Author: Frank

King of Kings

King of Kings by Frank Scoblete

He was 10 years old and in the fifth grade at Our Lady of Angels in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and it was Lent, the time Catholics gave something up to show God that they loved Him with their whole hearts and souls.

He had given up candy last year and he had stuck with it for the entire Lent. It wasn’t easy, but he showed God that he loved Him and his Son, Jesus Christ, the savior who had died for the sins of the world.

He knew he was a sinner. The nuns and priests had made that clear; man was born in sin and had to work hard to stay good. Nuns had made it clear that boys were bigger sinners than girls, so it was even harder for boys to stay clean of sin.

God the Father was a man. God the Son was a man too. So, men could be good too.

He did have guilt though. He really didn’t get the Third Person of the Trinity, named the Holy Ghost. He couldn’t grasp that at all. Why do we worship a ghost he asked Sister Jerome Drake when he was in second grade. She yelled at him that he had better believe or it was an eternity in Hell.  So, he believed even though he didn’t understand why he believed. Better to believe than not believe, considering Hell.

It was the day before Ash Wednesday and they were all being brought to the church for a pre-Lent confession to wipe away their sins. On this day he should tell God what he was giving up.

“What are you giving up for Lent, young man?” asked the new priest, Father Sullivan.

He had struggled with this for several weeks. He didn’t just want to give up something that was easy like his friends did. His friend Stevie was giving up “torturing my sister” but Stevie had a big hole in that because he defined torture as dumping water on her. All else was not torture.

Jimmy was going to help his father more. Jimmy’s father was the custodian of an apartment building.

But you should give up something that showed God how much He was loved. It had to be something important, something that meant something.

“I am giving up television,” he said. “I am giving up television for Lent, father.”

“Very good,” said Father Sullivan. “You are a child of God for doing that.”

Now, he felt good. It was good to feel good. Not all boys were big sinners. God would see that in him now. He was thrilled going home because he was a “child of God.” He was far, far away from Hell now. He was clean.

For two weeks he did his Lenten duty and he felt so good.

And then King Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World was announced as the movie on Million Dollar Movie for next week.

King Kong? King Kong!

He could hear the announcement because his mother and father watched the Million Dollar Movie every week.

Million Dollar Movie showed the same movie twice a night at 7 o’clock and 10 o’clock all week and usually four times a day on Saturdays and Sundays. It was like going to the movies. You didn’t have to pay. All you needed was a television set.

And now King Kong. Every night and weekends too.

But he had given up television for Lent. He had done it for two weeks already. He was a good Catholic. God liked him. Jesus liked him. And he assumed that that Holy Ghost liked him too, whatever that Holy Ghost was. Now? King Kong on the Million Dollar Movie.

He and his friends had talked about how they would love to watch that movie. All three of them had monster scrap books where they kept clippings of horror and science fiction movies. These clippings came from the newspapers when a new movie was coming out.

“King Kong. The greatest monster of them all,” said Jimmy.

“King Kong! Yeah!” said Stevie.

“Didn’t you give up T.V.?” asked Jimmy.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You’re gonna miss King Kong?” asked Stevie.

“No big deal,” he said.

“We’ve waited our whole lives for this,” said Jimmy.

“No big deal,” he said.

“Screw that,” said Stevie. “Just watch it.”

But he had given up television for Lent. He told Father Sullivan that too. His friends would get to see the greatest monster of them all. And he wouldn’t. Why couldn’t he have just given up candy or tormenting his sister Susan? Did he really have to give something up as important as television?

But he was trying to please God. And God had destroyed whole cities and He even drowned the whole world except for Noah’s family. God made everyone on Earth have to die, too, when Adam and Eve ate a fruit and were running around naked. Kong couldn’t do any of what God could do. God was more powerful.

It was now Friday. In three days, King Kong would be on Million Dollar Movie. Other kids were talking about it at school now, not the girls because they must have something wrong with them. But the boys were. It seems that’s all they talked about.

“I heard King Kong is bigger than a building.”

“He destroys a plane!”

“He kills dinosaurs.”

“He climbs up the Empire State Building.”

