Heidi Blake on the Tate Brothers

Posted on 07/15/2026 by paulefallon

If her credentials connote weight, Heidi Blake is no pushover. The reporter for Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, and Buzzfeed has been a London-based investigative journalist for The New Yorker since 2022. Her article about Andrew and Tristan Tate, “A Web of Abuse,” in the June 15, 2026 issue, clocks in at 23 pages. It’s about as character-filled, as long, and as exhaustively reported as any New Yorker article I’ve read.

Yet it left such a peculiar taste in my mouth.

Andrew Tate / Heidi Blake. Image courtesy YouTube

I didn’t know about the Tate brothers before I read the article. I’d heard their names as a couple of guys in the alt-right soup, but had skirted their details to preserve my own sanity. Still, when The New Yorker invests in such a significant profile, I provide attention.

It’s impossible to rank choice all the ways I detest the Tate’s. That they’re misogynist, for sure. And human traffickers, almost certainly. That they’ve evaded all kinds of justice due to their money and privilege. That they are mostly absent fathers to an undetermined number of children by an undisclosed number of women, and yet abusive to those children when present. That their fixation on ostentatious wealth and possessions is such a shallow, insatiable, way to be; yet strutting that wealth before an online world of Tate wannabe’s is how they support that wealth. How that wealth and influence gives them access to power. How they represent everything most corrupt in a world whose only value measure is money.

Yet the one thread that struck me throughout the entire article is how no matter what they say, online and off, nothing sticks. They flood the world with conflicting perspectives until there’s no more solid ground, no moral base, no objective truth. The Tate brothers did not invent this, nor do they perfect it to the level of the world’s premier truth conflator, Donald Trump. Rather, they illustrate how guys with really no talent beyond brazen hutzpah acquire outsize influence in our world.

By the time we get to page 23, and despite Ms. Blake’s journalistic balance. I’ve decided these two are total scumbags. Then we arrive at her actual interview with Andrew and Tristan. Andrew states that his reputation as a misogynist is “completely unfair.” Having waded through 22 pages of how he’s built an empire of web porn by wooing vulnerable girls with enticements and love, cajoling them to perform, keeping them in a secluded harem when they’re not online, refusing to pay them fairly for their sex work, belittling them, forcing them to have sex, and physically choking them during the act, I find this statement indefensible. Yet, Ms. Blake does not challenge him on it. Instead, he continues, “What I am is a realist who has certain world views on how men should act, which is with honor and duty, and they shouldn’t be hurting women in any way. Of course, on the internet, you use hyperbole, and you exaggerate sometimes for comedic effect.”

The discrepancy between Andrew Tate’s quoted statement and his actions is so great, it would be laughable, if the effects of his actions were not so horrific. Yet again, Ms. Blake neither challenges nor corrects. Which makes me suspicious. These guys are clearly charming and persuasive, masters at casting a slim shadow over overwhelming evidence in order to cast doubt and live another day. Their serpentine ways can bait naïve women from dismal backgrounds. But surely, this seasoned investigative reporter will call them out. Apparently not.

In the final paragraph, Tristan Tate walks Ms. Blake to the elevator. He strides towards her. Opens his arms. “Come on, give me a hug.”

And she does.

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Tao of Lloyd

Posted on 07/08/2026 by paulefallon

A guy doing ninety minutes of PT every day gets into podcasts, and the brightest gem I’ve discovered is “The Tao of Lloyd.” I’ve listened to every episode to date (approaching fifty, with a new one each week) and recently started all over again.

“Tao of Lloyd” is a brilliant concoction; conceived, composed, and performed by Dennis Trainor, Jr. a Boston-area actor and teacher. Each episode is 12 to 15 minutes long, and typically includes three distinct, yet karmically related, components. First: kick off with an agonizing dose of the latest, greatest fascist moves undermining our beloved country. Second: transition into a meditation to sooth our agitated souls (though Lloyd’s monkey mind usually interrupts any sustained sense of calm). Third: a reading of a chapter of the Tao Te Ching, the fundamental text of Taoism. Lloyd then wraps up by making some piquant connection between the world we inhabit today and the one the Tao envisions in its 81 simple, ennobling chapters.

