Hair he is... Mr. America?

Donald Trump has managed to blurt his way to the top of a hoard of candidates vying for the Republican nomination. I like the way he is willing to say what he thinks, including about his competitors. The problem is, he apparently doesn’t actually think very much or very clearly. No "Reagan Rules" for him (never speak ill of fellow Republicans, a rule Ronnie’s handlers never followed).

He inherited wealth, went broke, and was bailed out by his bankers but he struts around like a self-made man. When you owe the banks thousands or even millions, that’s your problem. But when you owe them even more, that’s their problem. He was their problem and they took care of him.

His contribution to America is building casinos, a fancy word for grim warehouses of hopeless obsessives throwing their money away. He has no style or taste yet he claims his name alone is worth $3B and maybe that’s true because America has plenty of vulgarians.

What does it tell you about a man’s ability to (literally) face facts when he so desperately tries to hide his baldness? His “do” is structural: a comb-over-under-around that swirls over his eyes. I say dump the chump.

Fifty Shades of Pale

The bestselling book "Fifty Shades of Grey" has now been followed with a blockbuster movie, at least in its opening weekend. Will voyeuristic soccer moms keep it up or was this a quick "girls night out" fling?

Full disclosure: I have not read 50SoG. I understand that it depicts adults agreeing to "play rough" in sex, using bondage, dominance/submission, and maybe even some pretend or mild sadism/masochism. The keywords here are "adults” and “agreeing" (note that only adults can agree; children need their guardian to agree, legally). Compare this to scandalous dramas in the past, such as "Lolita", brilliant book and movie by geniuses Nabokov and Kubrick, where a young schoolgirl is the object of an old professor's lust. That his lust is inappropriate is integral to the story. (That she proves more, ahem, experienced than him...is twisted for sure.) Or the movie "Manhattan", where a middle aged nebbish Woody Allen's girlfriend is 17 years old. (That she proves more mature than him does not mitigate the fact that the obtuseness of the "relationship" is never even hinted at). The blockbuster movie “Pretty Woman”, where an improbably beautiful and delicate prostitute is cast as Cinderella, swept off her feet and away from her hovel by a Wall Street buccaneer, is disturbing but at least it depicts adults (behaving badly).

50SoG is not beyond the Pale.