Dave's Fiction Warehouse

Regrets, she has a few I t’s tempting to chortle when a Trump voter reaps the whirlwind. But Ryleigh Cooper, 24, was just a kid during Trump’s first time around, so I can sympathize. According to this Washington Post story, she lost her Forest Service job earlier this month, as part of the ongoing Musk/Trump vandalism of the federal government. There goes a $40,000 annual salary. There goes health insurance. There goes 12 weeks of paid maternity leave. Oops.  Ryleigh said she voted for Trump mostly because of his glib campaign pledge to make IVF treatment free. She didn’t realize Leon Musk was on the ticket. Oops again. Trump doesn't talk about IVF now. At all. He and Musk have bigger fish to fry: parasites to purge, hotels to build in Gaza.  It gets worse: Republicans just approved a budget plan that will raise her taxes, gut Medicaid and shrink all sorts of programs meant to help folks in the middle and lower tax brackets.  If there’s an upside, maybe the IVF thing see...

I applaud the Philadelphia Eagles for apparently declining to sit with Trump at the White House. Hey, it kind of stinks in there! Also, anything that gets Megyn Kelly’s panties in a wad should bring joy to all our hearts. Kelly, noted MAGA apologist and all-around mean girl, has big feelings about the rumored snub. Replying to a fan’s post expressing disgust with the team, she had this to say: “SAME. GO F YOURSELVES EAGLES… F THIS BS!” Harsh words! Which pretty much tells you that the Eagles are on the right side of history here. Like the Eagles, we should all work to erode the autocratic aspirations of the Orange One. Naturally he’ll claim he didn't want them there in the first place. But we know better, don’t we?   I really didn’t care who won the Super Bowl, and in fact didn’t watch one second of it. But if the Eagles have the stones to stick to their guns on this, I’m a fan for life. As they say in Philly: Go Birds! 

W e all know by now that Donald Trump will do whatever Vladimir Putin tells him to do. And most of us have long suspected that his eagerness to bend over for the Russian president is not based on, say, mutual respect or the shared love of golf. So this claim from former KGB official Alnur Mussayev, reported in the Irish Star , kind of rings true. Mussayev says the KGB recruited Trump while he was visiting Moscow in 1987, on one of his many failed real estate ventures. At the time, Mussayev says, he was running a directorate charged with “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.” A man like Trump – clueless, vainglorious, infinitely susceptible to flattery – would have fit the bill nicely. The KGB even bestowed a code name: “Krasnov.” I’ve often pondered those pictures from Trump’s first meeting with Putin in Helsinki, in 2018. In each of them, Trump looks a little sore in the backside, while Putin wears the satisfied smirk of a man whose long game is paying off bigtime. I thou...

F or me, SNL’s 50th Anniversary special was about as good as the show gets: 50 percent  worked pretty well and 50 percent didn’t. Over the last few years, the average SNL has hit closer to 30-70. But that’s just me. I loved the two legendary Pauls as musical guests, even with their voices now abraded by age.  I loved the reel of commercial parodies (“Oops, I Crapped My Pants”) – always one of SNL’s strengths. Loved Martin Short and Steve Martin. I liked John Mulaney’s musical history of New York. I even liked the reprise of that hoary “Scared Straight” bit with Keenan Thompson and Eddie Murphy. Kristen Wiig’s return as doll-hands Dooneese was not hilarious, but Will Farrell kept it going. Don’t know if I ever want to see the alien abduction sketch again, even with Meryl Streep. Like so many SNL mainstays, this one has worn thin. Ditto with “Domingo”: funny the first time, and now just dumb. A couple other misses: Where was Bill Hader? Dan Akroyd? And if there was even a fleeti...

I f, like me, you’re running out of things to distract you from the collapse of America, you might check out “Mo,” now in its second and last season on Netflix. It’s a good antidote to the stench of cruelty and corruption wafting forth from D.C. these days.  It’s a smart and funny (and occasionally poignant) show about the trials of a Palestinian family living in Houston. The title character is played by creator Mo Amer. He and his family get by on various jobs and side hustles while trying to navigate the Orwellian hellscape that is the U.S. asylum and immigration system. (When certain blowhards go on about “open borders,” it’s clear they have no idea of the obstacles faced by immigrants not named Elon. Or Melania.)  “Mo” is an excellent show in its own right, but is even better for the way it humanizes folks who, for whatever reason, no longer have a country of their own.  It ain’t easy being a stateless refugee. Especially in Texas, a state that loathes immigrants in ...