It’s an existential search for balance, fueled by triple espressos.

So, if this podcast is written, produced, and stars Dennis Trainor Jr., then who the heck is Lloyd? Upon first listen I had no idea, but now…let me explain. Dennis is a Gen X guy, raised on Reagan and The Wonder Years. One of his cultural touchpoints is Cameron Crowe’s 1989 rom-com. Say Anything, starring John Cusack in his first leading role. Since inhaling the “Tao of Lloyd,” I’ve watched the movie. It’s an okay flick; the best thing being John Cusack’s portrayal of the directionless high school senior Lloyd Dobbler, an all-too-easy going slouch of a hero. Lloyd navigates life with elan by releasing the least possible energy. Not everyone likes him, but the folks that matter most, appreciate and love him.

Lloyd exemplifies the satisfaction, and balance, of non-doing as he succeeds in achieving his main mission—capturing the heart of uber-achieving Diane Court. His biggest act of expressing love is actually standing still, albeit outside Diane’s window with his boom box hoisted high, blaring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”

The film ends with Diane flying to London to embark on a major scholarship, with Lloyd beside her with no plan beyond being with her in this moment. According to Dennis Trainor Jr., as Lloyd all grown up, Lloyd and Diane do not work out. She’s now Senior Vice-President for Government Interface at Palantir; he’s an itinerant protestor, present at Standing Rock, Occupy Wall Street, and other places where folks have stood up to be counted, only to be discounted. Lloyd’s a man who never quite engages with the world as it is and yet slivers, psychically intact, through time and space.

The remarkable, wonderful, thing about “Tao of Lloyd,” is how it resonates with the challenge of being centered in a world dominated by extremes. I have such a difficult time sitting still, meditating. Within moments I’m ruminating. Then hyperventilating. “Tao of Lloyd” accepts that dissonance. Lloyd’s monkey mind, like my own, interferes with the meditation again and again. And yet, that interference keeps me engaged, and more of the meditation sinks in than when I try to squelch my mind’s anxious wanderings.

I’ve become more centered since I welcomed: “Tao of Lloyd” into my life.

Post Script: “Tao of Lloyd” is soon to be a one-person play. Dennis Trainor, Jr. will premier it at Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August. Check out a preview performance on Tuesday July 14 at Armory Arts Center in Somerville!

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The Day I Became an Old Person

Posted on 07/01/2026 by paulefallon
Looking west over Galway Bay, from which my ancestors emigrated to America five generations ago

July 1, 2025—one year ago today—I became an old person. For some, aging may be an incremental process, and I sometimes discern creaking facility over time. But last July 1st, a seemingly innocuous event triggered a cacophony of health issues, which I now measure as the divider between before I got old…and after.

I had a lab appointment to draw some blood. No biggie. The nurse mentioned I was due for my COVID booster. Sure thing. Since 2021, I’d had my initial COVID pair and four boosters. I was accustomed to feeling punk the next day, maybe register a low fever. But this time the fever persisted, and I spent the July 4th weekend in bed at 102 degrees. The fever dwindled, then spiked. My hands swelled. Then my belly. Every few days I seemed to develop some new symptom. I couldn’t raise my right arm. Then it became numb. I stopped sleeping. I was a mess.

