“Friends, I predict that during this pandemic, one tune that has popped to the top of the charts will become our “crisis theme” song.

Yeah, I know it’s a pretty easy prediction—every crisis has one.

Years from now, when you hear this tune on the radio, it will flash across your memory banks.

And you’ll yell, ‘Wow, I remember that song. We sang and danced to it during the COVID-19 pandemic. When we were sheltering-in-place. When life sucked like big lemons. But we danced to that song like mad men and women. We pretended to be dancing in the Copa and living the vida loca.’

And when you stretch into your ‘I survived the 2020 coronavirus’ tee-shirt that song’s lyrics will dance across your brain.

“Well Mort, we know it’s tough for a song to be crowned the pandemic theme song. What’s your criteria?”

“Well, I established five key elements for the crown.

The song must:

Catch the vox populi by the privates;

Possess over a billion streams on Spotify;

Have a sexual connotation;

Have one hell of a catchy tune;

And be very danceable.”

“Mort, what’s this song you’re talking about?”

“Well, I nominate “Dance Monkey” by the group Tones and I. The singer is an Australian gal named Tony Watson.

Yeah, I know it hit the charts in November 2019 but so did the initial cases of COVID-19 in China.”

“Mort, I don’t remember that song.

Help us out. Give a clue. Give us some lyrics.”

“Okay, here they are:

‘Just like a monkey I’ve been dancing my whole life

But you just beg to see me dance just one more time

Ooh I see you, see you, see you every time

And oh my I, I like your style

You, you make me, make me, make me wanna cry

And now I beg to see you dance just one more time.’”

“Mort, we think you’re right. That song should be coronavirus theme song.

But only time will tell.

But tonight, I going to dance the night away with my little dance monkey.

During the AIDS crisis, I lost all of my respect for the CDC.

So you may wonder, “Mort, that’s a long time ago. What happened?”

“Well, here’s my story, about karma biting the CDC in the ass?”

In the beginning, I, like most of you, held the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the highest regard.

As a  Miami attorney for one of the largest health departments in the nation, they were my go-to team.

A team of experts who understood not to play around with mother science.

I loved their simplistic, nerd-like wisdom.

“The most effective way of preventing STDs is by not having sex.”

But if I had a novel health issue requiring expertise, I called the CDC and I appreciated that their answers weren’t painted in politics.

In the mid-’80s, as AIDS spread across the nation and in the gay community, the CDC declared it a sexually transmittable disease (STD).

Their STD team knew how to handle the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. They had done it for over 40 years.

For years they succeeded in slowing the spread of syphilis by “contact tracing”—asking an infected carrier who he or she had slept with and then contacting, testing and treating those partners in need.

When I attended college we called this approach, “Epidemiology 101.”

Well in the mid-’80s, the Miami Dade Health Department was honored with an onsite visit by some CDC big shots. They lectured us in a group meeting about the spread of AIDS.

But I being a shy, politically-correct attorney, waited for one of those CDC reps to visit me in my office so I could ask her the $64,000 question.

“When is the CDC going to recommend contact-tracing to the states during this AIDS pandemic?”

The rep looked me in the eyes and whispered, “I don’t know. But it won’t be for a while.”

Squinting my eyes and raising my voice two octaves, I said,

“Do your bosses know while they’re playing politics with this disease, they’re killing people?

How do they sleep at night?

When will they ever learn that politics and science are polar opposites?

Don’t they know that while they’re fiddling, Rome is burning.”

The rep glanced down at her shoes and did not utter a word and

my respect for the CDC flew out the window.

But as she left my office, I wanted to tell her,

“Karma is a bitch with a long memory and the patience of a saint.

One day in another pandemic the CDC will pay for its sins.

Mark my words.”

But I bit my tongue.

It’s midnight and I’m binging on “Godless.”

It’s a Netflix classic American Western drama.

It’s  seven-episodes long.

It’s a father and son movie.

And I’m hooked.

I want to go to bed but these episodes are just too darn good.

I treasure the landscapes, the acting and the plot.

I am stunned by the props, the sex and the violence.

And I love the dialogue—folks using words sparingly but wisely.

The title intrigues me.

Why “Godless?”

The movie’s villain explains, “What G-d? Mister, you clearly don’t know where you are. This here is the paradise of the locust, the lizard, the snake. It’s the land of the blade and the rifle. It’s the land of the bleeding and the wrathful. It’s godless country.”—Frank Griffin

In the film, the 1880’s wild west appears pretty “godless.”

And I know that with an absence of a higher power evil prevails.

But Westerns are morality plays:

Good versus evil;

Black hats versus white hats;

G-d versus the devil.

Hollywood makes sure by the end of the film that the white hats win.

The outlaws, banditos or the savage Apaches die and the town survives.

From the age of five until my bar mitzvah, I want to wear a white hat.

I dream of killing horse thieves, Mexican hombres and savage Comanches.

I want to be a cowboy riding on a white horse, wearing blue Levis, with brown leather chaps and a white felt Stetson, shooting a 1873 Winchester carbine and hanging out with Miss Kitty.

I can still remember the soft touch of the felt on my fingers.

As a kid, my parents encourage my dream by buying me the works: a silver six shooter cap gun, a gold marshal’s badge, a red bandana, a brown plastic belt and holster, a tan cowboy hat with a stampede string and narrow pointed-toe black cowboy boots embellished with Texas stars.

I can still smell the smoke emanating from my cap pistol.

I cannot fail mention the hours I spend playing with my collection of hundreds of plastic toy cowboys, Indians, horses, corrals, barns, stagecoaches and Conestoga  and chuck wagons.

Talking about chuck wagons, once a week, my mom cooks and I devour the chuck-wagon special: steak, fries covered in ketchup and pork and beans.

I can still taste that sirloin smothered in onions.

I think, “You play being a cowboy. You dress like you are a cowboy and you even eat like a cowboy.

So where is your horse?”

Well during my wonder years, I blow out my candles, silently praying,  “G-d please, this year a horse for my birthday.”

As the candle flames convert to smoke, I daydream my dad saying, “Son, let’s walk to the backyard to see your gift.”.

I run to the yard and see my palomino tied to a post.

Well, it never happens.

G-d and my parents conspire to make sure a horse is not in the works.

But G-d gives my father and I a far better gift.

The eternal love of cowboy movies.

A love that leads us to watch hundreds of glorious westerns for hundreds of glorious hours.

Bonding hours.

Quality-time hours.

Father-son hours.

And when I give my father’s eulogy, I say,

“Dad and I loved westerns.

We watched them all the time.

And I know right now as I speak, he’s up in heaven in front of a large screen color TV  watching “Gunsmoke.”

“Well, That was 31 years ago.”

And now, I sit in the middle of the night—alone—watching “Godless” and picturing my father.

Realizing how much he would have enjoyed this cowboy flick.

Realizing how much I miss him.

Realizing how much I love him.

Remembering how we loved talking about the westerns.

Then something happens.

Within a split second, I feel his aura.

His presence.

His warmth enveloping my body.

I clearly know where I am.

I am in his loving arms.

We watch one more western together.

And this is why I believe.

And this is why I am not Godless.