"... Mr. Haskell paid $500 to several day laborers to haul away several heavy black plastic trash bags from his home.... When they looked inside one of them, they found human body parts, prompting them to return the bags..."

"... and money to Mr. Haskell, whom they photographed — along with the bags — and reported to the police, prosecutors said. That same afternoon, investigators said, Mr. Haskell was seen in security camera footage removing a trash bag from the trunk of his Tesla and disposing of it in a dumpster in a parking lot in nearby Encino, Calif. A person sifting through the dumpster the next day found a beheaded torso.... During an initial criminal proceeding in December 2023, Mr. Haskell appeared shirtless in court, wearing a smock intended to prevent inmates from using it to hang themselves. At the time, his lawyer told Fox News that the Sheriff’s Department had forced him to appear that way, creating speculation that Mr. Haskell might harm himself...."

From "Son of Ex-Hollywood Agent, Jailed in 3 Murders, Dies by Suicide, D.A. Says/Samuel Haskell, 37, was accused of dismembering his wife and his in-laws. He was the son of Sam Haskell III, an Emmy-winning film producer and veteran talent agent" (NYT).

The father, we're told, "had several A-list clients, including George Clooney, Ray Romano and Whoopi Goldberg," was a producer of "several films and shows about Dolly Parton," and headed "the Miss America Organization until... he resigned amid reports that he and other pageant leaders had made misogynistic and derogatory comments about the competition’s contestants." The link on "resigned" goes to the 2017 HuffPo article, "The Miss America Emails: How The Pageant’s CEO Really Talks About The Winners/Internal correspondence reveals name-calling, slut-shaming and fat-shaming in emails between the Miss America CEO, board members and a pageant writer."

Why aren't there so many songs about rainbows?

I see "Wisconsin teacher fired after criticizing district’s ‘Rainbowland’ ban/Administrators in Waukesha, Wis., had banned Melissa Tempel’s first-graders from singing the song by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus" (WaPo).

At Wednesday’s hearing, Tempel and her attorney, Summer Murshid... argued, the teacher’s tweets after school hours fall outside the scope of her employment and constitute "the type of speech that falls squarely within the protection afforded by the First Amendment," Murshid said. 

"I thought that the fact that the tweet that I made, that 'Rainbowland' wasn’t going to be allowed, was something that the public would be really concerned about and that they would be interested in knowing about it," said Tempel, whose supervisor deemed her a “master teacher” who was “magical with children” in her last employment review. 

I feel like averting my eyes, but maybe you choose to worship all that is Dolly.

Sample lyric: "Don't get me started on politics/Now how are we to live in a world like this?/Greedy politicians, present and past/They wouldn't know the truth if it bit 'em in the ass...."

I've got 9 carefully curated TikToks for you this evening. That is, these are all things I liked.

1. Some have FOMO, but a lot of us have FOPU.

2. A lobster has been seen in real life.

3. Kayak camping and the coconut crab.

4. The L.A. conversation.

5. What does Dolly Parton think about prostitution? 

6. I remember when I lost my mind.

7. When David Bowie shouted out "It's great to be in Cincinnati..."

8. The different generations react to they/them pronouns.

9. Unclogging the drain.

Taking the high road.

You've probably seen this 1977 interview before. This is a communications professor dissecting it:

Do you think he should have given Walters some credit for bringing out the best in Dolly? You could say that Walters behaved without vanity, lowering herself, to elicit what was a brilliant performance from Dolly. But that's not how the professor grades it.

I've hand-picked 9 things from TikTok for you. Let me know what you like best.

1. Understand the difference between "ask" and "guess" cultures.

2. In a 1-bedroom apartment, the "bedroom" doesn't need to be the bedroom.

3. Just a guy falling. [UPDATE: Link removed because the video is no longer available.]

4. Photographing birds.

5. Your iPhone photo app has a built-in plant identification function.

6. A Southern etiquette lesson. 

7. Here's a way to make a cheeseburger — an insane way, but a way nonetheless.

8. Dolly Parton talks to Oprah Winfrey about losing weight and goes on for 4 full minutes.

9. A cover of "Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall."

"I’ll accept it because the fans vote. When I said that, it was always my belief that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was for people in rock music."

"I have found out lately that it’s not necessarily that. But if they can’t go there to be recognized, where do they go? And so I felt like I was taking away from someone that maybe deserved it certainly more than me, because I never considered myself a rock artist. But obviously, there’s more to it than that."

 Said Dolly Parton, quoted at The Vulture. Last month, she had declined to be considered for the honor.

"Yesteryear’s 'ball-point pen' became the 'ballpoint,' 'wild-flowers' evolved into 'wildflowers,' and 'teen-age” found acceptance as 'teenage' in most outlets..."

