"Among the early regulars was a group from the Second City comic troupe, including Don Novello, John Belushi and Bill Murray. They downed beer and coffee..."

"... and marveled at Mr. Sianis’s kind but firm handling of first-timers who expected his tiny grill to turn out anything other than cheeseburgers...."

I'm reading "Sam Sianis, ‘Cheezborger’-Flipping Owner of Chicago’s Billy Goat Tavern, Dies at 91/His dive bar became famous thanks to Mike Royko’s columns, a baseball curse and a 'Saturday Night Live' skit" (NYT).

"The phrase 'cheezborger cheezborger' entered the pop-culture lexicon and made the Billy Goat and Mr. Sianis a tourist attraction. During the summer of 1978, at the inaugural ChicagoFest festival on Navy Pier, Mr. Sianis set up a booth where he and Mr. Belushi recreated his quirky grill for thousands of fans."

Bill Murray discovers what a podcast is.

A TikTok montage of Murray on Joe Rogan.

ADDED: Here's the montage in YouTube form, "Bill Murray learns who Joe Rogan is ON his podcast":

"Just remember, you’re a living organism on this planet, and you’re very safe."

ADDED: It really happened:

"The world is different than it was when I was a little kid. What I always thought was funny as a little kid isn’t necessarily the same as what’s funny now."

"Things change and the times change so it’s important for me to figure it out. I think it’s a sad dog that can’t learn any more. I don’t want to be that sad dog and I have no intention of it."

Said Bill Murray, quoted in "Bill Murray admits behaviour on set towards a woman led to halt to film/Actor describes incident that took place during production of Being Mortal as a ‘difference of opinion’" (Guardian).

"Bill Murray’s new film being shut down for an investigation into his alleged 'inappropriate behavior' is taking on a darker tone amid a resurfaced on-set horror story..."

"... that’s kept Hollywood whispering for decades. Disney was allegedly forced to hire bodyguards to protect the cast and crew of 1991’s 'What About Bob?' after the actor hurled a glass ashtray at co-star Richard Dreyfuss and threatened to 'throw' the film’s female producer 'across a parking lot.'... Despite his enduring status as a beloved Hollywood bad boy, Murray has repeatedly been accused of violently clashing with co-stars — from alleged head-butting to 'inexcusable and unacceptable' language — on numerous sets stretching all the way back to the 1970s."

From "Sad tale of Bill Murray’s on-set violence surfaces amid ‘behavior’ investigation" (NY Post).

More stories here: "Bill Murray allegedly behaved inappropriately on his latest film. It’s not new territory" (L.A. Times). 

I'm looking back at my old posts with the "Bill Murray" tag:

In 2015, people were talking about "Living a Bill Murray Life." Murray had composed 7 rules to help you live like him, which was presumably something quite a few of us thought of as a cool thing to do.

In 2016, I featured this Bill Murray quote: "What stops us from looking at ourselves and seeing ourselves is that we’re kind of ugly, if we really, if we look really hard. We’re not who we think we are. We’re not, uh we’re not as wonderful as we think we are."

In 2018, I quoted something Harvey Weinstein had said in 2014: "Being a Murray-ite is a religion, where you can behave as badly as you want to people, and they still love you. I used to feel guilty about behaving badly, and then I met Bill, and it feels so much better."

"We just went out with our friend to walk the dog, and you’re wearing a mask, everyone’s wearing a mask. The dog is the only one who’s completely alive!"

"He’s living the dog’s life. The rest of us are afraid to die, and afraid to kill, so we’re masked up and we’re injected, and so forth. It’s the most challenging time of this life cycle for us. We didn’t have a world war or a depression, the things our ancestors had. This is the hand we got dealt and if you fold, you can’t win."

Said Bill Murray, quoted in "Bill Murray: ‘We are afraid to die and afraid to kill’/The comedy great sits down with classical cellist Jan Vogler and talks to Kevin EG Perry about the pandemic being this generation’s ‘most challenging time’, his cure for depression and shooting a majestic concert movie at the Acropolis of Athens" (Independent).

Also: 

"I remember my friend Hunter Thompson..."

Ah, the other Hunter. 

"Ordinary speech can emit small respiratory droplets that linger in the air for at least eight minutes and potentially much longer..."

