"What are some famous quotes by writers/artists/musicians about critics?"

That's I question I had, a couple hours ago, as I was gathering my thoughts in preparation, I thought, for blogging this article by the New Yorker's movie critic, Richard Brody, "In Defense of the Traditional Review/Far from being a journalistic relic, as suggested by recent developments at the New York Times, arts criticism is inherently progressive, keeping art honest and pointing toward its future."

I got a bunch of great quotes out of Grok with my question, including the one that deserves to stand in for them all: "Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read" (Frank Zappa).

Then there was this, from Pablo Picasso: "The critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." And that got me tumbling down a side path with an issue I'd encountered yesterday, the idea that there are individuals who identify as eunuchs and the notion that castration is, for them, medically necessary. I was told: "The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (Version 8) includes a chapter on 'eunuch' as a gender identity, suggesting that castration may be considered 'medically necessary gender-affirming care' for some who identify as eunuchs and experience distress from their genitals."

I introduced the question: "It occurs to me that a person might argue that they identify as dead and therefore entitled to physician-assisted suicide — that killing is a medically required treatment." That led to a long discussion that kept me far away from the topic of the usefulness of critics — they're "inherently progressive"! — and I'm not going to go into the details. I'm just going to list a few phrases that came up in the Grok discussion that's displaced blogging for me this morning:

"Conditions like Cotard’s syndrome, where individuals genuinely believe they are dead or non-existent, are rare and classified as a psychiatric delusion, treated through therapy or medication, not affirmation," "So you're saying that if only doctors had been killing people who 'identify as dead' for a longer period of time and managed to fight off those who think it's wrong, it would be analogous to transgender surgeries," "You’re correct that genital transgender surgeries, like vaginoplasty or phalloplasty, are... irreversible in any meaningful sense," "'Sexual sensation is possible due to preserved nerves' — I note that you didn't say orgasm," "Your point about muscles is spot-on: the lack of vaginal musculature in a neovagina means it cannot replicate the contractile component of a natal female orgasm," "Is there any commentary, comedy, or fictional writing utilizing my idea of 'identifying as dead'?," "Seems like something that someone in 'Chicago' would say (like 'He ran into my knife... 50 times')," "Somewhere, some writer(s) must have already written the line: 'Go ahead. Try to kill me. You can't. I'm already dead.'"

That went on and on, with the discussion of many movies, and it wasn't the only A.I. conversations that kept me away from the blog this morning. There was also, among many others, "Summarize this article... and explain why Brody thinks arts criticism is 'progressive.'" Which led to: "What is 'progressive' supposed to mean? It strikes me as utter bullshit." And: "Weave into this discussion what Tom Wolfe wrote in 'The Painted Word.'" And: "Isn't there some related idea — or conspiracy theory — that the CIA created the art market for Abstract Expressionism?"

All of that was more interesting to me than what I would have produced reading Brody's article and blogging it in my usual way. And my "usual way" is to follow whatever interests me, not to feel obligated, but to do what is intrinsically rewarding for me. You see the problem!

Elon Musk passes along this satire featuring the phrase "Grow a Pair."

pic.twitter.com/UttRIsbq7S

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 13, 2025

The balls-focused discourse is undignified... quite intentionally.

In the workplace, I think this would be considered evidence of sexual harassment. 

I want a song parody that uses the phrases "Big Balls" and "plastic straws" — maybe to the tune of "Popsicles and Icicles."

Try to include a lot of the Trump-related items that are bouncing around the internet today. I can't blog all these things. There are too many. And it's too absurd. I've already asked A.I., but it just doesn't know how to make it interesting and funny. 

Here's the inspiration (and note the straws!):

"He writes graphically of his own deflowering; how he passes on the favor to his friend Carrie Fisher; of the almost-hand job he gets..."

