Sunrise — 5:59.

Talk about anything you want in the comments.

Too good to check? Were the "Terry and Julie" of "Waterloo Sunset" Terence Stamp and Julie Christie?

I'm reading "Terence Stamp’s Swinging, Smoldering Style/He helped redefine male beauty, ushering in the era of the cinematic bad boy" by the NYT style reporter Guy Trebay. (Stamp died last Sunday at the age of 87.) 

Trebay writes: "In his 20s, when he sought a life beyond the straitened circumstances of his upbringing, he became a favorite of the London tabloids that relentlessly chronicled his relationships with the model Jean Shrimpton and the actress Julie Christie. His romantic life was at one point so well known that he and Ms. Christie inspired the 'Terry and Julie' in the Kinks song 'Waterloo Sunset,' released at the height of the mid-1960s music and fashion scene known as Swinging London."

If we go over to Genius.com to find the lyrics, we see: 

"Ebony & Ivory wastes your time, knows it's wasting your time, knows that you know it’s wasting your time, and loves that you know."

"Make no mistake: it has extremely niche appeal. But having watched this film, I think I can safely say I’m in that niche."

Writes Samantha McLaren, quoted at Rotten Tomatoes.

And here's the original song that asked the question, "Oh Lord, why don't we [live together in perfect harmony]?"

"The sculptures were meant to be provocative: 'Miss Mao' shows Mao as a topless woman with distorted, babyish features..."

"... while 'the execution of Christ' depicted a firing squad of life-size Mao statues aiming rifles at Jesus. But Gao denies they were defamatory.... Gao is accused of breaking a law that wasn’t even enacted until nearly a decade after these artworks were first exhibited. In 2018, China criminalized acts that 'distort, smear, desecrate' or otherwise 'damage the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs.'... Gao, who is a Christian, maintains that his artwork was not intended to defame Mao but rather to explore, through cartoonish depictions of a symbolic figure, the concepts of original sin and repentance.... For [his wife] Zhao, who was not married to Gao when he made the statues, it makes no sense for authorities to claim her leaving with her child would 'endanger state security,' as officials claimed...."

From "Seven-year-old New Yorker stuck in China over father’s political art/Gao Jia, the American-born son of a well-known Chinese dissident artist, has missed first grade because his parents have been stopped from leaving China" (WaPo).

"I want to get to heaven if possible. I'm hearing I'm not doing well. I hear I'm at the bottom of the totem pole. If I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons."

Wow. President Trump tells Fox News he hopes his efforts to end wars will bring him closer to Heaven.

This is powerful. Watch:

"I just want to end it. If i can save seven thousand people a week from getting killed, that's pretty good. I want to get to heaven if possible. I'm… pic.twitter.com/jcrQy4ixtT

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 19, 2025

"But without reliably insightful book reviews, literature risks becoming 'an unweeded garden that grows to seed.'"

"We’re left depending only on the whisper network of our own clique, exchanging the same tuna casserole back and forth. I realize this wobbly jeremiad reeks of self-interest: After 30 years of summarizing the plots of literary novels, I can do literally nothing else. But if journalism is still, at least partially, a public service, then book reviews are one of its most eloquent contributions — one we should defend until the very last page."

Writes Ron Charles, in "The future of book reviews looks grim/The Associated Press will no longer produce book reviews, though it will pursue stories about the publishing industry" (WaPo).

Let's talk about the tuna salad and the unweeded garden. The unweeded garden is in quotes, but there is no attribution. We're talking about literature, and if you're one of the last remaining Americans who care about actual literature, you're presumably supposed to know "an unweeded garden that grows to seed." But we can all google and find the attribution. I know I did.

I've sat through "Hamlet" a few times in my life — and read it too — and the first soliloquy is familiar to me: "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!" I know some other lines: "How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world!" But I didn't recognize "Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed...."

And what of the tuna casserole? How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the tuna casseroles of this world! The tuna casseroles are those books your friends and internet contacts talk about. The comfort food, the genre novels. Bleeh. Makes Hamlet the Book Reviewer want to kill himself. "O... that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!"

That it should come to this! No book reviewers! If there are no book reviewers, there will be no literary fiction. Ron Charles spent 30 years "summarizing the plots of literary novels." Well, AI can summarize the plot of any novel. That can't be the function of a book review, at least not anymore. It must be that the reviewer is supplying some special discernment, choosing what to elevate to the high plane of literature and convincing us that we should aspire to be the kind of people who read things like that.

By the way, I find it hard to trust a writer who dresses up the word "nothing" with the dreadful intensifier "literally" and plunks the phrase a few words away from "literary": "After 30 years of summarizing the plots of literary novels, I can do literally nothing else." He's defending his own livelihood. That counts against his opinion. What am I to think of Ron Charles anyway? Here he is, 14 years ago, displaying himself as "totally hip," opining on an author who is, if nothing else, truly striving to produce literary fiction:

"More than three-quarters of [University of Georgia 46 freshman girls'] rooms were decorated in... a 'LoveShackFancy Southern mishmash.'"

"(The luxury brand LoveShackFancy’s dorm decor includes a $225 shower curtain and a $115 heart-shaped throw pillow.) [The resident assistant] said she hasn’t seen professional interior decorators on the halls, but she watched in awe as parents took three to four hours to set up their daughters’ rooms.... The flouncy decorators, she said, are typically extroverts who plan to be a part of Greek life on campus, and they come to college to befriend similar people. A minimalist decorator, on the other hand, is 'maybe doing a major that is a little bit more analytical, or is into more niche activities.' She added, '... they really won’t interact, even on the floor.'..."

From "The over-the-top world of luxury dorm decorating/Wallpaper, custom headboards and $469 mattress toppers aren’t the norm in college rooms. But they are everywhere on TikTok" (WaPo).

