The event was called UFC Freedom 250, and, true to that name, it turned out to be about the UFC and the United States of America.
3 days before his birthday, Trump had said — quoted at USA Today — "You don't have to wish me happy birthday because I'm not happy about that birthday that I'm having. That's a number that I never thought really too much about. It's not a number I like, but I'm here, nevertheless."
And at that huge event on the White House lawn on the evening of his birthday, last night, I don't think there was even a passing mention of his birthday.
All I am seeing is a spontaneous welling-up of the song "Happy Birthday" in the crowd:
If that was planned, it was planned to seem unplanned. It's entirely unconnected to anything happening in the Octagon.
He took his seat ringside and mostly just sat there smiling. At the end, he entered the Octagon, but not to be celebrated. He was congratulating the fighters and giving them a photo-op to celebrate themselves.
Time doesn't move, but the world moves. Bob also says: "The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it...."
And was time moving in the past? Bob also says: "The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country.... You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would."
ADDED: Based on what I quoted, you might find the headline confusing. Bob didn’t say anything about Trump and what’s Liza Minnelli doing there? But the article actually has a bunch of other celebrities — Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel, Gloria Steinem, and Dionne Warwick. And all of them, including Liza, are shown answering the question “Any advice for the president as he turns 80?” I presume Bob was asked that question too, and he refused to answer. Nevertheless, Bob’s answering of the two questions he did answer – what’s the best thing and what’s the worst thing about turning 80 – is put at the top of the article. So The New York Times wanted to make it about Trump and all the other celebrities went along with that but whatever it is Bob happened to say about aging and time mattered more, and I’m glad The New York Times was able to see that. And thanks to Bob for seeing, once again, that you don’t have to answer the question asked by the one who walks into the room with a pencil in his hand, sees the President of the United States standing naked and asks, How would you advise that man?
Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Allen Ginsberg. I'm sorry I let it slip past unnoted, but I'm noting it now. Marilyn Monroe had her 100th on Monday. That got way more attention in the media, so I could have observed it, on the right day, but I avoided that. She's had too much attention already. I imagine she's tired of it, tired of the form it takes.
Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas?... We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier....
"... the American republic will celebrate its two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary next month with a full card of mixed-martial-arts brawls on the South Lawn of the White House. Weigh-ins will take place at the Lincoln Memorial. The night of mayhem is also meant to celebrate the eightieth birthday of the President of the United States, a longtime fan of the sport...."
I wanted to quote that here because I feel as though I'm seeing a trend in Trump-hating writing. There's a choice to couch descriptions within a problem of the distortion of reality. In this article we have the idea of the Framers microdosing. Last night, I blogged a WaPo writer saying "at least half of life with RFK Jr. feels like something you dreamed"... though "It sure feels real in your lower intestines, doesn’t it?"
Why did the writer take us inside her body like that? It's one thing to say my mind is off, I feel like I'm on drugs or I must be dreaming or maybe I'm crazy, but it's another thing to invite us into the nether regions. People often speak of their "gut reaction," but it's rather intimate to bring up "lower intestines." At least we're not directed to think about the colons of the Founding Fathers.
Anyway, speaking of getting physical: mixed martial arts. Mixed martial arts for the celebration of America's "two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary next month." Next month is June. The 4th of July is in July. But the fighting on the White House lawn is June 14th. That's Trump's birthday. Can't he have what he wants?
What did George Washington do on his birthday? It's 4 in the morning, and I'm writing this wide awake and sober: I'm going to guess nothing.
History in the making 👀
New visuals for #UFCWhiteHouse and the UFC Freedom 250 Fan Fest are here!
22 years of doing exactly this. Year 23 begins today.
The bloggiversary arrives 2 days after my birthday, but I didn't blog about my birthday — though I appreciated the birthday wishes that popped up here and there in the comments section. And it was one of those big birthdays, the 3/4 of a century mark, 75.
Here on the blog, it's the bloggiversary that matters. This is the milestone I choose to highlight. I'm delighted to be here to blog another day, Day 8,037.
