Okay, can you tell I’m super excited about the upcoming Congressional UFO report that’s going to prove Mulder was onto something? The above capture, like the current news cycle, isn’t genuine . . but it’s all Obama’s fault for admitting this UFO business really is a thing! And so I have a deal for any aliens who might be reading this Friday edition. Leave us be and we’ll give you Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Cleveland Cavaliers and anything Jim Belushi ever starred in. And to balance the books, Imma throw in Nancy Pelosi, the Detroit Tigers and the original script from Cop Rock.

Let’s get to Friday . . .

We’re kicking things off with a Cincinnati Special, delivered by our favorite Beach Boy, Frank, who does his thing over at Beach Walk Reflections.

An American Story: When it comes to having his finger on the pulse of a nation, Buddy Carter has achieved a  doctorate level knowledge over the past half century. As a butler on staff at the White House executive residence since the Reagan administration, he has seen it all. I mean that literally. He has suffered Reagan’s corny jokes, he’s served coffee to the Clintons, kept a close eye on W’s pretzel habit and most likely was the treated to Obama’s pipes whenever 44 laid down some Al Green in the hallways.

He was the man with a plan when it came to state dinners, or when a foreign dignitary came calling, or whenever the leader of the free world just needed a moment to vent. He attended the weddings of Chelsea Clinton and Jenna Bush, among many others. He accompanied First Lady Melania Trump to the funeral of former First Lady Barbara Bush in 2018. Such was the bond Buddy fostered with everyone he crossed paths with.

“For 47 years, across 10 administrations, Buddy Carter has been an integral part of the lives of US Presidents, their families and their home, the White House,” said Michael LaRosa, press secretary to First Lady Jill Biden .

Thank you Mr. Carter, from all of us.

Coup Coup For Cocoa Puffs!: What if I told you a former National Security Advisor of the United States advocated a military coup? Well, if he was a democrat, Mitch McConnell and the Gang That Can’t Shoot Straight would demand he be locked up . . immejiately. But seeing as how Michael Flynn is Trump’s errand boy, they’ll probably run him for President in 2024 . . .

Lost Footage from “The Revenant”: Hailey Morinico’s “To Do List” for the Memorial Day weekend . . .

• Grocery shop
• Fire up the grill
• Fend off an Apex predator

About that last item on the checklist . . the 17 year old from Bradbury, California nailed it. More specifically, she nailed a big ass brown bear . . get this . . who was toting her cubs. Which goes against every rule Ranger Smith laid out in his diminutive tome, “Don’t Fuck With Bears”.

However, this particular brown bear mama was going up against a fairly tenacious dog mama, so there was that. And the video serves as the tail of the tape in this knockout upset of the week, as Morinico came to the rescue of her fur children by doing what Leonardo DiCaprio? Couldn’t.

I’m only excited because this shit happened in the eighties: After thirty-five seasons on the shelf, the USFL will make its return next spring. The original version was fairly successful as a spring football league, until they attempted to move to the fall . . which is owned by another well known pigskin property. The USFL will compete with the XFL for viewers, but if the former is half as much fun as it was in its three seasons of play, I’m betting on vintage for the win. Which means they’ll last a season to the XFL’s three weeks . . .

I wasn’t going to include this next story because the look of dejection on this homeless woman’s face in the above video was too sad for words. But you know what? If my Fridays are about mining the gamut, then it really is about the every single thing of a world that makes us rejoice one day, while bringing us to our knees the next.

And what’s more, it’s how I’m signing off on this episode . . .

Officer Conner Hjellming of the La Crosse Police Department was responding to a police call regarding a shoplifting incident at a Walgreen’s store back in December when compassion took the wheel. What he found was a young woman at the breaking point. She wasn’t stealing candy bars or cosmetics, she was stealing a pair of gloves and a hat to keep warm in the sub-freezing temps. So Conner let her have it. The gloves and hat, I mean. While warning her to steer clear of the store from now on, he paid for them. And so Connor’s job description, in which he promises “To Serve and Protect”, well . . mission accomplished.

And if you’re an alien reading this Friday episode, Imma give it to you straight. Don’t let the fact that we’re treating this beautiful place like a cosmic ping pong table fool you. Because inside this seemingly hopeless cause, this lost paradise of dreamers and this playground of schemers and this chain of fools, there is love. There is so much of the stuff that it could fill the oceans and the lakes, and the rivers and the streams and the kitchen sinks of every living soul. That’s 326 million trillion gallons of the stuff, for your information.

