Another commenter sniffs at the sniffer: "Sinks are in a kitchen. Basins are in a bathroom."
I wasted some time trying to understand why Mick Jagger would want someone using the sink — uh, basin — next to him, but this is just some house Jagger rented over half a century ago. But I'm still blogging this because 1. I'm amused by one commenter out-sniffing another, 2. I'd never paid attention to the basin/sink distinction (if it even exists in America), and 3. The double sink issue. I browse enough real estate listings to know there are people out there who think 2 sinks in one bathroom is a nice feature. Why?! The only decent use I can think of is in a children's bathroom, but who are these kids who can't brush their teeth the old fashioned way, huddled around one sink?
ADDED: And Trump already replicated the mirror routine — here, with Jimmy Fallon, back in 2016. The Mick Jagger routine happened in 2001. There may be earlier examples of this routine, or similar things, like Harpo and Groucho in "Duck Soup," and, replicating that, Harpo and Lucy on "I Love Lucy."
10. “You do tend to present a yobbish image.” One interviewer suggested this to him as the Stones were breaking through. “Moronic, I think, is a better word,” he replied, deliciously....
15. Great rock stars project vanity. And you don’t get more magnificently vain than Jagger singing “Tell me a story about how you adore me,” on Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?...
25. Jagger is the only middle-class Englishman from Kent who could sing “I met a gin-soaked bar-room queen in Memphis / She tried to take me upstairs for a ride” without it sounding like cosplay....
"So were his swagger and Byronic good looks. He had well-chronicled involvements with some of the most watched young women of his era. He wore, according to media reports, velvet jackets, Cuban-heel boots, bespoke shirts. He stared balefully into paparazzi lenses. His raucous lunches with friends and fellow writers like Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie, Clive James, James Fenton and [Christopher] Hitchens were written up in the press and made other writers feel that they were on the outside looking in. He seemed to be having more fun than other people. His detractors considered him less a bad boy than a spoiled brat.... 'He was more blond than [Mick] Jagger and indeed rather shorter,' Mr. Hitchens wrote, 'but his sensuous lower lip was a crucial feature,' and 'you would always know when he had come into the room.'
Mr. Amis wrote his first novel, 'The Rachel Papers,' published in England in 1973, on nights and weekends. He gave himself a year to complete it. If it hadn’t panned out, he said, he might have considered academia."
"I feel I’m only going to write short stories and novellas from now on. Chekhov said, toward the end of his life, 'Everything I read strikes me as not short enough.' And I agree."
"In the old days it came quicker, the prose. Now it’s a battle. It’s not about coming up with striking adverbs, it’s more about removing as many uglinesses as I can find."
"What makes you a writer? You develop an extra sense that partly excludes you from experience. When writers experience things, they’re not really experiencing them anything like a hundred percent. They’re always holding back and wondering what the significance of it is, or wondering how they’d do it on the page."
Some thought him misanthropic, but it would probably be truer to say that he was disappointed and depressed by traits in society that, in his opinion, more and more held sway. He could see beauty and virtue lurking jointly in the shadows. He could also appreciate the rich comedy of life and the poignancy of its pretences. Yet, in the end, his was a pessimistic outlook, holding that personal progress was necessarily finite and insignificant while the universe itself, unmoved by any guiding hand, moved ineluctably towards chaos and destruction.
Having just blogged about a NYT encolumnization of a viral video of people fighting in a restaurant, I wanted to serve you a delightful palate cleanser:
As you can see Mick is watching Dylan's "Bringing It All Back Home" and in this picture (courtesy of https://t.co/ehK93T1LbK) you can see Dylan watching the Rolling Stones debut album and in the second Dylan on the toilet reading about the Stones LOL pic.twitter.com/3jUZUgxeue
— Voodoo Chile in Wonderland (@VoodooChileinWo) July 21, 2021
I was interested in that — "As if some god had come down from Olympus and started to come onto me" — because isn't that the way gods from Olympus actually behave in the story? No, no, they proceed directly to rape. I'm thinking of Leda and the swan — that sort of thing.
There would need to be some new telling of a Greek myth with a god like the one Faithfull described, not lording his godliness but explaining lyrics on his new album — earnestly imagining that she would turn her favor upon him because he visualized the "diamond sky" and "haunted, frightened trees."
***
There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.
Lyrics by Mick. I'm printing them out even though they're written on the screen so you'll have no trouble discerning them through the earnest noise. I'm just guessing you won't listen through. Plus, if we can read them, we can analyze them:
We took it on the chin/The numbers were so grim/Bossed around by pricks/Stiffen upper lips...
Pricks/Stiffen... That's literary art.
Pacing in the yard/You're trying to take the Mick...
To take the mick is to tease somebody, and his name is Mick, so he's taking the butt-of-the-joke position.
1. In the first post of the morning, I asserted: "Some of the best videos have been made like that, with the singer randomly walking along someplace mouthing the lyrics and interacting with this and that." Instead of naming any actual video, I just wrote, in parentheses and italics, as if that helps, "(Yeah? Which ones?!)"
2. That loose thread nagged at me for 3 hours — from about 4:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. — and I tried to call to mind a great video that fit the description. I came up with "Brass in Pocket" and watched the delightful video, even though it does not fit the description:
3. Who cares? I like it anyway. Primed by a good YouTube experience, I took the websites suggestion to watch "David Bowie imitates Mick Jagger!!"
4. Bowie does do a quick, excellent Jagger impression. About 2 seconds of that video, but watch the whole thing. You'll get to a part about how his wife bought him an old suit of Little Richard's and he must not have been so little after all because the suit was way too big for Bowie.
5. That got me looking up how tall the 2 men were. Have you noticed the internet is ready to tell you the height of various people? Just yesterday I was watching a video of Bob Dylan and David Crosby singing at the same microphone and Dylan seemed to tower over Crosby. The internet says Dylan is 5'9" and Crosby is 5'10". Maybe it's something about the shoes or the camera angle.
6. In honor of the first post of the day, which got this list started, I pause to see if the internet will give me the answer for the famous philosopher named in that post, and I'm pleased to be informed: René Descartes was 5'1". Anyway, it turns out that David Bowie and Little Richard were the same height: 5'10". Maybe Bowie's wife got conned on that suit deal.
7. Since I was interested in the height of Little Richard, the internet assumed I would be interested to know that James Brown was 5'6". That is pretty interesting. If you didn't know that fact, I could see how you might get into an argument with somebody who — knowing the fact — would annoyingly stand his ground. And that's what happened in January 2007: "Man shot over argument about James Brown's height" That happened not long after "Brown, who was known to wear lifts, died of heart failure Dec. 25 at age 73."
I’m so looking forward to coming back to an America free of harsh words and name calling and be amongst people who I know have common ground and harmony. It’s a challenge but it can be done!
... I saw a TV commercial last night in which 2 characters did the gesture over and over and I realized that it has really gone too far and I really hate it. I wish I could find the commercial for you (maybe it's somewhere in the hours of Milwaukee-related sports events that I saw out of the corner of my eye last night and conceivably could scroll through on the DVR).
You know the gesture I'm talking about? If you google for it, the first thing you'll find is probably this:
Now that is clipped from this...
... which I found through the wonderfully helpful Know Your Meme site. It has an article "Mind = Blown."
The phrase “mind blown” has been used to express shock and bewilderment since as early as 1996 with the inclusion of a song titled "mind blown" in N.W.A rapper MC Ren's second solo album The Villain in Black. By 1997, the phrase had found its way into online vernacular, as evidently used in the title of a post on the Usenet group alt.fan.david-bowie to describe the poster’s reaction to seeing David Bowie perform live.
Of course, people were saying that blew my mind and so forth for decades. It was already so widely in use by 1969 that The Rolling Stones could use it in a joke (in "Honky Tonk Women").
And, yes, I know that 50 years later, Mick is still dancing...
But back to the subject. "Mind = blown" became a stock form of expression on the internet, but what about the gesture?
On April 19th, 2010, the /r/MindBlown subreddit was created to share awe-inspiring images and videos. As of August 2013, it has accrued more than 430 readers. On July 9th, 2010, a thread for "mind blowing" images thread was created on the New Schoolers forums, where it accrued nearly 70 pages over three years. As early as May 2011, the phrase became associated with a reaction GIF of a clip from the Adult Swim series Tim and Eric's Awesome Show (shown [above])....
Additional images, including both reaction GIFs and those meant to evoke a "mind blown" response, can be found with the hashtag #mindblown on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr.