"In modern times, the hyphen has sown controversy. [Pardis Mahdavi, author of 'Hyphen'] tells the story of how Teddy Roosevelt, in his outrage at losing the Presidency to Woodrow Wilson, in 1912, appealed to Americans’ xenophobia. He was an 'anti-hyphenate.' Mahdavi writes, 'Referring to the hyphen between the name of an ethnicity and the word "American," hyphenism and hyphenated Americanism was seen as a potentially fracturing and divisive force in an America on the brink of war.' Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Jewish-Americans, and Chinese-Americans were all suspect. In 1915, Teddy Roosevelt made some remarks that formed 'a turning point in how the hyphen became demonized both orthographically and politically.' He said, 'The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic.' (Victims of anti-hyphenism might be gratified to know that during the pandemic the equestrian statue of Teddy Roosevelt was removed from in front of the Museum of Natural History.)"

From "How to Use (or Not Use) a Hyphen/Plus: a brief digression into why The New Yorker hyphenates 'teen-ager'" by Mary Norris (The New Yorker).

Those are 2 very different issues with the hyphen. One has to do with the evolution of a compound word. It's about helping readers see what they're looking at. There must have been a time when people, looking at "wildflower" might have taken an extra moment to decide the second part is "flower" and not "lower" (what are "wildfs"?) The second issue is whether we're going to use this concept at all. To prefer "American" to "Irish-American" is to cast aside the Irish part. It's more like deciding we'll just call all these things "flowers" and not pay attention to whether they are "wild" or not... speaking of xenophobia!

What makes a flower "wild" anyway? All flowers are rooted somewhere and incapable of emigrating:

"Wildflower" is not an exact term. More precise terms include native species (naturally occurring in the area, see flora), exotic or, better, introduced species (not naturally occurring in the area), of which some are labelled invasive species (that out-compete other plants – whether native or not), imported (introduced to an area whether deliberately or accidentally) and naturalized (introduced to an area, but now considered by the public as native).

It's the human point of view or activity that creates an occasion for the concept of wildness. 

In the Dolly Parton song "Wildflowers," the "wildflower" is able to migrate: "So I uprooted myself from my homeground and left/Took my dreams and I took to the road...."

I thought I remembered a Disney cartoon that had flowers that pull themselves out of their place and dance around. I'm surprised I found it — "Flowers and Trees" — because the flowers are what these days we'd call racist:

I bring you 8 TikTok selections in the hope that you'll say which one(s) you like and why.

1. A song about cooking salmon in your studio apartment.

2. Scary stories for horses.

3. Dolly Parton and Patti LaBelle use their acrylic fingernails for percussion.

4. A freaky optical illusion.

5. A Tasmanian devil yawns.

6. How to live with a boy and still have a cute apartment.

7. Thatched roof skills.

8. Ukrainians before the war and now.

Dolly Parton does not want to be considered for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until she's put out a rock and roll album.

❤️ pic.twitter.com/Z6LKfWtlxg

— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) March 14, 2022

She's not saying that out of nowhere. They actually put her as a nominee on the ballot this year. For so many reasons, she was wise to withdraw the way she did. To lose the vote isn't good, and to win would draw intense criticism. I'm sure there was criticism just for the nomination. It's better to take that criticism and make it her own. It's not criticism at all anymore, but a recognition that country music is not rock music. 

And this way, she really could put out an album designated rock and get lots of new attention for that.

The Hall is voracious. It needs new inductees every year, and sometimes it looks rather desperate. By reaching into other music categories — designated the "roots" of rock — it can get some giant icons. It's nice to see a firm rejection of that grasping.

ADDED: She specified album. But as Andrew noted in the comments, there's this:

Blogging and serendipity.

It's my favorite thing about blogging, and today's occurrence was just about exactly perfect. 

Following my normal approach to blogging, I found a NYT piece about Dolly Parton and wrote about her interest in the children's book "The Little Engine That Could." I said: "It's the book she wants all kids to read. I can't imagine a left-leaning person saying that."

3 posts later, I was writing about the deceased ex-CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, whose friend declared that he was like The Giving Tree. I didn't think that was quite right: "The Giving Tree was giving — sacrificing to provide the boy with benefits. Hsieh's sacrifices did not give anyone else anything but merely pared away from the person making the sacrifices." 

These are 2 quite different children's books, but look. Shel Silverstein — author of "The Giving Tree" — wrote his own version of "The Little Engine That Could." I love when things come together like that.

You can read the text here, but he delivers a vivid reading:

Silverstein's engine goes through the same "I think I can" chant that works so well to convince kids they can achieve if they work hard and believe in themselves. You know, the right-wing ideology. The optimism. But Silverstein has a darker take. The 4th stanza inflicts reality:

He was almost there, when — CRASH! SMASH! BASH!

