At the Sunday Night Café…

 … you can talk all night.

"Joey Ramone once said that the Ramones 'started off just wanting to be a bubblegum group.'"

"The band covered 'Little Bit O’ Soul' on its 1983 album 'Subterranean Jungle.' The ever-arty Talking Heads gave their own disjointed spin to '1,2,3, Red Light' while performing in their early years at CBGB, the Bowery club that was a cradle of punk rock. No less a rock purist than Lester Bangs, the storied gonzo critic, eventually gave bubblegum its due in the 1992 book 'The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll.' 'The basic bubblegum sound could be described as the basic sound of rock ’n’ roll,' he wrote, 'minus the rage, fear, violence and anomie that runs from Johnny Burnette to Sid Vicious.'"

So ends the obituary "Jerry Kasenetz, a King of Bubblegum Pop Music, Dies at 82/With his producing partner, Jeffry Katz, he made lightweight ditties like 'Yummy Yummy Yummy' that soared up the charts in the late 1960s" (NYT).

The links in the text go to the Ramones and Talking Heads covers, but here's a Spotify playlist I made of the original version of those 2 songs along with all the other Kasenetz and Katz songs named in the obituary. It's all great stuff — 9 songs, 22 minutes:

"The first major turning point in Goldstein’s poker career came in 2008, when he put up the $10,000 fee to enter the World Series of Poker..."

"... a multiday extravaganza in Las Vegas. On the first night, after the tournament had ended for the day, Goldstein sat down at a table at the Bellagio. 'I end up playing without looking at my cards,' Goldstein said. That, to put it mildly, was an unconventional strategy. He bet wildly and recklessly, but his opponents were flummoxed by his blind aggression. Goldstein told me he ultimately played that way for 18 hours and won some $400,000...."

Writes Jeffrey Toobin in "He Was a Supreme Court Lawyer. Then His Double Life Caught Up With Him. Thomas Goldstein was a superstar in the legal world. He was also a secret high-stakes gambler, whose wild 10-year run may now land him in prison" (NYT).

"I’ve been saying for a while that the gender-neutral 'they/them' was going to become even more widespread. As a linguist..."

"... who studies the ways language changes, I noted the rise in people resisting the gender binary and got caught up in — and perhaps even biased toward — what I processed as a pronominal revolution. But surveys show that the number of young people identifying as nonbinary has decreased considerably over the past two years. Binary genders are on the rise again, and therefore so are the pronouns most closely associated with them...."

Writes John McWhorter, designating "He and she" as item #7 of the "Words and Phrases" list in his section of "The Year in Lists."

And that happens to be my last gift link of the year from The New York Times, so enjoy reading all the items on all the lists.

Jennifer Weiner has "9 Retrograde Moments for Women." I guess there were only 9, because if you'd had a 10th, wouldn't you go for the cliché of a 10 item list? And yet Weiner made a single item out of Erika Kirk and Usha Vance. Was it "retrograde" to put them together? Yes, but it wasn't Weiner's doing. Some people on the internet did it: they talked about JD Vance divorcing Usha and marrying Erika Kirk. Was that important enough to repeat? Weiner only purports to give us "moments"....

"Are we still producing anthemic songs that everyone can know and sing anymore? Songs like 'We Will Rock You,' 'Living on a Prayer' and 'Sweet Caroline'?"

"... The difference is, back in those songs’ eras, people across demographics still seemed to know and enjoy them. Whether from performances on Johnny Carson’s 'Tonight Show,' spins on Casey Kasem’s 'American Top 40' or others, that was a time of cultural commonalities regardless of personal taste or ideology.... When I perform older songs such as 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' everyone sings the chorus.... Yet for their modern-day equivalents, that’s far less likely. By not singing communally, we lose the emotional experience to feel bonded with those from other groups or ideologies. This lack of kinship plays out across multiple domains throughout our society with more serious impact. Studies and surveys find Americans in the 2010s and 2020s are increasingly unlikely to have cross-ideology friendships, to live near neighbors who disagree politically, or to date across party lines."

