Monday, January 31, 2022
Mange Tout, oh Bein Marie, Bein Marie! 🤗
Via HERE:
Only Fools and Horses has been named the most loved BBC television series of the broadcaster's existence.
As reported by the Radio Times the survey was conducted by The One Show to kick off its BBC 100 celebrations, which will be happening throughout the year as the broadcasting service celebrates its centenary.
Upon hearing the news, Only Fools and Horses star, David Jason told The One Show: ‘From the brilliant writing of John Sullivan all the way down to the entire team in front of and behind the camera, let’s just say luvvly jubbly.’
Big surprise to me is that Fawlty Towers is so low at #7 and The Office, generally #2/3 on these lists, didn't make it at all, although maybe I'm used to only seeing sitcom lists of this sort?
🎉 'Lovely jubbly!' @BBCTheOneShow viewers crowned Only Fools and Horses as their most loved @BBC TV programme in a #BBC100 vote!
— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) January 28, 2022
See the Top 20 ➡️ https://t.co/Xmuif20kAh
Check out the Top 10 ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/u28H6gBu8L
Welcome to Beverly Hills, 90210 Week!
A few thoughts of mine from 2008:
Is Tiffani Amber Theissen coming on Beverly Hills 90210 the greatest addition to a team since Jimmy Chitwood decided to start playing ball again? Fucking a; the only reason I even own a tv is for that rerun-every-6-years scene of her in the bathroom in her tongety-tong-tong soon after moving into the Walsh house. One episode in, and she's already said the words "lube job", "cue stick", "whip me" and "on my hind legs." Fucking christ.
Ooooh, I see we're in the midst of that story arc where Brandon is running for Student Body VP, along with that "surpsise, he's so nebbish!" Jewish guy Josh. He just gave a speech that the campus is buzzing about the next day, it's all anyone's talking about. Now Brandon's giving his thoughts on the voting patterns of the campus conservative, progressives and independents. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. Yes, I remember how HUGE campus elections were, how divided we all were in our student political beliefs! Tore us asunder! I have no idea if we even had a student goverment. Nor did I know anybody who knew anybody who even remotely knew we had a student government. The student body president could've given a speech declaring he had dug up Hitler's dick and was going to "feed it to all pieces of Ralph Machio, whom I've just chopped up into a thousand pieces" and nobody would've 1) noticed 2) cared 3) known who the fuck Ralph Machio was. Of course, I went to a state school. Oh, and how does this election end? With assassination, of course. Right. That's remotely plausible. At least now Brandon's prez. I'd have hated him to be stuck in a powerless, do-nothing position like Student Body VP.
Is it possible Beverly Hills 90210 was even better a coupla years after the gang left high school? Valerie shows up, Steve joins the KEG house, the Peach Pit goes After Dark, etc etc. How did this happen? This would be like if after the classic start of Anal Encounters I, II and III they skipped the boring IV, V, VI and VII and were followed by the penultimate run of VIII, IX, X and XII (goes without saying, XI was derivative and lifeless.)
Oh, here's a good one. Steve has just asked Brandon to come to his frat party, claiming that it would impress the brothers if he brought the student council president to a party. Yes, I remember the time the student council president showed up at a party of ours; OOOOH how we all squealed with glee! Wow, we did it! Now we're coooool!!! Seriously, what the fuck planet do these people live on? "Monseignor, it would really impress the guys if you came to my frat party." "Let's do this, Steve-O."
I feel like they missed an opportunity with the opening of the Peach Pit After Dark to ape Road House and turn the already-ridiculous Steve Sanders into a zen bouncer, a la a cross between Dalton the cooler and a goofball with a poodlehead. You blew it, Darren Starr!
Oh, SHIT!! This is the episode where we meet Ray, gotta go (BLOOD BOILING!!!! ooooooh, I hate Ray!!!!!!)
Sunday, January 30, 2022
Hello, Old Friend
It’s been a while since I took a deep dive down this fucker. Expect PLENTY of old Xmastime post links over the next week, people! 😜🕺🕺😜🤣🤣
Friday, January 28, 2022
Spotify Today
Of course I'm not canceling my own Spotify account and therefore am a huge hypocrite, but I thought I'd share this.
Hey, not all heroes wear crinkled-dry salmon-colored ascots.
Roy Clarke is Crazy Amazing
Just the other day I referenced my wanting to finally watch Last of the Summer Wine, and I see its creator/writer Roy Clarke turns 92 today. What this guy has done is simply astonishing: he wrote Open All Hours, Keeping Up Appearances and Last of the Summer Wine, all three of which appear in ANY best-of Britcom lists. LOTSW had an insane number of episodes, 295, and he wrote each and every one. Even at age 90 he was knocking out episodes of the Open All Hours sequel, Still Open All Hours.