A visit to urgent care. More bloodwork. A spinal x-ray revealed a curve that reflected a graceful vase, but a precarious backbone. Over the course of the next three months I was diagnosed with: a UTI; Lyme disease; a fully detached rotator cuff, a neural tangle in my right chest, polyuria, and sleep apnea. No one knew how this cavalcade of unaffiliated travesties befell me in such short order, and even the most ardent anti-vaxxer would be hard pressed to equate a COVID booster with a detached rotator cuff. However, my intuition suspects that the booster triggered my immune system, which then went rampant stirring up all kinds of previously sleeping dogs. I’ve always been very sensitive to medications (one Tylenol can vanquish the worst headache), while simultaneously warned that I’m insensitive to pain. Perhaps that helps explain how I’d never experienced any Lyme symptoms, or missed many gym reps as I tore my rotator cuff to shreds.

I’ve had more doctor’s appointments in the past year than all my previous decades combined, and the overlapping conditions make treatment plans a challenge. My right hand is perpetually numb, and the nerve damage in that arm precludes the shoulder replacement that could restore mobility. Good thing I’m left-handed. I’m too weak to effectively go to the gym, can’t raise my arms to do yoga, and am still building up bicycle endurance. Instead, I have a ninety-minute PT/exercise regimen I do at home four times a week. Thankfully, my legs are okay, so I can still walk four miles a day.

The reason I say I’m old is simple: what I once could do ain’t coming back. For over seventy years my physical health was excellent (mental health being another story). My body’s had a good run, so I can’t really complain. But there’s a wistfulness in remembering when I moved with grace and ease. Such fluidity will never return. I don’t really mind being old. There are blessings that come with diminished expectations, and I might easily enjoy my reduced capacities for twenty years or more. But youth and vigor? They’re delegated to pleasant memory.

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The Individual and the Cosmos

Posted on 06/24/2026 by paulefallon

Fifty-two years ago was my last summer ‘at home.’ The term barely applies, since I returned to a place I’d never been before. I had completed my first year of college. My parents, who had already entered the instability that eventually led to their marital demise, were living in an apartment in Brick Town, NJ, along with my younger brother, fresh out of sixth grade, and my oldest brother, already a buoyant ne’er-do-well. I worked in a perfume bottling factory, slept on the living room couch, and spent as much time as possible away from the broiling domestic tension. Rightfully confused about where I fit in life.

As always, I rode my bicycle, both for transportation and sanity. Late afternoon, I’d return from my shift, shower off the scent of the day, and pedal away, often not returning until everyone had finished their TV and gone to bed. One of my favorite journeys was the five-mile trek to Point Pleasant Beach. Long after the sun worshippers were gone, I sat on the sand, in the dark, arms wrapped around my knees, staring into the black Atlantic. Seeing absolutely nothing. Hearing naught but the surf’s steady roll.

These days, having reached the age of daily blood pressure checks, I always follow one cheerful phlebotomist’s advice to conjure ‘my happy place’ during the moments of meditation before I inflate the cuff. Oftentimes, my mind returns to that beach on those starless summer nights.

One might imagine that I felt small, all alone on those miles of Jersey shore, staring down the infinite darkness. But I did not. I felt adequately large. Sufficient. Equal to the task of becoming a man with marginal familial guidance. I felt at peace that I would create my place in the world. I suppose that’s why I recall that solitary time as a happy one.

Of all the tensions that the awkward pose explores, there is none perhaps so vast as the tension between the cosmic reality of our insignificance, and the all-consuming reality of our personal consciousness. Every day, all day, at every moment, I am totally aware of myself. What I do. Where I am. How I feel. I cannot escape for an instant the utter reality of being me. Nor can you escape being you.

Yet my existence is meaningless in the face of time or the scale of the universe. No matter what I ever do, or did, or will do, I will never make any measurable impact on who we are, where we’ve come from, or where we’re going. Even the most influential man of the 21st century, narcissist Donald Trump, will have no impact on the trajectory of the universe. It is simply too large for any single human to affect.

Over eons, we humans will impact the fate of the earth. Possibly the mechanisms of our solar system. Certainly not on the eternality of the universe.

And yet being alive feels so vital, so important, so critical to every one of us. We are each the center of our own personalized universe. We share ourselves with lovers, enemies, and friends; though ultimately each of us is unknowable to anyone else.

