Length 1:29:34 Date: Nov. 7, 2020

by Dr. Susan Block.

Ahoy there and welcome aboard Capt’n Max’s Birthday Cruise, one of the few pleasure ships sailing virus-free through the Coronopocalypse.

Birthday Boy dancing in his seat, he’s so happy.

I’m Capt’n Max’s First Mate and Prime-Mate, though Capt’n Max isn’t really a Captain; he’s a Prince.

And it’s his birthday!

Happy Birthday Prince Max!

He really is a “Prince” on both sides of his royal family, Lobkowicz (Czech) and Filangieri (Italian).

Which makes me a “Princess”—not just by temperament, but by marriage.

That and 20 bucks will buy us a bunch of royal blue birthday balloons. In other words, it’s pretty worthless. But we have lots of balloons. What we lack in guests at Max’s birthday “party,” we make up for in festive, cerulean, helium-filled rubber bags.

What we lack in capital, we make up for in love, adventure and sexual revolution.

It’s also the 6^th anniversary of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure which was my birthday gift to Max, a gift that he published six years ago, and, considering current events, it’s more timely now than ever.

Pomeranians for the Bonobo Way!

Go Bonobos!

Trumpty Dumpty Falls

What a great gift landed on our virtual doorstep this past Saturday morning as we celebrated my husband Max’s birthday and the 6^th anniversary of The Bonobo Way (my gift to Max on his 2014 birthday): the fall of the Big Angry Egg, the official electoral defeat of the Monstruous, Maskless, Pathological Lying, Child-Caging, Racist, Sexist, Grifting, Noxiously Vulgar, Grossly Incompetent, Pussy-Grabbing, Reality-TV-Forged, Science-Disdaining, Oligarch-Fellating, Climate-Change-Denying, COVID-Killing, Nepotistic, Narcissistic Nazi Mango Mussolini, Big Bully (Yet Big Sissy) Presidunce!

The Trumpus has had America in a chokehold for four long years

Yes indeed, Trumpty Dumpty had a great fall… complete with egg on his spray-tanned face.

The predatory Trumpus has had America in a chokehold for four long years. Now finally, we are free (or so it seems)—on Max’s birthday!

Apparently, our voodoo worked!

Not that we really *believe* in voodoo or any nonscientific methods here in Bonoboville. We’re not the tRump White House!

However, out of sheer desperation and Coronopocalyptic boredom, we have been trying various voodooistic practices. Actually, we started as soon as his greasy ass slid down that escalator, creating a tRump voodoo doll, then spanking and slapping it to the point that now, his bloated face, baby mushroom and fuzzy pink balls are torn up almost beyond recognition. We also put his big shithole mouth “under gag order” with various oblong objects, including a dildonic pacifier, an ear of corn, the Forbes edition Stormy Daniels used to whacked him, a water pistol, Jeffrey Toobin’s Zoom Dick and a jumbo bottle of bleach.

Book-Spanking Our Voodoo tRump Doll with the Bonobo Way to get him packing! Photo: Harry Sapien

We also spanked, pegged and infantilized various brave tRump human surrogates, held Russian Hooker Pee Parties with Dominatrixes Against Donald Trump (D.A.D.), all while chastizing Trumpty Dumpty for his mendacious “malarky” (Biden wins cutest throwback word of the campaign, beating out his own vintage “record player”) and monstruous moves, causing Post-Trump Sex Disorder(s) of various strains. Indeed, our fantasy roleplay psychodramatic tRump-whacking sessions have provided a rather effective form of much-needed therapy for me, Max, our guests and some members of our audience, though it has also horrified, triggered and pissed off many others.

Regardless, we kept at it, and the “final straw” in our relentless onslaught may have been our unconstrained Smashing Trumpkin(s) session on the Halloween Blue Moon at my Speakeasy in the Big Easy, capital of American voodoo.

I know, all these ritualistically spanked dolls, smashed gourds and cracked eggs sound kind of like the Satanic Panic that some say made Hillary lose in 2016. But I did it anyway, and it seems to have had the desired effect. We won!

This, along with the more staid efforts of millions of Americans—from progressive but pragmatic Bernie Bros like me to annoyingly conservative Republicans like the Lincoln Project—united by our simple focus on smashing Trumpkin (metaphorically, of course, don’t get too jacked up), has finally climaxed in triumph.

And yes, it’s rather orgasmic—dance parties exploding spontaneously on the streets from DC to Havana while couples like us join together in erotic celebration of this historic moment.

