Hello. You may or may not have heard of this, but the mainstream journo world is all a-titter over a story they have almost universally decided they can’t report.
Mild but memorable embarrassment: On more than one occasion when my son was a preschooler and fell down or bumped some part of his body painfully on a piece of furniture or other obstacle, I had in my hand a bottle or can of beer which I would use as a cool compress to soothe his pain. This practice led finally to an instance when he fell down during a gathering of family and friends, bumped his head, and sprang immediately and tearfully to his feet crying, “I need a cold beer!” The decree was received with some questioning glances my way, but mostly good humor.
If voters were dumbfucks in 1968 and 2000, weren’t they bigger dumbfucks in 1972 and 2004? The Nixon campaign sabotaging the Paris peace talks in 1968 was an act of treason far worse than January 6. The bombing of Cambodia and Laos. Pentagon Papers. Trump is a piker compared to Nixon who was re-elected in a landslide. Thinking the American voter can be trusted to make the right call is naive, to put it mildly.. The problem is we no longer have the checks and balances we had 50 years ago.
Regarding bodily function euphemisms, "making a sis" was relatively common back in the day, at least in NY Jewish households, even to the extent of being immortalized in Portnoy's Complaint.
"I stand over the circle of water, my baby's weeny jutting cutely forth, while my momma sits beside the toilet on the rim of the bathtub, one hand controlling the tap of the tub (from which a trickle runs that I am supposed to imitate) and her other hand tickling the underside of my prick. I repeat: tickling my prickling! I guess she thinks that’s how to get stuff to come out of the front of that thing, and let me tell you, the lady is right. Make a nice sis, bubala, make a nice little sissy for Mommy."
As an aside, in 1960, "The Twist" by Chubby Checker rose to #1 on the charts. About two-thirds into the song, without warning, the lyric "Yeah, you should see my little sis" pops up. Upon hearing this for the first time, I figuratively spat out my coffee (I was much too young to literally spit out any coffee).
I instantly pictured Chubby Checker nakedly flaunting his microscopic penis. To this day, this is what I picture whenever I hear the song.
Heather Cox Richardson has compared the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, in that it was so unpopular and reviled by voters that it led to a historic groundswell of voter turnout and rejection of the politicians responsible.
After the Kansas-Nebraska Act infuriated voters in non-slave states, a group of self-proclaimed "Anti-Nebraska" candidates swept into office and would go on to establish the Republican Party, which would choose Abraham Lincoln as it's leader a few years later, and end slavery, and serve as the driver of progressive post-war politics -- for a while, anyway.
It's too early to close the book on the Dobbs backlash (if Heather is right, then Harris will win and the GOP will collapse), but either way, using this logic, Pierce might not make the list. Long game.
Another Bob Seger reference. After an incompetent CEO was fired by the board of a company for which I worked, there was a company-wide event about a turnaround plan entitled “Lock and Load.” One of the slide presentations was synchronized to Bob Seger’s song by that name. When they got to the line “All these users and fakers,” a picture of the former CEO with a black bar over his eyes flashed up on the screen. The audience roared in approval.
The next CEO took the company public pocketing a huge amount in the process and promptly ran the business into the ground. I had seen it coming and had resigned many months before. My resignation letter included the lyrics to “Against The Wind.”
I've played saxophone for 50+ years and I still think that learning to play piano would really help train my ear. I mean I had "piano class" for 4 semesters at the conservatory and could play enough to accompany my roommate to get a minor in piano (such as it is) and then never played again. If you've ever been to a "dueling pianos bar" those guys can play ANYTHING you request. I know there are tricks to it and that's what I'd want to learn.
In particular, read the passage below, then try to reconcile it with any Republican news release or any commentary on Fox News.
"The United States is an Enlightenment project based on the supremacy of reason; on the idea that things can be empirically tested; that there are self-evident truths; that liberty, progress and constitutional government walk arm in arm and together form the recipe for the ideal state."
Lengthy story alert. All those wistful regrets at not being able to play the piano properly, or not at all, brings to mind a long ago story of piano playing, the human mind and NYC.