Does this irreconcilability leave me despondent or depressed? Not in the least. I look into the void. Acknowledge my insignificance. And carry on as if I matter.

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Musings on Assimilation: Part Two

Posted on 06/17/2026 by paulefallon
Image courtesy of New Yorker

Something quite specific prompted last week’s rather generic musings on assimilation. The New Yorker article of May 25, 2026 by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, “In Plain Sight.” The article chronicles the saga of Djena, brought from Guinea at age ten, to serve Mohamed Toure and Denis Cros-Toure in the affluent Dallas suburb of Southlake, Texas.

The Toure’s, who are related to a powerful Guinean family, kept Djena in servitude for sixteen years, cleaning their home and tending to their five children. No schooling. Floor sleeping. Hand-me-down clothes. Djena was given over the Toure’s by her poor parents. Apparently, this is a common occurrence for Guinean children without prospects. In the United States we call it ‘human trafficking.’

As Djena entered her twenties, and found a few contacts beyond the house where she served, she became aware of the inequities of her situation. Eventually, she escaped and found social workers/prosecutors who took the Toure’s to trial. They were convicted of trafficking and served seven years in prison.

Djena’s is a horrible story of abuse. Yet what I found most interesting about the article, and I wish had been more elaborated, is the fact that during the Toure’s trial, the accused couple were national news in Guinea. When they were found guilty, the Guinea press roundly condemned the conviction, and when they were released, they were welcomed back to Guinea with open arms.

When the customs of a native country are in fact crimes in the new country, assimilation is not optional. The Toure’s possession of Djena may have been ethically and socially acceptable in Guinea, but there is no way, considering how fully assimilated they appear to have been to Southlake and how differently they catered to their own children over indentured Djena, that the Toure’s were ignorant that holding a person in servitude in this country to wrong. What the article does illustrate, shamefully, is how they managed to do it in plain sight for sixteen years. Because one aspect of American culture the Toure’s grasped to their benefit, is how we value individual autonomy to the extreme of wearing blinders against what’s right before us. After the story broke, people recounted years of wonder and doubt about the poor stepchild in the Toure household. Yet no one said or did a thing. In that respect, the people of Southlake helped the Toure’s preserve an aspect of their Guinean culture that should have never been transferred here.

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Musings on Assimilation: Part One

Posted on 06/10/2026 by paulefallon

When immigrants arrive in the United States, or anywhere really, they bring the culture and lived experience of their native country with them. As they encounter the realities of a new nation, they must determine—sometimes consciously, more often through a sort of osmosis—which aspects of their former existence they cling to, and which they will abandon as they navigate their new life. The term we use to describe this is: assimilation.

Historically, the process of assimilation follows a predictable pattern. Immigrants arrive. They are shunned and belittled. They work hard, often at menial jobs well beneath their capabilities. Their children fit in better, gain more material wealth and social stature. Their grandchildren strive even higher, often entering professions and become affluent. The fourth generation is fully assimilated, and often slacks. 100% American.

One can look at this pattern as a pebble rippling out from the original English, as immigrants arrived further and further from the London epicenter. The Irish, the Scots, the Scandinavians, the Germans, the Southern Europeans, all endured discrimination and eventually rose above it. More recent immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America are still in the midst of their assimilation journey. There is one significant group of immigrants, African-Americans descended from slaves, whose trajectory in our nation fails this ladder of success. Everything about how they came to be here, and how they’ve been treated for the past four hundred years, makes their experience unique. A black mark on American ideals we grapple with, unsuccessfully, to this day.

The wonderful thing about assimilation is that it’s not a process of 100% acceptance. Most immigrants yield much of their language and customs as they adopt American ways because, in general, the more a person joins the flow, the easier their transition. But for many, clinging to old ways is a critical component of their identity, and so they retain their language, their dress, their food. I’m sure that Asian-Americans who adopt Euro-centric first names, like Susan and Ken, have easier times than the many African immigrants who maintain traditional tribal names, so foreign to many American tongues. Similarly, Muslim women who wear headscarves are notable, but women in full burkas strike a different chord, because, whether true or not, covering your face in our culture connotes something shady.