Three cheers and a bonobo beer for America! Millions of us have joined together to end the Trumpocalypse terror and loathing.

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. has decisively won the 2020 U.S. Presidential election in the popular vote and the Electoral College. Yes, there are the counts, recounts and the count of Monte Crisco (very slippery), but whichever way you toss your ballots, Donald J. tRump is the loser.

Three cheers and a bonobo beer for America! Millions of us have joined together to end the Trumpocalypse terror and loathing. And Amen and Awomen to that.

This despite Don Jr.’s screechy girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle offering a lap dance to the biggest donor to her boyfriend’s dad’s campaign, more fully embodying her promise that “the best is yet to COME.”

Not that Tyrannosaurus tRump admitted defeat, of course. Not this Presidunce. It’s a classic Trumpish case of being too conceited to concede. And he is the Loser-in-Chief. He will make all of us sore with how sore a loser he can be. At least, that’s how it stands as of this writing; Trumplesthinskin’s decisions are as wildly erratic as his golf swing.

Not that anyone takes his claims seriously—except his 70,000,000(!) diehard cult followers who would guzzle whatever Kool-Aid their dear leader offers them, topped off by mean Mitch McConnell and several other disconcertingly powerful and utterly unscrupulous tRump rump-lickers in Congress.

Trumpty Dumpty “had a great fall.” Will all these Senatorial “King’s horses” and Supreme Court “King’s men” manage to somehow put Trumpty Dumpty “together again”?

Then there’s Rudy Ghouliani, still in his Halloween costume, holding an “electoral malfeasance” séance in front of a Trump/Pence papered-over garage door at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, between a crematorium and a sex shop, now with its own VR Chat World, complete with frolicking furries.

Is this just a joke? Or a joke covering up an attempted coup?

My Counterpunch publisher Jeff St. Clair opines that the futile lawsuits are being mounted and funded mainly so the Trump Crime Family can grift off them like always. Someone should check the moving truck before it pulls out of the White House driveway to make sure they aren’t making off with the silverware, that Andy Jackson painting or the nuclear codes. They can have those garish gold drapes.

Happy Birthday Max! Here’s your special birthday edition newspaper… Photo: Author

If anyone has been more resolved than me to send this carnival-barking “cafone” packing, it’s Max, so this is a great birthday present. People were asking him all day if he liked their gift (tRump losing).

It’s also a nice win for The Bonobo Way. Love Trumps Hate (at least for this moment in time), and the Bonobo Way of “peace through pleasure,” sharing and caring trumps the brutish power of bullying, division and deceit.

It’s also a prominent step up for the Bonobo Way of female empowerment featuring a powerful female Vice President, not to mention a “mixed” woman of color (Black Jamaican on Kamala Harris’ Dad’s side and Indian on her Mom’s). Biden’s horrible war-supporting, Wall Street-fellating record is the opposite of bonoboësque, but his “healing” message of inclusivity and his personal, “sensitive male” demeanor is, at least, closer to the Bonobo Way than Proud Boy Trumpanzees (with apologies to real chimpanzees who are pretty cool, though not as cool as bonobos).

Let’s make Trumpkin pie; nobody will eat it, but we can throw it in the face of fascism.

I’m proud to say that, as the vote counting went down to the wire—Trumpers screaming to “Count Every Vote” in places where they were losing and “Stop the Vote” where they were winning—my hometown of Philadelphia put America over the top.

Actually, it was the suburbs. Of course, the City of Brotherly Love urbanites mostly went for Biden and the rural Pennsylvanians generally voted for tRump. But it was the “housewives” and a few house husbands of Philly’s Montgomery county, where I happen to have grown up—the ones that the Trumpus so persistently courted (“Suburban women, will you please like me?”)—that appear to have delivered the decisive electoral blows to the Trumpkin with their olivewood butcher block cutting boards.

Let’s make Trumpkin pie; nobody will eat it, but we can throw it in the face of fascism.

Not that I love or even like the politics of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. Neither were my first choice in the primaries. Bernie was first, Elizabeth Warren second, then Marianne Williamson and Julian Castro. Joe and Kamala were the bottom of the Blue barrel for me. However, the controlling right wing of the Democratic Party saw fit to forcefully put forth a conservative, right-leaning centrist team against the Trumpus and the Pompous Pence. Since that was my best alternative, I *chose* to vote for it.

