On this day, exactly 114 years ago, former actor and 40th President of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan, is born on the second floor of the Graham Building in Tampico, Illinois. February the 6th, one year later, on the other side of the world, in Munich, Germany, under the reign of Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria, Fritz and Fanny Braun give birth to their second daughter, Eva, a girl who, 33 years later, would go on to become the wife of Adolf Hitler.

Precisely 102 years later: February the 6th, 2014—Jay Leno hosts his final episode of The Tonight Show, with guests Billy Crystal and Garth Brooks. All these years later, and what have we learned? Evil abounds.

The state, still comprised of the same bad actors, wax figures who’ve aged out of being good-looking enough for real television. Nazis as far as the eyes can see. And Leno, the soft, corpulent chin, megalith of anti-comedy, floating above our cursed world in a psychic vision of wicked mocking, like a Burbank Zardoz, still haunting the screens of those weary souls sick enough to indulge in late night T.V., in the bloated and stiffened forms of the undead used cars salesmen who hawk legacy media and its cavalcade of “stars.” Colbert. Kimmel. And, of course, the one whom David Letterman once referred to as “that—what’s his name? Lonny Donnagan? What’s his name? Jimmy Fallon!” I like Seth Meyers, though. Always have.

Our timelines flood with uncanny video: slop generated by machines, a South African billionaire half-assing a Sieg Heil at a Presidential Inauguration, and, since it’s February, actors in unfortunate reunions for Super Bowl ads, clinging, like the rest of us, to the last tattered carrion of the monoculture, rummaging the caldera of a barren moon, sifting through the dirt of the past and finding that there is nothing. This world does not move forward. In fact, it doesn’t move at all—it tracks, pinpoints, maps paths through its fossilized self. We put our past on display, under hot lights, teeth clean, dead eyes reflecting, if we get up close, the same thing: you, but older than the last time you saw yourself.

Every day is a phantasmagoria. Dreamlike forms and structures trespass and overlap, brands meld together and form corporate portmanteaus, symbols of wicked deities whose most loyal followers gather near eternal stones, drinking wine and channeling a demiurge while they speak in tongues. From afar, we can hear the chanting, smell the flesh, feel the shifts in space, see the smoke of the fire by which they burn our futures to ash—and we are left powerless, distant.

As empire wanes, settling into a state of inertia, looted by delusional con-men and their army of 20-year-old grave robbers, it’s hard not to wonder—was this not the plan all along? Why else conjure these beings from deep within the shadows of our collective psyche, if not to unleash them upon this world, an inhuman techno-elite whose sole purpose is to operate the machinery? Meanwhile, New Money, awkward in its own flesh, dances for an army of sycophants, privates and sergeants hooting and hollering at the lewd clown-show, the prelude to a final act from which not even the mightiest of us may be able to un-fuck ourselves. F.U.B.A.R.: Fucked Up Beyond All Rebooting. Truly, as my people would say, a bummer.

And yet—not all is sorrow. It is February, after all, that time of year when an entire nation of cinephiles calls in sick to work, stricken dumb with an illness borne from the brave men and women of Hollywood congratulating themselves on another year of jobs well done: someone get my doc on a Zoom call, I think I'm dying of Oscar Fever.

Now, I know what you're asking yourselves. "The Super Bowl AND the Super Bowl of movies?! What movies?" Don't worry, you're not mistaken. This year's ceremony comes with a bit of a twist. In an Oscar first, no actual movies were nominated for any awards. Instead, a list of A.I.-generated films were put up in all categories, hallucinated cinema with titles like Emilia Pérez and Conclave. And how would the Oscar voters ever know? They're the last to actually watch any of the films—and, now exposed by this brilliant ruse, the voting body will promptly be replaced by a conference room full of T-Mobile Sidekicks, re-programmed to watch and rate HBO Max Originals on Letterboxd. Can you believe they've done 97 of these fucking things?

The ceremony itself will be hosted by none other than Conan O'Brien, the man who, if only briefly, vanquished America's false god of dumb guy jokes, Leno the Carpathian, to the nether-realm of 10:00 P.M. To show its gratitude, a weary nation offers what meager tokens of appreciation it can gather: the humble stage of the Dolby Theatre, bathed in scorching heat from lighting fixtures, making Wicked jokes in a Boston accent—but, we can all pray, hopefully not at the expense of Ben Affleck. Have we, as a nation, not suffered enough?

And it all goes back to when we started letting actors be President. Reagan, of course, but even further back than that—I mean, did anyone ever really buy Eisenhower's act? And Truman, like any good stage actor, performed a daily sleight-of-hand as, for eight years, he distracted an entire country from the fact that he was small enough to fit, comfortably, inside of a Cracker Jack box. (Did you know people used to eat that shit with milk? Truly a nation of sick-os). And, of course, the original, George Washington, who, while leading his men across the Delaware, read lines for an audition, a walk-on role in season 3 of Mad Men that, sadly, he would lose to noted character actor Christopher Stanley.

February the 6th. Unhappy Reagan Day to all who celebrate.