djt’s Second Term: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and his Schedule F plan, explained
The Limits of Originalism (SCOTUS)
Deep-Sea Mining and UK Elections: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Europe is Healthier than the US: But it’s not about the physical (although it makes the stage more dramatic), it’s about the work/life balance. About third spaces that encourage being around people, in a way that’s deeper than a brutal transactionalism.
The US is about the individual, to a hyper degree. Everyone is so focused on being emancipated from everything, freed from any “outdated” obligations, that they end up in an empty loneliness.
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Why Physical Media is Having a Comeback
Bill Cobbs, Actor in ‘Night at the Museum’ and many others Dies at 90. He was one of those character actors I learned to recognize in film and episodic television.
Martin Mull, Funnyman and ‘Fernwood 2 Night’ Star, Dies at 80
The Real (Weird) Way We See Numbers
Now I Know: How Bad Film Captured an Explosion and The Nobel Prize Winner Who Bet Against Himself and The Dead Parrot Society and The Case of the Mousey Soup
Kelly’s Sunday Stealing. He is the greatest cheerleader for Pie I’ve ever known.
Alex Trebek Forever stamps
Donald Sutherland 1935 – 2024
The obituary and Hollywood tributes
I saw him in LOTS of movies: The Dirty Dozen (1967) – as a “crazed/dazed Pvt.” at the drive-in with my parents and sisters.
MAS*H (1970) – the original anti-establishment Army medic Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce; I saw it again on TV when WXXA, Channel 23, first broadcast in Albany in 1982. The station showed it on the first Sunday morning it broadcast at 8 a.m.; I thought it was a strange choice
Klute (1971) -” a private eye who falls for a prostitute (his then real-life romantic partner Jane Fonda)”
National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) – the pot-smoking professor
Ordinary People (1980) – a friend of mine describes this movie as like his growing up with a controlling mother (the Mary Tyler Moore character) and ineffectual father (Sutherland)
Backdraft (1991) – pyromaniac; JFK (1991) – conspiracy theorist
Undoubtedly many others.
What struck me in a 2017 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper was this exchange:
If there’s a slight sadness about Sutherland it may be because his childhood in Canada wasn’t easy. He survived polio as a toddler and spent all of fourth grade at home with rheumatic fever. He was an awkward kid. Tall with big ears, at school they called him Dumbo. When he was 16, he had a question for his mother.
Donald Sutherland: And I went to her and I said: “Mother, am I good looking?” And my mother looked at me and went. “Your face has character, Donald.” And I went and hid in my room for at least a day.
Anderson Cooper: Did what she say stay with you?
Donald Sutherland: Not really. Just– just for– 65, 66 years.
Donald Sutherland: It’s not easy, Anderson. It’s not easy to know that you’re an ugly man, in the business like I’m in.
Anderson Cooper: Do you think of yourself as an ugly man?
Donald Sutherland: Unattractive is a gentler way of putting it.
Ouch! I never thought that.
Kelly posted some music.
Alerts!
I’m constantly reminded that technology is fine until it’s not. When the Massachusetts 911 system went down on Tuesday, June 18, I received an alert to that effect. I do not know why. A program intended to secure the state’s system caused the firewall to stop calls from reaching dispatch centers. Or something like that.
About 15 minutes later, while I was at a book review at the library, almost everyone’s phone started buzzing. It was rather startling and worrisome. It was the New York State 911 system letting us know that OUR state’s system was NOT down.
MUSIC
I Have Nothing – Peter Sprague featuring Rebecca Jade
Licks Off Of Records – Martin Mull
Mandela’s Blues – Kinky Friedman
Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists: Grateful Dead, which reminded me of the time I saw the Jerry Garcia Band in New Paltz on November 29, 1977
Coverville 1492: The John Wetton Cover Story and 1493: Purple Rain 40th Anniversary
Had To Cry Today – Peter Sprague featuring Leonard Patton
March Of The Belgian Paratroopers by Pierre Leemans.
Star 69 – R.E.M.
Let’s Go Fly A Kite – Dick Van Dyke and Jason Alexander
