"Women in rural Devon are being coached on how to give birth in the back of a car after their local hospital shut its maternity service."

That's in the London Times.

Catherine Mchomvu, an antenatal class teacher at the Devon Antenatal Family Centre, said it was important that women and their partners had supplies, including towels, blankets and water in the car....  “It’s about trying to create the birth environment that you would normally have in the hospital or at home, in your car.

And here's an article from 12 days ago: "'Maternity deserts' leave women with two-hour journey to give birth/Mothers-to-be fear delivering their babies on the roadside as NHS staffing shortages and closures leave swathes of England without nearby maternity care."

"My dad was the stage manager at a venue where Tom Waits was performing. The show started with him driving a beautiful restored Chevrolet onto the stage..."

"... and it was kind of a set piece there during the performance, to such a degree that Mr. Waits completely forgot the keys were in his pocket when he left.... [M]y dad got the surreal privilege of spending an evening driving around to every bar in Chicago that he could think of looking for the guy so they could get the car off the stage. This is how my father taught me that that if you hop dive bars long enough into a Saturday night, you will eventually - maybe inevitabley - come upon Tom Waits. He will give you the keys to a '55 Chevy Bel Air, and he will also buy you a drink for your trouble."

Comments by Phobos the Space Potato at on a Metafilter thread titled "New spoken word track by Tom Waits."

Here's that track:

"Mr Pelosi was driving a burgundy Maserati convertible along a residential street when he collided with a black Tesla, legally parked at the side of the road..."

"... according to court documents. Police said at the time that he briefly stopped before driving on again. The suspect 'fled the scene and did not make any attempts to contact the owner of the Tesla,' a sheriff’s deputy wrote on a complaint form. His car then appears to have broken down. The deputy said she found him about half a mile away. 'He disclosed hitting a parked vehicle and intended to go back and leave his information,' she wrote. The Maserati had to be towed away, according to the complaint...."

From "Nancy Pelosi’s husband charged over ‘hit-and-run’ in California/Paul Pelosi, 86, allegedly failed to stop when his Maserati convertible struck a Tesla parked by the side of a road" (London Times).

A broiler sunrise..

I asked Meade how he chose that song for the soundtrack and he said he was just looking for something "lively."

I said that song has great lyrics and regretted that we only get the first verse because my favorite line is the second line of verse 2: "The Coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale."

I love the slogan: "The Air Conditioned Refrigerator."

Here are all the lyrics to the Chuck Berry song. Verse 1: A teenage wedding. Verse 2: They have an apartment. Verse 3: They play music and have sex. Verse 4: They get a car, a "souped-up jitney."

"Chinese carmaker Seres has been granted a patent for what it calls an 'in-vehicle toilet' that slides under a passenger's seat for visits to the loo while on the road...."

"Chinese electric vehicles have become increasingly packed with unconventional features, like built-in massage seats, karaoke systems and a fridge, to stand out in a highly competitive market.... The loo will come with a fan and exhaust pipe to channel odours out of the car.... Waste is collected in a tank that has to be emptied manually. The toilet also features a rotating heating element that evaporates urine and dries other waste. When not in use, the toilet is concealed beneath the seat, making full use of the space inside a car without requiring more room."

BBC News reports.

Via Metafilter, where somebody links to this video:

"At the moment, [Saturday Night Live UK] has a grinning, whooping, gurning American mania to it."

"... [W]e and our US cousins have wildly differing senses of humour.... Much of the best British comedy relies on understatement, subtle wordplay, self-deprecation, self-mortification. It’s why Larry David is the American many Brits find most funny: he, like us, understands that life is a vale of tears, suffering and torturing yourself over mild social awkwardness...."

Writes Charlotte Ivers, in "Saturday Night Live UK review: Britain is funny but this isn’t yet/There’s talent in the cast — shame this Sky One debut was four parts American gurning, one part Princess Diana" (London Times).

A description of the "cold open": "Keir Starmer... and David Lammy... are psyching themselves up to phone Donald Trump, with the help of their 'Gen Z adviser.'... Keir: 'Oh golly, what if Donald shouts at me?' Gen Z adviser: 'You’re looking for more of a special situationship.'"

Also: "In a sketch parodying news headlines, the question is asked whether, once Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is in prison, he will 'be able to keep his mouth shut.' This is followed, I regret to inform you, by the punchline: '"I hope not," said his cellmate’s penis.'"

