"Science is truth."

Please share this with everyone. Let’s never listen to these liars ever again. I guess CNN doesn’t need Sanjay to be a useful idiot anymore pic.twitter.com/XawCqUEWUB

— Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) July 30, 2026

The invocation of science ought to be a call to calm rationality, but there we see it used like a tagline for a horror movie: Be afraid, be very afraid.

ADDED: Did you know that the line "Be afraid, be very afraid" originally came from Mel Brooks?

"We have reviewed video footage from the area which suggests that the cover was dislodged after a multi-axle truck turning onto 52nd Street from 5th Avenue drove over it.... manhole covers can get displaced by heavy vehicles...."

Said a representative from Con Ed, quoted in "Donike Gocaj, grandmother who ‘dropped’ into NYC manhole, hauntingly screamed ‘I’m dying’ — as witness claims there was nothing blocking it off" (NY Post).

A bystander: "She was just in the hole screaming that she was dying. Over and over she was like, 'I’m dying, I’m dying.'"

ADDED: Here's something I wrote in the comments to a post of mine that was about the only time Martin Heidegger laughed: 

Woody Allen famously said "If I got a paper cut, that’s a tragedy. If you fell down an open manhole and died, that's comedy."

There's a Woody Allen movie where he suddenly falls into an open manhole. Can't remember which one, but I saw it in the theater in London (for some reason), and the audience that hadn't been laughing at any of the numerous verbal jokes laughed heartily. Slapstick is a universal language. And yet some people reject slapstick. They think it's cheap or mean or something. Why would you laugh when someone falls?

Thanks to tcrosse for reminding me of that old quote.

ALSO: Was it Woody Allen who said that or Mel Brooks?

"So, in Poor Things, Emma Stone’s character is basically a woman with a child’s brain. And in this particular scene, she’s encountering dance and music for... the first time."

"How did you start to develop this dance? It’s such an interesting concept."

Asks the Slate writer Nadira Goff, in "How Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo’s Delightfully Weird Dance in Poor Things Came Together/Choreographer Constanza Macras on the standout scene, working with Yorgos Lanthimos, and expanding the idea of what dance is."

The choreographer answers: "It’s described in the script as a dance that is really going off because she’s just finding out [about dance]. So, with that in mind, I tried to create. [The director] was not convinced about some things; it looked too much like acting. When we passed it to the actors, then it grew and took shape. Emma Stone also had really good suggestions about her character because she was working, already, on this way that she moves. She brought in locking the knees. That gave shape to this dance as well."

Stone's character is a Frankenstein creation, so we may well compare the dancing to the Frankenstein in "Young Frankenstein":

That Frankenstein monster is able to dance smoothly, but his singing is very rough. That's the joke, and that gets to the question I was googling when I found that Emma Stone dance: Why do dancers always try to look as though what they are doing is very easy (for them) and pure joy (for them) while singers often act as though it's quite difficult and even painful? That's a big difference between singing and dancing, and I don't think it's because singing is more arduous and hurtful. Perhaps it's because the opposite is true, and the dancer must hide his feelings lest the audience turn away. But we don't turn away when a singer displays a horrible struggle and deep pain. We like that. What's our problem?!

I formulated my question after watching Fred Astaire and George Murphy in the first part of "Broadway Melody of 1940" (now streaming on the Criterion Channel). The first musical number is "Don't Monkey With Broadway" (modeling, for future satirists, how 2 men dance together in formalwear while wielding canes):

The men are unhappy with their job. We see them complaining back stage before they stride out beaming with joy — joy that does not exist but that the audience demands.

"In the writers’ room, we have occasionally had a kind of recurring phrase: 'Which is the most funny thing that could happen here, and by that I mean the most painful?'"

"And, sometimes, 'Which is the most painful thing that can happen here, by which I mean the most funny?'" 