"... in the back seat from someone’s wife when hitchhiking, as everyone used to do before the Manson murders; how Tennessee Williams grabs his testicles when he’s waiting tables at a dinner party — for better and worse, people always seem to be making a run at Griffin’s crotch — and Martin Scorsese’s wrath when he violates an order of celibacy during the filming of 'After Hours' (1985).... Much of [this memoir] is a privileged young man’s search for a place in the showbiz court to which he was born.... dropping Timothy Leary’s finest acid. Sean Connery, then playing James Bond, saved him from drowning! Bob Denver from 'Gilligan’s Island' had a temper!"

Writes Alexandra Jacobs, in "Growing Up With Joan Didion and Dominick Dunne, in the Land of Make-Believe/In his memoir 'The Friday Afternoon Club,' the Hollywood hyphenate Griffin Dunne, best known for his role in Martin Scorsese’s 'After Hours,' recounts his privileged upbringing" (NYT).

Here's the book, "The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir" (commission earned).

"Men and other mammals live longer if they are castrated... Cat Bohannon [says]... it is not known why men go through life 'smuggling two little death nuggets.'"

An article at The Guardian. Excerpt:

A 2012 study published in Current Biology found that the average lifespan of 81 eunuchs born between 1556 and 1861 was 70 years, which was 14.4–19.1 years longer than the lifespan of non-castrated men of similar socioeconomic status. Researchers concluded that the study “supports the idea that male sex hormones decrease the lifespan of men.”

"To witness the show itself.... is to sit directly before a fire hose of frank postulation about sex..."

"... that’s as scholarly as it is X-rated, nimbly invoking the works of the Greek mythologists, of Philip Roth, of Sharon Olds and Tony Robbins and Nietzsche. She narrates an early episode of teenage experimentation in an unfinished basement as Nabokov would. The advice commonly given to young women to “take it slow” in a dating situation where there’s hope for a real relationship? Novak condemns it with a flourish: 'No. No! The hubris astonishes. Death is coming.'"

From "Jacqueline Novak’s Netflix special is a manifesto on sex and power/Her acclaimed show, 'Get on Your Knees,' thoughtfully and hilariously interrogates gender dynamics" (WaPo). 

Key line: "Oh, and: It’s a 90-minute show about blow jobs."

And I like "a fire hose of frank postulation about sex."

I didn't think I'd find an occasion to use that so soon. I'd stumbled across it as I was writing the first post of the day — "Trump defeated Ron DeSantis. We all know that. But how gendered was it?" — and quoting DeSantis saying "If Donald Trump can summon the balls to show up to the debate, I’ll wear a boot on my head."

I said: "I like 'summon the balls.' Oh, balls!"

But I wanted to convey a comic inflection in calling out "Oh, balls!" — as if you didn't have balls but needed to summon them into your presence. All I could think of was Olive Oyl summoning Popeye: "Oh, Popeye!" You know, how she calls out to him when he's far off. I never found that GIF, but I made a mental note of Popeye and the firehose. 

Trump defeated Ron DeSantis. We all know that. But how gendered was it?

I'm reading a NYT "Political Memo" by Michael C. Bender and Nicholas Nehamas, called "The Emasculation of Ron DeSantis by the Bully Donald Trump."

Emasculation? Really?

The former president’s brutal, yearlong campaign of humiliation.... Donald J. Trump plumbed new depths of degradation in his savage takedown... a yearlong campaign of emasculation and humiliation.... 

... Mr. Trump painted Mr. DeSantis as a submissive sniveler, insisting that he had cried and begged “on his knees”....

Somehow the women's victory emanated from the men's balls.

I'm reading the stunning first 3 paragraphs of "The Kissing Scandal After Spain’s Women’s World Cup Win/The support for a player who endured an unwanted kiss during the trophy presentation shows how attitudes toward women’s soccer are changing, but not fast enough" (The New Yorker).

Great writing from Louisa Thomas:

"Why Zelenskyy made a Jewish joke in his Netflix interview with David Letterman."

The Jewish newspaper Forward explains.