I met Artur, or Anton or whatever he said his name was by chance. Eccentric? Perhaps, if you look to the outer reaches of the definition: like telling Mike Pence to throw the 2020 election was a presumptive presidential act. Compelling? Yes, though strangely, not so much the person, but who he was. He was very probably an autistic savant. And he was working his way through one of the devilishly hard pieces from Ravel's suite of devilishly hard piano pieces, "Gaspard de la nuit." He had memorized them all on one hearing, I learned. "I heard it," was his answer the time he said his name was Artur. I was at Steinway Hall on West 57th St. in Manhattan, just up from Carnegie Hall, on an assignment to write about pianos and the storied Steinways, in particular, for some anniversary or another. I happened to stop by two months later and again found him beavering away, this time through a part of the second movement of another notoriously difficult work, Prokofiev's 3rd piano concerto. He looked up, saw me, smiled and abruptly stopped. "I'm Anton he said. I'm done" He got up from the stool, smiled again and left. What was extraordinary was not only his technical prowess with the highly technical pieces, which somehow rivaled the professional artists whose recordings he memorized, but that he had internalized the emotion with which they played as well. The Steinway people had only fragmentary information about "Artur" or "Anton." For one thing, his real name apparently was Karl with a "K" he had informed them, showing them some sort of official looking card, as if that would allow him to play there. He turned up by himself once or twice a month and according to the trained eyes at Steinway, almost certainly had had higher level piano instruction at one time. Never said much, just nodded and sat down at his favorite pianos. Being New Yorkers, no one bothered to ask too many questions and besides, he beautifully demonstrated their instruments, so they let him play. But now he was "done" he had said, and he was. Neither they nor I ever saw Karl again. He disappeared into the pages of the story book that is New York, leaving me to marvel to this day about the strange, wondrous alchemy of the human mind.
About the “don’t mention the pregnancy thing” until they mention it guideline. I avoided any mention of pregnancy until my co-worker did. Then, I feigned a “Oh, you’re pregnant.”
She responded, “Yeah, I’m eight months along. Did you think I was just FAT?!?”
Approaching destitution? Naming Richard Alexander as the winner and putting at risk only the cost of mileage for driving his car to Detroit and parking seems to demonstrate that you're pretty careful with your loose change and need not worry about destitution.
Ha. Well, if this helps, I did choose the winner until 8 o'clock Tuesday morning, by which time it was clear the Sox would be doomed long before the deadline arrived. I judged this fairly. I had resigned myself to footing the bill, whatever it was. It's tax deductible after all.
I can play piano and guitar like crap. At this point I know enough about guitar that I can tell most people play it like crap. I opted for piano because that’s the one I’ve always regretted not being better at. My kid is the musical genius, not me.
I took years of piano lessons, and I was never more than ok. Sadly. I’d have given a lot to have that ability, real talent like Van Cliburn. So I had to choose guitar because that was completely beyond me. Couldn’t even begin to figure it out.
A lot of people memorize some chords and can then strum them out as they’re printed in the sheet music. At this point I think I’m rusty on the chords but could get back to that state quickly enough.
Thank you. To be honest, I just have fun throwing stuff at Pat and/or Gene and seeing what comes back. But I would certainly not have said no to a chance to observe history (of the not-a-bloodbath-revolution variety) in the making.
Gene, since you're no longer a mainstream journo, won't you tell us this big secret that the Iranians have? I'm having a difficult time speculating on what worse thing #$%mp could have done, unless it was buying a pre-teen sex slave.
I'm late this week! Busy weekend so I missed the questions, but I'm glad you asked them because the prompt dusted off a long-dormant memory. For reasons nobody, least of all the author, understood, my grandmother called a fart a "fingham." She also called them farts, but fingham was the polite out-in-public word. I was an adult before I found out this wasn't universal. Someone came back to my desk at an inopportune moment with a page proof she wanted to talk about and I turned red and said "I'm sorry about the fingham!"
Mild but memorable embarrassment: On more than one occasion when my son was a preschooler and fell down or bumped some part of his body painfully on a piece of furniture or other obstacle, I had in my hand a bottle or can of beer which I would use as a cool compress to soothe his pain. This practice led finally to an instance when he fell down during a gathering of family and friends, bumped his head, and sprang immediately and tearfully to his feet crying, “I need a cold beer!” The decree was received with some questioning glances my way, but mostly good humor.
