Monthly Archives: April 2025

Velcro Horsedog

Velcro Horsedog

I want a velcro horsedog!
I announced to the virus.
The biggest, boldest female ya got,
I told the human.

Now you walk
To where I stand.
Lay
Where I sit.
Nudge me to perilous ledges
Where we sleep.

Now you huff
At shadows I can’t see.
Snort at ghosts I dare not name.
Haul me from the mire,
Then bury your face in my ribs.

You, my tether.
You, my dare.
You, the velcro horsedog
I never deserved—
But somehow summoned anyway.

Once

Once

You are neither question
nor answer here—
only breath,
only the ache
of having once been
smaller
than this.

As if sky
remembered you
before you arrived,
and stones
waited longer
than time
to speak your name.

You walked into the hush
without footsteps,
carried
by something older
than direction.

There is no arrival.
Only the opening—
again
and again—
like an eye
that does not close,
because it no longer needs to.

The Greatest Monologue in Film


In a media landscape increasingly shaped by outrage, algorithms, and corporate consolidation, Network feels less like a 1976 satire and more like a prophecy — especially in the wake of Congress’ billionaire tax cut.

What once seemed like over-the-top fiction—the idea of a news anchor having a televised breakdown, or a corporation treating human emotion as a marketable commodity—now reads like a documentary. The film’s biting critique of media spectacle, profit-driven news, and public manipulation hits harder today than ever before.

With Ned Beatty’s thunderous monologue serving as the sermon of a system where commerce rules all, Network doesn’t just hold up—it warns us, loud and clear, about the world we’re already living in.

Some factslaps about the scene:

  1. Ned Beatty earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for under six minutes of screen time—one of the shortest performances ever recognized by the Academy. The shortest performance to win an Oscar remains Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love, with just eight minutes on screen.

2. His monologue scene was filmed in a single take by director Sidney Lumet, who felt Beatty’s delivery was perfect on the first try.

3. Beatty was a last-minute replacement, brought in just days before shooting. He memorized the speech overnight.

4. The monologue preaches a capitalist worldview, claiming corporations—not nations—rule the world, anticipating globalization decades ahead of its time.

5. Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky wrote the scene with biblical cadence. When Beatty asked if he should play it like God, Chayefsky replied, “Exactly.”

Thanks for the heads up, Paddy.