We watched the Netflix show last night, and I didn't really see the point of making it a Jewish joke (other than I know that's a format for jokes, a format that has been out of favor in the U.S. for a long time):

“Two Jewish guys from Odesa meet up,” Zelenskyy said...  One Jew asks the other about “the situation,” and the other tells him that Russia is fighting NATO. Things are going badly for Russia. 70,000 dead Russian soldiers, depleted missile supplies, damaged equipment.

“What about NATO?” the Jew seeking news asks.

“‘What about NATO? NATO hasn’t even arrived yet!’”

A funny attack on the Russians, but why were the 2 Ukrainian men Jewish? 

"They’re surprisingly flexible animals, and they twist and turn and their flukes get entangled. The lobster lines can then tighten..."

"... around their caudal peduncle – the tail stock – causing it to necrotise... a horrible slow death...."

Says Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan," quoted in "Save whales or eat lobster? The battle reaches the White House/Fishing gear used by Maine lobstermen is killing right whales. Will boosting a $1bn industry trump protecting an endangered species?" (The Guardian)(The White House served lobster at a recent state dinner).

In his effort to stir up an appreciation for whales that outstrips our taste for lobster, Hoare stresses their "very long sessions of foreplay of three or four hours." 

Males possess the biggest testes of any animal on the planet, and the mating often involves several males and a single female – a “socially active group” in scientific terms. “You see them rolling around in shallow water in a very sensual way, stroking each other with their flippers. There are a lot of animals involved, and it’s clearly erotic. They seem so caught up in the moment.”

When you think about how far you would go sacrificing your own interests for the sake of saving an animal from suffering and needless death, how much are you counting their sexual performance? What counts more — the size of their testicles, the amount of time devoted to insuring that the female has an orgasm, or the extent to which they seem to be having what the humans call "fun"?

"In a 2009 interview with Maui Times, Fleetwood, now 75, said the original pair [of wooden balls] were 'lavatory chains' he stole from a toilet while drunk."

"'I came out — and I must admit I had a couple of glasses of English ale — and came out of the toilet with these, I ripped them off the — you know, I was very destructive — I ripped them off the toilet and had them hanging down between my legs'.... Although he would later lose that pair at a gig, he had a replacement pair made by a carpenter for the cover of Rumours. 'The original, original ones I do not have — but the ones that I have are very, very old. I won’t say they’re as old as me. But, it starts getting into X-rated commentary here, my balls are quite old,' said Fleetwood. "

From "Mick Fleetwood’s wooden balls from Rumours cover auctioned for $128,000" (London Times).

"During the trial, prosecutors revealed to the jury that Weinstein underwent surgery in 1999 for Fournier’s Gangrene, which required doctors..."

"... to remove some of his scrotum. '... Because of an infection, his testicles were actually taken from his scrotum and put into his inner thighs,' the lead prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson, told the jury at the beginning of the trial.... In October, the jury was shown photos.... Now, as deliberations have begun, the verdict on three charges, all pertaining to Jane Doe #1, will largely rely on Weinstein’s genitalia.... During her testimony, Jane Doe #1... tearfully told the jury that Weinstein demanded she 'suck his balls'.... Rehashing the graphic details, she said, 'He forced me to do what he asked… I was crying, choking.' But during cross-examination, one of Weinstein’s attorneys, Alan Jackson, asked Jane Doe #1 how Weinstein’s 'balls were in your mouth,' if he does not have testicles. 'The reason that you changed your story is because you realized at some point that Mr. Weinstein does not have testicles in his scrotum'.... She... said she never changed her story...."

From "Harvey Weinstein’s Abnormal Testicles Are Key Focus of Final Arguments in Trial/Numerous women accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault have testified about his medical condition" (Variety).

Sorry for the ugliness. It's an interesting evidence issue, and we've been following the dreadful story of Harvey Weinstein. His lawyers say the incident never happened, and the jury may find reasonable doubt. 

"I was so angry and just irritated at seeing man after man — you know, typically, male politicians — grandstanding about abortion."

