At the Saturday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

***

That photo is from yesterday. Today's sunrise was rained out. We had such an intense sunrise yesterday, with lots of deep red and orange, and this 6:24 picture with the colors cooled off didn't fit the set. It gets a solo today.

The last remaining column factory in New York City.

A documentary about the American Wood Column Corp, which has preserved traditional wood manufacturing inside what is a beautiful building. 

"I think that these things are going to create a radical spectacle and exuberance for socialist policies that’s going to kind of light a fire for socialism around the country — unfortunately."

David Friedberg explains why Mamdani’s government grocery stores will actually succeed in the short term, and why that’s the entire point.

They don’t need them to work long-term.
They just need the spectacle in time for 2028.

“I think that these things are going to create a… pic.twitter.com/vp0U5iX4vL

— jay plemons (@jayplemons) July 31, 2026

"The camera advances toward a finely dressed couple kissing in Central Park.... The man and woman start to look nervous...."

"The video was released Thursday. Within hours, internet sleuths figured out that the two are colleagues at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a white-shoe law firm in Manhattan. The man, Nathaniel D. Cullerton, is 45 and a partner. The woman, Kelsey Borenzweig, is 29, and an associate. Cullerton is married. Everyone from the Daily Mail to Above the Law covered the scandal, and the video has since amassed more than 5 million views. 'Cheating in public, wife is a lawyer, got caught on camera? Triple homicide 😭,' read one comment, which has 224,000 likes, on TikTok under a repost of the video. 'People are way too comfortable cheating, make cheating illegal,' read another that got 43,000 likes...."

I'm reading "Welcome to Secular Sharia/Drunks, cheaters, and Karens beware: TikTok is the new home for public floggings" (The Free Press).

That article is summarized in video, here:

Jackie's head in a hatbox.

My son Chris, who's nearing the end of his project of reading biographies of all of the American Presidents, sends me very well-chosen snippets of things now and then.

He's reading "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" by Richard Reeves (commission earned), and he sends this:

"MTV created a space where we felt like we all went to the same school, and I like to call that school MTV high. We might have been different classes and been in different cliques..."

"... the hair bands, the punkers — but we all were aware of each other and have an understanding of each other. Every time see a teenager walking down the street in an MTV t-shirt, I feel so proud because I know they're picking up on the passion and the energy that got MTV off the ground."

Said Martha Quinn, commemorating the beginning of MTV, 45 years ago today.

Everyone always likes to say the first video was "Video Killed the Radio Star," but what was the next video and the next? I found out:

"This town deserves a star like [Ariana Grande]."

A new video, with lots of feminist revenge.

"Every time we find out something new about GLP-1, it's a positive.... They're now saying that it reduces the likelihood of stage one cancer going to metastatic cancer..."

"... by 50%. Every time we keep waiting for another shoe to drop, we find out, 'Oh, it's actually a good thing.' Everyone at this table is going to be on a GLP-1 within 24 months....  I think when you look at the studies around the upside versus the downside here, it's the most transformative technology in the world."

Says Scott Galloway, ticking off Bill Maher:

Bill Maher shuts down Scott Galloway on the spot after he says “everyone should be” on a GLP-1 “within 24 months.”

GALLOWAY: “Every time we find out something new about GLP-1, it's a positive. They're now saying that it reduces the likelihood of stage one cancer going to… pic.twitter.com/2KUMXrkciF

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 1, 2026

AND: Speaking of Scott Galloway...

Scott Galloway is upset about being 'doxed' after he supported Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax:

"He's taken a legitimate source of tax revenue, and he's turning it into a wanted poster."

"What is the upside here? Why is he doing this?"

Incredible. pic.twitter.com/9Yrb9lw4An

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) August 1, 2026

"I'm glad that I didn't get arrested, and I'm glad that we get to feed Annie this banana."

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I'm watching that because I was reading this NYT article, "'Errands' Should Be the Most Boring Show on the Internet/Fighting a traffic ticket. Hanging a curtain. Installing an air-conditioner. With his cult-hit online series, Noah Blau has made the mundane fascinating" (gift link).

As a student at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Blau grew engrossed in the work of cinéma vérité auteurs like Frederick Wiseman and Ross McElwee while also immersing himself in the New York canon of John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese.