This is how it looks on TikTok:

"At first, my hair came back as you’d expect, as the softest stubble. At about half an inch, though, there started to be a distinct ripple. The ripple evolved..."

"... into ’90s Billy Crystal (I clearly was not specific enough when I wished for the hair in 'When Harry Met Sally…'). There was a Nancy Reagan moment. And since then, it has gotten darker — and more and more (and more) poodle. I call this the haircut nobody asks for, or Baby’s First ’Do. It has changed the shape of my face. Old friends don’t recognize me. They seem to share some of the discomfort I feel standing in front of the mirror: Who is this? It’s like I uncanny-valleyed myself."

Writes Rachel Manteuffel, quite charmingly, in "Cancer changes you, but I never saw my new hair comingIt’s not clear why chemotherapy gave me curls, but when life gives you Garfunkel..." (WaPo).

"When i was 20 years old, i went through some serious mental health issues and decided i wanted a face tattoo."

"My local artist noticed i was in mental distress and told me that he would put semi permenant ink on my face of the tattoo i wanted. Wear it for a week without rubbing it off, then come back to him and decide if i still wanted it. I agreed and he stenciled it for me on my face. I came back shaking his hand a week later and decided to get a tattoo on my wrist instead. I will never forget what he did for me. Im 30 now, have a kid, wife, i work in IT for cybersecurity, and have no criminal history. I was setting myself up for failure. That artist saved me from a huge mistake i couldnt come back from"

Writes a commenter at r/shittytattoos, in a post with a photograph of someone's face tattoo (which seems to be what that person wanted to gift himself on the occasion of his 18th birthday).

"Angry Trump Accidentally Blurts Out Unnerving New Plot to Rig Midterms/Donald Trump just gave away his own game."

That's a headline at The New Republic that made me click, and I know I shouldn't reward TNR for its unnerving new plot to rig the attention market, but let's try to understand what "Angry Trump" supposedly has in mind.

I read this article so you don't have to. You already know the context, Trump's Truth Social Post about mail-in voting, which we talked about yesterday, here.

The TNR author, Greg Sargent, is calling attention to the fact that Trump mentioned the 2026 midterms. Trump said he'd sign an executive order "to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections." That's it. That's how "Donald Trump just gave away his own game." He revealed that he saw a causal relationship between his proposed reforms and the coming elections. Of course, Trump doesn't say he wants to rig the midterms for the Republicans. He's claiming to un-rig the elections, and he says "Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM."

Now one might try to say that the elections are not currently rigged. Here's Sargent:

There is overwhelming evidence that any fraud in mail balloting is limited to nonexistent. Indeed, it’s now beyond obvious that the pretext is the thing to watch.

I love when the author says something is "beyond obvious" and I can't even understand what he's talking about, but let's read on: 

At the Monday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

No sunrise picture today — it was raining.

"I am totally convinced that if Russia raised their hands and said, 'We give up, we concede, we surrender..."

"... we will GIVE Ukraine and the great United States of America, the most revered, respected, and powerful of all countries, EVER, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and everything surrounding them for a thousand miles, the Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners would say that this was a bad and humiliating day for Donald J. Trump, one of the worst days in the history of our Country.' But that’s why they are the FAKE NEWS, and the badly failing Radical Left Democrats. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!"

Trump is on a roll on Truth Social this morning. That may be his best written work — most absurdly comic and yet too true — maybe ever.

"President Trump said on Truth Social on Monday that he would 'lead a movement' to get rid of mail-in ballots and would sign an executive order..."

"... to help bring what he described as honesty to the 2026 midterm elections. Mr. Trump has long opposed mail-in voting, though Republicans made electoral gains in 2024 by embracing the practice."

Says the NYT.

I'm skeptical of the implication in that last sentence, that mail-in voting is better for Republicans than it is for Democrats. I think the 2024 gains only show that if there is mail-in voting, Republicans will do better if they encourage their supporters to use that method, rather than to wait for Election Day and to vote in person. But I would imagine that if general mail-in voting is eliminated and most people can only vote in person, Republicans might be even better off. Why would that be? Some people will say, because mail-in voting is used to cheat in various ways. Whatever the extent of the cheating, there's also the energy and enthusiasm it takes to vote in person. Shouldn't both parties insist that they don't want to cheat, only to keep the other side from cheating, and claim that their supporters are strongly committed and not lackadaisical? 

Here's the full text of Trump's Truth Social Post:

"Play to WIN, or don’t play at all! Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

 Writes Donald Trump, at Truth Social.

This blog has a theme today: sitcoms.

The first post is about "And Just Like That" (and mentions "Leave It to Beaver" and "Seinfeld").

The most recent post is about "The Cosby Show."

And the only other post... well, I've got to shoehorn it in, but think about it. Everybody into the Oval Office. Maybe you think that's not funny, but I was raised on "Dr. Strangelove."

"I am so pro separating the art and the artist... The one I can't do is Cosby...."

"I loved his sitcom.... I always thought it was weird though that his job was a gynecologist who worked out of his basement.... In his home!... He would walk up and take gloves off in the living room.... And you'd be like, wait, were those gloves just inside a woman? You're supposed to take them off, I think, like, right away.... I get obsessed with people that hide in plain sight. You're like, yeah, his job was, I think, obstetrician, they give women anesthesia in a basement. That means when you walked up the stairs, she was still passed out. In his basement...."

Said Whitney Cummings, on Bill Maher's podcast.

I like this comment over at YouTube: "Bill has been beat at his own game. Whitney is the supreme lord of interrupting and not letting people talk."

I didn't watch the Cosby show. I know the Cosby character was a doctor but did he work out of his basement and take the gloves off in the living room? Where does the comic exaggeration begin and end? I ask Grok.