A STAR IS ABOUT TO BE BORN, I’M SO ASHAMED OF MYSELF

I think Donald Trump is a vile pig --the worst person in the world. He has surrounded himself with cretins and he thinks he can take over the world with his disgusting lies. ICE is his Gestapo .Stephen Miller is his Heinrich Himmler.

And the Republican politicians are too chicken to try to stop him.

He hasn’t been stopped yet and the only people who have the courage to fight him are the brave artists who are rebelling against Trump putting his name on what is now the Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

'Hamilton' just bowed out of a Trump-Kennedy Center performance. Other artists who have canceled or withdrawn include:

• Issa Rae

• Kristy Lee

• Wayne Tucker

• Brentano Quartet with Hsin-Yun Huang

• Magpie

• Doug Varone and Dancers

• Comedy show "Asian AF"

• Chuck Redd

• The Cookers

• Stephen Schwartz

• Rhiannon Giddens

• Balún

Cast members from a performance of "Les Misérables" boycotted their scheduled event.

Issa Rae also canceled her sold-out show at the venue.

I believe Donald Trump's inability to line up anyone to perform at the Trump Kennedy Center with the possible exception of Sylvester Stallone (who these days sounds as though one of the boxing gloves from his movie Rocky is lodged in his throat), may be a blessing in disguise for me. Let me explain.

When I was seven years old, my mother had high hopes for me to have a career in show business. Forget that I had no talent – I couldn't sing or dance, or perform. Plus, I was the clumsiest child on the face of the earth. But nothing could stop my mother's ambition for me.

My stage-struck mother finally decided that, at the age of seven, I had to take mandolin lessons.

In Gravesend, my old Italian neighborhood, little boys took mandolin lessons, unless they were blind, in which case they took accordion lessons so they could pick up some change playing "Lady of Spain" on the accordion while begging on the Sea Beach subway.

The mandolin teacher my mother selected was Mr. LaPonte, a vile old man who spoke little English and had an angry, explosive temper. LaPonte charged 25 cents a lesson – an amount my mother could ill afford. Every week my mother would send me to Mr. LaPonte's shabby, cluttered, tiny apartment, which he shared with his wife who, even to my innocent seven-year-old eyes, appeared to be the homeliest woman in all of Christendom.

Every week I would arrive at the LaPontes' house with an excuse as to why my mom didn't have the lesson money, and a promise that we would pay next week.

One day I was warming up on the mandolin before my lesson. I was playing "Opus #1," a song that was the theme song of Tommy Dorsey's band. Mr. LaPonte ripped the mandolin out of my hands and threw me out of his house, screaming at the top of his lungs: "Don't you ever play that "N****R" music in this house again." Among other things, it turns out Mr. LaPonte was an ugly, disgusting racist, too.

My formal mandolin training ended when I showed up at the LaPonte apartment one day and there was screaming coming from behind his door. Inside the tiny apartment was a rather buxom 15- or 16-year-old girl, her furious mother and the LaPontes yelling in Italian.

It seems while he was standing behind the girl, giving her a lesson on how to hold the bow on her violin, LaPonte decided to squeeze her breasts. She told her mother, and so you could add child molester to the list of ugly LaPonte credits.

As LaPonte mounted his defense, screaming that he never touched the child, his own wife cast her verdict and threw a glass full of water at him, hitting him on the shoulder and splashing everyone in the apartment. I left vowing I would never go back, and I didn't.

If I remember correctly, when I left we owed the old reprobate 75 cents.

After that, my mandolin career consisted of playing on West 7th Street every hot summer night, when the heat made the houses unbearable and sleep impossible, so everyone sat outside their homes and waited for that mythical breeze to come from Coney Island, which was a few miles away.

Yes, the lead song in my mandolin repertoire was "Opus #1."

Now, a thousand years later, I am imagining this scene taking place in the Trump White House

Jared Kushner, the president’s smart, nice son-in-law, is speaking:

"Mr. President we cannot find a single person to perform at the Trump Kennedy center ever since you put your name on it.”

"Our last choice, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, just told us to f**k off.”

"We have to go to our nuclear option."

Trump: "Nuclear option?"

"Yes, we may have to go to Jerry Della Femina playing his mandolin."

"Jerry Della Femina? That idiot hates me. He didn't even vote for me."

"Mr. President we are desperate." Della Femina is demanding 5 million dollars for just one performance, and he is insisting that you must issue a blanket pardon for everyone

 who ever lived in his old neighborhood, Avenue U, and the entire Gravesend section of Brooklyn.

And so it will come to pass. One day there I will be with my mandolin

I’m so ashamed of myself. I’m doing it not just for the money but for my sainted mother who always wanted me to go into show business. I will play two Neapolitan songs, "Come Back to Sorrento" and "Funiculi Funicula," and I will end with my specialty, "Opus # 1." And looking down, smiling at me from heaven, will be my mother.

I just pray that she isn't muttering, "It cost me 25 cents a lesson I couldn't afford, and he winds up playing for this putz."