"Near the beginning of 'Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President'... President Carter offers a revelation involving one of his children, country singer Willie Nelson and what Nelson once described as 'a big fat Austin torpedo.'"

"Asked about Nelson’s account of smoking marijuana on the roof of the White House at the tail end of Carter’s term in 1980, the former president lets out a chuckle. Nelson, Carter explains in the film, 'says that his companion that shared the pot with him was one of the servants at the White House. That is not exactly true. It actually was one of my sons.'... Asked whether he was the Carter offspring whose father had accused him of smoking pot at the White House, Chip pauses.... 'My guess is it’s true. If you’re talking about me and Willie, he was my friend,' he says. Asked to paint a picture, he replied with a sigh.... The date was Sept. 13, 1980. Carter was in the thick of his reelection campaign against Ronald Reagan. In Iran, 52 American hostages had endured more than a year of captivity. Nelson was in the middle of a set at the White House. Recalls Chip, 'In the break I said, "Let’s go upstairs." We just kept going up till we got to the roof, where we leaned against the flagpole at the top of the place and lit one up.... Most of the avenues run into the White House. You could sit up and could see all the traffic coming right at you. It’s a nice place up there.'"

From the L.A. Times.

Isn't it cosmically cool to have smoked pot with Willie Nelson on the roof of the White House? No higher place on Earth!

But what did Chip Carter do with his life? He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page (though his name appears on a disambiguation page to distinguish him from one other person with that name). I do see an August 1977 article in the Washington Post reporting that Jimmy Carter kicked 27-year-old Chip out of the White House because Chip had entered a "trial separation" with his wife Caron. Caron and the couple's baby, James Earl Carter IV, stayed in the White House. "The White House Press office, however, denied a published report that the President, in a fit of anger, ordered his son to move out because he had said he was breaking up with Caron."

And whatever happened to James Earl Carter IV? I found a September 19, 2012 article in The New Republic: "The Aimless Career of James Carter IV."

It just might work.

Headline at Rolling Stone: "The High Life/Sixty-five years after he smoked his first joint, Willie Nelson is America’s most legendary stoner and a walking testament to the power of weed. It may have even saved his life."

Seventh sentence in the article: "He turns 86 this spring and has a history of emphysema, so Annie, who’s been with Willie for 33 years, tries to get him to look out for his lungs, especially on show days."

In Mongolia, it's raw marmot organs. In America, it's marijuana. You have problems you'd like to solve, and here's this substance that might help. In Mongolia, plague. In America, emphysema.

[Willie] pauses for a second, before telling a joke he’s told a thousand times. “I don’t know anybody that’s ever died from smoking pot. Had a friend of mine that said a bale fell on him and hurt him pretty bad, though.”

But Willie has emphysema... and he also has an economic interest in marijuana commerce:

The idea for a weed business started a few years ago; Nelson had bronchitis and he couldn’t smoke, so Annie started making him weed chocolates... She lent some to a friend, and big business came knocking....

Nelson’s official title is “CTO: chief tasting officer.” The company even had business cards made up. He explains: “If I find something that’s really good, I say, ‘This is really good.’ ” Despite 65 years of pot use, Nelson is not a connoisseur; he shrugs when asked for his favorite Willie’s Reserve strains.....

Branding. He's selling his name and he's being the face of the business to the press. He's a very old man with emphysema, but the product is edibles. Problem solved, no?

How did pot save his life? He switched to it from cigarettes and whiskey, 40 years ago, and those other things would have killed him.

"I wouldn’t have lived 85 years if I’d have kept drinking and smoking like I was when I was 30, 40 years old. I think that weed kept me from wanting to kill people. And probably kept a lot of people from wanting to kill me, too — out there drunk, running around.”

Nelson uses the phrase “delete and fast-forward” a lot. It’s the title of a recent song of his, and it means forgive, forget and move on — a way to get through painful times. Weed, he says, helps him delete and fast-forward. “You don’t dwell on shit a lot. The short-term thing they talk about is probably true, but it’s probably good for you.... They say people who smoke pot have a short-term memory. Maybe that’s good, you know?... Because [otherwise] you start remembering a lot of negative things that you’re not supposed to remember. And the next thing you know, you’re back drinking whiskey. So weed helps you forget about stuff you don’t wanna think about."

Great branding. Wreck your memory. You'll live longer.

"This was all the result of my psychiatrist, Willie Nelson, calling me at 3 O’clock in the morning as I was watching Matlock."