And maybe that’s what you’re here for. Maybe you figure we’ve screwed up our chance, so why not take our dibs. I’d like to think you’re so far advanced that conquest doesn’t rate, but who am I to know for certain? And it doesn’t matter anyways, because I’ll take the look on that young woman’s face when she realized that there was someone out there who actually cared enough to make the day she was walking through just a little better. And just so you know?

We have more where that came from.

A Czechoslovakian woman lights a candle at Prague Castle to commemorate the almost 30,000 lives lost to the coronavirus. (Courtesy: The Atlantic)

We dredge too much of our existence in possessive terminology that inevitably collapses into a scrum of agitated verbs. After which we grab a side and hunker down to fight for an idea called ownership. Thing is, for almost fourteen billion years, this cosmic fastball got along just fine without us. So as much as we like to believe we own the joint, the only thing we really own is our ability to find our place inside it.

It’s what I think about when I look at all those candles. Because I can’t dismiss those lights as someone else from somewhere else. What I see is the pain, struggle and the strength to overcome that we all share. Every someone from every someplace . . everywhere.

Let’s get to Friday . . .

Oh! Canada? . . . The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens got their postseason puck on last night, for the first time since . . are you sitting down? The Carter administration. Those dynastic Habs swept the Leafs in ’79 on their way to their fourth Stanley Cup of the Scotty Bowman era. And while Bob Gainey and Guy LaFleur and Ken Dryden ain’t walking through that door, for one night, the Habs awakened the echoes.

The Queen’s Gambit: (Hat tip to the lovely Dale for this one) Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine reached the summit of the chess world back in 2017 when she won the top spot in two disciplines of the game; Rapid, where each player gets 15 minutes to complete their moves and Blitz, where players get 10. She had realized her lifelong dream of becoming a grandmaster at the age of thirty-one.

And then she gave it all away.

Muzychuck ceded her world titles when she decided to boycott the Women’s World Speed Chess Championship that was to be held in Saudi Arabia. At the time, she spoke of how she refused to be treated like a “secondary creature” in a country that is still playing catchup with the rest of the world when it comes to their treatment of women. When given the chance for fame and fortune, she chose her principles instead.

That’s one hell of a checkmate.

The Great White Nope: If you’re searching for the antonym for backbone, look no further than the GOP. Yes, for the second week in a row, the party about nothing has scored a spot in my lineup. You can thank Mitch McConnell for this entry, since he’s the voice that is looking to put the kibosh on a bill that would establish a commission to investigate the events of January 6th. His argument is that investigations are currently ongoing and so the commission’s work would be duplicative. Okay fine, but would he feel the same way if the insurrectionists had looked and voted differently? Just asking . .

This kindness thing really does matter: Imma dish up a before and after pic for this next story, because it goes to show just how far a kindness can travel. And this particular random act of kindness was provided by a man named Ian. He was walking along, minding his own business when he came upon Natalie Fernando attempting to calm her autistic child Rudy, and not having very much luck doing so. Mom and kid love to take walks along the water, but kid ain’t so crazy about the return trip. And on this day, he wasn’t having it, which resulted in a meltdown. Which soon resulted in nasty stares by passersby who haven’t a clue as to what mother and child go through on a daily basis.

Enter the man named Ian, who didn’t hesitate to communicate with Rudy. I mean, the guy really wasn’t sure it was going to work but he knew the try was a damn sight better than simply walking by. So he lay on the ground and Rudy . . he listened. No words needed to be exchanged, because in that moment, kindness was speaking.

The “After” image speaks to what happens when you take a breath and consider what someone else might be going through. Imagine how much good we can create if we stopped thinking about ourselves for a moment. If we stopped feeling inconvenienced by someone who harshes our mellow, and instead considered that maybe they never get to feel that kind of mellow at all.

The best chances involve kindness.

My final story for this Friday episode comes to us courtesy of Eilene at Myricopia, and it  involves geologist David A. Johnston.

Johnston devoted his life to the study of volcanoes, but his legacy goes far beyond that. He believed it was his duty to put himself at risk if it meant protecting the public from natural disasters. It was thanks to the tireless efforts of Johnston and his peers that authorities closed Mount St. Helens to the public ahead of the eruption, saving thousands of lives in the process.