Is it enough of a cliché yet? It's used profusely in an ad. Doesn't that mean it's time to stop?
I don't mind people writing "mind blown" or "mind = blown." I'm just annoyed by the gesture, which I'm seeing in completely nonhip advertisements. Maybe you can do it ironically, acknowledging its overuse and abject squareness, and maybe I'm giving it new power — the power to annoy — by writing this.
Here are lots of GIFs doing the gesture, in case you want access to the cool trend of annoying me.
ADDED: The OED traces the underlying idea — blowing a mind — back to 1966, but in a way that strongly suggests the expression was already current:
24. j. to blow (a person's) mind, to induce hallucinatory experiences (in a person) by means of drugs, esp. LSD; hence transferred, to produce (in a person) a pleasurable (or shocking) sensation.
[1966 San Francisco Examiner & Chron. 12 June 33/3 The Barry Goldberg Blues Band..does an LP called ‘Blowin' My Mind’.]
1967 San Francisco Examiner 12 Sept. 26/3 On a hip acid (LSD) trip you can blow your mind sky-high.
1967 San Francisco Chron. 2 Oct. 49/3 Because when the Red Sox rallied to beat the Minneapolis Twins..Boston fans blew their minds....
This is blowing my mind:
Here, you can buy the album "Blowing My Mind" at Amazon, where one reviewer says:
The best track is "Blowing My Mind," with catchy chord changes and decent lyrics, but Goldberg sings it like he's soaping his pits in the shower.
"Yeah, we can practice in my parents' garage, but we got to play the songs I want to play. OK? So who knows 96 Tears by Question Mark and the Mysterians? Anybody? No? Anybody know She's About A Mover by the Sir Douglas Quintet? Alright, Hang On Sloopy it is. Ah 1, ah 2...."
The alleged plight of white South Africans is a major rallying cry of far-right movements across North America, Europe and Australia. An online petition titled “Genocide of whites in South Africa,” which calls on Trump to allow “white Boers to come to the United States,” has garnered [garnered!] nearly 23,000 signatures.
Daniel Dale, a correspondent for the Toronto Star, observed that Trump’s tweet Wednesday marked the first time he had used the word “Africa” on the social media platform since becoming president — “to express support for white people,” Dale said, “on the recommendation” of white nationalists, whose claims had been amplified by the Fox host. An archive of Trump’s tweets indeed reveals that Wednesday’s post was his first as president that included the word “Africa.”
The Rolling Stones singer did backing vocals for “You’re So Vain”... In her memoir, Simon recalled... [Mick] testing out a song, which included the lyrics, “Funny, funny, funny, funny, how love can make you cry.”...
A new duet, never before played in public, was recently discovered on a tape... The lyrics recalled by Simon match [the tape], though the two seem to croon the word “change,” not “cry.”...
In an interview with the magazine in 2016, Simon stoked speculation about the long-lost duet. She sang the line she had put in her book, asking, “Does that sound like any Stones song to you?” The interviewer suggested “Fool to Cry”...
“Maybe, maybe,” Simon said. “We had this little back and forth at the piano for about an hour.” But then Paul and Linda McCartney arrived, she said, and the spontaneous collaboration was over....
In her memoir, she wrote that “for Mick Jagger, all women, including me, were his, by divine right.”
Whatever. "Fool to Cry" is kind of my favorite Rolling Stones song. A great soundtrack for crying, if that's ever on your agenda:
But don't you hate that — when you're having a sublimely artistic and romantic experience and Paul and Linda McCartney arrive?
Said Mick Jagger about Trump's use of the old Stones song "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
That's quoted in a HuffPo article that forefronts something Keith Richards said, telling a tale that dates back to 1989, when Trump as the promoter of the Stones' Atlantic City concerts had put his own name in larger letters than band's name:
“I got out my trusty blade, stuck it in the table and said: ‘You have to get rid of this man!’ Now America has to get rid of him. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
How did it ever happen that Keith Richards became the attention-getter over Mick Jagger? But here we see it again. Let's talk about Keith and put Mick as the afterthought. And of course it's not surprising to see the violent ideation with the flashy knife gesture getting preference over the musing about the song.
But I'm more interested in the song and Mick's puzzlement about Trump's persistent use of it to end his raucous rallies. It's such an odd mood switch — to talk the way Trump does about bigness and greatness and to bring out such cheering and enthusiasm and then to play "You Can't Always Get What You Want," like it was all for nothing. He was just winding you up.