Thank goodness for the 10%, 20%, 40% retention of immigrants’ native ways. They are the key to what makes our culture so dynamic. Just as every immigrant is influenced by what they encounter here, those of us who’ve been here awhile (3-5 generations in my case) are influenced by the immigrants we encounter. Growing up in small town New Jersey I never encountered an African name or a woman in a headscarf. Now they are commonplace, and though my pronunciation is wobbly, I always appreciate people who understand that their name is unusual, and take the time to help me with correct pronunciation.

Of course, the true richness of American culture’s connection to the immigrant experience is far deeper than names and scarves. Our food, our clothing, our music, our art, our literature, it is all tangled in the saga of the person who quests, travels, becomes changed, and in the process changes where they’ve arrived.

I’m a huge proponent of welcoming immigrants. I would like us to welcome more. Legally. With support. And the understanding that, like their forbears, they will likely have to struggle a bit more than those of us already comfortably settled. But they will have opportunity. The opportunity to assimilate. To prosper. To be shaped by our culture. And shape it in return.

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My Jericho Experience

Posted on 06/03/2026 by paulefallon

For the past few years the most rewarding work I’ve done is with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Attending parole hearings as an ombudsman, working one-on-one with inmates preparing for their parole hearings, meeting with recently paroled men through the Louise Eustace Fellowship. I’m fascinated by how different these man’s lives are than my own, and have come to appreciate their perspective on a world that’s far less generous than the one I inhabit.

Last fall I received an invitation to participate in a Jericho Circle Weekend Intensive. I was familiar with Jericho Circle as a program that helps inmates come to terms with the traumas they face, and offers the opportunity to understand, reframe, and supersede their trauma as a path toward rehabilitation. I knew it included weekly meetings in prison, as well as weekend retreats that mix outside community members with inmates. I also knew that completing Jericho Circle was a noteworthy factor towards achieving parole. I did not know that Jericho held weekends beyond prison walls, nor who put my name on the invite list. Nevertheless, I signed right up to spend my 71st birthday weekend immersed in the Jericho experience.

I arrived at the Clara Barton Summer camp compound on a dreary February Friday night, open to whatever possibilities Jericho might offer. Jericho is a confidential experience, and so I will not offer any specific names or traumas shared. Suffice to say that 47 people, some formerly incarcerated, some psychologists and social workers, some general citizens like me, convened in a large circle to engage in group exercises designed to draw us nearer to each other while surfacing our histories. On Saturday morning we also broke in to small groups of eight where we explored individual demons.

Small circle sessions were hours long, a core principle of Jericho being to take whatever time is required to unearth the trauma. A corollary is the certainty that the root of relieving any trauma lies deep within, adjacent to the trauma itself, and that healing occurs upon confrontation and reframing the pain.

Over the course of the weekend, folks in my small group visited the pain of an alienated coworker, the hurt of an uncaring sibling, the doubt of a new father, the closure sought from a father who chose to move away and die alone, the anxiety of releasing the legacy of a lifetime’s work. The visitations were intense, and often involved forms of reenactment. They also followed a general pattern, as sharing evolved into one person identifying a particular strain of pain, which the group encouraged, then supported, then acted out and pursued to catharsis. At one point we made a train line of supporting pressure, another time we were birds flying in V-formation trading off leaders. For one role play I was tapped to be someone’s father, to sit center circle and silently accept the hurt from a son who felt rejected. Each exposition ended with us in a tight circle, embracing the sharer as they sobbed in release. I felt empathy for each individual as they did their work. And a growing sense that I had no intertest in being the center of such an experience.