As was one of the lead scientists for the United States Geological Survey monitoring team, he was manning an observation post six miles away from the mouth of Mount St. Helens on the morning of May 18th, 1980 when the volcano erupted. His was the first radio transmission of the eruption. They would be his last words, after which this brilliant mind was stolen away, his body never found.

David never got to tell his grandkids what it was like to be there on that day when Mount St. Helens erupted because he was busy making sure that others would get to tell that story to their grandkids. His bravery is the kind of gift humanity does not deserve, but also must never forget. Because it’s his legacy that feeds our will, to be better and to do better. And forty-one years removed from the day he was lost, his footprints still resound.

He was thirty-years old.

Another week, another episode of the good, the bad and the dyno-might! And if you’re showing up here on the regular, you’ll see where I occasionally go rogue inside this rose garden. And that’s because my weekly episodes ain’t searching for heroes. Nah, this aircraft endeavors to find the best in all of us.

I think we all get it, the fact that Superman ain’t walking through that door. We get every kind of something hitting our grills on a daily basis and somehow we are able to navigate our way home anyway. Because the good stuff compels us to figure out better conclusions, in the same way the not so good stuff does. And in the end, it leaves us with the realization that the sunny side can’t push us to do good things and the dark side can’t bury us. In the end? It’s up to us.

Let’s get to the roster . . . .

An ode to Wee Willie Keeler: Vintage hat tip to the Texas Rangers Joey Gallo, who figured out how to beat the dreaded shift. There’s no need to ban it if you simply play fundamental baseball . . who knew? With MLB players all caught up in launch angles and exit velocities in a feast or famine philosophy, stuff like hitting the other way, bunting and sacrifice flies has gone the way of pepper games. So it was refreshing to see Gallo beat the shift against the Angels recently by laying a bunt down the third base line. He could have walked to first base. For one blissful moment, sanity returned to the MLB.

“19 And Counting” takes on a whole new meaning: I have to ask. Does the Mama Duggar catchphrase about giving birth to a freshman class pertain to her son’s criminal perversity? Was his hard drive a part of God’s plan too? Yes, any chance I get to slam these sanctimonious Baptists, Imma take it. As for Josh, he best hold onto the soap, never fall asleep and take his meals in solitary.

A priceless beef: A grateful shout out to the octogenarian I stepped in front of the other day at the grocery store. In my defense, I wasn’t sure whether he had fallen asleep while standing up, so I walked in front of him to grab my shopping cart. In his defense, I didn’t excuse myself when doing so. But it all turned out fine when he came to and then proceeded to give me shit by shouting “That’s the problem with the younger generation!”. Needless to say, I was flattered. So I said a simple thank you before bidding him adieu.

Same time next week old timer? God, I hope so.

All Creatures Great and Small: This is Clarence, an eleven-year old Saint Bernard who, with some help from his four legged pals, was able to achieve the impossible. They brought Republicans and Democrats together. Yeah, that’s no typo, it actually happened when Congress passed a bipartisan bill that will provide comfort dogs for first responders. Clarence earned his Angel First Class wings a long time ago, having visited Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, the Boston Marathon and the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; providing a moment’s peace for the officers called to the scene of some of the nation’s worst tragedies. As an officer for the Greenfield Massachusetts Police Department, he’ll provide comfort and peace to uniforms and civilians alike. Wherever the need arises, he’ll be there.

And now he brings his friends.

When you wish upon a star: Props to LA for bringing us this story, which will send us off into the weekend with plenty of sunshine for the ride.

How many of us remember what it was like to believe in Santa Claus? It was a magical time inside the myriad confusion, angst and fears we had about the great big world. The idea of a jolly old man and a sleigh pulled by reindeer was our mobile snow globe. Our belief existed within the province of magic and infinite possibilities.

Letizia Gonzalez wants to raise her two little girls to believe in that place. And the want is even stronger after the last year and a half we’ve spent in a purgatory filled with plenty of that confusion, angst and fear. So mama brought her girls together and created a dream for them to hitch their little stars to. She tucked the Christmas wish lists of the twins- Luna and Gianella- into a pair of balloons and then the three of them released them to the skies above.