"When my agent called me about a 'Simpsons' audition, I knew exactly what role it was for, and the idea actually made my stomach sink."

Said Sunil Malhotra, quoted in "Apu Returns to ‘The Simpsons’ With a New Voice Actor/After almost a decade away from Springfield, the character returned to the show, this time voiced by a South Asian actor rather than a white man" (NYT).

Was it wrong to remove Apu in the first place?

If it wasn't wrong, is it right to bring him back? Do you remove the problem if you insert a voice actor of the same ethnicity as the character? If so, what was wrong with the TV version of "Amos 'n' Andy"? It had black actors.

"It's so funny because it's so nothing in a way, but incredibly profound. It reminded me of Sam Shepard."

nathan fielder creating a play called “smokers allowed” to get around the smoking ban

what’s the loophole? nathan’s responding “theater law” makes me laugh every single time 😭 pic.twitter.com/PLSnotfqC1

— susie (@susieetweets) October 20, 2026

"There are more than 1,200 Halloween haunted houses that charge admission...."

"There are small haunts put on by organizations, like schools, and driven by volunteers; outdoor haunts with sprawling mazes where ghosts, ghouls and slashers hide; and haunts that live permanently in their spaces but open only during the weeks before Halloween. New York City’s Blood Manor falls into that last category.... Jim Lorenzo, Blood Manor’s owner and operator, said that he has to 'do 365 days worth of business in 23 days.'... Come Nov. 15, Mr. Lorenzo will hand his landlord a check for '$200,000-ish,' paying rent for the entire year.... 'We had to show financials because the landlord couldn’t understand, how could you afford to pay rent all year long'..."

From "The Bedeviling Work of Designing and Redesigning Haunted Houses/If you’re looking for the ultimate home renovation project, try opening a haunted house" (NYT).

"I mean, sometimes I like feeling nothing but sometimes it's it's fun to feel something."

Thanks to Lem, in the previous post, for pointing to this video, which has Nathan Fielder exploring the concept of "cringe."

Back in 2013, I blogged about the word "cringe." People were admiring "cringe-inducing" comedy, notably "The Office," which I wouldn't watch, because it made me feel bad. I mean, I like to feel something, but not bad.

Sunrise — with birds on a misty lake.

Coots:

Heron:

Ducks:

"A lot of people look at me, and they think I’m extreme, and I’ll be the first person to say that: I’m extreme."

"However, the only reason that I am extreme is because I’m a product of an extreme society. We are actually, I would say, one of the most extreme societies that have ever existed on the face of the Earth. We are in a society of extreme disconnection and extreme destruction and disharmony. It’s all sold to us as absolutely normal. But it’s not. Right now, we’re going through the sixth extinction. It’s human-driven. Millions of species are going extinct because of our actions. That’s extreme."

Says Robin Greenfield, quoted in "He forages all his food but calls your diet ‘extreme’/Robin Greenfield seeks to challenge ideas about what counts as normal food" (WaPo)(gift link).

I see that he's in northern Wisconsin, and he eats a lot of "wild rice, acorns, wild pecans, black walnuts, hazelnuts, plums, fish and deer."

How do you eat acorns? We could forage a lot of calories from our own little yard if we knew how to eat acorns. Hint: It's a lot of work!

By the way, I remember Euell Gibbons. He was big enough, back in the 1970s, to be satirized on "The Carol Burnett Show": 

The heron at 6:59 a.m. — in reverse chronological order.

"All of us are going to die. Sometimes the time we have spent on things has far less meaning than the time we spend with God, the quality time we give to God...."."

Said the Rev. Patricio Alfredo Sánchez Molinari, speaking of timeliness and death, quoted in "Priest Dies After Crucifix Falls on Him During Livestreamed Mass/The Rev. Patricio Alfredo Sánchez Molinari was addressing his congregation in Guayaquil, Ecuador, when a wooden cross detached from a wall and struck him" (NYT).

That happened Saturday. In a similar event, on Friday, "Visitor Killed by Roof Debris at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West/A 55-year-old rector from a university in Brazil was killed while on a walking tour of the famed architect’s winter home in Scottsdale, Ariz." (NYT).