By Sunday morning I realized that I would not offer sharing. That it would be disingenuous for me to relate the kind of trauma my fellow participants clearly felt, because I don’t feel anything as acutely as they professed. Was it because my life has been without trauma? No. I could match many of the injustices they related. Was it because I’m too emotionally shut down? No. I felt my companion’s emotional angst, and even cried along with them. Why then, did I not want to dig into my core and excavate the fundamental pain of my existence?

There is an elemental difference between the way I experience the world and the type of release Jericho Circle offers. Every person, in doing their work, found a place within themselves that’s inhabited by unremitting pain. Total agony. The coworker was conniving. The father was cruel. The sister was mean. The legacy was futile. And yet, as I listened to each tale, I felt myself wondering: perhaps the coworker had legitimate reason? Perhaps the father wanted to spare his child? Perhaps there had been some joy growing up with the sister? Perhaps it’s not our purview to define our legacy; that’s for others to do.

The more I pondered my experience, the more disconnected I felt from the Jericho Circle. I realized that my mind is too attuned to deciphering the grey, to allowing other possibilities, for me to find comfort in painting such a bleak world. I don’t subscribe to the notion that the only way to joy is through grief, or that I have to feel pain in my body as a pathway to comfort. I intellectualize pretty much everything, think things through, study and analyze, often at a distance. I extrapolate meaning from my thinking, and, time and again, change my perspective—and my behavior—as a result of analysis. My emotional constitution, and how I nurture it, is very different from the model espoused by Jericho Circle.

I’m glad that Jericho works for many, and I imagine it resonates most deeply with folks whose traumas are much more serious than mine. We need multiple avenues to self-acceptance and inner peace.

I left the weekend in an excellent state of mind. Not because I’d worked through any trauma. Rather, because I came to understand myself better, by choosing not to go there.

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Say His Name

Posted on 05/26/2026 by paulefallon

Israel Martinez: December 6, 1958 to April 30, 2026

The first time I met Israel Martinez, I realized he was a man of substance, a person wizened by experience and reflection. I was keen to assist him any way I could. Then, over time, as our assigned roles mellowed, I was proud to call him friend, and pleased that he reciprocated the honor.

That was two years ago, as a volunteer assisting inmates prepare for their parole hearing. Israel was a lifer at MCI Norfolk. Sixty-six years old, more than forty of them in prison. The man had done some terrible things, and our society would be quick to restrict his bio to his rap sheet: convicted of second-degree murder in 1978; three previous paroles ending in dirty urine or assault. But there was so much more to this man.

Israel was born in Puerto Rico, the very much youngest son of a family whose common trait was drugs. Mother, father, sisters, brothers: all addicts. Israel dropped out of school in fifth grade, started sniffing glue at thirteen, took up heroine at fifteen. After his father died, Israel’s mother sent her uncontrollable boy to live with an older step-brother in Lawrence, MA. By seventeen, Israel was on his own. Working in a sneaker factory, living in his own apartment, getting high. At nineteen he was part of a trio that robbed an elderly man who, due to the break-in, suffered a heart attack and died. Israel was convicted of Second Degree Murder: life with possibility of parole.

I have no compass by which to gauge Israel’s youth. The hunger, the filth, the older brothers’ beatings according to arbitrary highs and lows. His traumas were especially difficult to absorb because Israel recounted them in a voice of quiet remorse rather than anger. Often, Israel paused and countered, “I know that is no excuse for what I’ve done.” He’s right, of course. But what did he ever know but violence and neglect?

During Israel’s first long stint in prison, he kept his head down and made sufficient progress to achieve parole. He held steady work, but violated parole with drugs. A second parole. More steady work. Another dirty urine. A third parole. This one longer. A job. A live-in girlfriend. Some modicum of stability, only to respond to his girlfriend’s infidelity in violence. Back to prison with a 20-year assault sentence.

