"There Must Be More to Life Than..."

"I have always loved immersion journalism, the fish-out-of-water yarn. I tried tantric sex when interviewing a practitioner..."

"... both of us cross-legged in kimonos, impaled on one heel. I trained in pro wrestling for six months after interviewing wrestlers and taking a shine to flying through the air. I’ve been 'choked out' by a black belt in jujitsu and roundly thrashed by a BDSM dom.... I recently shadowed two [bodybuilders]... But as it transpired, neither woman I followed took steroids, which seemed like an oversight. So I thought I’d take some myself.... A blast of testosterone might jazz things up a bit.... ... I decided to write about the experience of visiting a Melbourne anti-ageing doctor – one who offers everything from hormone replacement therapy to peptides and human growth hormone, and who looks pleasingly like Flash Gordon’s nemesis Ming the Merciless. I wanted to see what might be prescribed to a forty-something woman with no real business taking steroids.... I accepted a prescription for a testosterone gel, but turned down his offer of the steroid hormone DHEA.... He pulled me to a halt just before we reached the reception desk. 'I like to see people at their superhuman best,' he said softly...."

Writes Jenny Valentish, in "Journalism on steroids" (in The Monthly).

I'm reading that as a consequence of googling "journalists use performance enhancing drugs" while reading the WaPo article, "Trump keeps baselessly claiming that Biden will be on drugs at debate/The presumptive Republican nominee lodged similar evidence-free allegations in 2016 against Clinton and 2020 against Biden." Excerpt:

"President Biden said in a statement that he has received, and accepted, an invitation from CNN for a debate on June 27."

"'Over to you, Donald. As you said: anywhere, any time, any place,' he wrote. Mr. Trump told Fox News Digital that he 'will be there' and is 'looking forward to being in beautiful Atlanta.' CNN confirmed the date in a statement and said the debate would be hosted in its Atlanta studios, in a crucial swing state, with no audience. Moderators will be announced later."

The NYT reports.

That's brand-new breaking news. It came out just as I was about to put up this TikTok of President Biden challenging Trump to a debate (as if Trump hadn't been saying — for months — "anywhere, any time, any place" to Biden).

Justin Trudeau is in trouble for singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" 2 days before the Queen's funeral.

BBC reports: "Justin Trudeau's office has defended the Canadian PM, after he was filmed singing by a piano in a London hotel, two days before the Queen's funeral.... The Queen was Canada's head of state, and Mr Trudeau designated 19 September a national day of mourning in Canada.... Mr Trudeau can be seen in a T-shirt, leaning on a piano as Gregory Charles, a musician from Quebec and recipient of the Order of Canada, plays Bohemian Rhapsody.... 'Embarrassing doesn't even begin to cover it,' wrote Andrew Coyne, Globe and Mail columnist, on Twitter. 'He's the prime minister, in a public place, on the eve of the Queen's funeral. And this is how he behaves?'"

The desperate search for more Queen-is-dead stories rages on.

I actually love a good piano bar. Haven’t gone to one since before COVID, this reminds me I should check one out near me.
PM at the Savoy in London last night singing a little Queen….for the Queen… pic.twitter.com/yyCxIRAbJl

— Brian Lilley (@brianlilley) September 19, 2022

"She recalls an airline employee who glanced at her driver’s license and said, 'Oh, Jennifer Grey, like the actress.'"

"When Grey said, 'Actually, it is me,' the woman responded: 'I’ve seen Dirty Dancing a dozen times. I know Jennifer Grey. And you are not her.'... In the two hours she sat on a blue banquette in a Beverly Hills restaurant, matter-of-factly scooping a soft-boiled egg, spreading butter on rye toast and chatting about her memoir, only one person appeared to recognize Grey. The woman’s face lit up, then softened as if she’d spotted an old friend who’d survived a terrible ordeal."

From "Don’t Call Her ‘Baby.’ At 62, Jennifer Grey is Taking the Lead. In her memoir, 'Out of the Corner,' the 'Dirty Dancing' star opens up about rhinoplasty gone wrong, the implosion of her career and why she’s telling her story now" (NYT).