Said Jesse Armstrong, quoted in "The End of 'Succession' Is Near/The show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, explains why he has chosen to conclude the drama of the Roy family in its fourth season" (The New Yorker, February 23, 2023).

That's a quote I read recently — after watching all 39 episodes of "Succession" in something close to 39 days, which I did because I kept seeing New Yorker articles about the greatness of the final season and felt doomed to see the spoilers sooner or later. Having watched the show, I could finally read the articles, and so I have a vast trove of things to be reminded of when I'm reading other things, and that's how a post like this ends up happening. That last paragraph of the previous post — "Drinking is funny until it's not.... The need to say things like 'self-care,' 'virtuous aftercare,' and 'biohack' sounds desperate, but that can be part of the funny, especially for the drunkards" — got me thinking about Armstrong's quote about comedy and pain.

This is a big topic — comedy and pain — and I challenge you to discuss it without quoting Mel Brooks.

For Saturday, take a journey through 12 TikToks, arranged meaningfully... or so some people think.

1. Maybe you'll say "I remember the old pole."

2. London women who don't like American women are not too likable themselves.

3. How you would love it if your candidate were this loved.

4. A vertiginous ride.

5. A vertiginous walk.

6. The workhouse museum.

7. The meaning of life in eating your toast.

8. The butter board?!

9. Oh, Wisconsin!

10. When Anne Bancroft met Mel Brooks.

11. Saving a seal.

12. A dog carps about the stuck traffic.

"Most filmgoers under the age of sixty are puzzled by the scene in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles in which Black Bart attempts to persuade the craven townspeople of Rock Ridge..."

"... to stand up to the evil Hedley Lamarr by telling them, 'You’d do it for Randolph Scott.' To this they respond in unison, 'Randolph Scott!' then doff their hats reverently—an accurate indication of how closely identified Scott was with the Western genre. He always played the same character, a lanky, dryly amusing cowboy with a Virginia accent who spoke only when spoken to and shot only when shot at, and you could take it for granted that he’d do the right thing in any given situation. If he’d been younger and prettier, he would have been too good to be true, but Scott was no dresser’s dummy: he had a thin-lipped mouth and a hawk-like profile, and wasn’t afraid to act his age on screen. Nobody in Hollywood, not even John Wayne, looked more believable in a Stetson."

I'm reading "What Randolph Scott Knew/It was in a string of westerns late in his career that the actor came to embody an ethic that was the essence of the genre" — a Terry Teachout essay published in American Cowboy in 2005. 

 

I'm reading the old Teachout essay because — as I mentioned a couple days ago — Meade and I are watching that "string of westerns" — the "Ranown Westerns" at my favorite streaming service, The Criterion Channel. These are all directed by Budd Boetticher and written — or in the case of "Decision at Sundown," doctored — by Burt Kennedy.

These are low-budget films that are short — about 70 minutes — and — except for "Decision at Sundown" — shot almost entirely — or in the case of "Ride Lonesome," entirely — outdoors amongst the rock formations of Lone Pine, California. The plots are alike. As Teachout puts it:

"When I listened to 'West Side Story' again, when I read it again, I discovered this very brutal world, a divided world where people search for unity by exclusion of the other—the person who is not like you."

"It seemed as if it were written yesterday," said Ivo van Hove, the director of the new Broadway version of "West Side Story," quoted in "How Ivo Van Hove Remixed West Side Story for the 21st Century" (Vogue). I was reading that this morning because it was discussed in "New Broadway 'West Side Story' to Kick Up a Fuss: No Intermission, Famous Song and Ballet Cut, Video Projections for Sets" (Roger Friedman's Showbiz 311), which is linked at Drudge.

