"A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Christopher M. Kise, indicated that he would likely appeal the decision, which he called 'outrageous' and 'completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.'"

"He said that the judge ignored an earlier appeals court ruling and 'basic legal, accounting and business principles.'...  While the trial will determine the size of the penalty, Justice Engoron’s ruling granted one of the biggest punishments Ms. James sought: the cancellation of business certificates that allow some of Mr. Trump’s New York properties to operate.... The decision could terminate his control over a flagship commercial property at 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan and a family estate in Westchester County. Mr. Trump might also lose control over his other New York properties, including Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan and his golf club in Westchester.... [The decision] could shut down an entity that employs hundreds of people working for him in New York, effectively crushing the company. 'The decision seeks to nationalize one of the most successful corporate empires in the United States and seize control of private property,' Mr. Kise said."

I'm reading the NYT article on yesterday's big decision: "Judge Rules Trump Committed Fraud, Stripping Control of Key Properties/The decision in a lawsuit that could go to trial next week is a major win for Attorney General Letitia James, who says former President Donald J. Trump overvalued his holdings by as much as $2.2 billion." 

The judge included a joke in his opinion:

“The documents do not say what they say; that there is no such thing as ‘objective’ value,” the judge wrote, paraphrasing their arguments as he saw them, and adding, “Essentially, the court should not believe its own eyes.” In a footnote, he added a line from the movie “Duck Soup” uttered by Chico Marx: “Well, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”"

"Interviewers have come to me for the inside story because there must be something mysterious or controversial about Harpo."

"I disappoint them with the plain truth that he was exactly what you would hope he was. A simple, uncomplicated, beautiful, funny soul, who loved and cherished his friends and family."

From "In Susan Fleming Marx’s memoir, Harpo is an angel. Groucho, not so much" (WaPo). 

Let's listen in as Spotify renegotiates its contract with Joe Rogan...

"The picture of a plastic box containing a joint is a nice bit of stoner fun, but it also evokes the glass-cube sculptures of Larry Bell, another of the artists whose work Hopper..."

"... and Hayward collected (and whom Hopper photographed). A neon Motel Alaska sign, with a glowing index finger illuminating a nocturnal streetscape, echoes a Duchampian credo that Hopper was fond of, that the artist of the future will 'point his finger at something and say it’s art.' Pointing fingers recur in the tender image of two hands—one an adult’s, one a toddler’s—hovering over a mud puddle, a moving study of Hayward and Marin."

From "Dennis Hopper's Quiet Vision of Nineteen-Sixties Hollywood" in The New Yorker.

"Hayward" is Brooke Hayward, Dennis Hopper's first wife. "Marin" is the daughter of Hayward and Hopper, and she is the "energetic steward of [Hopper's] photographic legacy." I'll say! Getting a New Yorker article with sentences like those quoted above is kickass stewardship.

I looked up Brooke Hayward in Wikipedia. Oddly (and speaking of photographs), the only photograph of her there includes Groucho Marx:



It's a really nice photograph of Groucho too. He and Hayward starred in "The Hold Out" on General Electric Theater (on TV in 1961). It was a serious dramatic role for Groucho, and the look on his face is not Groucho being Groucho (and thinking the serious thought, this is a seriously beautiful woman) but playing the part of a man who (according to the caption) "disapproves of his teenage daughter's (Hayward) marriage." She's quite beautiful, but nothing about her says "teenager." In fact, the actress was 24. Today, you could be 54 and look like that.

Speaking of artist-name-dropping sentences in The New Yorker and wives named Brooke, I was continuing to read "The Art of Dying/I always said that when my time came I’d want to go fast. But where’s the fun in that?" by Peter Schjeldahl, and I came across what I will declare the best really long sentence I have read in the 16-year history of writing this blog:

I went back to college in Minnesota for a year, dropped out for good, returned to the Jersey City job for three months, unwisely married, spent an impoverished and largely useless year in Paris, had a life-changing encounter with a painting by Piero della Francesca in Italy, another with works by Andy Warhol in Paris, returned to New York, freelanced, stumbled into the art world, got a divorce, which, while uncontested, entailed a solo trip to a dusty courthouse in Juárez, Mexico, past a kid saying, “Hey, hippie, wanna screw my sister?,” to receive a spectacular document with a gold seal and a red ribbon from a judge as rotund and taciturn as an Olmec idol.