What a terrible mistake it is to think that your off-the-norm feature is dragging down the rest of your good looks rather than what's making you stand out! I was just having a conversation about Gene Tierney, the 1940s actress with an overbite, who said it was in her contract that they couldn't make her get her teeth fixed. Here's her NYT obituary: 

"There is nothing like the energy and atmosphere of live music. It is the most life-affirming experience..."

"... to see your favorite performer onstage, in the flesh, rather than as a one-dimensional image glowing in your lap as you spiral down a midnight YouTube wormhole. Even our most beloved superheroes become human in person. Imagine being at Wembley Stadium in 1985 as Freddie Mercury walked onstage for the Live Aid benefit concert... It was Freddie's connection with the audience that transformed that dilapidated soccer stadium into a sonic cathedral. In broad daylight, he majestically made 72,000 people his instrument, joining them in harmonious unison.... I’ve been lifted and carried to the stage by total strangers for a glorious swan dive back into their sweaty embrace. Arm in arm, I have sung at the top of my lungs with people I may never see again. All to celebrate and share the tangible, communal power of music.... I don’t know when it will be safe to return to singing arm in arm at the top of our lungs, hearts racing, bodies moving, souls bursting with life. But I do know that we will do it again, because we have to. It’s not a choice. We’re human... [T]ogether, we are instruments in a sonic cathedral, one that we build together night after night. And one that we will surely build again."

Writes The Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl (in The Atlantic).

ADDED: Interesting that Grohl made Freddie Mercury his central example of the sublime. Mercury was the one artist Kurt Cobain — Grohl's former bandmate — cited in his suicide note:

[W]hen we're back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins, it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact is, I can't fool you, any one of you.... I must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when they're gone. I'm too sensitive....

"So whether or not the music feels true to what Trump actually listens to, the whole scene... evokes a deep sense of what Trump stands for."

"And it feels like this question, which we keep referring to, of authenticity: Trump achieves that on an order of magnitude beyond what anyone else is currently doing on the other side," says Michael Barbaro in today's "The Daily Podcast" at the NYT.

The podcast goes with the NYT article "What Do Rally Playlists Say About the Candidates? Presidential campaigns have a sound. We analyzed the playlists of 10 contenders to see how the songs aligned with the messages." (which I blogged a couple days ago here).

The guest on the podcast is Astead W. Herndon, one of the authors of the article. He responds to Barbaro's prompt:

"We know that each of the candidates is trying to introduce themselves to the public and to stand out from what is a crowded Democratic field and music is one of the ways they try to tell that story. When I think about the scene at Trump rallies, before the speakers begin, when the crowd is doing the 'YMCA,' the Wave, and the dancing, I think that there's actual political value in that energy. And whoever wins on the Democratic side will have to motivate their base in a way that matches or exceeds that level of energy. And it has to be done in a way that seems authentic to who that person is and that is not going to be an easy task."

They have to do it and they will not be able to do it.

Listen to the whole podcast. It's fascinating to hear Barbaro and Herndon puzzle over the strange mix that is Trump's playlist. Why is "Memory" from "Cats" there?! Does Trump listen to "Cats"?! What's with all the Queen? Maybe it's not that Trump listens to Queen, but that the entire mix of the music  embodies something of America that the crowd feels as it dances and sings for hours before the speakers even begin. Maybe it's not the lyrics at all. Barbaro and Herndon don't stop to observe that "Cats" and Queen are totally British, not American at all. They also don't say mention the "surprisingly gay swagger" in Trump's music mix — which was the aspect of the "What Do Rally Playlists Say" article that I chose to blog about.

What's really clear — as you can see in my little transcription and will feel much more if you listen to the podcast — is that Trump's use of music is tremendously effective. It's an "order of magnitude beyond" what the Democratic candidates are doing. The Democratic candidates are trying to say who they are and tell their own story. Joe Biden is the average Joe. Kamala Harris is black. Kirsten Gillibrand is a feminist. They're at the level of introduction and standing out from the others. Obviously, Trump doesn't need to do that. We've known who he is for decades. But it's not just that. Trump isn't saying this is my music. Trump has a big crowd of people who have assembled and who are making a "whole scene" out of themselves that goes on and on long before he steps onto the stage.  None of the Democrats are doing anything like that.

ADDED: It's funny — Trump haters are always saying that Trump makes everything all about him. But Barbaro and Herndon are perceiving that Trump rallies are about the people... the people who love Trump. And maybe they love Trump because he creates a space in which they can love themselves. That's why the slogan is "Make America Great Again" (or "Keep America Great").

