"I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator from the Great State of South Carolina."

"This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!"

Signed President DONALD J. TRUMP, at Truth Social.

"In aiming for a vision of fitness that avoids overemphasis on masculinity, I gravitated away from influencers and biohackers toward strong artists..."

"... who had prioritized physical strength in their daily routines.... There is the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who in her book 'The Secret to Superhuman Strength' could not talk about fitness without also talking about her private history of romantic relationships and the role exercise played in managing stress and quashing depression.... The novelist Laura van den Berg turned to boxing to combat destructive anxiety patterns.... And I spoke with the poet Hanif Abdurraqib about how running... was about stress relief and managing clinical depression... In a recent interview with Haruki Murakami, the singer Harry Styles credited Mr. Murakami’s book on running with freeing him 'from the idea that music had to be an unhealthy profession and I had to be this tortured soul.'... These artists weren’t going on about perfect blood panels or maximum efficiency or tracking immense protein intake. They cared about feeling alive in their bodies, sleeping well and having the stamina to do meaningful work.... Rather than follow the voice of one supposed strongman, rattling off advice, I learned to favor a chorus...."

Writes Sebastian Langdell, a professor of medieval literature, in "Men Need Better Fitness Role Models" (NYT).

Langdell is rejecting the "fitness bros." He names a few of them — Peter Attia, Tim Ferriss, Andrew Huberman — so aren't the bros, too, a "chorus"? The distinction is not between a "chorus" and "one supposed strongman" but between the practical rules you ought to follow to achieve better fitness and the psychological motivation to pursue it. I don't see why the "chorus" wouldn't include both voices. Even if you feel inspired by Harry and Haruki and Hanif to go running, you'd still want to know if running long or short and fast or slow is more beneficial to your body and your mind.

Am I the only one who remembers this movie?

Wikipedia: "Athanael (Jack Benny), the third trumpet player in the orchestra of a late night radio show sponsored by Paradise Coffee... falls asleep listening to the announcer, who is doing his best to prove it is 'the coffee that makes you sleep.' Athanael dreams he is an angel (junior grade) and a trumpeter in the orchestra of Heaven.... [H]e is given the mission of destroying planet 339001 (Earth) and its troublesome inhabitants by blowing the 'Last Trumpet' at exactly midnight, signaling the end of the world...."

It was released on April 20, 1945 — 8 days after the death of President Roosevelt — and was a box office failure. I watched it in 1964 when it played on "The Early Show" on TV, which means it played every night for a week, Monday through Friday. That gave you and your brother the chance to turn it into a family cult classic complete with commentary and shouted-out memorized lines. 

I love the poster, but that's not a trumpet.

Bellflower.

Video by Meade, at 5:53 a.m. this morning. The color really did pop like that, and Meade said he wanted flowers like these in our front yard.

These are the tall bellflowers — Campanula americana, AKA American bellflower — that are native here. Not to be confused with the creeping bellflower — Campanula rapunculoides AKA European bellflower — that we fight and that our government tells us to fight. Those things are short, 1 to 3 feet tall. The tall bellflower are 3-6 feet tall. Perhaps you can tell from the camera angle.

"[T]hree large blank sheets of paper had been affixed to a wall. On the floor was a basin filled with a viscous liquid, tempera paint mixed with animal blood...."

"Then Mendieta—an energetic and diminutive woman, just five feet tall, if that—walked in, to the accompaniment of a drumbeat, dressed in a baggy white ensemble. She drenched her hands and arms in the mixture, reached to the top of one piece of paper, then forcefully smeared her limbs down the surface to make two bloody tracks, ending up on her knees on the floor. Mendieta performed this action twice more before absenting herself, leaving the audience to contemplate the visceral imprints she left behind.... It’s impossible to view Mendieta’s output and not think about the physical stamina and cultural daring that she must have had—not only to make art from her exposed body but also to hide herself away and make work that might only ever please or satisfy herself...."

From "Ana Mendieta, the Body Artist/Decades after her death, her bold innovations are finally coming into focus" (The New Yorker).

A Monday morning juxtaposition. .

I see this at the top of the NYT right now:

Sterile wealth, romanticized poverty, and mindlessness about sleevelessness.

1. The family of 5: "'Money right now, there’s not enough. Literalmente,' said Ms. Torres, speaking Spanglish. 'Sometimes I feel bad, like I can’t do enough for my kids.'"

2. The Biebers: "The 2,792-square-foot apartment has two kitchens — an open-plan kitchen for entertaining, with marble counters and Scandinavian larch wood cabinetry, and a secondary chef’s kitchen with stainless steel and matte aluminum cabinetry. The primary suite looks out to the Hudson River..." The living room, I see, looks out onto a big TV screen and turns its back on the uninspiring skyline of New Jersey.

3. The presumed dearth of sleeves: "In all of the discussions about body positivity and loving the different parts of you, including the parts of you that decades of social conditioning have deemed potentially problematic, arms, especially the upper arms, are often overlooked...." The letter writer is urged to "rethink the issue" and "learn to love your arms."

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"We don’t need presidents who have weird obsessions."

Said Kamala Harris, back in October 2020, blogged at the time, here.

I know that at the time I thought I bet all the Presidents have had a weird obsession. I know because I said that in a podcast at the time. 