“Scorsese’s ‘After Hours’ is like the ultimate errand,” he said. “That would be my dream episode — for someone to get so sidetracked on their errand that they get chased through SoHo by an angry mob, like in the film.”

That pushes all the right buttons for me. Also made me think of one of my favorite TV shows, "How to with John Wilson."

But I do have to home in on "Cops are usually kind of nice to me." How casually people enjoy their privileges. I need to check on how the heavy rains affected the people in the Corey Ruiz Autonomous Zone. 

ADDED: My son John has "17 thoughts on After Hours."

"Making daylight saving time permanent, Orthodox leaders say, would disturb their community rituals and create logistical problems..."

"... for Jews who work or attend school in the winter, when sunrise and sunset — which coincide with morning and evening prayers — would occur an hour later. For those who work secular jobs, praying nearly an hour later than usual would make it difficult to arrive at work on time, they argue."

The NYT reports, in "Why Some Orthodox Jews Oppose Permanent Daylight Saving Time" (gift link).

"Is this piece seriously arguing that we should continue to consume (another!) known carcinogen so that people can have low-paying jobs?"

Says the top-rated comment on the NYT article "What Else Do We Lose When People Give Up Booze? Yes, there are many benefits of cutting back. But bars are closing. Jobs are going away. And a way of being together can feel harder to find" (gift link).

Related news: "More Americans now use weed every day than drink or smoke cigarettes" (NY Post).

"It’s crazy to spend $100-plus on a babysitter just to go to the movies."

Said a woman, quoted nonanonymously, who brought her 7-week-old daughter to a screening of the hit movie "The Odyssey."

I'm reading "Baby’s First R-Rated Blockbuster/'The Odyssey' is selling out in all formats at all times of day. Even at morning screenings, which are packed with newborns and parents desperate to feel 'normal'" (NYT gift link).

But this isn't a woman who's oblivious to the interests of babyless moviegoers. She goes to a "baby-friendly matinee." The tickets clearly say the show is for "Adults With Infants." Fine, then. I just hope the babies have ear protection. It does say they turn the sound down "a tad." A tad's not enough.

And, of course, it doesn't matter that the movie is R-rated. The baby understands nothing of what makes it R-rated. Though it is possible that the turmoil and anxiety come across in some way we adults cannot understand.

"There was a cult of Fauci. People were getting Fauci tattoos and dancing with images of Fauci."

"He really was on the cover of every magazine, which, if you think about it, was weird! If millions of Americans suddenly made me their cult leader, and I had previously just been an unknown short man in the back of an HIV press conference, I would go insane with power too. So would you. And when you see lockdowns in the context of a power-drunk elf getting turned on by the idea of canceling Easter—he’s typing so fast he can barely keep up—you can understand better what we all lived through. For him, the pleasure was canceling things, especially things he felt gave power to the right (sports, family gatherings, religious events). We can never forget the freaks who gain power in a centrally controlled system...."

Writes Nellie Bowles in "I Am the Most Famous and Talked-About Person in the Country" (The Free Press).

So do "freaks... gain power in a centrally controlled system"? Or does the power that's there to be gained  in a centrally controlled system make freaks out of people? Bowles must mean the latter, because she'd saying she would "go insane" under the same circumstances and "So would you."

About that "dancing with images":

Flash back to the paid vaccine pushers!!! Never forget!!! pic.twitter.com/FxouJOmKNL

— Freedom Forever (@Freedom49503795) November 6, 2023

About what I boldfaced above: I'm up for taunting Fauci over the things Fauci deserves to be taunted for, but having repeated fun over his height seems... well, it seems like Obama's thing about balding:

Sunrise.

Before you say "Red sky in the morning...," let me assure you that it rained all day.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

3 very different places to live.

These 3 architectural idiosyncrasies charmed me today:

"Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the reflecting pool to vandalism."

Wrote Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney.

Quoted in "Charges Dropped in Reflecting Pool Case as Prosecutors Say Work Was ‘Botched’/A former Olympian will not face trial after federal prosecutors acknowledged that the Trump administration’s claims of vandalism were false" (NYT).

One could read that headline to mean that the work done to the pool was botched OR that the prosecutorial work was botched. But the first sentence of the article makes it clear: "Federal prosecutors on Friday acknowledged that contractors hired by the Trump administration had 'botched' the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool."