Keith and George thought Bob had a great idea.

Paul and Mick said no.

Ringo, Charlie and Bill were amicable to the idea as long as everyone else was interested. John didn't say a flat no, but he wasn't that interested.

What Glenn Beck might do with a butter knife.

I had to look up Nicholas Sparks. Which movies are Nicholas Sparks movies? Looking at that list of movies — none of which I've seen — I'm reminded of the horribleness of movies. I guess I have some empathy — me, being a woman — for males who endure this kind of stuff, presumably to please their woman, as Glenn Beck has 2 or 3 times. And maybe his wife finds this kind of after-the-show riffing hilarious or is at least comfortable...



... or not. Who am I to say?

Elsewhere on the web, winkies are calling this "transphobic."

This was going to be a comment on that post — one step down — about "Valerie," but it took on a life of its own.

Don't forget the old Monkees song, spelled a little differently: "Valleri."

According to Wikipedia, it was written because Don Kirshner thought the Monkees needed a "girl's name" song: "[Tommy] Boyce and [Bobby]Hart improvised 'Valleri' on their way to Kirshner's office, after pretending over the telephone that the song was already finished."

Lyrics here: "Valleri, I love my Valleri/There's a girl I know who makes me feel so good/And I wouldn't live without her, even if I could/They call her 'Valleri', I love my Valleri/Oh yeah, come on..."

Oh, yeah, come on, we're almost at Kirshner's! We need one more verse!

"She's the same little girl who used to hang around my door/But she sure looks different than the way she looked before...."

Oh, no! They went with the old too-young-girl-might-finally-be-old-enough theme. What do you expect two 29-year-old men under time pressure to write a girl's name song for a group of pseudo-teenage boys to sing about a teenage girl?

MEADE: "I just watched a movie called 'Valerie.' Starring Anita Ekberg. What rock star was she married to?"

ME: No. No. No. You're thinking of Britt Ekland.

MEADE: It had everything: betrayal, justice, frontier justice...

ME: The telephone rang, it would not stop, it was President Kennedy calling me up. He said, "My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?" I said, "My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren."

(I was quoting Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Free," and Meade knew it.)

ME: Britt Ekland was married to Rod Stewart.

MEADE: Yeah, so the movie is called "Valerie."

ME: Did you watch the whole thing? You never watch movies.

MEADE: It's only an hour long. The theme is: War on Women.

ME: Why did you start watching that?

MEADE: Because Valerie Jarrett.

(We'd both seen the Politico article "Fire Valerie Jarrett" and had talked about it, so I didn't need more info about how the search got started.)

MEADE: And on YouTube, I saw this movie "Valerie," and I just got drawn in. It's very cheesy, but it's also very good for its time. And then the other thing that got me is: It has Italian subtitles, and some of the Italian words were great. Like a guy says "yeah," and it's "sim," not "si." It also had a theme of xenophobia. It's a Hollywood movie made after World War II and a lot of people were still dealing with their fear of foreigners.

ME: Yeah, but what was War on Women about it?

MEADE: The husband was an evil man. He hits her, he tries to drug her, he rapes her on the wedding night, and when he finds out she's pregnant, he basically tries to cause an abortion by whipping the horses, and that doesn't work. He's a hard drinker. And he tortures her. He has this whole evil plan.... And there's a scene where he literally gives her the back of his hand. Remember when Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz said that about... who did she say that about?

ME: Scott Walker!

MEADE: So, anyway, there's a trial, and you get 3 testimonies.

ME: Like "Rashomon"!

MEADE: And the final testimony is Valerie's, so that's the true testimony. The truth is revealed. It ends very abruptly. 

"But 999 proteins were significantly more active in testicular tissue than anywhere else in the body."

"The cerebral cortex of the brain had 318, the liver 172 and smooth muscle zero."

IN THE COMMENTS:  Surfed reminds us of the old notion that men have 2 brains, and I said: "We always assume that the genital 'brain' is the lesser brain, but what if it's a genius compared to the brain brain?"

EDH said: "Vindication for those who thought Herman Cain's tax plan was 'the balls.' 999."

The ancient mating habits of whatever.

"Of course I want research, but I want to have research done in a way that focuses on growing our economy, not on ancient mating habits of whatever."

I want to do research into the psychology of Democrats slavering for a tidbit of Republican Saying Something Stupid.

"On a very drawn-out scale, I think I’m on the spectrum" — the autism spectrum — said Jerry Seinfeld.

"You know, never paying attention to the right things... Basic social engagement is really a struggle.... I’m very literal.... When people talk to me and they use expressions, sometimes I don’t know what they’re saying.... I don’t see it as dysfunctional.... I just think of it as an alternate mind-set."