The unwise marriage was not to the wife named Brooke. She arrived later. Like Hopper's Brooke, Schjeldahl's Brooke was an actress. We're told she quit acting after her best line in a movie was edited out, perhaps because Sean Connery thought it was stealing the scene from him. The line was about how nonsmokers were "in the hospital dying of nothing."

For some reason, the "Donald Trump House of Wings" sketch from his 2004 SNL show is trending again.

I saw it first here (because I follow Anthony Scaramucci on Twitter, which is a mystery in itself):

Little more of this (self aware and funny ) a little less racism! pic.twitter.com/YFvrauAm14

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 29, 2019

But I see from Googling that a lot of people are talking about it. For example, at Townhall, 4 days ago, somebody wrote, "'Donald Trump's House Of Wings' Belongs In The Smithsonian" ("This video has been making the rounds on Twitter after a One America News video researcher rediscovered the gem").

"Am I saying that I'm a chicken wing expert? No. But I am telling you this, the wing is hands down the best part of the chicken. Better than the head. Better than the torso. Better than the back...."

Torso... now that's funny. By the way, for decades, I've found the word "torso" funny. There's the line "and the torso, even more so" in "Lydia the Tattoed Lady," and once, when I was in Rome, visiting the Vatican Museum, there were a lot of posters showing a statue that was only a torso, with the word "torso," and, after seeing these posters all over the place, I overheard a young woman, who must have seen what I'd been seeing, and she said, "What's with the torso?" Even now, 2 decades later, I hear her inflection in my head, and I laugh out loud.



I wish I could find the old Vatican Museum poster, but I do think this is the torso in question, the most famous torso at the Vatican Museum, the "Belvedere torso":

It was once believed to be a 1st-century BC original, but is now believed to be a copy from the 1st century BC or AD of an older statue, which probably dated to the early 2nd century BC..... Legend has it that Pope Julius II requested that Michelangelo complete the statue fragment with arms, legs and a face. He respectfully declined, stating that it was too beautiful to be altered, and instead used it as the inspiration for several of the figures in the Sistine Chapel....

So that's what's with the torso!



If you don't know what that is, but you just keep seeing that, with nothing but the word "Torso," it really does make you the perfect audience for the line "What's with the torso?"

ADDED: That kind of laughing — my laughing at "What's with the torso?" — is premised on ignorance. It's like what makes "Beavis and Butt-Head" funny. They're so stupid and don't know the value of anything. They look at things and say "What's that?" Now, I don't remember what, if anything, I knew about the Belvedere torso when I went to the Vatican Museum 20 years ago, but, obviously, I knew from the museum's cues that it was an important artwork and I felt calmly assured that it was something profound and dignified. But the young women — in the manner of "Beavis and Butt-Head" — were just seeing it as a torso with the word "torso" (and, I think, a this-way-to-the-torso arrow) and reacting to it as if it was a completely random torso in no particular context. And I am still laughing out loud.

CORRECTION: The post headline originally said 2015, but it was 2004.

Is this a racial joke (about a little girl's dog)?

I think these folks are taking this White House thing a little too literally. https://t.co/2HRPEYhoQz

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) July 21, 2019

Neal Katyal was Acting Solicitor General of United States under Barack Obama.

In the conversation at Twitter, somebody writes: "They are so white on the outside, even Arabella s dog is white. Yet they are so dark inside so dark."

That sounds tantalizingly close to the old joke, "Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read" (attributed to Groucho Marx).

Jokes have changed!

IN THE COMMENTS: gilbar asks: "I wonder what they would have complained about, if they'd gotten a black lab?"

The jokes write themselves, don't they? A black dog is the only black creature that will go anywhere near them. What did they name him, Token? Etc.

AND: I wouldn't rule out the possibility that somewhere in the process of choosing that white dog, the Kushners realized their antagonists would make racial jokes and decided that would be a plus. What kind of jerks say racial things about a little girl's dog?

And look, there's Neal Katyal, scampering right into the trap! And there's Ann Althouse, kicking him around for being so rash and out of control.

ALSO: Isn't it time we stopped calling the White House the White House? The place was called the "Executive Mansion" until the racist Theodore Roosevelt took the trouble to change the official name to "The White House." There should be a movement to change the name back to "Executive Mansion." Repaint it too — not white and not any monochrome either. I recommend earth tones.

A new template for Trump-haters: "Trump Is Epic."