(Meanwhile, the Democratic Party idea seems to be "America = racism.")

IN THE COMMENTS: rehajm said, "Trump does this to people":



Are the people doing it to themselves? Green Day didn't make the people sing like that in Hyde Park.

Rehajm adds, "The clown car of Democrats are Joni Mitchell at Atlantic City scolding the audience for not paying attention." Here's my recent post about Atlantic City and Joni. You may remember that. You probably don't remember that back in 2004, when John Kerry lost me, the thing that bothered me the most was when he snapped at a guy and said "You're not listening," and then in 2008, Barack Obama said almost the exact same thing — "The people who say [I am shifting to the center] apparently haven’t been listening to me."

"What is the reason of this phenomenon? The solution of this question belongs to the domain of pathology rather than that of aesthetics."

"A physician, whose speciality is female diseases, and whom I asked to explain the magic our Liszt exerted upon the public, smiled in the strangest manner, and at the same time said all sorts of things about magnetism, galvanism, electricity, of the contagion of the close hall filled with countless wax lights and several hundred perfumed and perspiring human beings, of historical epilepsy, of the phenomenon of tickling, of musical cantherides, and other scabrous things, which, I believe have reference to the mysteries of the bona dea. Perhaps the solution of the question is not buried in such adventurous depths, but floats on a very prosaic surface. It seems to me at times that all this sorcery may be explained by the fact that no one on earth knows so well how to organize his successes, or rather their mise en scene, as our Franz Liszt."

Wrote Heinrich Heine, in 1844, quoted in the Wikipedia article "Lisztomania," which I'm reading because I was looking for the movie with that title. "Lisztomania," the 1974 Ken Russell film, which Roger Ebert called "a berserk exercise of demented genius" that "Most people will probably despise it." According to WaPo's Gary Arnold:

A boudoir-farce approach to the life and legend of Liszt would have been trivial-minded, but harmlessly trivial-minded compared to the collection of obscene fantasies and gassy porofundities Russell resorts to after his muse runs out of comic ideas.

No, "porofundities isn't a word." It's just supposed to be "profundities," even though it's hard to picture profundities being gassy. How do gassy things stay deep? Wouldn't they float upward?

Anyway... things said in 1974. Why am I reading that today? I saw a link at Facebook (from my son) to "Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody Is Now the Biggest Music Biopic Ever. It’s Also Total Bullshit/The classic rock band has always been savvy about its own branding and legacy, but their Oscar-nominated film takes things too far."

I realize that doesn't quite say "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the biggest bullshit. It's "biggest" in terms of gross worldwide ticket sales. And it's total bullshit — which is itself bullshit — but I don't believe you can multiply the dollar amount by 1.00 (to represent the assertion of 100% bullshit) and get to a number to compare to other music biopics and discover which one is the biggest bullshit.

I think the factual inaccuracies of "Bohemian Rhapsody" bother the people who are bothered because the movie is relatively conventional and sincere. I think it's unfair to the concept of bullshit to rank something like that first. I say go deeper — explore the porofundities! — before you make the final call. Consider the berserk obscene fantasies of the demented genius Ken Russell from back in the 70s when bullshit was bullshit!

Big shakeup at The Golden Globes last night.

I used to care. I used to minute-by-minute blog the whole show, but now I haven't seen any of the movies, and there's nothing that can't wait until the next morning. What used to take hours is now accomplished in a couple minutes of reading.

But I have one question. Why were "A Star Is Born" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the "Drama" category? The Golden Globes have a "Musical or Comedy" category, and these 2 movies seem awfully musical.

From the Daily Mail article: "No doubt many were surprised by the win as Bohemian Rhapsody was generally poorly reviewed with 62% on Tomatometer by Rotten Tomatoes with top critics giving it 48%."

As for not talking about Trump:

It definitely seemed to be a concerted effort as host Sandra Oh previously told The Hollywood Reporter: 'I'm not interested in [talking about Trump] at all. What I’m interested in is pointing to actual real change. I want to focus on that because people can pooh-pooh Hollywood all they want – and there is a lot to pooh-pooh, sure – but we also make culture. How many gazillions of people have seen Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians? That changes things.'