Back to Vogue:

[T]he show will be trimmed to run without an intermission by cutting the “Somewhere” ballet and—gasp—“I Feel Pretty.” The changes have not only been approved by the creators’ estates but, in fact, reflect the original desires of Sondheim, still going strong at 89, who candidly confessed in his 2010 book Finishing the Hat that he had long been uncomfortable with some of the lyrics of the latter song. Van Hove isn’t streamlining to be perverse; the show’s action takes place over 48 hours, and he wants the production to capture that race against time. “I want to make a juggernaut,” he says. “You feel that these people are running toward their death and there’s no escape from it.”

An intermission can serve some good purposes, giving people a chance to discuss the show and share interpretations and maybe compare notes and decide to get the hell out of there and maybe to help each other appreciate what's going on. You know, something like this:



But I like when a show has no intermission. Movies rarely have an intermission, and we are used to plunging straight through the story, keeping the momentum. Recently, I saw a play that had no intermission. It was the George Bernard Shaw play "Man of Destiny" (at the American Players Theater). Running time, an hour and a half. It was great.

But what about cutting "I Feel Pretty"?



Aside from the declaration that she feels "gay," this song and dance strikes me as very of the moment. Maria seems like she's got an Instagram account. Maybe the problem is that the audience isn't going to see Maria as delightfully hopeful and innocent, someone we don't want to see hurt, but a narcissistic fool who deserves a harsh dose of reality.

"Althouse: If you say 'Harumph' you must Link!"

Says Madison Man, in the comments to a post where I said "Harrumph!" He links to this:



Fantastic! My post has an embedded clip from "Putney Swope," because it has a line — "How many syllables, Mario?" — that I have held in my memory for half a century. But there's no chance that I'd have dragged up "Harrumph," because — can you believe it? — I have never seen "Blazing Saddles."

Is it "harrumph" or "harumph"? Double letters are the peskiest spelling problem. The OED says the double-r is correct. It's defined as "A guttural sound made by clearing the throat. Also fig. So as v., to make this sound; to speak in a rasping or guttural voice; to make a comment implying disapproval." One example is from The New Yorker in 1961, a cartoon, I'm guessing: "My goodness, Henry, you're much too young to be going har-rumph, har-rumph all the time!"

I put "Blazing Saddles" on my list of movies that came out during the period of my life when I pretty much went out and saw everything that was supposed to be excellent but that I never did see — not at the time and not in later years, when it became easy to see whatever I wanted on videotape or DVD. Also on my list: "Apocalypse Now" and "The Last Picture Show." I think of those 2 because they are DVDs that I bought as soon as they came out because I assumed surely I'd watch them and that my previous failure to watch them was nothing but a chance omission. They've sat on my shelf for way more than a decade.

And I still don't feel like watching "Blazing Saddles." Harrumph!!

"Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die."

Said Mel Brooks, famously.

I'm thinking of that quote because I'm reading the comments on a WaPo article, "Woman impaled by beach umbrella in Ocean City" ("an umbrella was apparently uprooted and swept away by a gust of wind... the sharper end the umbrella shaft, which is used to plant it into the ground, impaled the woman in the chest"). This is what people have seen fit to write:

Obviously, time for common sense beach umbrella control.

I call for strict umbrella licensing and a 3 day waiting period.

Yes, we should of course do this, to the same extent every other advanced democracy does.

Thanks Trump!

Mary Poppins better learn how to park that thing.

By the way, there was another beach-umbrella impaling a week ago (in the foot, not the chest). And now, I'm googling "death by umbrella" and seeing, from last March, "How a beach umbrella fatally impaled a woman with 800 pounds of force":

The umbrella injured the left ventricle of the woman’s heart, and despite an emergency surgery, she died. “If this incident had gone unwitnessed, and the nature of the object was not recognized, the manner of this woman’s death may have been in question... This case provides confirmation that beach umbrellas may cause fatal penetrating blunt force trauma to the chest.”