"He asked me what I was doing. And I said, 'Well, I’m watching Matlock.' And he said, 'Well, that is the surest sign of depression. Turn ‘em off, Kinky, turn Matlock off and start writing.' And this inspired me because Willie is older, and he took the time and the energy, as a lot of people don’t, to encourage somebody. And then these songs came very fast, most of ‘em based on a silent witness of some kind, written to a silent witness, a dog, or a missing cat, or a dead sweetheart. So I consider these my Matlock collection. And there’s some wisdom to what Willie said, too. We may all have a Matlock, but we may not realize what it is — but if we can turn it off, god knows what we can accomplish. I hadn’t written songs in forty years, and these sound like they were channeled in from Leonard Cohen, or early Kristofferson, or something like that. I think all of ‘em are tragic songs. Best writing I’ve ever done."

From "Kinky Friedman’s New Album “Circus of Life” Is Full of Surprises/The Texas songwriting legend says we ought to give Donald Trump a chance" (RealClear/Life).

What's the part about giving Trump a chance?

At the Inappropriate President Café...

... talk about what you like and buy what you want through the Althouse Portal to Amazon.

"You don’t know if your friends are taking advantage of you because you have money. But a dom is like, I am taking advantage of you, and you’re going to like it."

"There’s that honesty that’s not there in your typical interactions with people," says Bratty Nikki, quoted in a Washington Post article "Meet the dominatrixes who control men where it really hurts: Their wallets."

“I think it’s the ultimate loss of control,” says financial dominatrix Bratty Nikki. “A lot of men are judged on how successful they are, and that is a good portion of what makes up their sense of self. When they say, ‘Hey, I’ve earned all this, and this is what I’ve worked for, this is a huge chunk of what makes me me, and I’m willing to give that up for you.’ I think they really enjoy that loss of power.”

The highest-rated comments all make the analogy to marriage, which is best summed up in the joke attributed to Willie Nelson and quoted in one of the comments: "Why get married? Just find a woman who hates you and buy her a house."

"Imagine a Being who is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. What does such a Being lack?"

"The answer? Limitation," writes Jordan Peterson, recounting "an old Jewish story." He continues, now with his own insight:

If you are already everything, everywhere, always, there is nowhere to go and nothing to be. Everything that could be already is, and everything that could happen already has. And it is for this reason, so the story goes, that God created man. No limitation, no story. No story, no Being. That idea has helped me deal with the terrible fragility of Being. It helped my client, too. I don’t want to overstate the significance of this. I don’t want to claim that this somehow makes it all OK. She still faced the cancer afflicting her husband, just as I still faced my daughter’s terrible illness. But there’s something to be said for recognizing that existence and limitation are inextricably linked.

Peterson proceeds to talk about Superman, who got boring when the plotline was that he had powers that worked on anything that could happen. His story was revived by giving him limitations:

A superhero who can do anything turns out to be no hero at all. He’s nothing specific, so he’s nothing. He has nothing to strive against, so he can’t be admirable 

AND: I feel a pop-song cue to the Talking Heads' "Heaven." That link goes to Lyrics Genius, where you can play the song, read the lyrics, and see line-by-line commentary on the lyrics. On the line, "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens," someone has added:

This refrain at first seems nonsensical, or perhaps tongue-in-cheek: Why would the most perfect place in all of creation be so…well…boring? However, consider: Once a state of perfection is reached, anything deviating from that is then imperfect. And if Heaven is imperfect, what’s the point? How’s it any different from Earth? This at first frustratingly rational take on spirituality also serves as a reminder of how boring life would be if things really were perfect: In the immortal words of Dolly Parton, “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

If those Dolly Parton words really are immortal —  omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent? — why did I keep finding them only in quotes (like that one) and not in song lyrics? Because it's a paraphrase, I think. People haven't remembered the words, only the idea. I think I found the song, a song for children, "I Am a Rainbow." The line is, "To make a rainbow you must have rain/Must have sunshine, joy, and pain."

This is my favorite rendition of a song about rainbows — it's never boring...

"Crazy" the way we've forgotten Ross Perot.

Here's Nick Corasaniti, writing in the NYT "Ad of the Week" column:

The ad is titled “Crazy.” It opens with a picture of Senator Ted Cruz looking mischievous and Mr. Trump with mouth agape, seemingly mid-rant. But leveling the actual “crazy” accusation is not the role of the narrator in this ad from New Day for America, the “super PAC” supporting Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. That falls to Patsy Cline, whose 1961 recording of Willy Nelson’s “Crazy” provides the ad’s soundtrack. The rest of the lyric: “I’m crazy for trying, and crazy for crying. And I’m crazy for loving you,” is barely audible under the narrator’s voice.