One moment did get political, however, as Christian Bale had one of the most memorable speeches of the night while accepting Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his role portraying former US Vice President Dick Cheney in Vice. He blasted the former politician as he said: 'Thank you to Satan for giving me inspiration on how to play this role... I will be cornering the market on charisma-free a******s. What do you think, Mitch McConnell next? That could be good.'

"In South Korea, Queen-related events are being held across the country... Queen’s songs are taking over South Korean national television as well..."

"A major broadcaster replayed the 1985 Live Aid concert in December, while young singers from the nation’s enormously popular K-pop bands, who were not even born when Mercury died, staged a tribute ensemble in a televised year-end show. In Tokyo, the movie ['Bohemian Rhapsody'] is discussed endlessly in company cafeterias, bars and restaurants. Fans share their favorite scenes, including those that made them weep, and even trade tips on which movie theaters allow people to stand up, sing and dance along with the songs. That in itself is quite something in reserved Japan, where moviegoers usually sit in absolute silence, even through the credits at the end of films."

From "Bohemian Rhapsody fever sweeps Japan and South Korea" (WaPo).

"'Bohemian Rhapsody,' the movie about Queen, lasts more than two hours, not a very long time by modern feature standards, even though it feels interminable."

"A baroque blend of gibberish, mysticism and melodrama, the film seems engineered to be as unmemorable as possible, with the exception of the prosthetic teeth worn by the lead actor, Rami Malek, who plays Freddie Mercury, Queen’s lead singer. Those choppers may give you nightmares. And some of you who venture into the theater will surely be inspired to exclaim 'Mama mia, let me go!'"

Writes A.O. Scott (NYT).

ADDED: Here's The New Yorker's Anthony Lane:

Extra teeth. That was the secret of Freddie Mercury, or, at any rate, of the singular sound he made. In “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a new bio-pic about him, Mercury (Rami Malek) reveals all: “I was born with four more incisors. More space in my mouth, and more range.” Basically, he’s walking around with an opera house in his head. That explains the diva-like throb of his singing....

... Malek, mixing shyness with muscularity, and sporting a set of false teeth that would make Bela Lugosi climb back into his casket, spares nothing in his devotion to the Mercurial....

"Durkheim saw groups and communities as being in some ways like organisms—social entities that have a chronic need..."

"... to enhance their internal cohesion and their shared sense of moral order. Durkheim described human beings as 'homo duplex,' or 'two-level man.' We are very good at being individuals pursuing our everyday goals (which Durkheim called the level of the 'profane,' or ordinary). But we also have the capacity to transition, temporarily, to a higher collective plane, which Durkheim called the level of the 'sacred.' He said that we have access to a set of emotions that we experience only when we are part of a collective—feelings like 'collective effervescence,' which Durkheim described as social 'electricity' generated when a group gathers and achieves a state of union. (You’ve probably felt this while doing things like playing a team sport or singing in a choir, or during religious worship.) People can move back and forth between these two levels throughout a single day, and it is the function of religious rituals to pull people up to the higher collective level, bind them to the group, and then return them to daily life with their group identity and loyalty strengthened. Rituals in which people sing or dance together or chant in unison are particularly powerful. A Durkheimian approach is particularly helpful when applied to sudden outbreaks of moralistic violence that are mystifying to outsiders...."

From "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt — which I started reading a couple days ago and am in the middle of reading.

I wanted to blog this passage because of the prompt, "You’ve probably felt this while doing things like playing a team sport or singing in a choir, or during religious worship." Tell me how you relate to that. I'll tell you how I do.

I've been in some situations where I have seen it happening to other people, and my own reaction was markedly to separate from the group and become especially aware of my individuality. I never feel pulled into the collective. It has the opposite effect on me. I don't know why I'm immune, but I may have been inoculated by Frank Zappa.

It was Friday, February 2, 1969, at the Fillmore East, and in the middle of the show Zappa — I believe he was wearing red velvet/satin pants — divided up the audience into parts — maybe 4 sections — each assigned to sing out when pointed at. I didn't sing when pointed at, but I was interested in the sound he got flowing through the big audience as he escalated to more and more elaborate pointing patterns. He kept going until the crowd — struggling to respond to his showy conducting — could not keep up and it became cacophony. At that point, as I remember it, Zappa gave the crowd a gesture — perhaps a contemptuous 2-handed get-outta-here — and said something to the effect of, You people were idiots to have followed me in the first place. But I had not followed him, and so my resistance to the ecstasy of crowd merger — which I'd worried was stand-offish and putting me at risk of a joyless future — was vindicated.