He slid down and mashed into engine hash 

On the rocks below... which goes to show 

If the track is tough and the hill is rough, 

THINKING you can just ain’t enough!

AND: Less serendipitous but very interesting is this Eminem song that uses "The Little Engine That Could": 

 

The writing is plainly brilliant, but it's very dark. Lyrics here. Key line: "I think I can, I think I can/I know I can, psycho I am."

"If Dolly Parton were organizing a literary dinner party, which 3 writers — dead or alive — would she invite?"

This answer is amusing because she's so openly declining to answer the question in terms of setting up an excellent conversation:

First would be James Patterson because, since we are both in entertainment, we could write it off as a business expense. (Ha!) Second would be Fannie Flagg — she’s a friend and a very funny author, so I know she would be a guaranteed good time. Third would be Maya Angelou because she would definitely have wonderful stories and spoke and wrote so poetically. As a bonus, I’d ask Charles Dickens to join us — for the street cred. 

That's from a NYT piece with a headline — "Dolly Parton Likes to Read by the Fire in Her Pajamas" — that forces me to crack a Groucho Marx joke — How the fire got in her pajamas, I don't know.

 

Anyway, she names 4, not 3, and Patterson seems only to be there as part of a tax avoidance scheme. Does Dolly Parton ever let her political opinions show? She flaunts her resistance to taxation. That might be conservative. The other thing in that piece that strikes me as conservative is that she expresses — twice — her love of the book "The Little Engine That Could." It's the book she wants all kids to read. I can't imagine a left-leaning person saying that. 

I found this from the Independent: "Dolly Parton’s politics hide in plain sight, whether she admits it or not There’s not much room for ambiguity in our times, as some Hollywood stars have found out, yet Parton’s philanthropy, which includes her funding of a Covid-19 vaccine, means she gets a free pass. But it’s easy to read between the lines." 

I've already read between the lines. A devoted promoter of the "The Little Engine That Could" must be conservative or libertarian. But let's read this:

"Well, I couldn't believe it when I got up this morning and turned on the TV, checking to see what the coronavirus was doing, and they told me that my friend and singing partner, Kenny Rogers, had passed away..."

You never know how much you love somebody until they’re gone. I’ve had so many wonderful years and wonderful times with my friend Kenny, but above all the music and the success I loved him as a wonderful man and a true friend. pic.twitter.com/hIQLIvt8pr

— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) March 21, 2020

"Imagine a Being who is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. What does such a Being lack?"

"The answer? Limitation," writes Jordan Peterson, recounting "an old Jewish story." He continues, now with his own insight:

If you are already everything, everywhere, always, there is nowhere to go and nothing to be. Everything that could be already is, and everything that could happen already has. And it is for this reason, so the story goes, that God created man. No limitation, no story. No story, no Being. That idea has helped me deal with the terrible fragility of Being. It helped my client, too. I don’t want to overstate the significance of this. I don’t want to claim that this somehow makes it all OK. She still faced the cancer afflicting her husband, just as I still faced my daughter’s terrible illness. But there’s something to be said for recognizing that existence and limitation are inextricably linked.

Peterson proceeds to talk about Superman, who got boring when the plotline was that he had powers that worked on anything that could happen. His story was revived by giving him limitations:

A superhero who can do anything turns out to be no hero at all. He’s nothing specific, so he’s nothing. He has nothing to strive against, so he can’t be admirable 

AND: I feel a pop-song cue to the Talking Heads' "Heaven." That link goes to Lyrics Genius, where you can play the song, read the lyrics, and see line-by-line commentary on the lyrics. On the line, "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens," someone has added:

This refrain at first seems nonsensical, or perhaps tongue-in-cheek: Why would the most perfect place in all of creation be so…well…boring? However, consider: Once a state of perfection is reached, anything deviating from that is then imperfect. And if Heaven is imperfect, what’s the point? How’s it any different from Earth? This at first frustratingly rational take on spirituality also serves as a reminder of how boring life would be if things really were perfect: In the immortal words of Dolly Parton, “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

If those Dolly Parton words really are immortal —  omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent? — why did I keep finding them only in quotes (like that one) and not in song lyrics? Because it's a paraphrase, I think. People haven't remembered the words, only the idea. I think I found the song, a song for children, "I Am a Rainbow." The line is, "To make a rainbow you must have rain/Must have sunshine, joy, and pain."

This is my favorite rendition of a song about rainbows — it's never boring...

Still agonizing over Jolene after 40+ years, Dolly Parton goes a cappella with Pentatonix.

"Had lots of fun putting a new spin on Jolene w/@PTXOfficial! Thx for the opportunity."



Lovely. If you're wondering, as I was, how Dolly Parton can still be so beautiful — she's only 70. And what does Jolene look like after all these years? Has she kept her more-beautiful-than-Dolly-Parton looks all this time?