I don't see what's American about those jokes. And I don't see why the SNL format forces writers to use American-style humor! Worse, don't excuse your bad jokes by claiming they are American. The SNL format — cold open, monologue, sketches, Weekend Update, music performance — is an empty shell into which writers can insert whatever humor the producers want. Take responsibility. Or withdraw into the vale of tears and suffer and torture yourself. Apparently, you find that amusing. 

As for the "grinning, whooping, gurning American mania" — I only know the word "gurning" from the perennial reports of the World Gurning Championships. I see the NYT had one last year: "In This Pageant, the Ugliest Face Wins/The World Gurning Championships in northern England celebrate the centuries-old art of face-pulling."

That's been going on for years. I remember reading about the World Gurning Championships in LIFE magazine in the 1960s:

Here, you can buy that issue of LIFE on eBay. It was March 14, 1969. The cover story is "The Daring Contraption Called LEM." Inside: "The Race for the SST." And here's an ad: "McDonald's introduces Big Mac/A meal disguised as a sandwich." And: "Why is the Camaro the pace car again?/Because it's the Hugger."

That's all so American. And the American point of view was that gurning was a British oddity.

ADDED:

More clips from the show: here.

"To think, 190 miles an hour down Pennsylvania Avenue — this is going to be wild."

Said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, quoted in "Trump announces August auto race in downtown Washington" (Politico).

The Trump administration plans to usher a massive auto race into downtown Washington in August as part of a broader celebration of the United States’ 250th birthday, President Donald Trump announced Friday.

Flanked by senior officials in the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order to launch what the White House has dubbed “the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C. — the first ever INDYCAR street race in the Nation’s capital.”

"Collectivism" — he spoke the word, as if a wedding vow.

Mamdani said it, he highlighted it: "We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism." He promised it. He attributed warmth to it.

The link goes to my post yesterday with that quote as the title. In the comments, I wrote: "He's saying the words that have been left unsaid in the past. In that way, he's like Trump."

Who are the other American politicians who might have said "collectivism" — in a positive way, not as a way of criticizing somebody else? Bernie Sanders, who swore in Mamdani, doesn't use that word.

This blog has a 22-year archive, so I did a search to see how "collectivism" has figured into our discourse. I found 14 items, and I don't think any of them count as a positive use of the word in the style of Zoran Mamdami. 

Here are all the past occurrences of "collectivism" on this blog, in chronological order:

"Flanked by executives from major automakers in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said the Transportation Department would significantly weaken fuel efficiency requirements..."

"... for tens of millions of new cars and light trucks. The administration claimed the changes would save Americans $109 billion over five years and shave $1,000 off the average cost of a new car. The Biden administration’s stricter efficiency standards were designed to get more Americans to go electric. But Mr. Trump said they 'forced automakers to build cars using expensive technologies that drove up costs, drove up prices, and made the car much worse. This is a green new scam, and people were paying too much for a car that didn’t work as well.'"

From "Trump Returns to Gasoline as Fuel of Choice for Cars, Gutting Biden’s Climate Policy/The president said he would weaken Biden-era mileage standards, which were designed to increase electric-vehicle sales, calling them a 'scam'" (NYT).

"Lee Anderson, Reform’s chief whip, suggested the return of the 'Invacar' — or invalid carriage — a small single-seater microcar that was distributed by the NHS for decades..."

"... after the Second World War. Anderson told a press conference hosted by the party: 'I remember back in the day if you were on disability and you wanted a car from the state, it was a blue three-wheeler, anybody remember those? What’s wrong with that? Let’s go back to that.' The cars were banned from British roads in 2003 for being too dangerous, after reports of them overturning and catching fire, and ministers ordered that all remaining cars be crushed. Anderson made the comments as he criticised the Motability scheme, which allows disabled people to get cars through the benefits system. Labour ministers are considering removing BMWs, Mercedes and other luxury cars from the scheme, which provides such premium brands to more than 40,000 benefits claimants...."

From "Bring back three-wheeled cars for disabled drivers, Reform urges/The chief whip, Lee Anderson, suggests return of ‘Invacars’, which were withdrawn on safety grounds, as part of a replacement of the Motability scheme" (London Times).

"In the mid-1980s, Mr. Wheeler helped oversee the construction of 40 luxury condominiums overlooking Charlotte’s 1.5-mile oval track — a first for a NASCAR track."

"While the idea was widely mocked, these aeries for gearheads sold out in seven months, according to a 1995 article in The New York Times, despite the fact that 'cars with 700-horsepower engines running at nearly 200 miles per hour produce a sound somewhere between a roar and a howl, sometimes until 11 o’clock at night.'"