A question I asked Grok: What are some other incidents of a person getting killed by an object that has some ironic significance? On my own, I only thought of [that character I falsely remember as having been played by] Daniel Day-Lewis in "Howard's End."

Reading this, you may wonder, am I spending my time well? Death is right there walking beside you, ready to take you out when the time is right.

"Congress must demand a full accounting of the damage Mr. Musk and DOGE caused, and we will not let anyone obstruct our oversight."

Said House Foreign Affairs ranking member Rep. Greg Meeks, quoted in "Capitol agenda: Dem gavels are coming for Elon Musk/Democrats have long eyed investigating the world’s richest man and the GOP’s top donor. They may get their chance if they win back congressional power in November."

That's in Politico this morning, along with this: "Democrats have a message for Elon Musk: Watch out/From DOGE to Ukraine, the uberwealthy GOP donor could be an irresistible target if House gavels change hands."

"I grew up feeling that I was a vehicle for male pleasure. I never really considered my own needs."

"My priority has been to make sure I don’t get rejected or abandoned. Therefore, I’m prioritising my partner’s enjoyment because the first thing I’m protecting is my safety. Maybe it is controversial to say it.... You tell some men they’re not satisfying you and it’s terrifying what the potential reaction could be. Understandably, we avoid that conflict at all costs. I don’t think I’m unique. I think what a lot of us are doing when we’re having sex is making sure he’s OK, because otherwise you’re going to be left alone and be some old spinster."

Said Lily Allen, quoted in "Lily Allen: ‘I felt I was a vehicle for male pleasure — not my own’ It’s been a difficult few years for the pop star Lily Allen, whose marriage to the Stranger Things actor David Harbour fell apart in very public fashion. Now she’s riding high again" (London Times).

"If you're tired, go to sleep."

Enjoy three minutes of the Brewers talking about Murph’s funniest dugout moments. 😅 https://t.co/g9YNEcJrzR

— Sophia Minnaert (@SophiaMinnaert) October 19, 2026

"The incentives of the streaming era mean many documentaries are now preordained affairs: true-crime narratives populated by talking heads..."

"... and pitched when the outcome is already known, or cozy, authorized docs about celebrities. [Lance] Oppenheim, like [Nathan] Fielder and John Wilson, is after something more heightened and less predictable; unlike them, he doesn’t have a writers’ room or make himself a character in the proceedings. He borrows from the tradition of nonfiction filmmakers like Frederick Wiseman, seeking out stories that can unfold in real time. Often, the process involves a lengthy 'fishing expedition,' leaving him with hundreds of hours of footage to sift through in the edit. Then there are the surreal flourishes that bring the work into the realm of what Oppenheim calls 'docufantasia.'..."

From "Lance Oppenheim Is Going Places How the 30-year-old director cold-emailed his way into making two of the best films of the year" (NY Magazine).

The "2 of the best films of the year" are "You Can See Everything," that film about Elizabeth Holmes, and "Primetime, " the one about the "To Catch a Predator" guy, Chris Hansen.

By the way "How To With John Wilson" is my all-time favorite TV show.

And I like this quote from Oppenheim's wife: "It’s almost like he was an alien beamed down to Earth and the only piece of software that was downloaded was like, ‘You are going to make movies.'"

Sunrise.

Tourists salvaging what they can of their Paris trip? Or are these locals? I'm guessing locals. They're smoking!

A striking contrast on the streets of Paris: A couple sits sipping drinks at an outdoor café as flames burn just steps away. The moment was captured Saturday near the Arc de Triomphe, on the outskirts of rioting that erupted during demonstrations over rising prices, inequality and public spending. Video shows the pair continuing their conversation as a burning trash bin lights up the background.

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 19, 2026

ADDED: For me, a longtime connoisseur of travel critique, this video shows us a stark version of what is nearly always the case. I'm guessing these are, in fact, local residents, because they're smoking, but if they are tourists, they are doing what I think tourists more or less always do. They have a fantasy of a place and they believe they can go to that fantasy and they perform the mental labor of believing they have entered into the place they imagined. They screen out or rationalize the contradictory material and they determinedly live out their dream. 