That's the headline for a conversation at the NYT between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens. The pull quote under the photo of Trump is: "'Which horrible things the president has done lately seem most appalling to you?' Gail Collins asks."

I'm thinking this is a real turning point in Trump-hating, a recognition that the portrayal of Trump as small isn't working anymore. The man with the tiny hands and tiny penis, the child of man, who bumbled into the White House and is throwing tantrums, watching TV, writing the teeny-tiny missives called tweets, eating kid's food, and ordering befuddled adults into acting out his random impulses — this template won't do anymore. The new template is: He's HUGE!

That's my hypothesis. I'll follow it with a new tag, "Trump Is Epic." And let me give you some highlights from the Collins-and-Stephens dialogue. The first observation isn't that Trump is epic, but that Trump is tiny:

Gail Collins: [G]iven the man’s general disorganization, I find it hard to imagine the [Muller] report picking him out as the sinister, canny leader who was orchestrating everything behind the scenes.

That's the familiar little child-man. The old template.

Anticipating a fizzle of a Muller report, Collins searches her feelings to find something that could be big: "Still feeling that the real disaster for Trump is going to come with the investigations into his business practices in New York." Stephens says that his "guess" too. He expresses concern about Trump's inauguration committee and campaign-finance violations, but he thinks they won't amount to much if the Russian collusion story doesn't stick. So instead of concentrating on "what Trump might have done behind people’s backs," we should shift our concern to "what he does every day in plain sight."

So Collins poses the question, "Which horrible things the president has done lately seem most appalling to you?" Stephens indicates he's ready to go — "Well, that list is long" — but then he chooses to "start by praising Trump on a couple of fronts":

I think he’s shown moral leadership on Venezuela, by getting much of the world to recognize Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president and drawing attention to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding under the Maduro regime. And I’m also glad he’s partially reversed course and will keep at least some troops in Syria....

That's all big and presidential, and so is the first appalling thing Stephens comes up with —the declaration of a national emergency over border security. Second is calling the NYT "a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE" (the caps are Trump's). And then "hankering for a deal" with North Korea, the "desire to start another trade war with Europe," and "lies and exaggerations and demagoguery about the purported evils of illegal immigration." And then there's just his "overall comportment" — you mean like this? — "his overall comportment continues to be a foul stain on the office of the presidency."

Collins joins in with reproductive rights, domestic violence, and guns, and it seems obvious that the main problem is what I've thought it's been all along for Trump haters — they wanted the other candidate to win the last election. And they get around to (almost) admitting it:

Gail: When he was running against Hillary Clinton I thought he was terrible, but not nearly as terrible as he turned out to be. Kind of amazing. Did you foresee all of this?

Bret: Partly. I wrote more than a dozen columns for The Wall Street Journal during the last presidential campaign, denouncing his bigotry, lawlessness, ignorance and demagoguery. He vindicates my first impression with his every foul tweet.... 

They never declare "Trump Is Epic." That's just in the headline, so it's a bit of a puzzle. I'll leave my hypothesis as it is. Trump-haters are pivoting. Trump is now presidential — mega-presidential. But it's bad horrible terrible presidential.

ADDED: Bret Stephens reveals his propensity for disgust with his repetition of the word "foul": "his overall comportment continues to be a foul stain on the office of the presidency" and "He vindicates my first impression with his every foul tweet." The one I would edit out is "foul tweet." It's not just the repetition but also the accidentally funny homophone, "fowl tweet." You've got that bird image already there with "tweet."

Stephens uses an old-fashioned locution for some reason. He sounds like the straight man in a 1930s comedy. Your overall comportment continues to be a foul stain on the office of the presidency sounds like a line that would have been delivered to the President of Freedonia in "Duck Soup." Hey, there's that fowl again!

"Isn’t it beautiful?"

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of "The Beatles" — the white album — Roger Friedman reprints what Prudence Farrow wrote about the song "Dear Prudence." (Here's Farrow's memoir, "Dear Prudence," which Friedman says is free on Kindle, but you have to pay $10 if you don't pay for Kindle Unlimited.) I'll just give you one paragraph.