From "Humpy Wheeler, NASCAR’s Greatest Showman, Dies at 86/With fire-breathing robots and death-defying school-bus stunts, he brought spectacle to stock-car racing as the sport boomed in the 1970s and beyond" (NYT).

Maureen Dowd's sister got her car stolen in Washington D.C.

"Two polite officers who responded to our call said they could do little, amid a rash of brazen car thefts by teenagers. One officer said that, even if they saw the perp driving in her car, they could not chase him, because of laws passed by the D.C. Council.... The next morning, though, an officer... banged on her door. Her car was found in a park, running, nearly out of gas. When she collected it, after paying a $215 towing charge, she found an odoriferous collection: half-eaten pizza, grape soda cans, fast-food wrappers, a used condom and a couple of debit cards.... [T]he police said to throw [the cards] away... Then... she got over $1,800 worth of speed-camera tickets that the car thieves had racked up going 70 in 25-mile-per-hour zones, and some for running red lights.... She had to go down to headquarters on Friday to get the police report so she could appeal the tickets...."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Criminal Fights Crime" (NYT).

The final line is: "Even if Trump is being diabolical, Democrats should not pretend everything is fine here. Because it’s not."

I like to think the Democrats need to offer solutions, not just admit that there are problems. Of course, it's awful to deny that the problems are really that bad or to say that we deserve the problems or that side effects of solving the problems are worse than the problems. But assuming Democrats admit there is a terrible problem — and Dowd is only denying that "everything is fine" — they seem to want to focus on how bad Trump's solutions are.

Does a hot young actress really want President Trump approving of her? Poor Sydney Sweeney!

Trump, this morning, at Truth Social:

Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the “HOTTEST” ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are “flying off the shelves.” Go get ‘em Sydney!

Well, she's selling perfectly ordinary denim. Maybe she'll make being Republican the new thing.

That's from 60 years ago, but it's a line I've never forgotten: "The new thing is to care passionately and be right-wing." In context, of course, he's laughably wrong, and everyone watching that movie knew it. Didn't we? Or did we think watch out, some day that will be true. It's all a matter of time.

Trump's post continues:

On the other side of the ledger, Jaguar did a stupid, and seriously WOKE advertisement, THAT IS A TOTAL DISASTER! The CEO just resigned in disgrace, and the company is in absolute turmoil. Who wants to buy a Jaguar after looking at that disgraceful ad. Shouldn’t they have learned a lesson from Bud Lite, which went Woke and essentially destroyed, in a short campaign, the Company. The market cap destruction has been unprecedented, with BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SO FOOLISHLY LOST. Or just look at Woke singer Taylor Swift. Ever since I alerted the world as to what she was by saying on TRUTH that I can’t stand her (HATE!). She was booed out of the Super Bowl and became, NO LONGER HOT. The tide has seriously turned — Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

And speaking of Trump on Truth Social, there's also this, which caught my eye...

.. because I thought I saw Bucky Badger. But yes, happy birthday to the Coast Guard.

"We talk about the view that the soul exists but can’t do so without the body"/"'Is that what you believe?' he asks."

"'Ah well, I don’t, you see. My body is like a Hillman Imp and my soul is driving it. When I die, I park the car and walk the rest of the way. And I’m thinking that heaven is probably pedestrianised, so I can leave it outside.'"

From "Frank Skinner on faith and finally getting married (she said no four times)/The comedian opens up about his alcoholism, the consolation he finds in poetry — and whether he could succeed Melvyn Bragg as In Our Time presenter" (London Times).

There's a new season of "Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast" beginning this week, first episode here. I'm a big fan of that.

Hillman Imp? Apparently some sort of car. 

Oh!

That's Frank's idea of the metaphorical body that contains his soul. 

I'm reminded of the George Harrison song: "I got born into the material world/Getting worn out in the material world/Use my body like a car/Taking me both near and far...."

But George didn't name a particular car. Frank named the Hillman Imp. How about you?

"'Enjoy the simulacrum of actual learning,' Stella the Car said as she deposited them in front of the school."

"Now she was mirroring Daddy. Really, the key to being less odd was to develop your artificial intelligence. Daddy had once mentioned creating a computer program that would flash the most obvious next line of conversation right into your eye. You could go through the whole day thinking about important things and just letting the program prompt you every time you had to open your mouth."

I'm reading "Vera, or Faith: A Novel," by Gary Shteyngart (commission earned).