I am about to turn 75, so I was struck to arrive at this passage in James Traub's "John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit" (commission earned) — a book I've been reading on and off since my last birthday:
IN JULY 1842, ADAMS TURNED SEVENTY-FIVE. ALREADY HE HAD outlived the biblical span of threescore and ten, which Adams viewed as the age beyond which no one could reasonably expect to live. Life, he understood, was a “pilgrimage” from which he could at any moment be recalled. He had been admonishing himself for years, often on the occasion of his birthday, to prepare his soul for death. Two years earlier, on his seventy-third birthday, he had written in his diary, “I am deeply sensible of the duty of beginning in earnest to wean myself from the interests and afflictions of this world, and of preparing myself for the departure to that which is to come.” Then, almost in the next sentence, Adams made a stark admission to himself: “The truth is, I adhere to the world and all its vanities, from an impulse not altogether voluntary, and cannot, by any exercise of my will, realize that I can have but very few days left to live.”
SEVENTY-FIVE... the age beyond which no one could reasonably expect to live...
"The next page in the book simply shows a hand-drawn heart, a brief message and a photo of a woman’s buttocks in a thong bikini. Another assistant described how Mr. Epstein transformed her life, from a 22-year-old woman who had been divorced and had worked in a hotel restaurant to a person who traveled the world meeting powerful people. Among them, she listed Mr. Trump, Mr. Clinton and 'brilliant scientists, lawyers and business men.'"
"I believe and I always believed that as fragile as our democracy is, our systems would be strong enough to defend our most fundamental principles. And I think right now that um they're not as strong as they need to be. And I just don't want to for now I don't want to go back in the system. I want to I want to travel the country. I want to listen to people. I want to talk with people. And I don't want it to be transactional where I'm asking for their vote...."
Said Kamala Harris, to Stephen Colbert (scroll to 6:02).
Colbert said it is "harrowing" to hear her say that. When she responded: "Well, but it's also evident, isn't it?... It is harrowing..." Colbert broke in to rescue her. It sounds as though she's saying that she doesn't "want to be part of the fight anymore."
She takes the hint: "No. Oh, absolutely not. I am always going to be part of the fight. That is not going to change. I am absolutely going to be part of the fight."
The internal link goes back to a post from the first year of this blog:
Go back to the first post of today to see how that connected up. But rereading that old post — which has a Sean Lennon Ono tag (because I sat near Yoko Ono when she was pregnant with Sean) — made me want to check to see what Sean was writing on X today. I see:
What nice synchronicity! It was only by chance that John and Sean were born on the same day and only by chance that on this October 9th, the story of an orange rolled up the aisle of an airplane took me back to the story of My Dinner in the Vicinity of John and Yoko.
If I had to try to think of a meaningful connection, I'd say — as I've said before — I like that Yoko Ono book "Grapefruit."
"... or lost wages and emotional distress.
The man, Kevin Berling, had been working at a medical laboratory, Gravity Diagnostics in Covington, Ky., for about 10 months when he asked the office manager not to throw him a birthday party because he had an anxiety disorder, according to a lawsuit filed in Kentucky’s Kenton County Circuit Court....
Mr. Berling had a panic attack after he learned about the planned lunchtime celebration, which was to have included birthday wishes from colleagues and a banner decorating the break room. Mr. Berling chose to spend his lunch break in his car instead.
The next day, Mr. Berling had a panic attack in a meeting with two supervisors who confronted him about his 'somber behavior,' Mr. Bucher said. He was fired three days later in an email that suggested that Mr. Berling posed a threat to his co-workers’ safety...."
The legal claim was discrimination based on disability. The company's legal position seems to be both that it wasn't informed of Berling's disorder and that the condition was not a disability within the meaning of the law.
What should you do if you have an anxiety disorder and risk getting triggered by workplace interactions?
I don't much celebrate birthdays — do you? — but I don't think I'd even consider celebrating my birthday while alone, and if I did, I might come up with the idea of champagne and some special food, but not of picking up a musical instrument and serenading myself.
It's so charming — don't you think? — that mandolin, foie gras, and champagne. I look to see — when was his birthday? Did he get to that birthday before the deathday popped up in the timeline of fate? Yes, he did. His birthday was January 14th. He died on the 21st.
It's Sunday in the Mad city, and everyone is sending me email, telling me that it's Bob Dylan's birthday tomorrow. The 80th, I think.
But I don't believe Bob cares about birthdays. He doesn't need to be saluted when his birthday comes any more than he needs to be bowed down to on Sunday, like whoever the artist is that he sang about in "She Belongs to Me."