My mother [the actress, Maureen O'Sullivan] bought what became widely known as “The White Album” as soon as it was released in the fall of 1968. She introduced it to me in a most odd way. During a family gathering at her apartment, we were playing Killer, a whodunit game. The “killer” kills by winking at you, then you wait fifteen seconds before announcing you have been killed. My mother went around the room, showing the album while playing it on the record player. I listened to “Dear Prudence” with great apprehension. As each line finished, I wiped my brow with relief. As the song ended, I felt immense gratitude that it was not as I had feared. Just then, my mother came over to me, and leaning in, she gently said, “Isn’t it beautiful?” I looked up at her, and she winked.

Here's Maureen O'Sullivan talking to David Letterman in 1986. She talks about Groucho Marx, who tested jokes on her until she said "I really hate funny men. I will never laugh... So don't tell me any more jokes... I like humor to come out of something else — but no gags." She — who played Jane in the Tarzan movies — then proceeds to tell us about Cheetah — a "horrible creature" and "a homosexual."



ADDED: I'm adding my "animal cruelty" tag. O'Sullivan and Letterman and the audience laugh and laugh over what is the mistreatment of the chimpanzee used in the Tarzan movies.

"It’s happened thrice, so it can’t be a coincidence: There’s some guy who I believe is playing a fart sound as he passes people as some sort of social experiment."

"I think it’s always the same... fart... Every time... while I was talking to a friend.... we just get interrupted by this fart that leaves us silent and staring. He plays it as he passes and never looks back, acts like nothing happened. Guy is white, college age, very straight-laced looking."

From "There’s a ‘serial farter’ on the loose in the West Village" (Page Six).

More and more the news makes me think about Harpo Marx...



Just yesterday, writing about the Manafort trial, I came very close to adding this:

What does the NYT know about me?

I'm looking at the front page of the NYT website right now. The sidebar has 3 lists of links under the headings "Most Emailed," "Most Viewed," and "For You." Here's what I'm seeing right now:







So how do you have sex in a canoe?

... Take out the removable center thwart, if there is one; you don’t want to get stuck under it in the event of a flip. (One old boat in the museum’s collection, called a “girling canoe,” features a detachable thwart and a record player.)... Be mindful of the fact that sound carries particularly well across still water. To avoid someone rushing to rescue you, keep some body parts visible above the gunwale. “A canoe with nobody in it raises alarm”...

ADDED:

Not just for Justin Trudeau anymore: Fake eyebrows are worn by the fictional President of the United States in that novel "co-written" by Bill Clinton.

I'm reading that brilliant, hilarious Anthony Lane essay in The New Yorker, "Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s Concussive Collaboration/'The President Is Missing' contains most of what you’d expect from this duo: politico-historical ramblings, mixed metaphors, saving the world. But why is there no sex?" As the title suggests, the essay is jam-packed with great observations, but I'm just blogging enough to tell you about the eyebrows:

Jon Duncan is the President of the United States... “a war hero with rugged good looks and a sharp sense of humor,” not to mention a beguiling modesty... Duncan is facing possible impeachment... Another problem: a female assassin is in the offing.... There are also a couple of computer wonks, motives unclear: the first, “a cross between a Calvin Klein model and a Eurotrash punk rocker,” if you can picture such a creature; the second, a frightened fellow who arranges a covert meeting with the President at Nationals Park. Nail-gnawing stuff.

No wonder Duncan dreams of sitting there in the stadium, crisis-free, with a hot dog and a beer. And he knows which beer, too: “At a ball game, there is no finer beverage than an ice-cold Bud,” he says to himself. Not since Daniel Craig practically ruined “Casino Royale” by pimping his watch to Eva Green (“Rolex?” “Omega.” “Beautiful”) has a product been placed with such unblushing zeal.

The reason Duncan can attend the game, alone, is that he’s wearing a Nationals cap, plus thickened eyebrows and spectacles. Aided by this impenetrable disguise, he slips out of the White House and, bereft of a security detail, goes on the lam....

Google books let me get a screen grab and saved me from having to buy the Kindle text to show you this. Click to enlarge:

"The first signs of modern 'proto-hippies' emerged in fin de siècle Europe. Between 1896 and 1908, a German youth movement arose..."