"... according to a study published Wednesday that could help explain why infections of the coronavirus so often cluster in nursing homes, households, conferences, cruise ships and other confined spaces with limited air circulation. The report, from researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the University of Pennsylvania, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal. It is based on an experiment that used laser light to study the number of small respiratory droplets emitted through human speech. The answer: a lot."

From "Experiment shows human speech generates droplets that linger in the air for more than 8 minutes" by Joel Achenbach (in WaPo).

How did we ever sit together in restaurants and talk and eat? Saliva was always constantly flying about and getting up our nose and into our mouth and onto our food! It was inexpressibly gross. And now that we know, how can we ever eat anywhere near another person... at least another person whom we wouldn't feel okay about French kissing? How can we talk with anyone other than over the internet? Human life as we have known it is over... but we can't say that. What would be the point? Life is too unhealthful to be lived?

Louder speech produces more droplets, [the researchers] note. The paper estimates that one minute of “loud speaking” generates “at least 1,000 virion-containing droplet nuclei that remain airborne” for more than eight minutes.

Okay, so maybe just tweak human life. Make improvements. Speak, but speak quietly.



AND:



PLUS: Here's a game for your coronavirus lockdown: "Say It Don't Spray It - The Word Game That Gets You Wet! The Ultimate Party Game That Brings Uncontrollable Laughter!"

Say It Don't Spray It is a hilarious variation on the category game that most people have played at one time or another! It is amazing how just a small amount of water creates a tremendous amount of anticipation, funny faces and general hilarity.

Trump's 6-page letter is — and he intended this — one of the prominent documents in the annals of American history.

I wanted to write that out precisely because I believe it is true and it is — for millions of people — enraging — enraging and flummoxing.

The letter ends by stepping away from the present and imagining the people 100 years from now, looking back and seeing things from their point of view:

There is far too much that needs to be done to improve the lives of our citizens. It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.

One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.

People of the Future, I am speaking to you.

That is, of course, a way to speak to people of the present. Conjure up the people of the future who are watching what we do now. Don't want them looking at us with horror or contempt, do we? The anti-Trumpers are doing the same thing. Join us or the People of the Future are condemning you.

(Greta Thunberg has soared to power and fame by convincingly embodying the People of the Future. She is Them, and she is scorning and excoriating you.)

So, we're hearing lots of statements using this rhetorical device of the People of the Future. Trump's contribution to the People of the Future genre is distinctive for 2 reasons:

1. It's not just one more statement in the voluminous back and forth about impeachment. It's a written compendium of everything the President of the United States wants to say on the subject of this important historical event. It is long in that it's 6 pages. (Anti-Trumpers have enough to be able to disparage it as rambling.) But it's also short. (The Mueller Report is 448 pages.) It will surely be preserved and read and studied and reflected upon far into the future. It is clearly a historical document, unlike virtually all the other statements bandied about in — to use Trump's term — "this impeachment fantasy."

2. The letter refrains from purporting to say what the People of the Future think. It speaks to them. It's modest in that regard: I'm thinking of you, and I want to talk to you, to "put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record" for you. He wants you "to understand... and learn." There's a mellow, humble tone to that. It should be distinguished from People of the Future rhetoric that conjures up a crowd shouting: We hate you! You were horribly destructive and blind!

ADDED: The People of the Future genre is vast. Think of The Ghost of Christmas Future:



ALSO: I wanted to list some of the ephemeral writings diminishing Trump's contribution to the annals of American history: "It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump’s letter to Pelosi is" (Jennifer Rubin in WaPo), "Trump's most expansive defense against impeachment is just as lame and dishonest as his tweets" (LA Times), "Trump's wild letter to Pelosi is filled with false and misleading claims" (CNN), "President Sends Six-Page Letter of Randomly Capitalized Ranting to Speaker of the House" (Slate).

New evidence, answering a 14-year-old question.

On February 20, 2005, I asked whether it's "party hardy" or "party hearty." The NYT had written "party hardy," and that was the first time I'd noticed the near homophones and the potential for either word to make sense — with a slight difference of meaning:

If you're trying to wish the person well in holding up to all that drinking, it's "hardy." If you want them to have a lot of rollicking fun, it's "hearty." If you're trying to say both, stick to the spoken word. If you're the NYT, and you mean to insult the catty, exclusionary state school girls, "hardy" actually is the better choice.

 I love when people comment on old posts, especially really old posts, and I was pleased to see that "Unknown" stopped by last night to contribute this:

"Being a Murray-ite is a religion, where you can behave as badly as you want to people, and they still love you. I used to feel guilty about behaving badly, and then I met Bill, and it feels so much better."