I keep expecting that one day, when Trump's accomplishments are listed and he's asked where all those great things you promised the people, he's going to say I always put it out there in plain sight for you.
A religion-flaunting speaker might have said — after all those visions of future greatness — "God willing." The pop-culture man had Mick Jagger singing it: You Can't Always Get What You Want.
"They stop emotional growth. So when you come out of it, you’re kind of 17."
Said Anita Pallenberg, quoted in her obituary. Amazingly, she made it to the age of 73.
What an embodiment of the mod beauty we adored in the 1960s! Go to the link — it's to the NYT — to see the photographs of her that made us so envious — in the arms of Keith Richards in 1969 and drawing lipliner on Mick Jagger (in the movie "Performance") in 1970.
That movie "remains as hallucinogenically strange and disturbing as ever and Pallenberg will be for ever remembered as Pherber: sexually omnivorous, dangerous, sweetly amoral. The movie... captures the psychosis of the end of the 60s, where art, crime and sex open up the gates of social mobility but identity becomes fragmented."
Pallenberg spoke of drugs freezing her, so she did not grow emotionally. Faithfull has spoken of not being able to have sex without being semi-anaesthetised with drugs. Their stories remind us of what sexual liberation could mean for women in the 60s. These great beauties paid a huge price for being the “girlfriends” of rock stars. Both these clever, multilingual, arty women educated their boyfriends (Jagger and Richards) about culture and art and style. Pallenberg got the boys to wear her clothes. Everyone, Faithfull once told me, was in love with Keith, even Mick of course …
"I like a high-spirited woman. And with Anita, you knew you were taking on a Valkyrie — she who decides who dies in battle." — wrote Keith Richards.
I don't know who Mick was talking to, but Chuck was talking to Robert Gates on "Meet the Press" yesterday. And Robert Gates said:
I think that Putin saw the United States withdrawing from around the world. I think actually the problem has been that President Obama's actions often have not matched his rhetoric. His rhetoric has often been pretty tough. But then there's been no follow up and no action. And if you combine that with red lines that have been crossed, demands that Assad step down with no plan to actually figure out how to make that happen, the withdrawal from the Middle East, from Iraq and Afghanistan and essentially the way it was done, I think it sent a signal that the US was in retreat. It was always going to be complicated to withdraw from those wars without victory without sending the signal we were withdrawing more broadly from a global leadership role. I think some of the things that have been done have accentuated that impression around the world. And I think Putin felt that he could take advantage of that.
Chuck Todd came back reminding Gates of the time President Obama got tough in his own special way by telling Putin to "cut it out." Obama himself claimed that it was effective to tell Putin to "cut it out," but Todd, for all his bolstering of Obama, said it was "obvious that lecture didn't do anything." Todd, wondering how we should retaliate, asked Gates to "characterize" exactly what it was that the Russians did. Gates said:
Well, I would characterize it as a thinly disguised, covert operation intended to discredit the American election and to basically allow the Russians to communicate to the rest of the world that our elections are corrupt, incompetent, rigged, whatever and therefore no more honest than anybody else's in the world including theirs. And, you know, the US oughta get off its high horse in telling other nations how to conduct their elections and criticizing those elections and so on. Whether it or not it was intended to help one another candidate, I don't know. But I think it clearly was aimed at discrediting our elections and I think it was aimed certainly at weakening Mrs. Clinton.
I still don't understand how our getting to read email that was intended to be kept private corrupts the election. There are always disclosures of secrets before an election. We always know some things and not others, and the information flow is not organized and orchestrated. What is the big deal? If, as Gates said, the Russians' idea was to get out the message that our elections are corrupt, incompetent, rigged, why are we helping him? Wouldn't the strongest defense against Putin be to act as if nothing of any significance happened, and he's a puny little man?
Podesta's dumb assistants got phished. That's all. And we got to read some real email that meant not very much. Why are our news media and the Democrats bending over backwards to pump up Putin? Why are they doing something that must delight the hell out of him?
"But I was a woman doing what I wanted to do. Isn’t that feminist? Some lady said to me, 'How could you shame yourself this way?' I said, 'I’m so sorry that you didn’t get to sleep with Mick Jagger and I did.' That shut her up."
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