Reminds me of that old Charlie Kaufman movie, "Synecdoche, New York," where a woman takes a real-estate tour of what is her dream house. The house is on fire, and she buys it and lives in in... dies in it:

ADDED: Protesters pop the bubble of tourist's fantasy of communing with the Mona Lisa:

"I did everything wrong 5 times."

Pat Murphy did not get a real big league managing job until he was 65 years old He has won Manager of the Year twice since Here is his whole story He never played a day in the major leagues himself. He was a catcher who signed with the San Francisco Giants and spent four years in the minors without ever getting called up He was the head coach at Arizona State for fifteen seasons. He won 629 games there and took them to the College World Series four times. Before that he was at Notre Dame and won 318 more Then it ended. He resigned in the middle of an NCAA investigation, after being told to resign or be fired The NCAA found him innocent of the violations. What they actually reprimanded him for was his attitude toward their investigators. They called it cavalier Here is how he describes that stretch "I was a college coach forever, and then I had this huge injustice happen, and I thought, Why me?" And then this, about himself "My ego was involved a great deal more than it should have been." So at 51 years old he went to the minor leagues Eugene, Oregon. Tucson. El Paso. Nearly five years riding buses in the low minors after fifteen years running one of the best programs in the country San Diego gave him the interim job and he went 42 and 54 in 96 games. They did not keep him "I did everything wrong five times." So he took a job as somebody's bench coach in Milwaukee. He did that for eight years Then Craig Counsell left for Chicago, and the Brewers handed it to the 65 year old Here is what happened next. Manager of the Year. Then Manager of the Year again. 97 wins last season, 103 this one And a sweep of a Los Angeles roster built to never lose a series like this He was not some nobody they found in a parking lot. He was one of the best college coaches alive before any of this, and the Brewers handed him a roster Counsell had already built. But he was 51 when he had to start over in the low minors, and 65 before anybody gave him a team of his own for a full season. Christian Yelich said it takes a certain kind of player to play for him. It took a certain kind of man to still be waiting at 65 (Via @thesportsontap)

— Punchoutpitch (@Punchoutpitch) October 18, 2026

I was interested in that quote — "I did everything wrong 5 times" — not because I'm following the Brewers, though I am, but because — just 5 days ago — I was blogging about the positive side of wrongness.

After Anne Carson won the Nobel Prize, I started reading her book "Wrong Norma," and I wrote about her answer to the question, "Tell me about the 'wrongness' in the title of Wrong Norma." She said that in academia you always feel "that you’re wrong or on the verge of being wrong and you have to worry about that, because everything is so judgmental and hierarchical." And that's "kind of a mentality I was interested in disabling." It "loosens the mind" not to worry about being wrong: "you can go on to think other things or wider things or the things underneath where you were. It’s just suddenly a different landscape." 

Apply that to baseball.

"The onslaught against [Jane] Doe and her supporters is taken directly from the playbook that established them: Gamergate."

"In 2014, a mostly anonymous digital horde waged a full-scale assault on women working in the gaming industry in an effort to damage their reputations and drive them from their professions. They harassed and doxxed their victims and fabricated and disseminated conspiratorial rumors about them.... Gamergate is a formative origin point for the alt-right, whose members and ideas have been absorbed into what is now called the new right. Once a subset of the broader conservative movement, the intellectuals and policy wonks of the new right, who almost all share atavistic visions of a masculine-obsessed politics, helped pave the way for Mr. Trump’s rise to power.... As a political tactic, resorting to a decade-old strategy of harassment should be evidence that the right’s bag of tricks is painfully meager. It’s also a bit baffling. In the face of a midterm election that could knock Mr. Trump’s presidency down into a posture of feeble lameness, the right’s online surrogates are instead burning crucial bandwidth on a grotesque persecution of a sympathetic woman — all while pushing a scolding grievance message about sexual values that is more likely to scare away new voters than bring them into the tent...."

Writes Nathan Taylor Pemberton, in "I Have Never Seen the Online Right So Happy" (NYT).