"... as a countercultural reaction to the organized social and cultural clubs that centered around German folk music. Known as Der Wandervogel ('wandering bird'), [these proto-hippies] opposed the formality of traditional German clubs, instead emphasizing amateur music and singing, creative dress, and communal outings involving hiking and camping. Inspired by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Goethe, Hermann Hesse, and Eduard Baltzer, Wandervogel attracted thousands of young Germans who rejected the rapid trend toward urbanization and yearned for the pagan, back-to-nature spiritual life of their ancestors. During the first several decades of the 20th century, Germans settled around the United States, bringing the values of the Wandervogel with them. Some opened the first health food stores, and many moved to southern California where they could practice an alternative lifestyle in a warm climate. Over time, young Americans adopted the beliefs and practices of the new immigrants. One group, called the 'Nature Boys', took to the California desert and raised organic food, espousing a back-to-nature lifestyle like the Wandervogel. Songwriter eden ahbez wrote a hit song called Nature Boy* inspired by Robert Bootzin (Gypsy Boots**), who helped popularize health-consciousness, yoga, and organic food in the United States."

I'm reading the Wikipedia article "Hippie," where I ended up after reading a BBC article, "Did the Hippies have nothing to say?/The 1960s counterculture fuelled an artistic explosion in the US – but were the flower children merely privileged?" Excerpt from the BBC article:

It’s important to consider the context of the hippies, a majority white, middle-class group of young people with the undeniable luxury of being able to ‘drop out’. Even considering their participation in the civil rights and anti-war movements, the fact is that hippies had less at stake than those fighting for civil rights so that they could fully participate in society, not drop out. The hippies romanticised indigenous and eastern cultures (without considering the suffering of poverty) for their lack of modernity, experimenting with communal living and imaginary bohemia, creating an artificial marginality, which they saw as ethically righteous. Not to mention their unapologetic cultural appropriation.

_________________________

* "Ahbez composed the song 'Nature Boy'... Living a bucolic life from at least the 1940s, he travelled in sandals and wore shoulder-length hair and beard, and white robes. He camped out below the first L in the Hollywood Sign above Los Angeles and studied Oriental mysticism. He slept outdoors with his family and ate vegetables, fruits, and nuts. He claimed to live on three dollars per week." Wikipedia. Here's the hit version of the song by Nat King Cole:



** "[Bootzin] dropped out of high school and left home to wander California with a group of self-styled vagabonds. In the 1940s, Bootzin, along with 10-15 other 'tribesmen', lived off the land in Tahquitz Canyon near Palm Springs, slept in caves and trees, and bathed in waterfalls. Decades ahead of the Hippie movement, Bootzin and his companions had long hair and beards, lived a carefree existence and were seasonal fruit pickers. The group became known as 'Nature Boys.' A combination of the philosophy of the Nature Boys and growing counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s in California may have been responsible for the emergence of California spirituality in the 1960s...." Wikipedia. And here's "Gypsy Boots" on "You Bet Your Life" with Groucho Marx in 1955:

"Ha. I read that, totally believed you meant Hillary looks like me..."

"... and said to Meade: That's what I thought. That's how I think I look walking around town. But I enjoyed the piano music. Reminded me of Chico Marx. I didn't recognize the music, but I said out loud: 'That's what bad taste sounded like 200 years ago.' And I mean that in an admiring way. Thanks for seeing me in her. I'm complimented. And I still do believe I traipse about in my natural habitat looking like broken-wrist Hillary."

I commented, in a thread where I was skimming, in which Mr. Fabulous said "She looks just a bit like the Professor, yes?" I'd blogged twice today about a picture of Hillary in India — here and here — but Mr. Fabulous was talking about Valentina Lisitsa playing "La Campanella":



"'La campanella'... is the nickname given to the third of Franz Liszt's six Grandes études de Paganini... Its melody comes from the final movement of Niccolò Paganini's Violin Concerto No. 2 in B minor, where the tune was reinforced by a little handbell."

To test my observation, here's Chico:

"Summary of Clay Travis vs CNN."

Summary of Clay Travis vs CNN pic.twitter.com/8kNLuBZJa7

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 15, 2017

"This Teenager Discovered Her Doppelgänger. And Then Another. And Then Another. And Then Another."

"If you’re a young brunette woman with solid eyebrow game, you might also consider adding your head shot to this ever-expanding group of doppelgängers."

@santanaa_g you guys should start a cult or something pic.twitter.com/6KFpH6WKQx

— Paige🎄 (@PaigeOlivia_73) January 6, 2017

ADDED: Why, of late, have eyebrows become a woman's dominant facial feature? Shouldn't we be looking at eyes? Eyes are the windows of the soul. Eyebrows are the windows of... what? Twitchy emotions like surprise and comic double entendre?