The problem with driverless cars is that they don't make mistakes.

OK, this is an original and good point.

pic.twitter.com/CmAHI9fUnr

— Bojan Tunguz (@tunguz) June 29, 2025

"Scholars who have studied the earlier age of electric vehicles see parallels in their demise in the early decades of the 1900s..."

"...  and the attacks they are facing now. In both eras, electric cars struggled to gain acceptance in the marketplace and were undermined by politics. A big knock against them was they had to be charged and ultimately were considered less convenient than vehicles with internal combustion engines.... Charging and access to fuel were also concerns a century earlier.... They also had to overcome gender stereotypes. Their benefits like quiet, smooth operation were considered by some men to be too feminine, and, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many models like the Baker Electric were explicitly marketed only to women.... In the fall of 2022, Representative Majorie Taylor Greene [said].... 'There’s nothing more American than the roar of a V-8 engine under the hood of a Ford Mustang or Chevy Camaro, an incredible feel of all that horsepower.' But Democrats, she said, 'want to emasculate the way we drive.'... 'Musk has done everything he could to try to make a Tesla a manly vehicle,' said Virginia Scharff, ... author of... 'Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age.'... But, Ms. Scharff added, Mr. Musk may have gone too far... 'Tesla is so associated with a kind of toxic masculinity now...'..."

From "Electric Vehicles Died a Century Ago. Could That Happen Again? Battery-operated vehicles were a mainstay more than a hundred years ago, but only a few still exist — one happens to be in Jay Leno’s garage" (NYT).

Here's Jay with his Baker:

Here's a charming 1910 ad — "Daddy — Get Me a Baker":

She's very feminine but does seem to know about "the business underneath," the "shaft drive."

"But there was also strong social fabric in his Harlem neighborhood. It wasn’t just Ms. Brown but his downstairs neighbor, Teddy, a retired seaman..."

"... who had moved into the building in 1936, who stridently guarded Mr. Levy’s parking spot while he was at work. 'He was retired and sat in the window. When people tried to park in front of the building, he would scream at them, "No, no, no. That’s Mr. Levy’s place."'"

I'm reading "A Long Life in Harlem, Made Possible by an Affordable Apartment/Owen Levy says the social fabric has remained strong in the often-tumultuous 46 years he has lived in the neighborhood" (NYT).

Times have changed. You can't get a big apartment near Central Park for $300. And anyone who thinks they can enforce a moral right to a public parking spot is going to become a figure of fun on TikTok:

"It wasn’t planned. That wasn’t two coaches throwing guys over and saying 'This is happening' — none of that happened. That was as organic as it gets."

Said Jon Cooper, the coach for Canada, quoted in The London Times:

Here's the video at YouTube. Judge for yourself. Political theater? Is this about Trump — Trump and his tariffs and his fifty-oneness?

Meanwhile, Trump himself was at The Daytona 500 and — with his lovely tiny little granddaughter — the sports-related masculine political theater was not brutishly macho but nobly patriarchal:

ADDED: The oversized MAGA hat emphasizes the tininess of the granddaughter, and it made me think of this image of Elon Musk in a giant hat:

pic.twitter.com/nhRCtyA3wj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2025

You can see the hat as it is — large — or you can perceive the optical illusion that Musk is a tiny person, a child. Musk famously tweeted: "I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man." And I've been thinking the love is a boy's love for the father he never had. Musk real father was — as Musk tells it — "a terrible human being" who has done "almost every evil thing you could possibly think of." The giant hat is a bid to be seen as a boy, to be loved by a father.

"Their suggestion was slovenly. Also slipshod, slapdash, shoddy, and schlocky — and those are just the ‘s’s."

Said Stuart Silverstein, speaking of esses, who has proved that Dorothy Parker wrote some things published in Life Magazine in the 1920s and who doesn't want to simply stick this material at the end of the third edition of her book "Not Much Fun," as the publisher, Scribner, requested.

Quoted in a London Times piece that highlights its opinion that the stuff is bad: "What would you do for money? Dorothy Parker wrote bad poetry/Verses anonymously published in Life magazine in 1928 have been identified as the work of the American poet."

The four poems are all about a daring girl who goes for a ride in some fellow’s car and all are titled Maybe She Didn’t Have On Her Walking-Shoes. The last of them, and perhaps the best, is a limerick about a “young lady named Maude/Who drove out with a man in a Faude” and has the payoff line: “And everyone murmured ‘My Gaude!’”

How is that bad in some way that other Dorothy Parker things would not have to also be called bad?