An actor without a script is about as useful as a car with an empty tank of gas; neither of them are very practical and all they really do is take up space. This is proven time and time again by such luminary thinkers such as Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, and a host of other Hollywood elitist actors that comically venture beyond a script in a desperate attempt to show the world that they, too, have a brain. But like the car with an empty tank of gas, they only show the world how utterly useless they are when left without fuel.

Add to this growing list the actor Peter Coyote who has decided to write his own script and inform us about Cuba. Unlike the sometimes informative narratives he reads from a script for documentaries (seemingly the only work he can find nowadays), Coyote depends entirely on his own intelligence (or lack thereof) to provide the narrative for his trip to Cuba. The results are as expected--he has no idea what he is talking about.

The flight [from Cancun to Havana] is only an hour, but it entails a cultural shift of many years. Disembarking, one goes through X-ray security and metal detectors before being admitted into Cuba and retrieving your suitcases. Lest one think this excessive, I suggest they read Reese Erlich's instructive new book titled "Dateline Havana." Most Americans know about the multiple attempts our government made to assassinate Fidel Castro, but I, for one, did not know that as a part of our plan to "destabilize" Cuba, we (meaning our government working through right-wing Cuban "terrorists" given safe-harbor in Miami) introduced swine flu from Africa, forcing the Cubans to kill more than 500,000 pigs, and dengue fever, which killed more than 150 Cubans, more than 100 of which were children. This is not to mention the bombing of liberal and moderate Cuban radio stations and newspapers in Miami, the bombing of the car of Cuban Minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., or even the invasion of the Florida Election Commission in 2000 to stop the counting of more than 10,000 uncounted ballots in the presidential elecction. To date, none of these folks, in flagrant violation of U.S. law, and most certainly "terrorists" (consider the bombing of the Cuban plane, which killed the entire Cuban Olympic Fencing Team, by a man named Posada Carilles, who is living under U.S. protection today) has been prosecuted by our government. I guess there are "those" terrorists and "our" terrorists, or something. Which all goes to say, I can understand the caution of the Cubans.

The article gets even more ridiculous as it goes along with Coyote marveling over farmers plowing fields with oxen and the wondrous dilapidated structures in Havana. The article seems to go on and on, however, and even I could not push myself to finish it before my eyelids began to close.

Perhaps I was too generous comparing Peter Coyote's unscripted work to a car with an empty tank of gas; at least the car makes an excellent paperweight.