NYT anti-Trump headlines are getting pretty funny.

This morning I'm seeing: "Trump Is Still Not Very Popular, and His Problem With Women Could Return." Sounds like a petulant teenager.

And "Grandiose Ideas for Donald Trump Inaugural Give Way to Traditional." What were the grandiose ideas? All I'm seeing is that Trump's friend Mark Burnett (producer of "The Apprentice") thought of "a parade up Fifth Avenue" and "a helicopter ride to Washington from New York," but it sounds as though the idea has pretty much always been to do another traditional inauguration. I'd say it's already very weird if not crazy to many people that Donald Trump will be President, so doing something weird/crazy would actually be less weird than inserting the man into the most traditional inaugural setting. It's like why the Marx Brothers did "A Night at the Opera" rather than "A Night at the Burlesque Theater."

I'm most amused by the first line of the "Trump Is Still Not Very Popular" article:

Hillary Clinton, in a rare postelection public appearance, said on Thursday that “lives are at risk” from an “epidemic of malicious fake news.”

Well, I get my fake news from the NYT. Is my life in danger? Or is fake-news'll-kill-ya part of the fake news?

“It’s a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly,” she said at the Capitol, days after a gunman was arrested at a Washington pizza restaurant that had been linked to a fictitious child sex ring.

Speaking at the unveiling of a portrait of the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who is retiring, Mrs. Clinton joked that the occasion was not the postelection visit she had once pictured.

“This is not exactly the speech at the Capitol I hoped to be giving,” she said. “But after a few weeks of taking selfies in the woods, I thought it’d be a good idea to come out.”

No, it's actually a good idea to go into the woods. With or without selfies. Showing up at the unveiling of a portrait of Harry Reid is just really sad. But you made news. Fake news. Fake news about fake news. Look out! It's killing us.

Now, why does an article with the headline "Trump Is Still Not Very Popular, and His Problem With Women Could Return" begin with that dismal Hillary story? It's actually a collection of 10 little stories. Only 2 were selected for the headline — the 2 that makes Trump look worst.

The Return of the Problem With Women bit is justified by an ad for a bacon cheeseburger:

[Video no longer available.]

That is pretty atrocious. What it has to do with Trump is that he's picked Andrew F. Puzder for Secretary of Labor, and Puzder is the chief executive of CKE Restaurants, which owns Carl's Jr. (along with Hardee's, Green Burrito, and Red Burrito). Puzder was quoted last year saying "I like our ads. I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American." If I was going to defend an ad like that, I'd say it's a brilliant parody of all the ads that have used sexual innuendo to sell a product. Pushing beyond light innuendo has been going on since that "Take it off, take it all off" Noxzema shaving cream ad, which seared the Noxema brand into our memory in 1967:



The subtle use of sex to sell products happens in ads all the time. It's funny to just be blatant. It's like an SNL ad parody. And there's an inherent limit to how far you can go: Do you want that shaving cream on your face? Do you want that bacon cheeseburger in your mouth? You have to sell the product, and you can't make it disgusting.

The most fascinatingly specific topic of research I've encountered in a good long while.

"Zeppo's Marion Benda and Valentino's Marion Benda: A Legacy of Confusion," by Mallory Curley.

"God, the Rod, and Your Child’s Bod: The Art of Loving Correction for Christian Parents."

One of many books the librarians of Awful Library Books have targeted for deaccessioning. And:

Sometimes it’s the subject matter that seems absurd. Of “Wax in Our World,” a nonfiction book for young adults, Kelly said, “Who came into a publisher’s office and said, you know, the kids really need a book about wax?”

The idea is to free up space by removing books that are actually bad rather than going by how often the book has been checked out. Many great books are rarely checked out, but you should want them on the shelves.

AND: Though I laughed hysterically reading that bit about wax, I sobered up and read the Wikipedia article on wax and think it is a great topic for a young adult book. It could spark interest in chemistry and manufacturing. Kids are familiar with beeswax and ear wax and candles and crayons. What makes wax wax? What is wax useful for? There are wax museums — why wax? — and lava lamps. There's the lost-wax method of casting sculpture. There's sealing wax and ancient wax writing tablets. There's waxed paper and wax shoe polish. There's the wax put around cheeses. You might excite some girls (and boys) about chemistry with the wax that's in lipstick and mascara. There's the wax you put on skis and snowboards. There's the wax used in making designs on batik fabric and on Easter eggs. And it's good for jokes:

Wagstaff's Receptionist: The Dean is furious! He's waxing wroth!
Professor Wagstaff: Is Roth out there, too? Tell Roth to wax the Dean for awhile.