“He’s coming. He’s coming right into our lives!

That Friday afternoon after school he went into the church and sat in the back.

Our Lady of Angels church was on Fourth Avenue extending from 72nd to 73rd Street. It was a huge church with immense lights hanging from a high ceiling. It would be hard to hit that ceiling with a baseball, that’s how high it was. When there weren’t many people in the church, everything echoed.

There were always the ladies wearing black praying and lighting candles. They had their stockings rolled under their knees with a big rubber band holding them there.

The school was behind the church. The priests would walk in the area behind the church reading the bible. It was all concrete. You never saw the nuns, except in school or if you were in trouble and you had to work in the convent by scrubbing floors or cleaning the basement.

The nuns stayed in the convent. He didn’t even know if they had a television. What did they do when they weren’t teaching or praying?

He made the sign of the cross. In his head he said, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of, uh, the Holy Ghost.

“Dear God, you know I am a good kid… I hope… and that I do not want to go to Hell with the bad people in the world. I haven’t done too much bad, not like some of the other kids. I hope you know that because you know everything, right? So, you do know that, right?

“I am going to get right to the point. You must be very busy watching everyone to see what to do with them when they die. I don’t want to bother you so I will be quick.

“You see, King Kong is on next week on the Million Dollar Movie. I don’t know if you follow television. It is a movie I have wanted to see my whole life. I have pictures of King Kong in my scrapbook. But now the movie is going to be on.

“I have a problem. I gave up television for Lent. That was to make you and Jesus happy at my sacrifice. Maybe the Holy Ghost would be happy too. I don’t know him that well.

“Father Sullivan…I am sure you know him…was very happy too when I told him.

“I want to see the movie. If I see it, will I go to Hell? Sister Jerome Drake says that anyone who breaks their vows to God, to You, I mean, will probably go to Hell.

“I don’t think that is fair. I mean I am not like Hitler or anything that bad, right? My father fought Hitler in The War so that is good for the whole family, right? That is like Noah, right?

“God, I just want to see King Kong. That’s all. I need to break my vow just a little bit to see him in the movie. I won’t even tell anyone. This will just be between me and you. No one has to know. So, I would break my vow a little but no one has to know.

“I don’t want to go to Hell because I saw King Kong.

“I don’t know how you speak to regular people like me but can you tell me I am okay by doing this? Just tell me in some way if I can do this. Give me a sign. I don’t want to go to Eternal Damnation. Or be drowned.

“I will say a lot of prayers to make up for it too. I will also give to the Church my money that I earn by working in my parents’ store. How about two weeks’ worth?

“Thank you, God. For listening to me.”

He made the Sign of the Cross, stood up and left the church.

He went to church again on Saturday to speak with Father Sullivan in Confession.  “Bless me Father for I have sinned. Actually, not too much this week.” He gave his usual list of teasing his sister, disobeying or thinking of disobeying his parents.

Then, “Father, I gave up television for Lent.”

Father Sullivan said, “That is a wonderful gift to the King of Kings in this time of his trial on Earth.”

“Uh, well, you see, I have been really good these last two weeks. I don’t even listen to the T.V. when my parents are watching it. I keep my head under the pillow if I am awake.”

“Excellent,” said Father Sullivan. “God loves you for this.”

“But King Kong is going to be on Million Dollar Movie next week,” he said. “I have waited my whole life to watch that movie.”

“What are you telling me?” asked Father Sullivan.

“I am thinking of taking a break so I can watch the movie next week.”

Father Sullivan did not respond. There was silence.

“Uh, are you still there?” he said.

Father Sullivan coughed. “You are thinking of breaking your vow to God and to Our Lord Jesus Christ? Is King Kong more important to you than the King of Kings? Our savior?”

“No, but I see that I take this week off, uh, and watch King Kong and then, you know, I get back to not watching television after that. So, I am only missing a week.”

“You going to watch the movie every night next week?” asked Sullivan.

“Well, it’s on twice each night but I’d only be watching at seven o’clock except maybe Friday I can watch it twice if my parents let me.”

“And your parents will allow you to break your promise to God?”