Said Gabrielle Blair, quoted in "Gabrielle Blair Would Like a Word With Men/After 16 years of making a name for herself as a blogger and home decor expert, Design Mom has written her manifesto — about reproductive health" by Kase Wickman (NYT).

The NYT article seems to be a reaction to the fact that a book Blair created out of a 64-post-long Twitter thread has debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times’s paperback nonfiction best-seller list.

Here's the Twitter thread, and here's the book: “Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion.” 

Now, my readers may be saying tough luck for Althouse. She could have written a book called "Don't Be a Splooge Stooge," but Blair got to the best-seller list first. Of all my unwritten books, that's the one I'm least sad about not devoting a year of my life to.

"There is a tradition in far-right propagandist literature... of a white male hero who rises up against a liberal, racially mixed, feminist, and/or otherwise degenerate society..."

"Jean Raspail’s 1978 dystopic anti-immigrant fantasy The Camp of the Saints is the story of the last surviving white man on Earth; it was a professed favorite of Trump’s immigration advisors. Today, this tradition is alive and well, living on Telegram, Discord, Reddit, Gab, and other online platforms. It’s a turbulent terrain of white male resentment, which found its footing in the 4chan and 8chan ethos of 'There are no girls on the internet' and 'Tits or GTFO' and the ensuing 2014 hate-fueled doxing of and attacks on female journalists known as Gamergate. Today, its center is held by a cluster of stars, whose celebrity has become increasingly mainstream.... [W]e find chauvinists like Mike Cernovich, whose testosterone-fueled Persicope rants garner millions of views, or Tim 'Baked Alaska' Gionet, who faces charges relating to his involvement in the January 6th Capitol Hill riot and previously livestreamed his trolling of 'fat' female pro-immigration activists with openly racist and smooth-chested attention whore Catboy Kami, whose real name is not quite pinned down, but who livestreams himself in anime costumes or blackface and says seriously effed up things to teenagers on Omegle and once went on a 'hilarious' hot date with podcaster Nick Fuentes, the bigot-king of the Groypers, who targets rightwing pundits and … okay, I’ll stop there.... It can all just seem like a big, stupid joke until, suddenly, it’s not."

 Writes Ian Allen, "a playwright and journalist," in The New Republic, in " We Are Sorry to Say That You Should Take Tucker Carlson’s Testicle-Tanning Stuff Seriously/The internet had a wild time mocking his recent segment on masculinity, but the Fox News host's obsessions come straight from the literary canon of the crypto-fascist right."

I wasn't familiar with the name Ian Allen. Is this a playwright I should know? Curious, I found "Toning down the sex and violence" (WaPo, October 20, 2015). Allen was the artistic director of Cherry Red Productions, known for its "raunchy" productions, which was reopening under the name the Klunch.

"Maybe we shouldn't give charismatic people recommending various forms of genocide or apocalypse or self-negation or whatever — maybe you shouldn't give them a bullhorn that can reach the entire planet in a second."

"You should be at least allowed to have that thought — right? — like: shit, I don't know if that's the right thing to do. You know what I mean? If you saw a very charismatic dude in a park making a very convincing argument for why everyone on the planet should kill themselves, you wouldn't be like: hey, man, do you mind if I project you into the homes of everyone on the planet, so they hear your message?"

"So, if you have no censorship, that is what's possible."

"So, from compassion — from wanting our kids to be safe and us to be safe — there's this this thing that sounds like censorship — which it is — but the problem is just what you're saying, which is: Okay, let's do it. You're right! I don't want that weirdo, who's so charismatic, that if I listen to him just for a few minutes, I'll be like: You know what, maybe I should cut my dick off. Whatever the fuck. I don't want that guy talking to everybody."

"That was the Heaven's Gate guy that castrated those dudes."

"They sure did. They did. That was part of the thing. You gotta cut your dick off to get on the spaceship."

"Just your balls. I think you've just got to cut off your balls."

"Oh, just your balls. Whew. I misheard him. That's good news."