There have also been cases of deliberate weaponizing of umbrellas, notably the assassination of the Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Ivanov Markov in 1978:

On 7 September 1978, Markov walked across Waterloo Bridge spanning the River Thames, and waited at a bus stop to take a bus to his job at the BBC. He felt a slight sharp pain, as a bug bite or sting, on the back of his right thigh. He looked behind him and saw a man picking up an umbrella off the ground. The man hurriedly crossed to the other side of the street and got in a taxi which then drove away. The event is recalled as the "Umbrella Murder" with the assassin claimed to be Francesco Gullino, codenamed "Piccadilly".

When he arrived at work at the BBC World Service offices, Markov noticed a small red pimple had formed at the site of the sting he had felt earlier and the pain had not lessened or stopped. He told at least one of his colleagues at the BBC about this incident. That evening he developed a fever and was admitted to St James' Hospital in Balham, where he died four days later, on 11 September 1978, at the age of 49. The cause of death was poisoning from a ricin-filled pellet.

Here is Markov's description of life in Bulgaria in his time:

Today, we Bulgarians present a fine example of what it is to exist under a lid which we cannot lift and which we no longer believe someone else can lift... And the unending slogan which millions of loudspeakers blare out is that everyone is fighting for the happiness of the others. Every word spoken under the lid constantly changes its meaning. Lies and truths swap their values with the frequency of an alternating current... We have seen how personality vanishes, how individuality is destroyed, how the spiritual life of a whole people is corrupted in order to turn them into a listless flock of sheep. We have seen so many of those demonstrations which humiliate human dignity, where normal people are expected to applaud some paltry mediocrity who has proclaimed himself a demi-god and condescendingly waves to them from the heights of his police inviolability...

Speaking of paltry mediocrity, I am seeing — in a cheesy book called "Death by Umbrella! the 100 Weirdest Horror Movie Weapons" — that there were 2 movies in which an umbrella was a murder weapon: "Silent Night, Deadly Night 2" ("Ricky skewers Rocco... and even unfurls it") and "Stitches" (woman killed with an umbrella to through the back of her head, popping out her eyeball, and unfurling in a way that rains blood all over the place).



I give you that clip, but I myself could not watch it. I clicked off at 6 seconds. Let's look at this:


Monument to Georgi Markov in Sofia cc TodorBelomorski

A translation of the inscription: "The living close the eyes of the dead, the dead open the eyes of the living."

"When I see a woman rip a 40-yarder off the goalpost, then I’ll agree they deserve more pay."

"When I see a woman control the ball, dazzle à la Maradona or Messi, then I’ll agree they deserve more pay. But they can’t and they don’t. The women’s game is good but so far beneath the men’s game, men’s skills... there’s no reason they should be paid the same..... And interesting that the other women’s sport screaming for more money, and getting it, is tennis — good as Serena is, she wouldn’t win a game off the 500th ranked male. Probably not a point on his serve."

A comment by one "Abie Normal" of San Marino, California on a NYT article about equal pay for female soccer players.

On that commenter's name...



On that "wouldn’t win a game off the 500th ranked male"....

"We do, however, have a problem with the fact that those who are so quick to condemn Dunham say nothing about these men."

Writes Katie Halper — speaking for herself and her "Morning Jew" co-host Heather Gold — in a piece titled "9 comedy bits Lena Dunham critics need to call anti-semitic," pushing back the criticism of that Lena Dunham humor piece in the New Yorker, "Dog or Jewish Boyfriend? A Quiz." Halper and Gold have the thesis that the criticism of Dunham comes from sexism, not any serious concern about anti-Semitism, and you can think about that. I'm just absolutely distracted by this sequence from Mel Brooks' "History of the World Part 1," which is a hell of a lot more than a "comedy bit":



I was in awe, saying out loud, several times: "Why have I never seen this before?" Why isn't that more famous? You endlessly hear — it's knee-jerk at the mention of the Spanish Inquisition — about Monty Python's "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition." Why isn't that Mel Brooks song-and-dance more deeply engrained in the culture? Is it because he's Jewish?

"If you want to find the ur-texts of ‘The Producers’ and ‘Blazing Saddles,’ of ‘Sleeper’ and ‘Annie Hall,’ of ‘All in the Family’ and ‘M*A*S*H’ and ‘Saturday Night Live’..."

"... check out the old kinescopes of Sid Caesar."

Goodbye to Sid Caesar. He was 91.



ADDED: "Everybody thinks that Sid waited to be pumped up with intelligence and with material from his writers. They thought that he was just like — he'd sit there like a crazy empty balloon and that we would come in and we would pump him up and make, you know, we'd make a human being out of him. His tongue would stick out and he would talk and be funny, you know? But, believe it or not, Sid was one of the funniest guys, even away from the writers and the writing room."

Said Mel Brooks.

"Sid was the flame... Every writer was a moth who wanted to hang around that flame. There wasn't a writer in television who didn't want to be licking around that flame."

Said Carl Reiner.

Comedy = tragedy + time.

Yesterday, this blog was devoted to the topic of comedy and tragedy, with particular emphasis on the aphorism "Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel," which might be the most famous + insightful thing ever said about comedy and tragedy. The competition is that Mel Brooks quote I was redoing the other day — "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die" — and the one you see above in the title to this post — "Comedy is tragedy plus time."

That aphorism invites criticism. One is that it should be phrased "tragedy plus time allows comedy" — because you still have to say something funny about the old tragedy. Another is that it may be that we feel free to make light of old-enough tragedies, but that's something pretty disgusting about us, as is extremely well explained by the comedian David Mitchell here:

Comedy is when a white man falls into an open sewer and dies.

Jack Hamilton has a piece in Slate subtitled "Forget Walter White. Eastbound & Down is the most original, disturbing, wrenching show on television. (And it’s hilarious, too.)"

If we live in a golden age of great television shows, the vast majority of these shows have featured angst-ridden white male protagonists. This shift from heroes to anti-heroes has been frequently and rightly characterized as a broader interrogation of masculinity itself, one occasioned by crises of its creators, crises of culture, or both. But while current prestige-magnets like Mad Men and Breaking Bad might offer revisionist takes on white maleness, they also offer their audiences renewed fantasies of the same. Young men buy suits cut to look like Don Draper’s; aggrieved Internet communities close ranks in protection of Walter White’s right to be the One Who Knocks.

So what's great about Eastbound & Down is that it deprives the beleaguered white male of hope.

Eastbound & Down isn’t so much a show about white masculinity in transition or decline as it is a biting send-up of male fantasy itself. Powers fancies himself an alpha dog, gunslinging, rock ’n’ roll outlaw, a fiction he believes to be reality, and to which he believes himself to be entitled. Kenny Powers’ problem, in a sense, is that he’s watched too much TV. If Mad Men is a drama about the encroaching demise of a certain white male dominance, Eastbound & Down is a satire of its vacancy, and its bankruptcy. The latter is a whole lot funnier, and often more daring.

Because hopeless, pathetic decline is hilarious. To paraphrase Mel Brooks: Tragedy is when a woman or person of color feels disrespected or bullied. Comedy is when a white man falls into an open sewer and dies. (Here's the disemparaphrased Mel Brooks quote.)

I quoted the subtitle of the article above — because it made the content of the article clearer— but now I see enough additional meaning to make me want to quote the title. It's "Breaking Ball." That's not just a play on "Breaking Bad" and a reference to crushing testicles, it's an allusion to the show's milieu, baseball. Eastbound & Down shows baseball as "gross and debauched, a morass of juiced-up players, abusive fans, godforsaken locales, bored and boring spectacle."

Many of the actors on-screen... boast hilariously unathletic physiques, and seem to have last donned a glove back in the days when home plate came with a tee. It’s the ugliest depiction of the game in recent memory, a hilarious and welcome desecration of one of the old white America’s favorite civic religions.

Take that, white America.