BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE WEDNESDAY APRIL 18, 2018) — While wondering when spring takes off its winter clothing, we present three items on today’s edition of  THE PLANET, noting in the process the call for all to avoid catty sniping and the “did-to/did-not” of the sandbox. Keep it as adult as you can, and if you can’t, you belong in other pastures, those where such steaming plop pies blend without notice.

GOODBYE, GUNNY — It was with shock and sadness that THE PLANET learned of the death from pneumonia of actor R. Lee Ermey, 74. Stanley Kubrick put Ermey on the map by casting the former Marine gunny sgt. in the role of Marine Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket. We met Ermey when we interviewed him in 1989. Reader’s Digest version of a novel-length story, that led to a collaboration with him on a novel and screenplay project called The Gunny. We worked on it for a couple years before going our separate ways. The Gunny didn’t make it into print or on the screen but not before we had our 15 minutes with Kubrick himself. The highlight of our time together included our lone dalliance into Tinseltown. Turned out, we loathed Hollywood to the point where we finally eschewed hotels and took up Ermey’s invitation to live with him and his family at his home in Palmdale. We worked hard, played a little, and relaxed even harder, enjoying long talks, cigars, annotating FMJ, tons of laughs, and otherwise feeding the mutual trust that comes but rarely in these kinds of collaborative business-artistic relationships. Beneath the leathered exterior that brought on countless roles as soldiers, cops, crooked politicians, judges, and other authoritarian types, Ermey was kind, generous, soft-spoken, funny, and just fun to be around. He marked a phase in our life and career that left a mark on all we would subsequently be and do. Semper Fi, Gunny. We hoist one in your name.

COM-EY COM-SA — Yesterday, amid one of the manufactured publicity storms only the overheated PR machine can generate, James Comey’s tell-all on President Donald Trump flew the coop. This carefully trained homing pigeon circled Washington, D.C. several times, describing an arc that the rest of the world took as a sign of … a sign of what THE PLANET wouldn’t presume to say simply because we haven’t yet read the book, having lent our copy of the preview galley proofs to Sean Hannity. The book has The Republican National Committee worried, and the dumb-dumbs there took the bait in launching their “Lyin’ Comey” website. Trump himself should ask a percentage of sales for the job he’s done in also promoting this page thinner. For those interested, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership is on sale now in bookstores and online. There, we did our part flacking.

CHEMICALLY YOURS — Trump’s ill-conceived strike on Syrian chemical weapons won’t make a dent in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ability to keep these gaseous killers in his combat arsenal. Chemical weapons experts — Gregory Koblentz at George Mason University, for example — agree that Trump’s volley was little more than symbolic. Problem is, it has further enraged and emboldened Assad’s considerable power base. Shortly after the U.S. attack, Assad supporters “flooded the streets in Damascus in a demonstration of support” (USA Today, April 17, 4A). It should be noted, too, that, because of the nature of manufacturing. the U.S. attacks deliberately avoided targets that, if hit, would have sent clouds of deadly gas airborne. Bottom line here is that Trump’s hypocritical venture must go down as a blunder — not a bang but a whimper unworthy of this country. America foist, like heck.

Finally, rest in peace Barbara Bush, a tough, resolute, r-e-a-l woman we greatly admired.

And one by one, we await our turn, a finality, an inevitability that can only rest peacefully in life with complete and joyful acceptance. Go happily into the night. We ARE the night, and the night is in the stars.

“For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert” — Arthur C. Clark

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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