“Uh, no, I haven’t told them I want to do this,” he said. “You know, I thought I’d talk to you first.”

“You are Judas! You are the man who betrayed Christ to death, if you do this. You are the soldiers hammering the nails into Christ’s hands and feet and stabbing him with a spear in his side and blood and water flowed from the wound. You see Mary, God’s mother, standing at the foot of the cross watching her beloved son die a horrible death.”

“Uh, Jesus does, you know, rise from the dead,” he said to the priest.

“You are a bad person if you do this,” said Father Sullivan.

Now, the big question. He had steeled himself for this question.

“If I do this, Father, will I be condemned to Hell for all eternity?”

Sullivan was silent.

“Father?”

Silence.

“Father?”

“Say five Our Fathers and ten hail Mary’s,” said Father Sullivan. “Young man, your soul is in danger. You will be bathed in blood. You will become an atheist.” Father Sullivan slammed the screen shut.

He waited a moment and then left the Confessional. He knelt at the altar railing and whispered his penance.

Would he go to Hell if he violated his promise about Lent? Was he Judas? What did it mean to be “bathed in blood” he wondered? What was an atheist?

Billy, another friend from down the avenue, whose father also owned a television shop, didn’t even have to do Lent because he was a Protestant. Yes, Billy would go to Hell eventually because he was a Protestant but at least in this life Billy could have more fun. He’d be watching King Kong without worrying about Eternal Damnation.

If he gave in and watched King Kong?

He wouldn’t give in.

He didn’t give in.

He continued his Lenten vow.

At the end of his junior year at St. John’s Prep High School, where he had a full scholarship for sports, he became an atheist.

 

 

 

 

Designated Hitter Hater

Flat out: I am a designated hitter (DH) hater. Since the professional baseball teams in the American League started using this concept many years ago, it hasn’t overjoyed me.

The idea is based on the “fact” that pitchers can’t hit and therefore shouldn’t have to hit. This year (2022) the National League has gone along with the DH idea. Now, a player can hit for the pitcher in both leagues and that alleviates the pitcher from having to pick up a bat. It also relieves the designated hitter from having to play the field.

First off, why can’t pitchers learn to hit? In games in high school and across the country at almost all levels some of the best hitters on a team are in fact the pitchers. One of the greatest pitchers of all time, Babe Ruth, was also the greatest hitter of all time. Sadly, they retired him from pitching so he could play the field and hit.

Fine, fine, maybe you buy into the idea of a pitcher not having to hit. I don’t like the idea, obviously, but I think I lost that argument long ago.

But I have another idea: Why do we need the DH at all? Okay, the pitchers don’t have to hit. Fine. But why do we have to throw in another player to hit instead? Don’t do that. We don’t need a designated hitter at all.

That’s great, right, no DH: “So let it be written, so let it be done.” (The 10 Commandments movie.) That’s right. Eliminate the DH and go to (here comes my really, really radical idea) an eight-player lineup. Why do we need nine players to hit when eight would probably make every team’s lineup a better one?

I would prefer to see Aaron Judge and Mike Trout and other high-powered hitters get an extra shot at bat with an eight-player lineup. “Eight hitters” is the best idea! Get rid of the DH. I think it would make the game much stronger too.

Most DHs are not assets to a team as are the other eight hitters. They are often older players playing out the string, or poor fielders who wouldn’t make the team if not for the DH, or you can add any other reason which you imagine.

Look, the teams would save money and the fans would get to see the better hitters.

Therefore, as a designated hitter hater, I call for the end of said DH and an inauguration of an eight-player line-up.

Baseball would be far better for doing this.

So I have written it and “so let it be done!”

Servant of the People: Funny and Foreboding

I am not sure why people are not raving about this half-hour sitcom from Ukraine, made just a few short years before Russia invaded. First, it is hilariously funny. Second, it is fiction that could not be truer. Third, it is a prescient tale of our times. It is funny, yes; true, yes; and absolutely foreboding, double yes.

My wife the Beautiful AP and I laugh uproariously at situations in the show and then our eyes widen, we look at each other and say, “This is amazing,” unable to find the words to express what we feel. We are watching history unfold before it actually unfolded.