In the real life of Dolly Parton, Jolene is a composite of 2 individuals — one an 8-year-old fan...

"One night, I was on stage, and there was this beautiful little girl — she was probably 8 years old at the time," Parton says. "And she had this beautiful red hair, this beautiful skin, these beautiful green eyes, and she was looking up at me, holding, you know, for an autograph. I said, 'Well, you're the prettiest little thing I ever saw. So what is your name?' And she said, 'Jolene.' And I said, 'Jolene. Jolene. Jolene. Jolene.' I said, 'That is pretty. That sounds like a song. I'm going to write a song about that.'"

... and the other a grown woman — a bank teller — who flirted with Dolly's husband:

"She got this terrible crush on my husband," Parton says. "And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us — when I was saying, 'Hell, you're spending a lot of time at the bank. I don't believe we've got that kind of money.' So it's really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one."

Hearing the song again just now, I got the feeling that "Jolene" is a sisterhood song. The problem is the man who has fallen in love with another woman, and he's hopeless, calling out to her in his sleep. The singer's recourse is to reach out to the woman, a show of belief that the women can work together and do what the man cannot do — the right thing.

As for the music of it:

"It's a great chord progression — people love that 'Jolene' lick," Parton says. "It's as much a part of the song almost as the song. And because it's just the same word over and over, even a first-grader or a baby can sing, 'Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene.' It's like, how hard can that be?"

Johnny Carson learns the word "bustier" from Madonna, who presents herself "as a virgin" to him.

And here's Boy George's first time:

Who should play Dolly Parton in her biopic?

6 possible actresses.

"A lot of people told me that I might have done better if I ‘got rid of all that hair, makeup, and those gaudy clothes.'"

"And I said, 'No, I don’t, because this is how I feel comfortable,' I’m not a natural beauty. I kinda patterned myself after the town tramp in our hometown because she had all that yellow hair and makeup. I always wanted that. I always felt more INSIDE than I was on the outside. I figure when I’m 100 years old, I’ll look like Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor. 'Cause it’s almost like a cartoon look. But it’s the way I feel comfortable."

Said Dolly Parton. 

Mariah Carey becomes an "American Idol" judge.

Which means Randy Jackson is staying (since he is her manager).

Carey was a guest mentor on "American Idol" in 2008, and she did an excellent job. I see I wrote: "Kudos to Mariah for doing the show the Barry Manilow way." The link goes to a post of mine that criticizes Dolly Parton for not guest-mentoring the Barry Manilow way. Here's the really old post, from 2006, praising Barry Manilow:

I just want to say how much I like Barry Manilow. Not his music, which isn't to my taste, but him as a person. Unlike Stevie Wonder and various other guests, he did not do the show to get the kids to sing his songs, and he took his role as a music teacher seriously. He really analyzed each performance and came up with concrete help and never seemed to be at all about self-promotion. I know you could say that this nice-guy thing is just his gimmick, but if it is, it works well, and maybe more people ought to try it.

I don't know who the third judge is going to be in the new "American Idol," but I'd be perfectly happy to have Barry Manilow.

"I don't think I've ever called anybody a genius, except sarcastically."

I just said, to Meade, after he misread the title of the last post as something I'd written, when it was a quote from a Wall Street Journal editorial. (Not that the Wall Street Journal was calling anybody a genius. It was characterizing what other people were saying about John Roberts, and, in my view overstating it.)

I decided to check my impulsive assertion. Have I ever called anybody a "genius" (without sarcasm)?

On February 15, 2008, I called Jane Fonda "some kind of media genius... a media genius — a media whore." And I called Eve Ensler "genius" for thinking up a play — "The Vagina Monogues" — that's so completely easy to produce and perform — "3 women sit on stools and get to read their lines off index cards."

On June 28, 2001, Howard Kurtz had called Mitt Romney a "boring genius," and I restated that as "a genius at being boring."

On March 14, 2012, I called Rush Limbaugh a "media genius," but not "enough of a genius" to have deliberately set off the Sandra Fluke flap for publicity purposes.

On December 30, 2011, I said "The guy's a genius!" about James Franco, but that was complete sarcasm.

October 14, 2011, I say this about Steve Jobs: "Here we are, mourning our loss of a genius, and the genius (apparently) fell for the monumental stupidity of 'alternative' medicine." I'm only referring to his reputation as a genius, and I'm calling him stupid.

June 14, 2011: I say "The idiot is a genius!" about Sarah Palin.

January 24, 2008: I refer to Dolly Parton as a "pop culture genius."

I see I need to amend my original quote: I don't think I've ever called anybody a genius, except sarcastically or in the specific category of genius: media genius.

ADDED: Contemplate the possibility that John Roberts is a genius — a media genius.