Both Joe and Kamala appear to be corporate shills deeply embedded “in the pocket” of Wall Street hyper-capitalism. Biden voted for George W. Bush’s awful, ongoing Afghan and Iraq Wars. Harris co-sponsored the lethal-to-sex-workers, censorious-for-everyone SESTA/FOSTA act.

Just as I’m book-whacking tRump’s furry pink balls, I’m infiltrated by QAnon! Photo: Harry Sapien

This is pretty scary, and not in an erotic scary-sex way. I’m afraid that, in an effort to “restore America’s place in the world,” we may wind up in World War III. On the other hand, I’m also afraid that once “Sleepy Joe” is in office (assuming the Trumpus coup is a bust), he will put us all to sleep. I must confess, after almost half a decade of nightly terrors, a four-year snooze fest sounds mighty appealing. But we really need to keep fighting for much-needed progressive change.

Nevertheless, I have a lot more hope than I would under a renewed tRump administration. Biden hasn’t always been pro-war; at least, he voted against George Bush, Sr.’s Kuwait invasion (starting as “Desert Shield,” then Desert Storm, now Desert Mess), and was opposed to Obama’s ill-conceived surge in Afghanistan.

In terms of sex work, I hope that Harris will be true to her word that she now supports decriminalization (an about-face from her earlier stance). With Zoom Dick a growing problem (Jeffrey Toobin’s tale of hard times rubbing people the wrong way having climaxed with being fired by The New Yorker), good sex work is more vital to the well-being of our society than ever.

Seriously, it comes down to this: Harris is not the odious, sanctimonious fly-magnet that is Mike Pence, and Biden is not the horrific tRump, so I voted for them.

In so doing, I discovered a feeling I’ve never felt before: the strange blissful thrill of partaking in a communal American triumph over something awful.

I know it’s not ALL of America, and I actually feel for the Trumpers, in a bonobo way, because four years ago, I was feeling as lost, pissed off, desperate and delusional as most of them are now. Nevertheless, most Americans who voted did vote to defeat the Trumpenstein, as I did.

Iconoclast that I am—against all the popular wars, for greater sexual freedom and more socialism—I don’t often experience this level of common ground with a majority of Americans.

It’s also true that “most of America” delivered a bloody Red Wave of Republifascist senators and congresspeople into our legislative body, many of them hellbent on delegitimizing any Democratic administration or “socialist” measure.

However, in our apparent triumph in the executive branch, I am, for this moment, in sync with America, and that’s a special communal ecstasy of its own—especially climactic after having been “edging” over those four excruciating days between Election Day and Announcement Morning, coupled with the sweet synchronicity of this occurring on Max’s birthday, especially since the horror unfolded on his birthday in 2016.

Let’s celebrate!

So here we are, four years later, celebrating the fall of tRump, a product of a corrupt, greedy, oligarchical American system, to be sure, but a particularly monstrous, ridiculous and yet incredibly tenacious and still rather dangerous product.

There’s a lot more work to do, and tough challenges to handle—the surging Coronapocalypse, the lopsided economy, the rich getting exponentially richer as the poor get dangerously poorer, sadistic policing, sexual discrimination and climate catastrophe, to name just a few of the emergencies facing all of us today. Then there’s the small matter of the peaceful transfer of U.S. Presidential power actually taking place.

Will tricky Trumpty Dumpty leave egg on all our faces?

Who knows? It’s Max’s birthday, it’s the Bonobo Way anniversary, and Mr. Wannabe Dick-tator has LOST the race! And that’s as good a reason as any to celebrate in Bonoboville.

Because we really don’t know what happens next.

So… Woohoo! #GoBonobos for Team Blue! Time to celebrate!

Actually, the Birthday Boy and I started celebrating in bed that morning.

Life, Liberty & Pr. Max’s Pursuit of Happiness

Seventy-seven years ago, My Captain, Capt’n Max, a.k.a., Prince Maximillian R. Leblovic di Lobkowicz di Filangieri, was born at 2:00 AM, November 8^th, 1943, in a little hospital next to the Vatican, tucked away in a special area of Rome that neither the Axis nor the Allies bombed in deference to the “neutrality” of the Pope.

Max displays a picture of the Good Ship Italia which carried him and a bunch of other deposed royals over to America. Photo: Harry Sapien

A descendant of many great Princes and Princesses on both his Lobkowicz and Filangieri sides, Max’s most famous ancestor is Gaetano Filangieri, the brilliant Enlightenment philosopher and friend of American Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who greatly influenced them, the United States Constitution and our concepts of “free speech,” “free trade,” “prison reform,” and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Pretty enlightened!