Differently abled, but not so differently that he's out of the zone where you can take what's different about you and leap ahead of other people.

The president of the National Autism Association worries that statements like Seinfeld's might cause people to lose track of the seriousness of the disability at the "lower-functioning end of the spectrum." "Autism is not a designer diagnosis."

A commenter at the link says: "Jerry, I have a daughter with full-blown, low-functioning autism. It bugs me so much to see every socially awkward person and their brother diagnose themselves with autism or pressure their doctors to diagnose them with autism. You have no clue, Jerry. You have no clue."

What do you think of this tendency to identify with the autistic? The experts define autism as a spectrum, which seems to invite all of us to think about the extent to which we share characteristics with those who are elsewhere on the spectrum. Isn't it helpful for some successful people like Seinfeld to encourage people further along the spectrum to see their characteristics in a positive light?

But there are issues of channeling contributions to charities and funding government services, and these are matters that must rivet the attention of the president of the National Autism Association and the father of daughter with full-blown, low-functioning autism.

ADDED: If it's a spectrum, what's at the opposite extreme? Some people say it's Williams Syndrome.

"Fox News has cut ties with contributor Dr. Ben Carson..."

"... after learning that the neurosurgeon-turned-conservative commentator plans to air a 40-minute ad promoting his bid for the Republican presidential nomination."

I look forward to hearing the calm, sane voice of Dr. Carson, easing us into the new election cycle. 

"This is animal abuse to the highest degree and absolutely disgusting, and could kill the snake..."

"... an adult green anaconda cannot fit the width of an adult man's shoulders into its body."

"Regurgitating a meal is stressful to a snake’s internal system... Not only is the snake not receiving the nutrients from his food, but the regurgitation process also robs the snake of essential digestive acids from his stomach."

ADDED: I wonder if that anaconda considers itself "in the entertainment business"?

"I think people were scared of him. The one thing people did was move away from him like he was dangerous."

"There were a lot of blasé New Yorkers that looked — and then looked back at their iPhone as if he wasn’t even there."

Tinder "is a much better app when you don’t message anyone... because then it becomes a self-esteem boost."

"Anytime you open it, there’s a list of people who said they would have sex with you. It’s a little validating."

Since a lot of her matches don’t end up messaging her after an initial expression of mutual interest (swiping right on each other’s picture), it “makes me think others are using it the same way,” she said. “It’s fun to swipe people left or right and be in a powerful position without having to go on an actual date with them and get to know that they’re a disappointing person.”

Safe sex.  Really safe sex. You can't be too safe. Or maybe you can.

At Skippy's Café...

... there's place for you.

(A photograph of a photograph in the Stoughton Opera House. This is like "The Shining." But in Stoughton... where I get the feeling all the dogs were named Skippy... and everyone had Olson somewhere in their name... except Lilly... who had a panda... named Skippy.)

"A Malaysian appeals court on Friday struck down an Islamic law that banned men from dressing as women..."

"... in what lawyers described as a landmark case in the country’s stormy battle between secular and religious authorities."

“The words ‘human dignity’ were repeated many times in the judgment,” [said Ambiga Sreenevasan, a lawyer and the former head of the Malaysian Bar Council]. “It brings us back to fundamental liberties.”...

The lead judge, Mohamed Hishamudin Mohamed Yunus, made it clear that the court was not ruling on homosexuality, which is illegal in Malaysia, and that transgender people had a disorder....

Transgender people were traditionally accepted in the culture of Malaysia’s dominant Malay ethnic group and served in a variety of roles, including performers and advisers to the country’s sultans. But the influence of conservative Islamic politics over the past three decades has often left transgender people ostracized.

"I admire that you have a blog solely dedicated to Hillary Clinton — our next US President, and I'd like to follow your footsteps..."

Ridiculous email of the day.

"In a SEAL version of Rashomon, the ostensibly silent warriors of the special operations community..."

"... have been going after one another over what really happened that night in Abbottabad."

Friday evening surrealistic contagiousness.

All I can say is: Watch the whole thing.



Via Throwing Things.

IN THE COMMENTS: There have been some great comments on the blog today, like this one from Paul Zrimsek:

And the sour-faced machete guy (Josh Lowder) just glared at everyone a moment, then threw his things (Ken DeLozier's head, Ben Peck's right foot, Katie Adkins' left breast) down on the ground and left. And while everyone was just blinking, the little girl (Morgan Burch) primly picked up the robot toy (Smarf) she'd selected and walked up to the register and asked, "Can I get this, please?"