That was a rather innocuous occasion. (And — I had to look this up — the words "innocuous" and "inoculate" do not have a shared etymology. The "oc" in "inoculate" goes back to the Latin word for eye — "oculus" — which also came to mean bud. The idea of grafting a bud into a plant got transferred into the medical context we think of today, which I was using metaphorically, above. The extra "n" in "innocuous" should get you to see — with your oculus — that it's not "oc" but "noc." That word comes from "nocere," the Latin meaning to hurt, which is also the source of "noxious.")

So... that Frank Zappa routine was a rather innocuous display, but it worked — as he intended? — to inoculate at least some of us... at least me... from susceptibility to collective effervescence.

When else have I seen that kind of crowd merger and felt stronger in my sense of individuation? First, I remember another concert — Pantera, in 1996. I attended this concert here in Madison only because in those days I had the privilege of driving 15-year-old boys to concerts. I enjoyed it, but in a distanced way, and there were times when the lead singer was exhorting a crowd and the crowd was responding en masse in a way that made me contemplate what it would be like to be in the midst of a 1930s Nazi rally. And, most notably, I remember the Wisconsin protests of 2011, as they gained momentum day by day, with endless hours of drumming and chanting. The protesters would stay for long hours in the state capitol building — many of them overnight — and I would observe for a while then go home but come back another day. So the changes in the atmosphere were very striking to me. Whatever serious ideas and beliefs individual protesters may have had, their collective mind was courting madness.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lots of great stuff, but I wanted to highlight this video recommended byDust Bunny Queen ("One of the best recent examples of this spontaneous collective effervescence is the Green Day concert in Hyde Park, England in 2017. Green Day was late and to keep the crowd entertained the song by Queen Bohemian Rhapsody was played on loud speakers. The crowd spontaneously started to sing all the words, perform to the song, singing, dancing, jumping. Bohemian Rhapsody by by 65,000+ singers"):



That was great. I got chills watching/listening here at my little desk.

"The president and first lady appeared not to have followed long-running protocol in which a bow or curtsy is customary."

"Moreover, Mr. Trump seemed to walk in front of the queen, and not quite alongside her, prompting Twitter critics to call his motions awkward and even rude. Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s communications director, said Mrs. Trump was briefed on royal protocol before the visit, but it was unclear if the president, who eschews briefings, received similar guidance. In other ways, the Trumps avoided breaching protocol. Touching a royal can make headlines, as Michelle Obama did when she placed her hand on the queen’s back in 2009. Then there was the time, in 1977, when Jimmy Carter kissed the queen’s mother — on the lips, no less."

From "From Truman to Trump, Queen Elizabeth Has Met 12 U.S. Presidents," in which the NYT is actually quite mild toward Trump. I noticed, "Even for a monarch who has encountered her fair share of presidents, Mr. Trump is probably the most disruptive American leader she has met." Probably??? Who's the competition? Trump is also the most disruptive President including the ones QE has not met. He's Disruptiveness Personified.

Here's the video of the Queen's slapstick approach to walking with Trump:

This is hilarious. The Queen acting like she’s training one of her dogs as Trump struggles to master the art of walking. pic.twitter.com/M7tNwJFlOX

— SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) July 13, 2018

What the hell is she doing?! He's walking slowly and normally. She's being weird. I think it has to do with Scotland (the homeland of Trump's mother).

By the way, have you seen these intensely gorgeous new movie posters?

The Apple ringtone "Marimba” uses hemiola — "a specific type of syncopation, featuring three beats where you would intuitively expect two."

"It’s a fairly common musical technique, one that’s been around for centuries, featuring prominently in the work of 19th-century composers like Brahms, Schumann and Tchaikovsky. It also regularly crops up in popular music — from the opening riff of Led Zeppelin’s 'Kashmir'..."



"... to the chorus of Britney Spears’s 'Till the World Ends'..."



"In 'Marimba'..."