By the time I met Israel, all of that was ancient history. For more than two decades, he’d been clean and sober. He became an active Catholic, led the Spanish-speaking NA/AA group, and had an admirable work record. He succeeded in programs around restorative justice, domestic violence, and rehabilitation. More important than any of those accomplishments, he’d become a man of peaceful countenance. He’d wrestled with his youthful hardships, and transcended them with grace.

I met Israel shortly after he’d been turned down for parole. I watched the videotape of his hearing. It was short, the questions simple, as if the Board had already decided this lone man sitting at the table, responding in checkered English, with zero supporters on his side, was a poor candidate to return to the community.

At our first meeting, Israel was clear, “I will try for parole one more time, but if the Parole Board wants me to die in prison, so be it.” I took his position as a challenge for success. We worked hard, put together a solid parole plan, and practiced the kind of questions he’d likely face. We got Israel accepted into a transitional house for native Spanish speakers. We had letters of support. Ten other volunteers attended the hearing, demonstrating community support. Israel did a good job, but the board’s questions hit harder. No one dwelt on the 1978 robbery (although that was the governing offense for parole). Rather the focus was on assaulting his girlfriend, more than twenty years ago, a crime for which he’d already served full sentence. Board members positively noted his age, his programming, his remorse, his unlikeliness to recidivate. Israel emerged from the hearing optimistic.

By happenstance, I was at MCI-Norfolk the day Israel’s decision came down. Rejected once again. He was bereft, but quickly rebounded. Although the board’s recommendations were simply more of the same work he’d been doing, Israel seemed to forget his earlier announcement, and set about preparing for his next hearing, eighteen months out, with renewed gusto. He even enrolled in a correspondence course on domestic violence not offered behind the walls. We were determined to succeed, and that determination gave Israel purpose.

On April 30 I received a call from the prison superintendent. Israel had suffered a heart attack, had been taken to the hospital, and died. Very little information offered; I knew better than to ask for more.

Turns out Israel had listed me as his emergency contact. Me: a guy he’d known barely two years; a virtual stranger assigned to his case who visited once a month. What business did I have being his primary contact? So I made the decisions as to his possessions, his remains, and fielded calls from the prison and Chief Medical Office questioning me about Israel’s family, or lack thereof. Each conversation left me queasy. How many years had Israel toiled in prison without any visitor’s at all, until I arrived? I cannot imagine being so alone in this world. To have no one. No one. Inconceivable.

I like to think that Israel died in a spirit of hope. That he was striving and working towards release. That all the meditation he’d done put him in a place of peace. I will never know for sure, but that’s the frame I choose.

In life, Israel Martinez knew very few people, and even fewer who treated him with love and respect. Let’s do better by this man death. Israel Martinez. Say his name.

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Serious Theater, Perfectly Executed

Posted on 05/20/2026 by paulefallon

Oedipus el Rey

Written by Luis Alfaro
Directed by Loretta Greco

The Huntington

Roberts Studio Theatre

May 14 – June 14, 2026

Victor Almanzar, Javier David, Juan Arturo,Gabe Martínez in Oedipus El Rey; directed by Loretta Greco; photo by Marc J. Franklin

The power of our foundational stories; the myths, fables, and legends shared across time and culture; is rooted in how facilely they can be adapted to illustrate unique places and times while preserving their universal message. Thus, when Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is reimagined by playwright Luis Alfaro as Oedipus el Rey, a Los Angeles barrio kingpin, we are enmeshed in that specific ghetto. And yet, we recognize the parallels between these characters’ tragedy and our own particular struggles. We are offered an opportunity for understanding. For empathy.

This production is flawless. The gunmetal backdrop with its riveting graphics. The sometimes moody, oftentimes glaring lighting. The abrasive orange shirts of the Greek Chorus of California inmates. The prison banter, fast and sharp as bullets, that turns into street hustle when we return to the hood. The play in unexpectedly funny, with careful tone shifts from joy to pathos. How director Loretta Greco transforms the bleak space into a joyful wedding scene, then incorporates the audience into the action, and then deposits us back into chaos, is the most well-integrated piece of audience involvement I’ve ever experienced. We ride the crest together, which makes the subsequent tragedy all the more devastating.

