Sweet blindness.

This is from the "Francis Albert Sinatra Does His Thing" TV special, in November 1968:

Also from 1968, the same Laura Nyro song, from Liza Minelli on "The Ed Sullivan Show":

I'm watching these old videos because I just finished listening to Andrew Hickey's podcast, "500 Songs Bonus: 'Stoned Soul Picnic" by Laura Nyro'" on Patreon (which you need to subscribe to and really should).

The top story today (according to Memeorandum): The dream of a woman President dies early this time around.

In 2016, we had Hillary, and the dream persisted until the morning after Election Day. This time around, in 2020, there was a feeling that maybe this time...



Here's Memeorandum's picture of what's getting read and talked about this morning:



Go here to get clickable links. From the top article, by Jessica Valenti: "Don’t tell me this isn’t about sexism. I’ve been around too long for that. Even just supporting Warren has come with an unbearable amount of misogynist condescension. I’m tired of being told that I’m a single-issue voter because I care about a candidate’s gender...."

The last link — to Michelle Cottle in the NYT — goes to "Maybe Next Time, Ladies."

From the above-embedded song: "Maybe this time I'll be lucky... All the odds are in my favor/Something's bound to begin/It's gotta happen, happen sometime/Maybe this time I'll win...."

That's from a Broadway show. A Broadway show where we know the characters are all doomed.

This idea that it's my turn. Where do people get it?

It's not just women thinking we're entitled to our turn and imagining that I am getting my turn if some co-genderist fulfills her hyper-ambitious dream. It's also the dreary practice of ceding the nomination to the stalwart party-member who's waited his turn most patiently, which is what the Democrats en masse have decided to do this time (and what happened with all the losers in recent memory (2016, 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000, 1996)).

And it's not just about presidential politics. It's the crazy dream that things happen in order. I'll just cite one example: The enthusiastic embrace of the idea that the coronavirus will not kill young people but is coming to pick off the oldest, the ones closest to the end of life anyway. That's a subset of the delusional dream of modern America: That human beings die in the same order that we were born.

No, we don't.

Disrespecting Judy and Liza.

Last night at the Oscars, in the opening monologue — TV-style, isn't it, beginning with a comic stand-up routine? — Ellen DeGeneres made Liza Minelli uncomfortable. The camera zoned in on Liza, and Ellen described the person on camera as "one of the most amazing Liza Minnelli impersonators that I have ever seen in my entire life." Liza — who'd done seemingly all she could to look fabulous — squirmed in obvious psychic pain.

It was only much later that I got a clue why Liza was there and why anyone would focus on her of all stars present in the arena. There was a tribute to the movie "The Wizard of Oz," which came out exactly 75 ago — as if the 75th anniversary of something is especially big. And the same year — 1939 — was the year of "Gone With the Wind." Given the prominence of "12 Years a Slave" amongst the nominees last night — it ultimately won Best Picture — it would have been apt to delve into Hollywood's most famous presentation of slavery, especially since the Academy awarded an Oscar to a woman who played the slave called Mammy, Hattie McDaniel:



That was for Best Supporting Actress, and last night the Academy gave the Best Supporting Actress Award once again to a black woman who played a slave, Lupita Nyong'o.

But forget the absurd resonance and strange racial history of Hollywood. The 1939 movie that got a long segment last night was "The Wizard of Oz." Who knows why? But there was Liza in the audience, not on stage singing. She was listening to Pink singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," while a montage from the 75-year-old movie played in the background. When the first image of Judy Garland went up, I thought the audience should have erupted in cheers and applause, but there was silence. Generally, the audience last night was stiff and dull, filling the seats as if according to instructions from management. Maybe when they saw Judy mouthing the words "There's no place like home," they felt something, a desire to be out of the un-Oz-like hall, at home or at least at some after party.

Pink was wearing a big glittery red dress that looked as if it had been made out of the skin of a thousand pairs of Dorothy's ruby slippers. After Pink had fully emptied the contents of her prodigious lungs, there was an empty stage and finally Ellen tripped out, in a makeshift Glinda-the-Good-Witch costume. The comic trope was that Ellen was one of these "Wizard of Oz" fans who might paste together a DIY costume of a favorite character for a night at the movies. Ellen joked:

"Did I miss it? Is it over? Not cool, guys, they were gonna call me. I'll do it by myself, 'You had the power' ... Oh, never mind."

She mocked Liza, and then she mocked the loser-fans who believe in the magic of movies, the people who really love Judy and Liza.

Oscars. Are you watching at all?

We did for a bit, but have signed off. Interesting seeing Kim Novak, but she was used irrelevantly. Nervy of Jim Carrey to imitate Bruce Dern right at Bruce Dern. Carrey declared it "intense," and we enjoyed the contrast to Ellen DeGeneres, whose squishy niceness doesn't really fit the grandeur of the occasion, and then she was bitchy to Liza. I didn't get that. And they keep trying to incorporate the idea of social media — Ellen tweeting from the stage, that sort of thing. They need to keep up the grandeur or it's just incoherent and boring. Eh. We turned it off. It was sluggish and draggy. We're out. But keep up the Oscar talk here if you like.

A quick wrap-up of today's incipient "mask" theme.

Sometimes the blog acquires a theme, like today, when the first post of the day was about masks that the Hopis don't like to call "masks" — you call them masks, we call them friends — and the second was a metaphorical use of the word "mask," to refer to Ben Carson's current persona. But I would be bullshitting if I said that the third and fourth posts were on theme. Oh, I could do that bullshitting. But I'm not going to waste your time. As the title of this, the fifth post, says, quick wrap-up. So here's the news about masks:

1. "Vogue models 'ate tissues' to mask hunger: Revelations follow similar claims by fashion industry insiders."

2. "Hamas militants’ menacing mask of defiance: Hooded gangs patrol Gaza as Israel fires first attack in months breaking fragile truce."

3. "A man wearing an 'old man' mask robbed a Cleveland Chase Bank Wednesday morning, the FBI said." (Hints for bank robbers: Use sunglasses to keep the rubber mask in place and to provide additional masking.)

4. "Do North Korea’s threats mask power struggle behind the scenes?" ("Those who study the Hermit Kingdom have very serious doubts that any attack on the U.S. or allies South Korea and Japan is even being seriously considered. 'It could be there’s a whole other game going on,' said Stephen Long, a North Korea expert at the University of Richmond.")

5. The General Zod mask from "Man of Steel" has been identified as the Halloween costume item for 2013, but the images that were at this link — purportedly terrifying — have been "removed at the request of the studio." Here's a 2010-era General Zod action figure, decidedly unscary.

6. "Police are looking for a man who went into a Turkey Hill [store] in Palmyra early Sunday morning wearing nothing but a ski mask." ("The man is described as a white male, approximately 50 years old, standing 6 feet tall with a 'heavyset' build. He had no visible scars, marks, tattoos or body piercings, police said." An amusing twist on the old phrase "no visible scars." Usually it refers to scars other than on the face. Here, the face is where the scars could be.)

7. The gas mask Justin Bieber wore around town in London last month was just "a joke." (And he "know[s] who [he is]" and is "not gonna let negativity towards [him] bring [him] down.")

So put down the tissues and eat some real food. Don't let the negativity bring you down, baby. Take off the gloomy mask of tragedy. It's not your style.

"And I said, ‘Why did you let me marry this idiot?'"

"He said, ‘I thought you liked him! You look so happy. Your dress was so beautiful. I don’t know. Let me go!’ And I said, ‘Michael, how could you.’ He said, ‘It’s over, relax.’ Then we looked at each other and we started to laugh, we really started to laugh."

When Minelli manhandled Michael.

Natasha Richardson has suffered a serious head injury in a skiing accident.

The lovely actress is 45 years old, the wife of Liam Neeson, and the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and Tony Richardson.

We saw her on Broadway in "Cabaret," back in 1998. She'd won a Tony for her portrayal of Sally Bowles, the role that had been identified with Liza Minelli. She played the part completely differently. It was quite cool.

I looked for a good video clip of her. A Google video search brings a scene from "Asylum" up first. Watch that — when you're not at work — and you'll see why that is popular on the internet. I've decided to embed the trailer from "A Handmaid's Tale" — that creepy feminist sci-fi atrocity — because I thought you might like to talk about it. It doesn't show off Richardson's acting. In fact, if I were judging her acting ability from this alone, I'd say she was quite bad. I'm not trying to trash her here though. I'm sad about the accident. But let's talk about something more than that it's sad she's had this accident.



UPDATE: Death.