"... the accented upper line creates the hemiola with a group of three notes in syncopation against the groups of two. Further, the counterpoint of the two lines jumps dramatically in pitch range, with the upper line using higher pitches that stick out conspicuously because of the accents against the lower notes in the second line.... Like 'Marimba' and [another Apple ringtone] 'Xylophone'..."



"... Queen’s 'We Will Rock You'...



"... has two repeating strands of musical activity: the stomping and clapping line, followed by Freddie Mercury’s declamatory lyrics in a freer rhythmic pattern. It’s this combination of brevity, repeatability and layered complexity that makes both pop songs and ringtones so sticky. 'The catchiness arises from the chunked and sequential nature of tunes; once they interest an ear, they play themselves through to a point of rest,' music theorist and cognitive scientist Elizabeth Margulis..."

From "No, iPhone ringtones aren’t bad. They’re musically sophisticated" by Alyssa Barnes (in WaPo).

"All 214 Artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Ranked From Best to Worst."

By the rock critic (not the musician) Bill Wyman.

It's an amusing read if you're not the sort of person who gets steamed because your opinions are not shared. I mean, he puts Queen second to last, beating only Bon Jovi, but he states his reasons.

Any way the wind blows.

In the comments on the post about the smelliness of a particular city in Iowa, stever writes: "I lived in Pampa,TX for awhile in the late 70s. There was a paint plant on one end of town and a rendering plant on the other. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, you only needed a nose to know which way the wind blows."

So Bob Dylan wrote, wrote "You don't need a weather man/To know which way the wind blows," which is about understanding what's happening. It brought a similar phrase to mind — "Any way the wind blows" — which means just about the opposite, more unknowing than knowing. It is closer to another famous Dylan phrase "no direction home." If you go any way the wind blows, you go wherever outside forces take you; you're an aimless wanderer. So it's not surprising the phrase comes up again and again in songs — most notably in Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."



And thanks to Queen for putting that video up on their official YouTube feed and with no ad. That shows some nice respect for their fans, and I hope I'm returning the favor by embedding them here and inviting all the love possible for this overflowingly generous band.

Now, I can't wear on your patience long enough to point out how many different songs have the title "Any Way the Wind Blows"...



But look at Doris Day — so wholesome, but kind of dirty:



And here's a different song with the same title. It's the one that's stuck in my personal memory bank — in 2 really different versions. You've got the Mothers of Invention of "Freak Out"...



... and the insanely, delightfully slowed down rendition by the Mothers in the form of Ruben and the Jets...



But maybe you like this kind of thing, slick country rock from the 1980s. Same title, but again, a completely different song:

Race-targeted ads for Toyota Camry — don't miss the one that's for white people.

This is from the NYT — "Different Ads, Different Ethnicities, Same Car" — where you can watch all the ads if you want. Click to enlarge:



The obviously targeted ones might be offensive or embarrassing:

The ad from Burrell, an agency that has specialized in African-American consumers... features... [t]he image of a peacock...

“Traditionally, Asian fathers show less emotion and affection toward their kids,” [said the executive at the agency that made the ad for Asian-Americans]. “We wanted to show that driving the Camry brought out a different side of an Asian dad...”...

When Toyota’s agencies gathered, they concluded that...  the Hispanic consumer sought “some guardrails”... a sense of responsibility, particularly to family, she said, adding that “internally, we called it ‘soaring with sense.’”

But what about white people? We're not talked about openly. We're hidden from ourselves inside this weird concept: "transcultural mainstream." Even the agency won't admit that this is the ad for white people:

“There is no Caucasian market,” said Mark Turner, chief strategy officer of Saatchi & Saatchi, who is white. “The mainstream market as defined by any mass marketer like Toyota actually comprises many different cultures, so we’re not the Caucasian agency. We’re the agency that caters to the transcultural mainstream.”

Here's that ad:

Scaramucci on the Colbert Show.

Worth a watch:



Most interesting thing: He comes right out and calls Steve Bannon a leaker and says if it were up to him Bannon would be gone.

Colbert is kind of annoying for 2 reasons: 1. He's straining too hard to get Scaramucci to do what makes comedians love him while at the same time trying to step on all of Scaramucci's jokes and claim all punchlines for himself, and 2. The audience over-screams with laughter any time Colbert gets off any kind of line, which really spoils the experience for me, watching at home. I want to decide what's funny, not have a bunch of sycophants continually informing me which of 2 men in a man-to-man interview they're rooting for.