I happen to think birthdays are more of a children's thing, and I tend to think Bob agrees with me, because in his memoir "Chronicles: Volume One," as he's writing about avoiding what was at the time "the long-awaited ballyhooed reunion tour," he says:
As long as my own form of certainty stayed intact, I owed nobody nothing. I wasn’t going to go deeper into the darkness for anybody. I was already living in the darkness. My family was my light and I was going to protect that light at all cost. That was where my dedication was, first, last and everything in-between. What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing. Not a damn thing. The press? I figured you lie to it. For the public eye, I went into the bucolic and mundane as far as possible. In my real life I got to do the things that I loved the best and that was all that mattered—the Little League games, birthday parties, taking my kids to school, camping trips, boating, rafting, canoeing, fishing….
"The situation this country is facing is anything but amusing"/"Oh, who cares? Honestly. One of the few joys of being as old as we both are is it is not our problem."
... by pulling them out of the cake — one by one — and blowing on them individually? He was mocked as some sort of germophobic freak.
But look at the video now, and you'll think it's not enough — he needs to turn away from the cake and blow in the opposite direction or the entire tradition of candles on a birthday cake is over.
That was a bit over a year ago. I noticed it just now because I'd gone into my "birthday" tag because — in last night's café — the first commenter, Andrew, asked me, "Did you forget that today was Bob Dylan's birthday?"
Last night, I'd said, "I’m not interested in birthdays. Maybe when he turns 80. Otherwise, he’s just old. I’m glad he’s alive. I don’t even celebrate my own birthday. I’m not a child." This morning, I thought, I probably blogged it when he turned 70, and I looked to see, because I think I'm pretty consistent about some things, and here it is, from 2011, "Bob Dylan turns 70," with just the line, "Thanks for staying alive, Bob!"
A commenter questions me for not making a bigger deal of it, and I respond by front paging his remark and saying I'm not interested in birthdays. And I also do something that I almost did last night in response to the commenter's prod: I look up "birthday" in the Dylan song-lyrics archive. There are 2 hits, and I analyze them and conclude that Dylan's not interested in birthdays either. There's a good chance I picked up my attitude from him, because these songs come from albums that got written on my soul when I was a teenager.
People jumped at the chance to mock the senator’s “bizarre” candle extinguishing method, calling him awkward and even “deeply weird.” But Romney’s candle-blowing technique is not all that strange — just more sanitary.... [B]lowing out candles the standard way, over a birthday cake, increased bacterial levels on the cake by some 1,400 percent.... The standard method for blowing out candles is the weird ritual here, blessing a birthday cake with the dispersion of hot slobber....
The social sanctioning of people who deviate from social norms, even with good reason, isn’t a surprise. Food rituals have significance in social bonding and relationships; in the case of birthday cakes, Smithsonian magazine reported that the practice of blowing out the candles makes people enjoy the cake more, with studies showing that the ritual creates a special moment that gives people a warm and fuzzy feeling....
I had to look up how I've been spelling "bloggiversary," after mentioning it in the comments yesterday and spelling it "bloggerversary." I just want to be consistent, and I've put a lot of effort into consistency in matters of style (such as not capitalizing "constitutional" but capitalizing "Constitution" but only when referring to a specific constitution (and "a specific constitution" does not refer to a specific constitution)).
Thanks, but "legal affairs blogger" feels so off. Even when I was still working as a law professor, I didn't feel like a "legal affairs blogger." Even when I've thought of my blog as partially "law blogging," I haven't thought of it as "legal affairs" blogging. Anyway, thanks, Boston Globe.
I have said this every year on my bloggiversary, and I can say it again this year: I have blogged every single day. No days off — no holidays or sick days or down days in the world of Althouse blogging. In the early years of blogging, that seemed very special, but now, it's super-normal, and not hard to do at all. You might think I have to force myself at least some of the time to keep up this long record — 5,844 days in a row so far — but I don't. Was there ever a day when it was just a chore, an idea of needing to find something to put up on the blog? Actually, no! I love writing on this blog, and I only write about what interests me and only to understand and give meaning to things for myself.
If that works for you, thanks for reading. If you think I should be blogging about things I'm skipping or I should be doing this a different way, I don't know what you are doing here! Nevertheless, it's great fun to write knowing that people are here and reading.
"The Queen has scrapped plans to host a party for Prince Andrew to mark his 60th birthday in February. Instead, the monarch is said to be arranging a small family dinner for the Duke..." (The Daily Mail).