Servant of the People is the story of a dedicated teacher—a smart, insightful, plain young divorcee—who lives with his parents, sister, and niece in a rundown apartment in Kiev (Kyiv). After a video of him ranting goes viral, he finds himself voted in as the President of his country.

He is elected overwhelming, at about 63 percent of the vote, to end corruption and to break the grip of Russian gangsters who control just about everyone powerful and everything worth controlling in Ukraine.

The writing is crisp; the situations are satiric, plausible, and disturbing. The characters at once outrageous and recognizable. They transcend the locale and could be Americans, Canadians, Europeans—folks from any of the democratic countries suffering from corruption’s byproduct: decay. The characters could be members of your family. They could be you.

The star of the show is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that’s right, the current real-life President of the Ukraine. He stumbles into the presidency on the show, although in real life he actually ran for President in a party called Servant of the People! (Yes, named after his television show.)

In Zelenskyy’s political life, he championed the right of Russians to have their works published and performed in Ukraine. Sadly, and ironically, his works were often banned in both Russia and Ukraine!

He aspired to heal the rift between his and Putin’s territories and finally end the tension between Ukraine and Russia.

However, Vladimir Putin is determined to get rid of this annoying democratic president and his free state of Ukraine, conveniently situated on Russia’s border. He just had to wait for the Winter Olympics in China to be over.

It took Putin only a short inhale to invade Ukraine. He expects to exhale his victory.

Putin is referred to many times on the show. The Russians are portrayed as a menacing element, loyal to their power, pocketbooks, and motherland.

President Zelenskyy has a law degree, although his true loves were acting and comedy. Still, politics called him. Interestingly enough, he did better in the real election than he did on his show, garnering 73.23 percent of the Ukrainian vote.

Watching this wonderful show and seeing how it conjoins with what is currently happening in the real world of Ukraine puts the viewer in a time warp. The President of the show is the real President of Ukraine and the problems he faces on the show are the problems he now faces in reality—in a wartime reality, not a comic reality.

On the show Zelenskyy is portrayed as a short man, almost never taller than anyone else in a room or a meeting. He has to reason, cajole, or fight to get his points across. Everything is uphill. But his character never stops trying to do the right thing by his people.

At 5’7” Zelenskyy is a relatively short man. But on the world stage he is a giant.

Pundits compare him to Winston Churchill, the premier who helped save England during World War II. Indeed, could be the modern-day Churchill.

Putin’s height is estimated between 5’2” and 5’7” and he rankles when he is on stage with anyone taller. On the world stage, Putin is a puny man.

I don’t know if Ukraine can survive the brutal onslaught of Putin’s armed forces. One can hope.

Watch Servant of the People. It’s on Netflix.

Common Sense

There are many Internet writers constantly whining about the fact that Americans have no common sense.

The left wingers think the right wingers are idiots, totally lacking this important facet of intellectual life; while the right wingers are convinced that the left wingers have lost not only common sense but their full minds in the bargain. Yes, there are even people in the middle who think everyone has lost his or her common sense. In short, to them everyone is a moron.

But is this so? First a vivid example:

I saw Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world’s greatest evolutionary biologist and a fierce critic of religion and the belief in a god, being interviewed by a man of deep faith. The man asked the inevitable question that creationists will always ask evolutionists: “How can the human eye, which is an amazingly complex organ, have come about by random chance? Isn’t that impossible?”

Dawkins then gave the man a lesson on how the human eye came about through evolution, from sensing light and dark, to seeing shades of different types, all the way to the human eye. At the end of this, Dawkins then mentioned about a dozen or more animals that have different types of eyes that reflect some of the evolutionary points the human eye may have gone through at one time or another.

It was a brilliant lesson from the renowned Mr. Dawkins.

Dawkins then asked the man if this made sense to him. The man said that “yes, it did” but that he didn’t believe any of it because his judgment of truth is the holy word of God in the Bible.