How can a prominent analyzer of political promotions write about the use of the song "Crazy" in a political ad and not mention that — back in 1992 — the song was the theme song of the Ross Perot campaign?

Ross Perot promised an unconventional campaign. He certainly delivered. In an oddly listless final day of campaigning, Perot addressed a disappointingly small rally in his hometown of Dallas, bought two final hours of prime-time television exposure, then retreated to the comfortable seclusion of his high-rise offices.

While his Democratic and Republican rivals were exhausting themselves in a frenzy of last-minute politicking, Perot seemed serene as he appeared before perhaps 3,500 followers in the 17,000-seat Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas. He thanked his supporters and summarized his roller-coaster candidacy this way: "What we've been through hasn't been pretty, but by golly you're taking your country back."

While again predicting victory in all 50 states in today's balloting, Perot also announced that he had adopted the Patsy Cline classic "Crazy" as the official theme song of his quixotic candidacy. President Bush last week said that Perot's allegations that Republican dirty tricksters had plotted to smear his daughter and disrupt her wedding were "crazy."

"There are millions of crazy people in this country," Perot told the crowd as he urged them to round up all their crazy friends and get them to vote. "And I'll say tomorrow I bet it'll be a crazy day at the polls."...

As he had at the weekend rallies, Perot characterized both President Bush and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton as unfit to lead the country out of its economic morass. He said that of the three candidates, only he is qualified to address fundamental economic problems because of his business acumen.

Ah! The resonance!

I wish I could embed this: Ross Perot telling his supporters the buses are ready to take them back to the asylum but first: his theme song. "Crazy" begins playing and he dances happily, in turn, with his 4 daughters and his wife.

Ancient Willie Nelson rolled out as a gently giggling prop...

... so Bill Maher can blab about legalizing marijuana. I found that very unpleasant. Willie's a beautiful singer-songwriter, and I would prefer not to see him used as an icon of pot-smoking. He's old, and I don't really expect him to articulate policy opinions, but his failure to do much more than giggle actually makes the argument against smoking pot.

I'm also reading Maureen Dowd's new column, which begins, "So you want to get high in a high-end way in the Mile High City." (I can't believe we're not past "Mile High City" jokes, but I guess putting in another "high" — "high-end" — gives you a time extension on "mile high.")

There are some dismaying resort operations exploiting the aging Baby Boomers' urge to spend money getting some legal(ish) marijuana at long last, e.g., "Dale Dyke and his wife, Chastity Osborn, a massage therapist" who are turning their house into a bed-and-breakfast, replete with "a tether ball, a camera in the living room to Skype your friends stoned, an outdoor swing 'where you can have a good time and catch a buzz,' and 'maybe a nerf horseshoe court.'" Picture it. Did you picture it nude? Well, it's clothing-optional. The business plan is to charge guests for the room, then give the homegrown pot to them.

"[The Grateful Dead's] Bob Weir sat in with Lukas Nelson... one of Willie Nelson’s sons..."

"... for Bob Dylan's 'Maggie’s Farm' and 'I Shall Be Released.' Ruby Stewart — Rod Stewart’s daughter — also added background vocals...."

"A U.S. Border Patrol spokesman says country singer Willie Nelson was charged with marijuana possession after 6 ounces was found aboard his tour bus in Texas..."

"Patrol spokesman Bill Brooks ... says an officer smelled pot when a door was opened and a search turned up marijuana."

Come on. Leave Willie alone.

At the Double Rainbow Café...

... we're feeling twice as optimistic.

Now, get out of the duckweed pond and carry on your open-threading up here, in the new day, the day we call: June 19th! Yay! Hooray for June 19th! Isn't it gorgeous? I did get some gorgeous late-sleeping accomplished, so the day is off to a smashing start.

And here's the coolest version of a great old song:



There was a semester when I listened to that in my car every day when I drove my 5 minute drive to work. Someday you'll find it... And then I found it!

Rainbows!

Willie Nelson cuts his hair...

... but not enough.

I'm not enjoying the jaunty bob on an old man.

"Nelson ambles on stage and embraces his audience’s love with open arms and a mile-wide wide grin."

"Dylan sneaks in and stares into the masses like it’s a plain white wall. Nelson plays virtually the same songs every night. Dylan changes his playlist every night, and never plays the songs the same way. Nelson radiates warmth and ease, Dylan chilliness and vague discomfort."

Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson together in concert, in Milwaukee.