootstraps, as many of your forebears have in such similar times of crisis. We have full faith that members of the artistic community will display unprecedented ingenuity in response to these times, and that ALL of our lives and livelihoods will ultimately emerge stronger than ever.
In the interim, as the White House administration has so strongly recommended, perhaps it’s time to “find something new,” at least for the time being? We will all get through this together, and America will emerge yet again as the strongest nation in the world. And we most definitely look forward, with bated breath, to the eventual return of the Arts which so selflessly serve our communities across the country with compassion, care, and a level of unprecedented professionalism.
With warmest regards,
The Many Millionaires Who Each Individually Make More Than Most Of You En Masse
P.S. The rent is due next week. And our thoughts and prayers are definitely with you during this trying time.
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Thanks for reading. If you like what you read, and want to support my fledgeling career as a writer and musician, you can drop a few bucks in the virtual tip jar. It all adds up!
Venmo: @David-Bryan10026

💥

Photo credit: David Bryan, Saint-Germain-les-Belles, France May 2018


The “Idle Janie” Journal - Day 22
“The Disastrous Disinformation Campaign”
What a truly terrifying time to be alive!
According to the Washington Post, as of JUNE 1, 2020, President Trump has made 19,127 false or misleading claims in 1226 days. To be sure, WaPo leans to the left. But, to his supporters, I have to ask: do you honestly believe that EVERY SINGLE ONE of those “lies” in question is just the “fake news liberal media” making things up? You don’t think it’s at least . . . possible . . . that just ONE of these . . . MAYBE just one . . . is actually accurate?
If NO, then you have been utterly, completely, and totally brainwashed. And there is literally no hope for you whatsoever. This honestly makes me weep for the future.
If YES, well — don’t you think that ONE might possibly pave the way for at least a fair consideration of some of the other accusations? Which obviously is tantamount to a crack in the dam. In which case I guess it’s almost understandable that your stance is that ole’ adage of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” as it’s gotta be a bit frightening to be standing at the bottom of the basin looking up at the colossal crack which will soon cause that entire dam to crumble. Noah ain’t got nothin’ on this!!!
But crumble that dam will. And crumble that dam must.
TODAY, in the news, 2 brief stories of interest:
1. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has attempted to defame Rep. Ilan Omar — whom the Trump administration has tirelessly attacked for years — retweeting a widely-debunked photo which he claims to be her at an Al-Quaida training camp in Somalia. However, the photo, although a real photo, is verified to have been taken in 1978, three years before she was even born.
2. A post by Donald Trump's official Facebook account purports to show recent violence in the US toward police officers, but is in fact a photo from a protest in Ukraine in 2014. I mean, seriously — look it up.
So, apparently the primary purveyors of the phrase “fake news” are, in fact, publicizing fake news. How does this square with his supporters? When the guy who says “everyone is lying to you,” continually lies to you, are you supposed to just believe him and take him at his word? And how can those of us who actually seek some semblance of truth even dare to dialogue with such disingenuous persons?
Honestly, I know I’m FAR from alone out there. But increasingly every day, I feel more and more like I’m in the movie The Matrix — and that I’m surrounded by a bunch of automatons who will believe anything and everything spoonfed to them — those who til their very dying breath will cling steadfastly, as Al Franken so astutely summed up, to the “lies, and the lying liars who tell them.”
Or, better put, as Morpheus explains to Neo: “The Matrix is a system, Neo, and that system is our enemy. But when you are inside and you look around, what do you see; businessmen, lawyers, teachers, carpenters. The minds of the very people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of the system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”
There are far too many Americans who seem to have “taken the blue pill.” And those pills are now free of charge, widely available, and packaged in simplicity, sexiness, selfishness, and self-centeredness. If you believe “fake news” is really a REAL thing, then it’s incredibly easy to identify with that particular cult of personality, eschewing personal responsibility and accountability to anyone and everyone else. The “road less traveled” is constricting and more concealed. The “easy way out” is widening. And the sheep are being led to slaughter as we speak.
This is all very baaaaaaaaaaad. 😉
P.S. There is a Trump re-election ad that shows fires, looting, and rioting in the streets, with the tag line “you won't be safe in Biden's America.” THIS AD IS LITERALLY SHOWING FOOTAGE FROM TRUMP’S AMERICA.
Seriously, you can’t make this shit up.
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Thanks for reading. If you like what you read, and want to support my fledgeling career as a writer and musician, you can drop a few bucks in the virtual tip jar. It all adds up!
Venmo: @David-Bryan10026