If voters were dumbfucks in 1968 and 2000, weren’t they bigger dumbfucks in 1972 and 2004? The Nixon campaign sabotaging the Paris peace talks in 1968 was an act of treason far worse than January 6. The bombing of Cambodia and Laos. Pentagon Papers. Trump is a piker compared to Nixon who was re-elected in a landslide. Thinking the American voter can be trusted to make the right call is naive, to put it mildly.. The problem is we no longer have the checks and balances we had 50 years ago.
Regarding bodily function euphemisms, "making a sis" was relatively common back in the day, at least in NY Jewish households, even to the extent of being immortalized in Portnoy's Complaint.
"I stand over the circle of water, my baby's weeny jutting cutely forth, while my momma sits beside the toilet on the rim of the bathtub, one hand controlling the tap of the tub (from which a trickle runs that I am supposed to imitate) and her other hand tickling the underside of my prick. I repeat: tickling my prickling! I guess she thinks that’s how to get stuff to come out of the front of that thing, and let me tell you, the lady is right. Make a nice sis, bubala, make a nice little sissy for Mommy."
As an aside, in 1960, "The Twist" by Chubby Checker rose to #1 on the charts. About two-thirds into the song, without warning, the lyric "Yeah, you should see my little sis" pops up. Upon hearing this for the first time, I figuratively spat out my coffee (I was much too young to literally spit out any coffee).
I instantly pictured Chubby Checker nakedly flaunting his microscopic penis. To this day, this is what I picture whenever I hear the song.
Heather Cox Richardson has compared the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, in that it was so unpopular and reviled by voters that it led to a historic groundswell of voter turnout and rejection of the politicians responsible.
After the Kansas-Nebraska Act infuriated voters in non-slave states, a group of self-proclaimed "Anti-Nebraska" candidates swept into office and would go on to establish the Republican Party, which would choose Abraham Lincoln as it's leader a few years later, and end slavery, and serve as the driver of progressive post-war politics -- for a while, anyway.
It's too early to close the book on the Dobbs backlash (if Heather is right, then Harris will win and the GOP will collapse), but either way, using this logic, Pierce might not make the list. Long game.
Another Bob Seger reference. After an incompetent CEO was fired by the board of a company for which I worked, there was a company-wide event about a turnaround plan entitled “Lock and Load.” One of the slide presentations was synchronized to Bob Seger’s song by that name. When they got to the line “All these users and fakers,” a picture of the former CEO with a black bar over his eyes flashed up on the screen. The audience roared in approval.
The next CEO took the company public pocketing a huge amount in the process and promptly ran the business into the ground. I had seen it coming and had resigned many months before. My resignation letter included the lyrics to “Against The Wind.”
I've played saxophone for 50+ years and I still think that learning to play piano would really help train my ear. I mean I had "piano class" for 4 semesters at the conservatory and could play enough to accompany my roommate to get a minor in piano (such as it is) and then never played again. If you've ever been to a "dueling pianos bar" those guys can play ANYTHING you request. I know there are tricks to it and that's what I'd want to learn.
If you're in the mood for unintentional irony, read this article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/john-lanchester-consumer-price-index-who-is-government/?itid=hp_opinions_p001_f015
In particular, read the passage below, then try to reconcile it with any Republican news release or any commentary on Fox News.
"The United States is an Enlightenment project based on the supremacy of reason; on the idea that things can be empirically tested; that there are self-evident truths; that liberty, progress and constitutional government walk arm in arm and together form the recipe for the ideal state."
Lengthy story alert. All those wistful regrets at not being able to play the piano properly, or not at all, brings to mind a long ago story of piano playing, the human mind and NYC.