Said Harvey Weinstein about Bill Murray, back in 2014, well before Weinstein became a pariah. Murray is asked about it now by The Guardian. He says:

“Well, I think Harvey was saying something funny, and you can take something someone said a few years ago out of context, but I think that’s a funny thing he said. Are you asking for a comment about Harvey Weinstein? I mean, I don’t know exactly what he’s being accused of yet, but I know some of the people involved in that situation, one very sweet person, and it hurts to hear her speak about it. Really, it hurts … I feel the pain about it and the pain is not over.”

You can take something someone said a few years ago out of context, but I think that’s a funny thing he said.... Might have been funny a few years ago, but that's the context: A few years ago. Now, it's The Era of That's Not Funny, and apparently you not only have to stop infusing your speech with humor that's not so hit-on-the-head obvious that the dumbest person in the room gets it, you have to account for not having spoken up about the not-funniness of jokes that were cracked before The Era even began.

A great cold open on "SNL" last night.

I particularly love Fred Armisen as Michael Wolff. It's also wonderful to see Bill Murray as Steve Bannon, and I'm told the Mika and Joe stuff is spot on. I find Kate McKinnon very funny here, but I don't know "Morning Joe" enough to see how closely she's tracking Mika Brzezinski, but Meade tells me it's a great impersonation:



I'm told I should watch some YouTubes of "Morning Joe" so I can understand the Mika and Joe dynamic, but trying to extrapolate from this imitation, it seems that the man (Joe) is inflated with self-importance and the woman (Mika) serves the role of continually deflating him in this weird combination of disrespecting him and being sexually attracted to him. Did I get that right? I don't know, but I laughed a lot and am prompted to believe I would laugh even more if I understood the target that is Mika Brzezinski.

What really cracked me up was Fred Armisen, whom I couldn't recognize for a good while because of the bald head but also because he assumed the ridiculous, infuriating demeanor of Michael Wolff so perfectly.

I laughed even more at the "My Drunk Boyfriend" sketch, which was about full-size robot dolls that are actually like your drunk boyfriend. The physical comedy is really excellent:

"Was SNL’s Take on Sarah Huckabee Sanders Sexist?"

"Critics are arguing that Saturday Night Live’s spoof of White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took low blows at her weight," reports The Daily Beast.

“I will say this: you guys were mean about Huckabee Sanders,” CNN’s New Day co-host Chris Cuomo said on the morning program. “You were fat-shaming her. You were talking about how she looks and what she wears. I thought it was mean, not funny.”...

Regardless of where you fall on the matter of offense, it is certainly lazy to go after a woman’s appearance as the sole source of comedy. Surely there are other punchlines—Sanders’ brusque, exasperated demeanor, her poor grasp of the meaning of “atrocities”—that don’t mock her body image.

ADDED: Ricky Gervais — an actual gifted (and fat) comedian — has strongly and on many occasions defending making fun of fatness. Example:

I heard someone on the radio once say that they were tired of the prejudice aimed at the overweight. They said something like "you're not allowed to make fun of gay people, so why are you allowed to make fun of fat people? It's the same thing."

It's not the same thing though, is it? Gay people are born that way. They didn't work at becoming gay. Fat people became fat because they would rather be that way than stop eating so much. They had to eat and eat to get fat. Then, when they were fat they had to keep up the eating to stay fat. For gayness to be the same as fatness, gay people would have to start off straight but then ween themselves onto cock. Soon they're noshing all day getting gayer and gayer. They've had more than enough cock... they're full... they're just sucking for the sake of it. Now they're overgay, and frowned upon by people who can have the occasional cock but not over indulge.

When a doctor tells me that that's how you become gay, I'll stop making jokes about fat people.

I think what that mostly proves is that if you are funny enough, you can joke about anything. Here's George Carlin's classic defense of that concept.

Now, I haven't watched the SNL about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, but I think it might be that they just show her eating. Is that funny enough? I don't know. Depends on how they do it! I remember years ago on SNL, John Belushi playing the role of Elizabeth Taylor — at a time when Liz was pretty fat — and just having her eat, but it was funny eating.

"What stops us from looking at ourselves and seeing ourselves is that we’re kind of ugly, if we really, if we look really hard."

"We’re not who we think we are. We’re not, uh we’re not as wonderful as we think we are."