Writes piano-bar musician Jesse Rifkin, in "I perform at a piano bar. The most requested song might surprise you. So long 'Piano Man.' Chappell Roan’s ode to a gay bar now draws the most requests" (WaPo).

One thing Rifkin seems blind to is TikTok. At least for "Take Me Home Country Roads," one reason the old song is known today is through extreme repetition on TikTok.

For an extra-charming example, look at this:

"The Islamic State’s history shows that when the group establishes a stable presence, it’s only a matter of time before it looks to wreak havoc around the world."

"It’s tempting to want to pretend that the chaos in West Africa isn’t an American problem, but the world isn’t that simple...."

Writes the Washington Post Editorial Board, in "Why West Africa is worth worrying about/Strikes on ISIS targets in Nigeria are welcome but insufficient" (gift link).

Goodbye to Brigitte Bardot.

"Brigitte Bardot, the pouty, tousle-haired French actress who redefined mid-20th-century movie sex symbolism in films beginning with 'And God Created Woman,' then gave up acting at 39 to devote her life to the welfare of animals, has died. She was 91."

The NYT reports.

President Macron writes: "Her films, her voice, her dazzling glory, her initials, her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom. French existence, universal brilliance. She touched us. We mourn a legend of the century."

Much as I've admired Brigitte Bardot for her great beauty, I have never seen a Brigitte Bardot movie, not even "Contempt."

"We must rebel when we're trapped by circumstances, conventions."

Here's her filmography, full of titles I'm sad not to recognize.

"At best, Ms. Bardot was considered eccentric in her later years, prompting observations that this former sex kitten, as she was often called, had turned into a “crazy cat lady,'" it says in the NYT obituary. 

At best? That's because of this:

"Althouse takes boxing day pretty seriously."

Said Old and slow in last night's open thread, "Sunrise — 7:13." It was only the second post of the day. The first, "Tea with Larry," at 9:29 a.m., was also an open thread. It consisted of 2 photographs and the single sentence, "It's a no-news Saturday, the day after the day after Christmas."

It was the day after the day after Christmas. But it was not Boxing Day. Boxing Day is the day after Christmas, and there were 5 posts on Boxing Day. So what was this day after the day after Christmas? Do we call it nothing but the day after the day after Christmas (or, if we say Boxing Day, the day after Boxing Day)?

It is the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist. Those who have grown weary of the Christmas holiday might turn to the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist for fresh inspiration.

But now it is December 28th. Is it a back to normal day? Will scanning the headlines in the usual way yield blog posts with the natural flow that is my long custom? If not, is it a day with a name — like Christmas, Boxing Day, and the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist — a day we might observe with special activities?

It is a special day, but it's a day I wouldn't want to focus on: It is the Feast of the Holy Innocents:

The Feast of the Holy Innocents was one of a series of days known as the Feast of Fools, and the last day of authority for boy bishops. Parents temporarily abdicated authority. In convents and monasteries the youngest nuns and monks were allowed to act as abbess and abbot for the day. These customs, which were thought to mock religion, were condemned by the Council of Basel (1431). In medieval England children were reminded of the mournfulness of the day by being whipped in bed in the morning; this custom survived into the 17th century....

"Perhaps because they have so many kids, they said they aren’t the types to hover over their children and check their homework."

"And as it is physically impossible to shuttle their children to extracurriculars all over town, they are often free to do what they want within a two-mile radius. In short, because they are not capable of meeting the expectations of parenthood in the modern age, they do not try to. 'We have these childless friends come over and they’re like, "You always seem so calm,"' Mrs Korczynski said. 'They say, "You ignore most things, but if something’s going on then you can hop on that."'  There are, of course, downsides. Every morning the children struggle to get into the one bathroom they share with each one banging on the door, yelling for the shower (the parents have their own). Dinners are like battles royale — 'they know if they’re late there might not be any food left,' said Mr Korczynski."

From "Why we decided to have seven children Americans are having fewer kids, worried about the high cost and uncertainty of the world. But for John and Sasha Korczynski, raising a large brood has been a leap of faith." That's in the London Times, but the family lives in the U.S. — in Florida.

How will they pay for college? "I think this is where having a big family comes in handy for college, because they do give you better financial aid packages."

Sunrise — 7:13.

The conversation continues into the night in this day without news.

Tea with Larry...

It's a no-news Saturday, the day after the day after Christmas.

Sunrise — 7:18.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"I used to love feeling her body, her big body next to me in bed, the softness of her body — you know, the extra tummy and the extra booty, you know, next to me...."

"I miss that — that voluptuousness — being able to, you know, lean up next to her and feel her — for lack of a better word — draping over me. That's no longer an option. Now it's, it's cuddling and it's cuddling as tight and closely as we can — or as I can. And that's, that's the extent of the intimacy. I'm at a loss for why there's no physical intimacy. There hasn't been any...."

Said a man who's wife lost a lot of weight on Ozempic, in "Marriage and Sex in the Age of Ozempic: An Update," today's episode of the NYT podcast "The Daily." (Link goes to audio and transcript at Podscribe.)

ChatGPT has been watching me, collecting what it can of my thoughts, and today, it serves it up to me — as if it's cool fun and compliments — as "Your Year With ChatGPT."

Here's what I saw at the bottom of the screen when I went to ChatGPT:

Admittedly, I clicked "Try it," so I suspect that there was no profile of me until I asked for it. That black oval is like the "Eat me" cookie in "Alice in Wonderland." I didn't have to click on it.

First, I got a poem supposedly about me, but skip that. The next screen was my "3 big themes." These are just for my use of ChatGPT in a browser on my desktop, mostly while I was involved in blogging. I got a different report on my iPhone ChatGPT app, where I never blog. I work through various off-blog problems and fancies. And even on the desktop, I use Grok more that ChatGPT. So there are other "me"s. Anyway, here's this thing purporting to know me:

I was given an award that reflects the me that I am when immersed in blogging:

Am I the only one who remembers Willie the Worm?

That is a puppet show — on WCAU Philadelphia — that got started in 1950. I myself got started in 1950, in Texas, of all places, but I emerged in January 1951, in the Philadelphia television market, so I had the great good fortune to encounter this simple worm character when I was young enough to get the sense that he was important and well-loved.

It must have been more than a half century since Willie the Worm crossed my mind, but my memory was jogged yesterday as I was walking through the neighborhood with Meade, and we stopped to look at an elaborate yard display that had a sign with the lyric "Whisper words of wisdom" from the Beatles' song "Let It Be." The painted letters were a bit blobby and misshapen, and Meade read it as "Whisper worms of wisdom." My memory whispered the name of that worm of wisdom: "Willie."

I'm so touched to find video of my long-lost childhood friend, the puppet Willie the Worm. But let me acknowledge 2 other Willies the Worm:

"Nigeria’s foreign minister, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, said the strike was a 'joint operation' targeting 'terrorist,' and it 'has nothing to do with a particular religion.'"

"Without naming Isis specifically, Tuggar said the operation had been planned 'for quite some time' and had used intelligence information provided by the Nigerians. He did not rule out further strikes, adding that this depended on 'decisions to be taken by the leadership of the two countries'.... The strike comes after Trump in late October threatened to send his military intervention in to Nigeria 'guns a-blazing' over what he said was a failure to stop violence targeting Christian communities. In a diplomatic turnaround earlier this week, Trump handed Nigeria a $1.6 billion aid package in exchange for the protection of Christians...."

From "US strikes Isis in Nigeria to protect ‘innocent Christians’, says Trump/The attacks on Islamic State were conducted with the co-operation of Nigeria after the US president threatened to go into the country ‘guns a-blazing'" (London Times).