I met Artur, or Anton or whatever he said his name was by chance. Eccentric? Perhaps, if you look to the outer reaches of the definition: like telling Mike Pence to throw the 2020 election was a presumptive presidential act. Compelling? Yes, though strangely, not so much the person, but who he was. He was very probably an autistic savant. And he was working his way through one of the devilishly hard pieces from Ravel's suite of devilishly hard piano pieces, "Gaspard de la nuit." He had memorized them all on one hearing, I learned. "I heard it," was his answer the time he said his name was Artur. I was at Steinway Hall on West 57th St. in Manhattan, just up from Carnegie Hall, on an assignment to write about pianos and the storied Steinways, in particular, for some anniversary or another. I happened to stop by two months later and again found him beavering away, this time through a part of the second movement of another notoriously difficult work, Prokofiev's 3rd piano concerto. He looked up, saw me, smiled and abruptly stopped. "I'm Anton he said. I'm done" He got up from the stool, smiled again and left. What was extraordinary was not only his technical prowess with the highly technical pieces, which somehow rivaled the professional artists whose recordings he memorized, but that he had internalized the emotion with which they played as well. The Steinway people had only fragmentary information about "Artur" or "Anton." For one thing, his real name apparently was Karl with a "K" he had informed them, showing them some sort of official looking card, as if that would allow him to play there. He turned up by himself once or twice a month and according to the trained eyes at Steinway, almost certainly had had higher level piano instruction at one time. Never said much, just nodded and sat down at his favorite pianos. Being New Yorkers, no one bothered to ask too many questions and besides, he beautifully demonstrated their instruments, so they let him play. But now he was "done" he had said, and he was. Neither they nor I ever saw Karl again. He disappeared into the pages of the story book that is New York, leaving me to marvel to this day about the strange, wondrous alchemy of the human mind.
About the “don’t mention the pregnancy thing” until they mention it guideline. I avoided any mention of pregnancy until my co-worker did. Then, I feigned a “Oh, you’re pregnant.”
She responded, “Yeah, I’m eight months along. Did you think I was just FAT?!?”
Haha did we work together? I was the lady in that conversation once! I assumed we both knew it was hilarious but maybe not
Approaching destitution? Naming Richard Alexander as the winner and putting at risk only the cost of mileage for driving his car to Detroit and parking seems to demonstrate that you're pretty careful with your loose change and need not worry about destitution.
Ha. Well, if this helps, I did choose the winner until 8 o'clock Tuesday morning, by which time it was clear the Sox would be doomed long before the deadline arrived. I judged this fairly. I had resigned myself to footing the bill, whatever it was. It's tax deductible after all.
I was a bit skeptical of how someone near to Detroit beat my “clever” entries about Casey Stengel and Shoeless Joe. 😂
I too referenced an old white Sox hero…” Hey Sox, remember Early Wynn? Screw him, we want a Late Loss.”
If the title had been “Beautiful Loser” I would have said it’s a reference to a Bob Seger song.
I had to look up the obscure reference to the 1966 Leonard Cohen work.
I meant it for Seger. Had no idea about Leonard.
Actually, Rachel says I should have responded: "That was such an obscure reference, even I didn't get it."
I can play piano and guitar like crap. At this point I know enough about guitar that I can tell most people play it like crap. I opted for piano because that’s the one I’ve always regretted not being better at. My kid is the musical genius, not me.
I took years of piano lessons, and I was never more than ok. Sadly. I’d have given a lot to have that ability, real talent like Van Cliburn. So I had to choose guitar because that was completely beyond me. Couldn’t even begin to figure it out.
A lot of people memorize some chords and can then strum them out as they’re printed in the sheet music. At this point I think I’m rusty on the chords but could get back to that state quickly enough.
Should Richard Alexander for any reason be unable to fulfill his duty, I stand by ready and prepared.
I will keep that in mind.
FWIW -- in other words, nothing -- I think that yours was the best entry.
Thank you. To be honest, I just have fun throwing stuff at Pat and/or Gene and seeing what comes back. But I would certainly not have said no to a chance to observe history (of the not-a-bloodbath-revolution variety) in the making.
Gene, since you're no longer a mainstream journo, won't you tell us this big secret that the Iranians have? I'm having a difficult time speculating on what worse thing #$%mp could have done, unless it was buying a pre-teen sex slave.
I'm late this week! Busy weekend so I missed the questions, but I'm glad you asked them because the prompt dusted off a long-dormant memory. For reasons nobody, least of all the author, understood, my grandmother called a fart a "fingham." She also called them farts, but fingham was the polite out-in-public word. I was an adult before I found out this wasn't universal. Someone came back to my desk at an inopportune moment with a page proof she wanted to talk about and I turned red and said "I'm sorry about the fingham!"
Wan't a choice, but I would pick a harp over anything else.