I liked the way the band played the "Scaramouche, Scaramouche" section of "Bohemian Rhapsody" as Scaramucci walked on. The song choice is the complete opposite of surprising but I liked the way they played it. Just a cool variation on an old theme.

Oh, wait. There's a Part 2, after the break...



ADDED: Scaramucci doesn't know if Bannon is a white supremacist, but he doesn't like Bannon's toleration of white supremacists.

"Thousands of angry comedians protested outside the White House on Monday afternoon, demanding the immediate reinstatement of the ousted communications director Anthony Scaramucci."

"Chanting 'Bring back Mooch,' the irate funnymen and funnywomen argued that the abrupt removal of Scaramucci was akin to taking the food out of their families’ mouths.... Buddy Schlantz, the owner of the Bethesda, Maryland, comedy club known as the Laff Pagoda, travelled to the White House to protest what he called 'a direct assault on the comedy community. Most comics I know are in a state of shock,' he said. 'Years from now, comedians will be asking each other, ‘Where were you when you found out that Scaramucci was canned?'..."

Writes Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker humorist, who probably did regret losing Scaramucci as a joke target. Or maybe not. It was too easy to use Scaramucci for comic purposes. Anyone could directly observe him and find him funny. He was funny even to those who liked him. What can you do with that? How many times can you riff on "Bohemian Rhapsody"?



ADDED: Comedians : Scaramucci :: Forest Therapy guides : forests.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ralph L said:

One of these years I'll figure out this Comedia dell arte business. The English upper classes must learn about it in grade school, because it's in Christie, Father Brown, and nearly every other English writer I read. I fail to see anything funny in what little I know about it.

Here's the Wikipedia article on Commedia dell'arte (note the spelling).

Commedia dell'arte... was an an early form of professional theatre, originating from Italy, that was popular in Europe from the 16th through the 18th century.... Some of the better known commedia dell'arte characters are Pierrot and Pierrette, Pantalone, Il Dottore, Brighella, Il Capitano, Colombina, the innamorati, Pedrolino, Pulcinella, Sandrone, Scaramuccia (also known as Scaramouche), La Signora, and Tartaglia.

Clicking on Scaramuccia:

Scaramuccia (literally "little skirmisher"), also known as Scaramouche or Scaramouch, is a stock clown character of the Italian commedia dell'arte (comic theatrical arts). The role combined characteristics of the zanni (servant) and the Capitano (masked henchman). Usually attired in black Spanish dress and burlesquing a don, he was often beaten by Harlequin for his boasting and cowardice.

80s Dusty.

I love Dusty Springfield, but have absolutely no memory of this...



... and I watched a lot of MTV in the 80s. I remember the Pet Shop Boys, chiefly this, but never knew they got together with Dusty Springfield.

Why am I looking at Dusty Springfield this morning? It was a strange journey! Routine checking of Instapundit took me to a Campus Reform piece titled "Student gov to pursue mandatory LGBT 'ally training' for faculty." It says LGBT in the headline, but the text refers to "LGBTQIA+." I figured the A was "asexual" — correctly, I see — and I wondered why do people who want nothing need anything? Recognition? Hey, what about me? I need nothing.

And you know me, I like to say Better than nothing is a high standard. I think there's too much bad sex going on and recommend valuing nothing as pretty high on the list of things you might want.

I played my favorite nothing song, "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" by The Velvet Underground, and thought about other great nothing songs. "All or Nothing at All," "Nothing Was Delivered," "I Who Have Nothing," "Nothing Compares to U." Here's a whole big list, so you don't have to tell me I "forgot" any nothing songs, and you can find your own favorites. Maybe you like "Money For Nothing" or "King Nothing."

With that list, I stumbled into 80s Dusty. The 80s look and feel so anaesthetized. That hair, that makeup, the shoulder pads — such deadness. I don't think nothing has to be like that. The antidote is this 70s nothing:



IN THE COMMENTS: Left Bank of the Charles helps out with 2 great nothing songs where the nothing isn't in the title: Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" ("Nothing really matters") and The Talking Heads's "Heaven" ("Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens").