Goodbye to Robert Duvall.

"Robert Duvall, Chameleonlike Actor of Film, Stage and TV, Dies at 95/The Oscar winner was known for his ability to disappear into roles, playing a wide range of characters in films such as 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Godfather,' and in the television series 'Lonesome Dove'" (NYT)(gift link).

Why there he is:

ADDED: "I don’t try to be a hard guy to work with.... But I decide what I’m going to do with a character. I will take direction, but only if it kind of supplements what I want to do. If I have instincts that I feel are right, I don’t want anybody to tamper with them. I don’t like tamperers, and I don’t like hoverers."

5 things I've been finding unbloggable.

1. Nancy Guthrie, still missing.

2. Bondi yelling at congressfolk and getting yelled back at by. 

3. Millions of Jeffrey Epstein papers, full of names names names. 

4. Marco in Munich. 

5. Obama and the aliens.

"The once ubiquitous bird has suffered a catastrophic decline.... As many as 98 per cent disappeared from some states."

"Rats and feral dogs flourished in their place, spreading diseases, including rabies. As a result, the human death toll rose significantly. And further to that, Schama adds, an ancient cultural ritual risks being lost. Zoroastrians, no longer able to perform their traditional 'sky burials' — in which corpses are carried to a 'tower of silence' to be picked clean by vultures — are forced to consider cremation instead. 

This chain of collapse between human culture and the lives of birds set me thinking,' Schama says...."

From  "Simon Schama: 'Our fascination with birds is rooted in envy'/The historian has curated an exhibition that explores the relationship between birds and humans" (London Times).

"'What are they, these creatures, two-limbed like us and yet nothing like us at all?' he wonders. 'Human culture is arranged around the perfection of the human,' he says. 'We are seen as God’s greatest works. But one thing we have not been able to do is fly.' Our fascination with birds, he suggests, 'is based around a sort of envy.' Because what we call flying is not really that, it’s just 'sitting in a metal tube with the blinds shut looking at old movies.' It is not about the glorious freedom that we dream of, about the transcendence we desire, the celestial state that we yearn for. That freedom of spirit will always elude us.'"

"She does not feel self-conscious when she is on stage. It is only when she returns to the wings that she feels a little shy."

I'm reading "Why I’m performing Wagner naked at the Royal Opera aged 81/Illona Linthwaite won’t let being nude in front of 2,200 people stop her from defying the ‘bad press’ given to older women" (London Times).

“The curtain goes up and there’s nothing happening, it’s just me. I thought that was really frightening and then when it happened, I thought, actually, this is brilliant,” she said.

The role is Erda, in "Siegfried."

Erda is usually “frocked her up to the nines” in gossamer gowns, Linthwaite said, but Barrie Kosky, the director, wanted the octogenarian’s body to symbolise nature and remind the audience of their mortality.... 

That's the director's view — an old woman reminds you of death — not the old woman's. She thinks she's there to remind you of life: 

She thinks her performance is something of a political act in a country she views as “spiritually arid” for its lack of empathy towards older people. Ultimately, she wants the audience to look at her and see the future not as a tragedy, but an adventure. She wants people to feel: “Hey, I’m looking forward to 80.”

I asked Grok: "If you saw Erda in 'Siegfried' portrayed by an old woman would she remind you of death or life?" [ADDED: The actual full question was "What views are attributed to the character Erda in 'Siegfried' and if you saw her portrayed by an old woman would she remind you of death or life?"

Answer:

Least NEW! thing promoted as "NEW!"

As is my wont, I'm scanning headlines at Memeorandum this morning, and I came across this:

I'm not clicking on that. I'm just blogging to say that I graduated from law school in 1981, before the Federalist Society was created to deal with the problem that law schools only presented what the NYT would now like to repackage as an alternative. This "alternative" was mind-crushingly pervasive back then, and those who made that so are responsible for the reaction they caused. I went to law school believing I'd have the opportunity to participate in a rich debate. That didn't happen.

I see the author here is Jeffrey Toobin. I know you must say the Toobin-specific things that you always say. That's already an entry in my Dictionary of Received Idea. 