💥

Photo credit: David Bryan, London, England May 2019


The “Idle Janie” Journal - Day 23
“This Ain’t Hollywood, Folks!”
Hands up if you’ve recently seen the 2011 Hollywood blockbuster, “Contagion”!
I gotta say, I love this movie, and admittedly have rewatched it several times during this sheltering-in-place. I love a good apocalyptic scenario, and flicks about global pandemics are perfect fodder for film lovers — especially during an actual outbreak. This particular film does an excellent job of illustrating exactly HOW viruses operate, and how countries should respond, as they team up to try and collectively combat the crisis.
The problem with Americans is that due to decades of being inundated with advertisements, allowing ourselves to become addicted to television, and now with the ever popular pastime of bingeing entire seasons of shows in one week, we have become a nation of nincompoops. An actual “Idiocracy.” Mix that up with a good ADHD cocktail, shaken and stirred with a healthy dose of ME ME ME, and it spells a serious short attention span on a national level.
The earth is about to enter our 8th month of collectively battling this novel virus, and while much of the world has successfully “flattened the curve,” our good old’ go it alone America has — in the words of one foreign journalist — “fattened the curve.” Our increasing isolationism from the rest of the world, compounded by our current administration’s intolerance of anything inconvenient to the economy, is a real recipe for disaster.
According to CNN, "the US reported more COVID-19 cases in the last 2 weeks than it did for all of June.” The problem here is that this virus, for all intents and purposes, moved TOO slowly to capture our attention. With much of our culture having seen the likes of “Contagion,” we were basically brainwashed to believe that IF a pandemic presented itself, it would ravage the country quickly, killing countless friends, families, and neighbors well within just a few weeks. To be sure, the early hotspots of Washington state and New York City showed promise for pretending to be a major motion picture. And the entire country shut down as we prepared to deal with death on an unprecedented scale never before seen in our lifetimes. But thanks to our early actions, which suggested we might be on the right track to keep this virus at bay, we then collectively quit worrying about it altogether. It was “no worse than the seasonal flu,” and therefore not worth the continued economic shut down and shelter-in-place. As it started to get warm, we wanted our waterparks and bars. We needed our haircuts and hotdogs. We demanded indoor dining, and just needed to hit the gym again.
How did it not occur to all of us that the reason WHY we showed such promise at containment was BECAUSE of our early actions? If we had somehow as a country come together and accepted shared humble hardship just a little bit longer, then we would all be heading off on our summer vacations free of worry, with “Wuhan” a distant memory in our minds, with the virus vanquished and vanished.
But a virus isn’t an A-list celebrity. It doesn’t follow a script, there is no rehearsing of lines, no dry run before the cameras start rolling, and no universal release date. There are no pre-production location managers, no talent scouts, and no post-production editing.
And to add to all of this, if we’re comparing this crisis to a movie: THERE WAS NO DIRECTOR. Just a bunch of prop masters, costume creators, makeup artists and set designers sitting around wondering who’s in charge, and a chaotic collection of actors waiting for the head honcho to holler “ACTION!” And for such a big budget film, even a noticeable absence of any kind of catering — there was literally nothing to eat.
Our federal government failed. Miserably. Other countries came to the rescue of their residents, put A REASONABLE AMOUNT of cash in their pockets and pleaded with them to stay home indefinitely until it was safe to come back out. And for the most part, that’s what they did. Now they are opening up again, and free to travel throughout much of the world, while we watch our numbers here increase exponentially, pissed off that our passports are now pointless.
It’s gonna be a long summer, and, well, probably no surprise that there is going to be a sequel. It’s gonna be a blockbuster, I’ll bet!
Sad to say it, but since we’re such a make-believe cult-of-personality obsessed culture, perhaps we would have collectively taken this more seriously if we had lost more Hollywood and TV stars to this virus. Remember how Tom Hanks got COVID early on? What if he had died? Or a handful more of our favorite musicians. Or sports stars and other notable celebrities. Maybe then we’d have taken the seriousness of this to heart.
Oh, and by the way, this virus sure as shit doesn’t care which political party you profess to belong to. It is unfortunately about the only nonpartisan actor in America right now. Vote for the Virus 2020! I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be the boss of us soon, anyway.
The only part of the film analogy that is more fact than fiction for us is the soundtrack. And I think we’ve finally got our theme song set:
REM’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it!”
And you know what? I feel fine.
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Thanks for reading. If you like what you read, and want to support my fledgeling career as a writer and musician, you can drop a few bucks in the virtual tip jar. It all adds up!
Venmo: @David-Bryan10026

💥

Photo credit: David Bryan, La Ciotat, France October 2017


The “Idle Janie” Journal - Day 24
"Denver Bookends, Revisited"
I've been writing and posting here for 23 days straight, save for one sabbath day a couple of weeks back. Took today off to clean and pay bills. But wanted to get something "on the books," so I don't lose momentum with my probably imaginary audience. 🤣 Anyway, maybe I've built up a small following, who knows?
A Facebook friend is currently traveling out west, and i reached out to her with recommendations, which led me to reminisce about a literally life-saving road trip I took 7 years ago. It's rather lengthy, but if you're willing to put in the time, the payoff will hopefully be palpable.
I hope a few of my closer friends who have been following my daily journal, but have never read this short travel memoir, will invest the time and will hopefully enjoy it. I could only conceive of such a piece because of all of you, and your influence on my life.
Anyway, hope you enjoy it!


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Thanks for reading. If you like what you read, and want to support my fledgeling career as a writer and musician, you can drop a few bucks in the virtual tip jar. It all adds up!
Venmo: @David-Bryan10026

💥

Video credit: David Bryan, Montfrin, France October 2017

The “Idle Janie” Journal - Day 25
SABBATH (and cleaning day, continued LOL) - In the meantime, please check out the video above! This was at sunset from a magical AirBnB rooftop in Montfrin, France -- a tiny little village reminiscent of World War I "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron." I've stayed there twice, and would love to go there every year on a writer's retreat!! 

(HOT TIP: if you're on a laptop and go fullscreen for better effect, the video is doing something weird, where it goes "diagonal." You can prevent this simply by moving your mouse while the video is playing. It's only a minute long, so just keep the motion constant!)

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