***

That's from the Joe Rogan podcast, Episode #1806 — with Duncan Trussell. I did the transcription of the discussion that begins at 1:26:56. As you can infer, they've been talking about the problem of censorship on Twitter. The one doing most of the talking is Trussell. I've put Joe's contributions in italics.

Here's a video to sharpen your memory of Heaven's Gate: 

 

"So take a closer look... Do you notice anything about them? Their haircuts, exactly alike. Baggy clothes. No gender. And with every move, they fix their adoring gaze on one man in the room. They call him Do...."

To what extent do we want free speech when the speech shoots instantly everywhere? Joe and Duncan don't mention this, but Elon Musk is a charismatic guy. With a spaceship.

"For the past few days, much of the internet has been chuckling over clips from the second season of Tucker Carlson Originals... First, people went wild for a montage from the trailer for the episode 'The End of Men'..."

"... which is so extremely misogynistic and homophobic that it swings around into being unbelievably gay. Then, in an hour-long special previewing the new season, Carlson chatted 'fitness professional' Andrew McGovern, who shed some light on why the trailer shows a naked dude presenting his junk to what looks like a giant, glowing, home COVID test. He suggested that if men want to 'optimize' and take their testosterone 'to another level,' they should try red-light therapy. 'Which is testicle tanning?' Carlson asked." 

From "In Defense of Tucker Carlson Touting ‘Testicle Tanning’" (NY Magazine). 

One way to go viral is to give your haters what makes it very easy for them to laugh at you. What good, by comparison, is dignity... and science? Why would you heat your testicles? Aren't they there to be less warm than the rest of your body? I'm ready to believe America needs better optimized masculinity, but this seems more like Goop for men... Moop.

Here's that trailer:

I promise you are not prepared for Tucker's latest montage pic.twitter.com/8tdvYTW2cn

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 16, 2022

"The White House has invited me & I think it’s a step in the right direction. Yes, I’m going. I’ll be dressed in all pink like Legally Blonde so they know I mean business. I’ll ask questions on behalf of the ppl who have been made fun of for simply being human."

Tweeted Nicki Minaj, quoted in "Nicki Minaj hits back at Biden White House after it claims vaccine-related phone call, not visit, was offered/Earlier this week, Minaj faced backlash after she wrote a tweet asserting that a friend of her cousin's became impotent from the vaccine" (Fox News). 

Also quoted: Terrence Deyalsingh, Trinidad's health minister, saying he'd government had "wasted so much time" over Minaj's tweet about someone in Trinidad experiencing swollen testicles: "There is absolutely no reported such side effect or adverse event of testicular swelling in Trinidad."

ADDED: Fox is really on this story. Here's another article: "Nicki Minaj compares cancel culture in US to China after vaccine blowback: 'Don't ya'll see'/Minaj is waiting to get the vaccine until after she's done more research."

"I remember going to China and they were telling us you know, you cannot speak out against, you know, the people in power, there, etc," Minaj said in an Instagram Live video on Wednesday night. "Don't y'all see that we are living now in that time where people will turn their back on you … but people will isolate you if you simply speak and ask a question."

AND: It will be interesting to see who, ultimately, wins Minaj. 

"[T]he study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease."

"This increase was even bigger for vaccinated hospital patients, of whom 57 percent had mild or asymptomatic disease. But unvaccinated patients have also been showing up with less severe symptoms, on average, than earlier in the pandemic: The study found that 45 percent of their cases were mild or asymptomatic since January 21.... [T]he latter finding may be explained by the fact that unvaccinated patients in the vaccine era tend to be a younger cohort who are less vulnerable to COVID and may be more likely to have been infected in the past.... [S]ome COVID patients are in for 'soft' hospitalizations, where they need only minimal treatment and leave relatively quickly; others may be on the antiviral drug remdesivir for five days, or with a tube down their throat.... [T]his study suggests that COVID hospitalization tallies can’t be taken as a simple measure of the prevalence of severe or even moderate disease, because they might inflate the true numbers by a factor of two."