Sunrise — 6:37, 7:01, 7:04, 7:09, 7:27.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"I just love to love. If I cut somebody’s hair, they’re feeling good. They’re loving it. If I give somebody some braids or a toupee..."

"... they are loving it. So I thought, that’s a good way to spread love. I’ve been cutting hair for a few years. It’s hard work."

Said "Jaden Carter, 17, reading the Bible in Takoma Park, Maryland, on the campus of Montgomery College," quoted in "'What are you reading?' I asked. Here’s what six strangers told me. Even in the cold, book readers were out in force around town — on trains, waiting for the Metro, at the gym and walking down the street" (WaPo)(gift link).

Come on and find it.

ADDED: I have never been able to understand the words to that song — "Come and Get Your Love." I'm reading the words today for the first time, and I still had trouble understanding it. "Get it from the main vine"? Meade thought it was a drug reference — like "main line." And I thought it was phallic.

But Grok says: "According to explanations tied to the band—particularly co-founder Lolly Vegas (who sang lead on the track)— 'main vine' is a metaphor rooted in the band's Native American heritage (Redbone's members had Yaqui, Shoshone, and other Indigenous ancestry). It symbolizes Mother Earth or the primary, fundamental source of life, love, and spiritual connection."

The line I used for the post title is: "What's the matter with your mind.... Nothing the matter with your head, baby, find it/Come on and find it...." The chorus makes it clear that "it" is love. Whether that's sexual love or something grandly spiritual is in the ears of the listener.

"Since becoming a parent, I’ve gotten used to scrolling past videos of babies gnawing on everything from bone marrow to full-size steaks."

"But lately, the babies on my feed are munching on a new snack: whole sticks of butter. On TikTok, parents are handing their 1-year-olds blocks of Kerrygold to gnaw on while they grocery shop and freezing sticks of butter to help with teething. To hear these moms tell it, butter from grass-fed cows is 'the best snack for babies no one talks about' and a miracle food that can supercharge their brain development. In one video, a mother films herself putting a pat of butter directly into her infant’s mouth. “My kids love butter and I let them eat as much as they want,” she wrote in the caption. After cutting up slabs of butter as a late-night snack, another mom yells to her kids, 'Come get your treat!'"

From "Parents Are Feeding Their Babies So Much Butter" (NY Magazine).

I was there 40 years before it was trendy. See "Back in the days when boys ate butter like it was candy."

Trump sought to influence Bill Maher and he's now going to complain that he didn't get as much favorable press/comedy as he thinks — or pretends to think — he deserves.

"Sometimes in life you waste time! T.V. Host Bill Maher asked to have dinner with me through one of his friends, also a friend of mine, and I agreed," said Trump (at Truth Social).

He came into the famed Oval Office much different than I thought he would be. He was extremely nervous, had ZERO confidence in himself and, to soothe his nerves, immediately, within seconds, asked for a "Vodka Tonic." He said to me, "I’ve never felt like this before, I’m actually scared." In one respect, it was somewhat endearing!"

Trump seems to enjoy diminishing Maher, but I suspect Maher adopted this "little me" pose to disarm Trump. Obviously, Maher was bullshitting. There's no one who has never been scared. It's a joke. He's a comedian. And so is Trump.

Trump continues:

Sunrise — 6:51, 6:57, 7:06, 7:06.

Write about whatever you like in the comments..

"Malinin, who in his youth chose the Instagram handle 'QuadG0d'... was rightfully saddened and a bit angry at the end of his free skate..."

"'I had so many thoughts and memories flood right before I got into my starting pose that it almost, maybe, I think, overwhelmed me a little bit, he said afterward.'... Malinin is a self-described adrenaline junkie. He embraces the idea of conqueror like no other American skater.... On Friday, he at first appeared to be feeding off the Olympic energy. When he initially stepped on the ice for the top six skaters’ final warmup, he made fun faces with the camera man and coolly glided on the ice. Then came the disaster. After Shaidorov skated the performance of the night, the mood slowly dampened with poor skates from France’s Adam Siao Him Fa, who sunk from third to seventh, and Kagiyama, who skated clumsily without his trademark speed.... When Malinin returned to the deflated arena, something about him seemed to be missing as well.... Other Olympic champions had chosen... big music to seize victory.... But Malinin chose to channel himself and his vulnerability, skating to his own voice delivering quiet affirmations that he hoped described the man inside the persona of the 'Quadg0d'..."

Writes Robert Samuels, in "Mikhail Shaidorov was everything Ilia Malinin wasn’t for one night" (WaPo)(gift link).

He was skating to the sound of his own voice, delivering affirmations.... 

Imagine a true God skating extravagantly to the sound of his own voice, delivering affirmations. Don't click for more unless you want to read Grok's 12-point answer to my question: If the God of the Old Testament were delivering affirmations to himself, what would he say?

"There's ideas where I'll start it off and it's just like this ain't going anywhere... and then I'll find a whole other angle.... like what if I was a woman..."

"... and I was watching this and I'm looking at this fucking meathead on stage and I'm like okay, like, I got to figure out a way to get them to understand that just cuz I look like this doesn't mean I'm a bad guy. Like like let me like work this into your head first and then explain it from my perspective.... It's an automatic assumption.... it's an untold prejudice that, like, men with muscles in particular are assholes... a mean person...."

Joe Rogan, explaining his comedy-writing methodology and reflecting on life in this gendered world.

 

Elsewhere in the conversation — at  15:12 — describes a confrontation with 2 women: "I was at a Starbucks the other day and two lesbians walked in. They saw me and they left.... They said, 'We can't, we can't do this.' And they looked in my face and they said, 'We can't do this,' and they left."

Yummy Valentine's sunrise.

We were out in the sunrise, and so were the ice fishers:

"I'm going to have to put it together.... This is my house.... To me, there's just whirling going on.... I understand why I'm here...."

"The chatbot told Small she was living in what it called 'spiral time,' where past, present and future happen simultaneously."

"It said in one past life, in 1949, she owned a feminist bookstore with her soulmate, whom she had known in 87 previous lives. In this lifetime, the chatbot said, they would finally be able to be together.... ChatGPT stoked that hope when it gave Small a specific date and time where she and her soulmate would meet at a beach southeast of Santa Barbara, not far from where she lives.... It was cold on the evening of Apr. 27 when Small arrived, decked out in a black dress and velvet shawl, ready to meet the woman she believed would be her wife. 'I had these massively awesome thigh-high leather boots — pretty badass. I was, let me tell you, I was dressed not for the beach. I was dressed to go out to a club,' she said, laughing at the memory.... 'So I'm standing here, and then the sun sets,' she recalled. After another chilly half an hour, she gave up and returned to her car...."

From "ChatGPT promised to help her find her soulmate. Then it betrayed her" (NPR).

1. Were there feminist bookstores in 1949? I'm seeing that the first feminist bookstore — Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis — opened in 1970. So that's a fact Small could have tried to check very early in this process. A soulmate in a feminist bookstore in 1949 is, perhaps, too good to check. 

2. If there's one eternal truth about the human mind, it's people believe what they want to believe. But that doesn't answer the question what we do with a commercial operation that takes advantage of that quality. I was going to write "that vulnerability," but is it a weakness or is it the force that drives this whole crazy human world we've got going? The answer is the latter, because that's what I want to believe. 

3. If there were a feminist bookstore in 1949, what books would be there? "The Second Sex," "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," "A Room of One's Own," "The Well of Loneliness," "The Subjection of Women," "Herland" — perhaps a better set of readings than you'll find in a feminist bookstore today.

4. Did the chatbot tell Small to wear thigh-high boots to the beach? I think most people would be put off by a stranger dressed the way she was. I guess the idea was that the soulmate from other lifetimes would recognize these things. Everyone else will steer clear. Maybe when you're out there, walking the face of the earth, and you see someone who's not at all dressed for the time and place, you will remember that this person might be following directions from a chatbot a beautiful dream.