The first words that crossed my mind when the DJ on the Beatles channel on the car radio asked — on the occasion of John Lennon's 79th birthday — what did John Lennon mean to you?
Who on earth do you think you are? A superstar? Well, right you are!
ADDED: Yoko is actually crocheting, but I have a tag for knitting, and I'm interpreting knitting as a form of crocheting, whether it really is or not.
From Wikipedia: "The salient difference between crochet and knitting, beyond the implements used for their production, is that each stitch in crochet is completed before the next one is begun, while knitting keeps many stitches open at a time."
That is a fantastic metaphor. Think of life like that. There are 2 kinds of people in the world: crocheter and knitters. The crocheters complete one thing before they begin the next, and the knitters keep many endeavors open at the same time.
Yoko is crocheting blindfolded. What does that mean — especially related to karma? I'm thinking that the blindfold depicts a lack of awareness of the karmic consequences of ones actions. At no point in the performance does she remove the blindfold. Karma — even instant karma — never knocks her right in the head. But we can all see that she's blindly fixed on a discrete, inoffensive task, and maybe we're invited to see ourselves in that and to see our own inattention to the larger forces of the universe, which will — suddenly some time — knock us right in the head. So "You better get yourself together, darling/Pretty soon you're going to be dead."
The first time we hear about instant karma, it is indeed going to kick you right in the head (and you're reminded, rhymingly, that pretty soon, you're going to be dead). But the second time we hear about instant karma, it's "going to look you right in the face." That won't work too well if you are blindfolded, so you might want to take off the blindfold and — rhyming with "race" — "Join the human race."
That made me think, John was talking about other people as subhuman. These days, you could get canceled if you talk like that. But John quickly escapes the accusation that he's looking down as he leaps to the declaration that other people are not merely human but superstars, shining "like the moon and the stars and the sun."
Then we hear for the third and last time about how instant karma is going to "get" us. First was kick you right the head. Second was look you right in the face. Third is, "going to knock you off your feet." The rhyming line is "Better recognize your brothers/Everyone you meet." Your brothers, they're all superstars too. They shine on like the moon and the stars and the sun.
In 2 places in the song, John objects to laughing: 1. "What in the world you thinking of/Laughing in the face of love?" and 2. "How in the world you gonna see/Laughing at fools like me?" Laughing corresponds to Yoko's blindfolded crocheting. You don't see what you are doing. Stop laughing and see that we all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun.
"... though fewer thought it was actually expected. About 40% of both groups said the baby itself was already a present and did not wish an additional reward. The popularity of push presents has been attributed in part to media coverage of celebrities receiving them. Examples include a 10 carat diamond ring given to celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe by her husband Rodger after the 2011 birth of their son, a Bentley given to reality TV star Peggy Tanous of The Real Housewives of Orange County by her husband Micah after the 2007 birth of their daughter, and a diamond and sapphire necklace given to singer Mariah Carey by her husband Nick Cannon after the 2011 birth of their twins. The trend has generated a backlash...."
That's at "Push Present" (Wikipedia). I had to Google that after reading somebody on Twitter who said, "My wife just brought up a 'push present.' I had to google to find out what hell that is. This is our fourth kid. She can't start this now." The too-late-to-start-now argument is interesting. It made me think of another too-late-to-start-now argument: Every time it's your birthday, it marks the anniversary of what your mother did for you, going through pregnancy and childbirth, so you should be giving her a present.
By the way "push present" assumes the mother goes through labor and vaginal delivery, so it's the wrong term. Whatever the woman goes through is a big deal, and she deserves to be honored for her contribution to the continuation of humanity, but often it's a Caesarean section, and naming the present after the "push" might feel quite wrong at a sensitive time. Plus, "push" sounds pushy and calls attention to the idea that the new mother might not want to do what she's just put herself in the position of needing to do.
“They’re a very big thing in L.A.,” said Justin Lacob, 35, a new father who lives in Los Angeles. Although his wife didn’t expect a present, he said, “I’ve heard women complain about what they received.”...
Any gift for a new mother should have special meaning. “When she looks at it, it should remind her of the experience, of crossing over into motherhood,” said the New York City childbirth educator Patricia Rangel, who is curating a list of shopping ideas for her business website. (Ms. Rangel suggests an affordable piece of simple jewelry centered on the new baby, such as a birthstone, an engraved name or a charm in the shape of a peanut.)...
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