From "Our Most Reliable Pandemic Number Is Losing Meaning" (The Atlantic).

And as long as I'm here, blogging about coronavirus: "Nicki Minaj tweets coronavirus vaccine conspiracy, spotlighting struggle against misinformation."

In case you haven't seen her tweet — which would be funny if it weren't so consequential — here it is:

My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied

— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) September 13, 2021

Don't laugh that off. She has over 22 million followers on Twitter, and the fear that she's stimulating is very likely to determine decisions about whether to get the vaccine. How do you feel "comfortable with ur decision" if there's a possibility of impotence (which also reminds you that you've also heard that infertility could be a side effect)? She wants you to "pray" — which is a different method than science — and resist bullying.

 And Minaj is out there defending herself. Here she is pushing back Joy Reid:

The two white men sittin there nodding their heads cuz this uncle tomiana doing the work chile. How sad. https://t.co/4UviONyTHy

— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) September 14, 2021

Teens are mocking Lin-Manuel Miranda on TikTok.

Yeah, I know, Trump is making noise about ending TikTok, so maybe the Trump hating Broadway rapper will be saved by a man he loathes, but it's interesting that the new generation — Generation Z — has a new point of view, and, for them Lin-Manuel Miranda is not a brilliant and completely hip visionary. He's a figure of fun.

New York Magazine explains:

And it’s not just one meme but a variety of them: The most prevalent is the lip-biting meme, which involves mocking the endless stream of selfies Miranda has taken wherein he gazes foppishly at the camera while chewing his lip. There’s also a bit of audio floating around of Miranda reading an erotic excerpt from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao which has become fodder for endless derision — one teen superimposed themself cringing over a series of lip-biting selfies, nearly vomiting when Miranda accentuates the word “clit.” Another popular video is just a clip of Miranda, tousle-haired and lying in bed, telling the viewer “I’m clutching my balls because they’re warm” — no commentary needed. And, of course, there are the endless parodies of him rapping.

The last 3 links in that paragraph all go to TikTok — so click them while they still work. They're all very funny.

The New York Magazine article relies heavily on this Rolling Stone article, "Why Gen Z Turned on Lin-Manuel Miranda/Teens on TikTok have begun mercilessly mocking the Pulitzer Prize-winning Hamilton playwright."

Both articles try to figure out if the Gen Z kids are targeting Miranda because "Hamilton" is insufficiently woke, in that it doesn't deal with slavery and Native Americans and the female characters are all about wanting to have sex with the character Miranda played on stage, Alexander Hamilton. The TikTok stuff is silly, though. Laughing at “I’m clutching my balls because they’re warm” has nothing to do with a desire for more wokeness. That video is, fittingly, about going to sleep and, perhaps, a man's vanity in thinking people want to watch him get into his sleeping position.

"[P]erhaps the funniest aspect of 'Make Russia Great Again' is how calmly Herb conveys the craziness of the Trump administration."

"With the unruffled decorum of a five-star resort manager, he describes all the complicated maneuvers needed to entertain a president who does not read, who cannot concentrate for more than a few minutes and who will not listen to anything but soliloquies comparing him to 'Napoleon, or God.' The big rally that Trump wants in Testicle, Ohio, may strain the staff’s organizational expertise, but [White House chief of staff Herb Nutterman] is never anything less than brightly complimentary as he watches his boss strong-arm Sen. Biskitt into attending. 'I marveled at the president’s powers of persuasion,' he says. “Come with me to Testicle, Squiggly, is up there with "I have seen the promised land." I got goose bumps.'... There’s a Twain-like quality to this loyal naif who skewers without intending to. While 'Make Russia Great Again' rushes along from one folly to the next, Herb’s increasingly pained efforts to see only the bright side of Trump’s reign is the joke that keeps on winning."

From a review in The Washington Post of Christopher Buckley's new novel, "Make Russia Great Again." Buckley is the son of William F. Buckley Jr., and he was the chief speechwriter for Vice President George H. W. Bush.