Said Bill Murray, back in 2014, in an interview with Howard Stern, quoted in a new NYT article — by David Segal —  titled "Confessor. Feminist. Adult. What the Hell Happened to Howard Stern?/Scattered among the gleefully vulgar mainstays are now intimate exchanges that have made Mr. Stern one of the most deft interviewers in the business."

That's one of the articles I read on my iPhone this morning before getting out of bed. I've had it in the back of my mind as something I might blog, and I thought of it just now as I was having a conversation with Meade about Bill and Hillary Clinton. The theory under discussion was that Bill and Hillary are not really of our generation but our parents' generation, even though they are only about half a decade older than us. What puts them in that earlier generation is that they don't believe in telling it straight and revealing their true selves. They think things need to be kept hidden and that what you say publicly needs to be a cover story. They never believed the 1960s credo Tell it like it is.

Why not tell it like it is? Let it all hang out — that's another 60s saying. I thought of what Bill Murray said: "What stops us from looking at ourselves and seeing ourselves is that we’re kind of ugly...." Not everyone thinks like that. "We’re not, uh we’re not as wonderful as we think we are." Not everyone thinks like that, but it is a way of thinking. You could also believe that everybody's beautiful. (Here's the song that plays in my head when writing that sentence.) You could take a flier on the belief that whatever you are is what you should be and it's perfectly good. What else are you going to do? You're you, and you're never going to be anyone else. Another 60s expression: Do your own thing. 

Did that make you think of Donald Trump? It seems that all roads lead to Donald Trump these days. And wouldn't you expect an article in the NYT about the greatness of Howard Stern as an interviewer would have something important about the Howard Stern interviews with Donald Trump, something as profound as the place where Howard took Bill Murray? Your NYT-mistrusting mind might be yelling at the computer screen: Not if it's anything that makes Donald Trump look good. Bill Murray was highlighted as the celebrity Stern opened up. If he opened up Trump in a similar way, we don't learn about from the NYT. Trump appears in the article, but only like this:

Mr. Stern...  is the same guy who, for years, traded misogynistic quips with anyone who was game, including, Donald J. Trump. In a 2005 phone interview, the two rated the looks of the cast of “Desperate Housewives.”

“Would you go out with Marcia Cross,” Mr. Trump asked, “or would you turn gay, Howard?”

“She’s got a good body,” he answered. “Just put a bag over her head.”

It's like one of those video  from the Democratic National Convention — those little videos displaying Trump saying something like "A woman who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10" so you can sit there staring and hating....

"Someone told me some secrets early on about living. You have to remind yourself that you can do the very best you can when you’re very, very relaxed."

"No matter what it is, no matter what your job is, the more relaxed you are, the better you are. That’s sort of why I got into acting. I realized that the more fun I had, the better I did it, and I thought, Well, that’s a job I can be proud of. I’d be proud to have that job, if I had to go to work and say, ‘No matter what my condition or what my mood is, no matter how I feel about what’s going on in my life, if I can relax myself and enjoy what I’m doing and have fun with it, then I can do my job really well.’ And it’s changed my life, learning that. And it’s made me better at what I do. I’m not the greatest or anything. But I really enjoy what I do."

A quote from Bill Murray, used to compose the 6th of 7 rules for "Living a Bill Murray Life," which Instapundit linked to this morning. The whole thing is very entertaining, but I found that the most intriguing rule. I'm not sure I trust that rule. Not for every job anyway. From my perspective, for example, it's a great rule for blogging, but it's close to unethical for teaching, depending on your idea of fun.

"Apropos of nothing, you have never seen a man in shorts until you have seen Bill Murray in 'The Lost City.'"

Writes Bob Boyd, in the only comment on yesterday's Amazon post. (Here's "Lost City" on Amazon, in case you've got a yen to see Bill Murray in shorts, perhaps wandering lost in some city or perhaps knowing exactly where he is in a city that somehow finds itself lost.)

This makes me realize that I need to make a list of men in shorts movies (and TV shows). I think of "The Big Lebowski," but what else? There's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," where Johnny Depp plays the role of Hunter S. Thompson. Help me out here. Don't cite examples of men in bathing suits. Despite the similarity of men's bathing suits to shorts, it's not what we're looking for here. And don't include movies where the men are wearing sports uniforms/gear, e.g., "Hoosiers" and "Breaking Away." It must be a major character who is opting to go about in shorts in a situation in which women like me would think: That man should put on a pair of pants because those shorts make him look like a large boy.

By the way, speaking of titles that begin with "Breaking," the TV series "Breaking Bad" begins with the image of an empty pair of pants flying through the air. We never see the main character, Walter White, wearing shorts. Even when we see him with his pants off, in his underpants, the underpants are not undershorts but tighty whities. When not naked or in his underpants, he's wearing long pants like the long pants seen in that opening empty-pants shot. I think the series is a man's search for his lost masculinity. The lost masculinity is symbolized by the flying empty pair of pants.

So let's also work on a list of men-in-pants movies (and TV). Simply wearing pants is not enough for a pants-wearing-man to make this list, nor is looking great in pants enough. There needs to be some Walter-White-level importance to the pants, the kind of meaning expressed in phrases like "wearing the pants in this family" or "put on your big-boy pants."

"In discussions of the film 'Groundhog Day' on this blog, I’ve noticed a couple of people questioning..."

"... why the Bill Murray character would find Andie McDowell’s Rita deserving of all those years of his devotion and energy. For example, '…[W]hat, exactly, made the lovely but, let’s face it, vapid Rita worthy of Phil’s centuries of effort?'"

Was it centuries? I haven't seen that movie since it came out. I didn't remember the extent of the time frame. I can't picture myself in the mood — ever — to rewatch that one, but I do have a special affinity for stories and, especially, humor that has to do with extravagant comparisons or variations in size. So, here, that would be what appears to be a day is reframed as a century. The single funniest thing I ever heard in my life was: I was cutting someone's hair and I noticed a bright red dot on his scalp. I said: "What's this red dot?" And he said: "That's my Santa Claus hat."

I wish I'd made a tag for this concept long ago, because it would have collected a lot of different things that are impossible to put together retrospectively. It's not like, for example, deciding after 9 years of blogging that I ought to have an Andie McDowell tag. I could easily do a search. Also, that tag could only have one possible name. This other tag... what would I call it? Size? That size thing I like? Size-osity? Big and small? I have a "light and shade" tag, so I think I'd do big and small. Too late now. But not a century too late. Only 9 years. Oh, what the hell. I'll start now.

That reminds me: Have you ever seen this? It's the best graphic representation of all time (and all space).

Wes Anderson's stop-action animation movie.

Ha ha. Stop-action, not computer 3D crap, which I hate. George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray. Roald Dahl. 91% on the Tomatometer. Let's go!

"Elvis the ecstatic/ Elvis the plastic/ Elvis the elastic with a spastic dance that could explain the energy of America.”

Bono's poem about Elvis, aired on British radio:

A warning about the poem’s language preceded the airing, as a series of offensive words including “nigger” and “spastic” were employed.

Here in America — where we have Elvis energy, apparently — those 2 words are on completely different levels of offensiveness, but I guess that's the way they talk in Britain, where, presumably, "spastic" is not a word to be used casually.

***

Bonus: "Saturday Night Live" transcript. ("Oh no, its Chaz 'The Spaz' Knerlman!... Why don't you shut up, Spazalopolis!")

Ah, now it's coming back to me. Remember back in 2006, when Tiger Woods got into trouble for casually saying "spaz" in Britain? Language Log had a great post titled "A Brief History of Spaz":

[T]he clumsy or inept meaning of spaz remained mostly on the playground until the late 1970s, when it began seeping into American popular culture. In 1978, Saturday Night Live started running occasional sketches starring "The Nerds," with Bill Murray as Todd DiLamuca and Gilda Radner as Lisa Loopner. On two shows that year (Apr. 22 and Nov. 4), host Steve Martin joined in, playing the character Charles Knerlman, or "Chaz the Spaz" as he was known to Todd and Lisa.... A year after the SNL sketches in 1979, Bill Murray starred in the summer-camp comedy Meatballs, which featured a stereotypically nerdy character played by Jack Blum called "Spaz."

For someone like Tiger Woods who came of age in the '80s (and who, incidentally, is on record as saying that another Bill Murray movie, Caddyshack, is his all-time favorite), the American usage of spaz had long lost any resonance it might have had with the epithet spastic. This is not the case in Great Britain, however, where both spastic and spaz evidently remain in active usage as derogatory terms for people with cerebral palsy or other disabilities affecting motor coordination. A BBC survey ranked spastic as the second-most offensive term for disabled people, just below retard....

***

Don't you love the energy of America?