That post and podcast predated access to Grok, so I didn't have the chance to use this prompt: Accept the hypothesis that every U.S. President had a weird obsession and to list all the Presidents with their weird obsession. I did use it today, though. Some of my favorites:

"Given all the lovemaking, it’s remarkable any of them had time for painting or poetry. But each activity reinforced the next, sex flowing into art..."

"... art turning into sex, all of it transforming what was ostensibly a holiday by the sea among friends into a frenzy of erotic and creative expression — an outpouring that, as Europe girded for war, acquired a rebellious political charge. 'It’s as if the group were thumbing their noses at fascism,' Thomasson writes, their lives and work serving as a 'manifesto for an alternative world to the one that was coming into being.'"

From "Sex and Surrealism on the French Riviera/A group of artists gathered at a hotel on the Côte d’Azur in 1937. A new book by Anna Thomasson captures the art and escapades the holiday inspired" (NYT).

I'm skeptical... but envious.

Is the book readable? Sample text: "We get a powerful sense of physicality. Of bodies, of limbs and breasts and bottoms and penises, alone or entwined, still or in action. We feel the warm sun and salt water on bare skin and sand between toes, intimacy and proximity and responsiveness and desire." It's really hard to write about sex! Actually, that writing reminds me of a podcast I like: "Boring History for Sleep." It goes on and on about how everything looks and feels and smells and sounds. 

Why is "Paint It Black" the most-played Rolling Stones song on Spotify?

Look, it has over 1.7 billion streams. The next most played Stones song — "Satisfaction" — has only 940 million.

I think it's the non-Boomers, discovering it through movies and TV and video games and TikTok. Here's a link to see the 180,000+ TikTok videos that use the recording. It seems quite popular with aviation (for males) and the wearing of black clothing (for females). And then there are tattoos:

"In those two minutes, you ask yourself existential questions about what time even is, what a body even is, what a feeling even is."

"It’s just a sensation, right? But knowing that pain — and there is pain — is just a sensation does not help you right now because that took three seconds to figure out and you still have a wild wagon-train trip to California to go. Did you mention that there’s a man with a ukulele there? He appears to work for this cold-plunge outfit, and he is wearing that dumb hat and quietly strumming — is that? — Leonard Cohen’s 'Hallelujah'? You love that song and have never enjoyed it less. Your hatred for this man only buys seven or eight more seconds, and as you cast your mind about, looking for something else to get you through, a strange thing happens...."

Writes Taffy Brodesser-Akner, in "I Survived a Cold Plunge and All I Got Was Everything I Ever Wanted/I resisted the trend until I couldn’t any longer" (NYT).

By the way, do you need a fancy cold plunge machine or a session at a cold plunge commercial establishment? Can't you just fill up your bathtub with water from the cold tap and maybe toss in the ice that's accumulated in the bin inside the refrigerator? That was a good question for Grok.

"We take what we do very seriously. We’re not making little goody bags — we’re really thinking out what it is people need the most."

Said Jeffrey Newman, quoted in "Jayson Conner, 48, and Jeffrey Newman, 58, Die; Gave Thousands of Backpacks to Those in Need/The couple, who died within a few days of each other, provided needed supplies, like socks and wet wipes, to people living on New York City’s streets" (NYT).

Goodbye to Lindsey Graham.

"Lindsey Graham, longtime senator from South Carolina, dies at 71/Graham, a staunch Trump ally and key GOP foreign policy voice, was running for reelection this year. He died of a 'brief and sudden illness,' his office said" (WaPo)(gift link).

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"And I’ve also gotten into this habit of doing songs that are about personal relationships and then I throw a verse about politics in there."

"That’s a trick that I’ve learned from other songwriters, because nobody wants to hear a whole song about politics or social comment. A blues song like 'Rough and Twisted,' you talk about women and everything, but then you throw in stuff that’s obviously political: 'The only club was called conspiracy.' 'What they wanted was tyranny.' So you find yourself using these tricks."

Said Mick Jagger, in an interview at "Mick Jagger Knows He May Have Played His Last Rolling Stones Show" (NYT).

ADDED: I like this part about philosophy: 

"They’re always having so many arguments, these philosophers, and always disagreeing with their masters. I was reading this book on Kant. They’re quite rude to each other and then they have to make up later, and I can’t understand what they’re really talking about. Was Kant a Christian? Was he an atheist?"

The interviewer, David Marchese, enthuses, "I think it’s cool that you’re reading Kant." And Mick responds coolly: "Well, it’s all vaguely fashionable."

"Hiking in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, the one and only time he dropped acid... Mr. Cunningham peered down at the town of Silverton and was overcome by the feeling..."

"... that 'cars were the boss and people were the servants of the cars.' In the 1970s, he had been known for wearing a mask around the Bay Area, breathing with an oxygen tank to protect his lungs from air polluted by cars. Other machines could also drive him to distraction. He and Ms. Phelan, who married in 1988, regularly slept in what was essentially a treehouse outside their home in Fairfax, Calif., near San Anselmo — for the fresh air and the nightly respite from the plugged-in world of cellphones, fax machines, televisions and computers...."

From "Charlie Cunningham, Mountain Bike Innovator, Dies at 77/In the late 1970s, he built what is considered the first off-road bicycle with a frame that was aluminum rather than steel, one of his many inventions" (NYT).