Juan Arturo’s Oedipus is young and brash beyond sense, which is probably the most valuable skill required in a world where swagger counts above all. Yet the character that I kept thinking about, days after the performance, was Melisa Soledad Pereyra’s Jocasta. Ms. Pereyra is petite, so much smaller than the men that suffocate her, and her performance is so quiet. Jocasta is unhappily married to Laius, yet mired in mourning when he dies. She’s resistant to Oedipus’ advances, yet yields to his insistence. She has supposedly managed to rule in her husband’s absence, yet is so meek, so submissive once Oedipus pushes himself in. In the wedding scene, she’s uncannily reminiscent of another universally tragic figure: Maria in West Side Story. I was puzzled by this demure performance, until I realized how well it reflected the barrio world in which Jocasta lives. Where women have to be strong always, yet appear meek to the strutting bravado all around them.

Juan Arturo, Melisa Pereyra in Oedipus El Rey; directed by Loretta Greco; photo by Marc J. Franklin

Playwright Alfaro makes a few telling changes from Sophocles’ tale, none of which I will reveal, but each of which dissuade the audience from casually thinking, I know what happens next. Each lateral move, I thought, enhanced the power of the tragedy. I was in rapt attention the entire play.

If you’re up for something light and fun, go see the Lyric’s Something Rotten and exit laughing. But if you want be challenged, go see Oedipus el Rey, and exit in awe of The Huntington’s riveting exposition of the human condition.

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Spending Down Retirement

Posted on 05/13/2026 by paulefallon

Two weeks ago, I cracked open a spigot I’ve been avoiding for some time. Might as well turn the faucet on full flow.

Image courtesy Amazon Prime

Turns out, I have a lot of money. Not billionaire money. Not crazy amounts that would take decades to disburse. But plenty enough to do whatever I want. Actually, much more than required to do whatever I want. After all, one of my favorite mantras is, “It doesn’t take much money to be Paul Fallon.”

I don’t know how I managed to absorb a lifetime of messages of economic prudence while repelling the usual corollaries of indulgence upon maturity. Now that I’m old and rich, I can have all sorts of luxuries. Except they hold no appeal.

I have some family and friends who did not adequately save for old age. They’re frustrated by their economic constraints. Fortunately, the safety net for old folks is more robust than for the rest of the populace, so they have basic food and shelter and health care. They can do pretty much everything I want to do, though they yearn to do more.

More common among my mostly well-educated, mostly affluent friends, is that they’ve saved enough to savor creature comforts. Which they do with relish. They enjoy the most recently fashionable restaurants. They have concierge medicine. They travel, often first class. They quip how they can’t take it with them as if it’s a moral imperative to spend all their money before they die.

This is a perspective I do not understand.

Money is a peculiar resource because, unlike coal or water or sunshine, it’s created by humans. It’s not finite; at least not since we slipped off the gold standard. It’s easily renewable, as we consistently make more of it, just because. It’s also peculiar in that, unlike gas or electric, it’s pre-assigned. We possess the resource (whether outright or through debt) before we use it. And yet I still consider money to be a resource because it is something we can choose to steward, or exploit.

In theory, money is just a medium of exchange, useless in its own right. In fact, in America, it’s the ultimate measure of who anyone is. Unless, like me, you choose to steward money as you would any precious resource. To live below your means. To consider money a security blanket against the vagaries of an uncertain world. A blanket that I hope to flutter among the quick when I’m six feet under and no longer in need of any warmth save that of mother earth.

I don’t feel any compunction to spend whatever digits appear on my bank statement. Not today, not tomorrow, not any time before I die. When I move on, I’m quite content to have them transferred to others, preferably in a way that benefits them and aligns with my personal values. Some consider it a waste of luxury unspent. I call it my legacy.

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