In the Bible, God (meaning Yahweh, as opposed to say Zeus or Odin, etc.) created the world in six days. All the creatures were made as a “kind” and these “kinds” do not change. Yes, there are many different types of dogs but all dogs are of one kind. Man is obviously a “kind” and everything about man is the way it should be, including the eye. There is no such thing as evolution. The earth is only about 6,000 years old (give or take).

The Bible was everything. Nothing could shake this man’s belief in it, no matter what facts he was given. Dawkins just looked at the man and I am sure he wondered, “This guy has no common sense. What’s wrong with him?”

Now, the religious man probably thought the exact same thing. It was Dawkins who did not have the necessary common sense. How could Dawkins deny the eternal word of the Lord? Where was Dawkins’ brain?

If you are of the religious bent, you will agree with the man and disagree with Dawkins. If you are scientifically minded, then Dawkins is right.

Is the religious man so stupid that in other aspects of his thinking he also emits an intense odor of idiocy? Not necessarily so.

This man may be great in analyzing ideas for his business. He might be excellent in handling people and fixing things. He might have plenty of common sense in most other areas of his life. It’s just this Bible thing that would make the Dawkins of the world think the guy has a screw loose.

And Dawkins? Well, he probably has plenty of common sense except in areas of evolution on Earth. Therefore, he might not be the best choice for the Seventh Day Adventists’ “Man of the Year” award. After all, how could he not know that Saturday is the day God rested and not Sunday? Geesh! Some people have no common sense!

It is quite obvious that common sense exists here and there.

People might think Joey the Wrench is such an idiot that he probably doesn’t have any common sense at all. But the Wrench certainly knows motorcycles and how to fix them. He’s good with the ladies too – or maybe those ladies don’t themselves have common sense. Hmmm.

The bottom line? There is such a thing as common sense but no one has a true handle on it at all times. It’s here and there but it is not everywhere and none of us really thinks that it is. If we did, well, then we wouldn’t have any common sense, would we?

In conclusion, please use your common sense when discussing common sense.

I Have Been Censored!

I have been censored. Yes, I have. By myself. Self-censored.

Here is how it all came about:

I was going to publish an article on my website—my first website article in months—titled “A Subtle Sense of Humor” about Derek Gilstrap who cuts farts in public on boardwalks, promenades, escalators, parks and shopping areas. He walks by a group of people and lets loose different varieties of amazing farts.

These are created by a handheld device; they do not actually come from Mr. Gilstrap’s nether regions. The people reacting to the farts do not know this. Some of them jump away; some run away; some just open their mouths in awe or disgust. I write as if this is delightful.

Now, in the article I carefully took apart his various gaseous shenanigans as if they are artfully done. But then something happened. In the videos, I saw too many young women dressed in (what I call) an inappropriate manner.

They are wearing “crack sweats.” You’ve heard of skin-tight jeans and such, correct? Well, these are beyond that. They go into any crack a woman has on her body, namely her buttocks and her front nether region.

I point this out in the article in a state of horror. I don’t explicitly say these young women could be my daughters but, damn it, they could be my daughters. I wonder what has happened to our society. How have we become so crass? So decadent?

Where are the women I was taught to appreciate—Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca; Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life, Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, my mother, and my Aunt Annie—the women I admire for their class and strength? (Okay, okay, they were beautiful too.)

Simultaneously, I was praising Gilstrap’s epic farting performances and telling the readers how great the farts are but I kept getting waylaid by those crack clothes.

Okay, what should a reader understand about what I was doing in the article? Right, right, this was a self-satire. I was actually making fun of myself for being as crass and decadent as the young ladies wearing the crack clothes.

My wife read the article and looked at me. She shook her head. “It’s a good article but not everyone will recognize the satire. People like me will be disappointed that you even watch fart videos and others will think you’re an old fart by judging how women dress. Either way, you’ll lose readers. So, be prudent.”

“But that’s not what I am actually writing,” I said.

“Some will get what you are trying to do. Most will not,” she said.

My wife, who is every bit as strong and classy as the women I have held up as strong and classy, is probably right. She is my editor and she is usually right.

Censorship is alive and well, but we’re calling it prudence here in the Scoblete household.

In conclusion, I have nothing else to write on this subject. I have censored myself.