"Beyoncé... walks through the street smashing car windows with a baseball bat, wearing a fluffy canary-yellow dress."

Writes Carrie Battan in The New Yorker, which isn't as punctilious about grammar as it once was.

Beyoncé smashes car windows with a baseball bat, wearing a fluffy canary-yellow dress. Why the bat had to wear a dress, I'll never know.



I haven't watched the new Beyoncé video and I have a low tolerance for Battan's effusive, messy prose. But I do see that Beyoncé's car destruction expresses her anger about her husband's cheating on her, and then in the end, they reconcile: "'My torturer became my remedy,' she says, 'so we’re gonna heal.'" What happened to the old "feminist" label? According to Battan:

Last time around, Beyoncé announced herself to the world as a feminist. This time, she takes that label, turns it inward and intensifies it. “Lemonade” declares that misogyny is at its most potent and complex within the bonds of love.

Takes that label, turns it inward and intensifies it... So embracing your "torturer" is the new, inward, intensified feminism?

ADDED: Mollie Hemingway writes:

One of the lines in the album is “He only want me when I’m not on there / He better call Becky with the good hair.” So cut to the next morning when the very woman rumored to have been Jay Z’s mistress posts on Instagram that she has “good hair don’t care.” Queen Bey’s devoted fans immediately took after Rachel Roy — and, for good measure, celebrity chef Rachel Ray as well.

"Lee Siegel courageously speaks up on behalf of everyone who lacks a sense of humor."

Top rated comment at an NPR interview with Lee Siegel, who has written a biography of Groucho Marx, about whom he says:

The conventional image of Groucho was that he was on the side of the little guy, and he spoke defiantly and insolently to powerful people and wealthy people... But my feeling is that Groucho was out to deflate everybody — that he was a thoroughgoing misanthrope.... His misogyny is relentless and thoroughgoing, and it's very hard to tolerate. His attacks on Margaret Dumont almost always take the form of attacking her status as a woman. And it's very odd that he keeps attacking her, because of course she might be wealthy and she might be somewhat clueless and she might be puffed up with her own virtue — but she's actually fairly kind, and a harmless person who just wants to help out these impostors Groucho is inhabiting. But he keeps insulting her for being a woman. And you don't find the same thing in Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy or W.C. Fields, but with the Marx Brothers, yeah, they took woman hatred to a whole new level. It's difficult to watch.

Is it? Margaret Dumont thought of herself as a great straightwoman. Check out the evidence... if it's not too difficult to watch:



ADDED: Having given this post the "Lee Siegel" tag, I clicked on it, and found 2 old posts that caught my fancy. First was a September 2013 post about a Siegel op-ed "When City Elections Were Fun," remembering the time Norman Mailer ran for office.

Back then, the race for mayor was fueled by the outsize talent that powered New York itself. In contrast, in the current campaign season we have the spectacle of figures whose substance consists of embarrassing character defects, fiery (yawn) rhetoric and patient waiting for a rival’s implosion.... But imagine if the present-day city... were to produce even one candidate with his brio and originality."

Ha ha. What are the chances Siegel is enjoying Donald Trump, who's an outsize New York talent? I like that old post because it gave me an opportunity to show you a photo of me in 1970 sitting under a Mailer-for-Mayor poster. (The first comment says, justifiably, "Althouse looks like a member of the Manson Family in that 1970 photo.")

The second old post is "Adventures in sock puppetry," from 2007. Lee Siegel had gotten into trouble writing under a pseudonym in his own comments section at TNR. I had written about it, and when somebody showed up as "Lee Siegel" in my comments, I assumed it was somebody else appropriating his name and deleted him. "Lee Siegel" emailed asking to be restored and I needed him to prove it really was him.

He's all:

Prove it to you? Are you kidding? You want me to Fedex you my passport? What childishness. Then I guess you can't prove that anyone is who he says he is who writes in to your "blog." Hey, it's me. You just don't want to restore my post. So don't. One more tale from the brave new blogosphere.

I retort:

You've given me the proof that you are not Lee Siegel. Thanks.

Am I wrong?