Gaetano’s legacy also had a big impact on the Little Prince Massimo (Max’s Italian name), as well as the young refugee who came to America in a big ship called the “Italia.”

In his inimitable style, Max describes this great sea voyage, sailing across the Atlantic at the age of seven in this stately vessel filled with Migrant Royalty, the deposed and fleeing dynasties of Europe in a post-WWII floating “caravan,” refugees from a war-torn country sailing to the Great Promised Land of Montclair, New Jersey.

We are all refugees, many of us from war-torn lands, hoping for a better life in America.

Max talks about the influence of his ancestor, Prince Gaetano Filangieri, who inspired Thomas Jefferson to include the “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. Photo Harry Sapien

These were royal refugees, of course. Little Prince Massimo attended the birthday party of Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, the nine-year-old daughter of Italy’s last king, while on board.

On that great ship, my Little Prince found a spot towards the bow where he could feel the power of the sea that infused him with a fierce and salty courage that has lasted his entire life.

The experience gave him a bit of a nautical fetish (no, he wasn’t in the Navy), which is why he was wearing a captain’s hat when we fell in love.

It’s also one reason why we call him Capt’n Max.

Even though he now prefers baseball caps to captain’s hats (seems I’ve taken over the Captain’s hat tradition, wearing one on this show topped with a Lobkowicz family pin as well as an American flag pin to match my navy blue tinted hair), Capt’n Max is the Captain of the Good Ship Bonoboville, our Ship of Fools for Love… and Lust.

And so, we celebrate Max who has created for himself, for me and for so many others an amazing life. He has done so many important revolutionary things in his life that many people don’t know about, some of which he talks about on this show, my 25^th Bedside Chat of the Coronapocalypse.

Max was the pioneering publisher of the first “reader-written” media—predating social media, which is also very much reader-written—such as the LA Star, Love, Hate, Finger and God, The Brentwood Bla Bla and Beverly Hills, the Magazine and now Dr. Susan Block’s SPEAKEASY Journal.

 Telling enthralling stories of his past, Max credits some of his adventurous streak to his Czech father, Prince Peter Francis Leblovic di Lobkowicz, who taught him what it meant to be a prince without a principality, but with an illustrious heritage and a deep, ongoing responsibility to be “princely,” gracious, generous, a.k.a., not greedy, like today’s Billionaire Princes of Capitalism.

Max describes slipping out the bathroom window to escape his Hollywood predator. Photo: Harry Sapien

One of the many fascinating tales he tells is that of his ill-fated brush with Hollywood stardom when, as a handsome young man resembling James Dean, a famous producer promised him a bright future, then put a firm hand on his upper thigh.

Sensing a #MeToo moment before there was #MeToo for anyone, let alone men, young Max (who then called himself Mickey) asked to be excused, went to the luxurious bathroom of this famous Hollywood producer, opened the window and climbed out, never to venture onto another Hollywood casting couch.

Instead, he went into publishing reader-written sex magazines, though not right away. Listen above or watch below to hear Capt’n Max’s captivating stories of international intrigue, sex, politics and publishing.

For almost thirty years, Max has also been the executive producer of The Dr. Susan Block Show, as well as co-founder of Bonoboville, both a social-media and a real “socialist/capitalist” pro-sex community.

“So here’s the deal…” Photo: Harry Sapien

He’s my partner, he’s my lover, he’s my prime mate, he’s my husband, he’s my hero. Happy Birthday Max!

After 77 years of life on Earth, two operations and a few rough brushes with abusive police, as his wife, I can tell you that Max is in remarkably good shape.

Though seeing President-Elect Joe Biden, who’s a year older than Max, crisscrossing the country, looking dapper (at least, unlike Trumpty Dumpty, his suits fit!) and making speeches every day, just shows how much an old dude can do. Bernie’s even older!

Speaking of reaching a ripe old age, I take a moment on this show to say good-bye to my old friend and mentor, the Godmother of Masturbation, Dr. Betty Dodson, who lived an extremely active life past 90. Read more about Betty and how she inspired me in my latest on Counterpunch.

Betty attributed her longevity to “pot, garlic and masturbation.” If that’s true, I could make it to 120.

In memory of beautiful Betty, in honor of Max and in celebration of legal weed winning big across this great stoned country in Election 2020 (go bonobos for Montana, South Dakota, Arizona and New Jersey!), we spark up a doobie.

As we’re toasting Max’s birthday, our Englewood New Jersey friend, Chris Gagliardi, calls in to sing “Happy Birthday” to Max, wish The Bonobo Way a happy sixth anniversary and celebrate the downfall of Trumpty Dumpty.

Four-time winner of the SUZY award for “Most Bonobo Political Activist” and an advocate for fellow autistic people, Chris has been a tireless participant in the coalition of those determined to bring down the Trumpus—in social media and the real world—so his celebration is well-deserved.

A journalism student and big advocate of the Bonobo Way of Peace through Pleasure, Chris eloquently envisions a great future for the “peace through pleasure movement.”

On days like this, I believe he’s right. Go bonobos, Chris!

Our “Let them eat cake!” moment. Photo: Harry Sapien

Then Ana comes in with the cake, a big beautiful slab of sweet chocolate yumminess topped with “Happy Birthday Prince Max” in blue icing.

We all sing Happy Birthday—badly, but sincerely—at which point, it’s time for the Birthday Boy to blow out his candles.

Just as he’s about to do that, we realize that other people will be eating this cake, so maybe it wouldn’t be very thoughtful to spit all over it by blowing out the candles in the Coronapocalypse.

So how to blow them out? Harry suggests fanning the flames with a copy of The Bonobo Way, which sounds apropos, but might turn into a book-burning.

Then Unscene Abe shows himself and a can of “canned air” that you use to clean computer equipment.

It “blows out” the candles beautifully and without a drop of saliva entering the icing.

Max blows out his birthday candles in a Coronapocalypse-safe way, using Canned Air (thanks Abe), while smoking a joint in celebration of legal weed sins across America! Photo: Harry Sapien

Somebody should have told poor Kendell Jenner about “canned air.”

She looks so gorgeous dressed up for Halloween like Pamela Anderson in Barbed Wire, blowing out the candles on her birthday cake.

However, she got dragged in social media for 1) throwing a maskless celebrity-studded party during the pandemic right after her sister Kim Kardashian’s tone-deaf sharing of pics from her birthday getaway, and 2) spitting all over her cake before serving it to her guests, not to mention breathing like a beautiful but toxic dragon in the direction of the masked server who appears to get whiplash trying to jump out of her way as she blows.

Just as I’m pointing out how Coronapocalyptically virtuous we are, Ana comes back with a big decadent pan of lobster.

There are also several gastronomically indulgent plates of sushi and sashimi.

Check out the Photo Album below for all the food porn.

Are we Kardashian’ing here?

Well, maybe a little, but lobster and sushi are the Birthday Boy’s favorites and they go with the nautical theme.

Fishy Frame-Up at the Speakeasy Bar. Photo: Selfie.

There are also some presents, but these are not too over-the-top: a “Cabinet” cigar poster from someone who thoughtfully believes that Max smokes cigars (he used to puff ciggies and now tokes doobies, but never smoked cigars), a Scorpio puzzle in honor of the Captain’s underwater astrological sign and a candle that smells like “Fresh Baked Bread.” Why bread? Why not. Hey, it’s a lot less fattening to burn a bread candle than eat a loaf, and after this feast, we all need to go on a fast.

Then Chico the Pomeranian Pleasure Puppy, pops up dressed in blue for the birthday fiesta.

There’s almost always something to celebrate in Bonoboville, but this is a big one: Max’s birthday, a Bonobo Way anniversary and good-bye and good riddance tRump!

Happy Max’s Birthday! Happy Bonobo Way Anniversary! Happy Fall of tRump! Photo: Mars FX

Oh, and it’s our first Bedside Chat of Naughty November!

Speaking of which, with Spanksgiving coming soon, now’s the time to get your copy of Speakeasy Journal: Spank ‘n’ Art at Dr. Block’s NEW Pleasure Shoppe.

We continue the festivities into the brand new Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy Bar and then into our old (well, 15 months old) bed.

Making like Joe & Jill, not Donald & Melania. Photo: Selfie

There, inspired by what looks like passion—or at least pleasurable, physical affection—between the President-Elect and his feisty yet feminine, PhD-degreed (that’s Dr. Jill Biden, thank you very much) First Lady (as opposed to Melania’s constant rejection of Donald’s sweaty little hands, now headed for divorce)… we ascend one more peak of sexy celebration before collapsing into each other’s eternally naughty arms.

November 8, 2020 Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sex therapist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure and horny housewife, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For speaking engagements, call 213-291-9497.

MAX BDAY PHOTO ALBUM