Also - it was Ray Butt happening to catch David Jason in a repeat of Open All Hours that led to his being cast as Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses. So in addition to the crazy number of C L A S S I C shows Clarke created and wrote, he's also indirectly (or directly?) responsible for Del Boy as we know it!
Roy Clarke (Top Left) is 92 today, Happy Birthday Roy 🎁🎂 (Roy wrote the scripts for the programmes you see below and many more he still writes to this day) pic.twitter.com/gIG6fyTokH
— 🇬🇧📺 Classic British TV 📺🇬🇧 (@Classicbritcom) January 28, 2022
Triumph.
This was one helluva moment of sweet, sweet vindication. #Imnotcryingyourecrying #flashbackfriday 
Crasy, Amirite?
Between King George III ("Trey"), Queen Victoria ("Darling Vikki") and Queen Elizabeth ("Beth Metal"), 183 out of the last 251 years of the British throne have been hogged by three people. That's 73%. - XMASTIME...11 years ago!!!!
Queen Victoria became queen because her father died shortly after her birth and she became heir to the throne because the three uncles who were ahead of her in the succession - George IV, Frederick Duke of York, and William IV - had no legitimate children who survived.
Queen Elizabeth became queen because her uncle pulled a not-even-one-in-a-lifetime bananas thing of abdicating in order to marry an American divorcée.
So both of these women became British monarchs through curiously tenuous, quirky threads of succession...and together have ruled for an astonishing 133 years (so far)!
Here's my bff Tom Hollander as George III, no reason.
"So....we're just gonna let chicks rule everything now? Really? Great."
ANNOUNCEMENT
I am currently looking for investors to launch a podcast like this one but for Hallmark movies. Let’s make some money, people!
Thursday, January 27, 2022
Xmastime One Year Ago Today
This Tweet of all tweets was posted a year ago. I just happened to re-watch it a few days ago, and this girl (I think she's only 20?!) is genius. More please! 🤗
Britcoms that are represented (all the ones I've seen are great, but * = Xmastime superslice):
Gavin and Stacey*The Office
The Inbetweeners*
Miranda*
Absolutely Fabulous
Motherland
This Country (Never watched this one)
The Vicar of Dibley*
Not Sure What the News Reporter One Is
Derry Girls*
Stath Lets Flats
Catastrophe
Outnumbered (Never watched this one)
The IT Crowd*
if british sitcoms were set during the pandemic pic.twitter.com/pF60iduWas
— Lucia Keskin (@chiwithaC) January 26, 2021
Questions. I Have Them.
What’s more of a party tragedy: throwing a party and having fewer than the number of expected guests to arrive, meaning there’s tons of beer & food for everyone, or throwing a party and way too many people show up, meaning you run out of food & beer? 🤔🤷♂️
Mind Blown du Jour
Via Mentalfloss 100 Facts About Earth:
16. Eratosthenes calculated a rough estimate of Earth’s circumference.
Eratosthenes used observations of how high the sun rose in two different Egyptian cities, along with some relatively simple math, to create a rough estimate of the Earth’s circumference. Despite his rather crude methods, his estimate was in the right ballpark. That was more than 2000 years ago.
I mean ffs, I still brag to anybody who will listen (and they don't) about the time the 7th grade I went into the wrong Math
Contest room by accident, taking a college-level geometry test instead
of the 7th-grade one, and I still came in 19th out of 60. Meanwhile this fucker figured out the circumference of the planet YEARS before Google and we only know about him because of listicles thanks to Mentalfloss. Man.
Wednesday, January 26, 2022
MTMS du Jour
Fuck Curt Schilling
Now that he once again didn't get enough votes to go into the Hall of Fame, Schilling’s become the perfect right-wing avatar; he’s able to frame himself as a “victim” of the left-wing media and that's why he’s not in the HOF, when the reality is he’s not a HOF player anyway. Beautifully scripted. Unlike his stupid video game that almost ruined Rhode Island, of course.
Hold Up.
I know the 1996 Only Fools and Horses trilogy was somewhat popular in the UK but more viewers than Lady Di’s funeral??!!
OH, Let Me Guess...
Look: Dogs are Funny
I was reminded earlier today of this famous Onion juxtaposition of cats vs. dogs opinions on remote working at the beginning of the quarantine, and this line from the dog jumped out at me:
Look: I’m a dog. I’m not some public intellectual.
I don't even know why but "intellectual" was already funny, but for some reason "public intellectual" of which I have no idea what that even means, has me sitting here all by myself laughing like a loon while Scooter looks at me like I'm an idiot.
Sonny May Just Make it After All
A few weeks ago I mentioned the incredible fact that 6, SIX! major players on The Mary Tyler Moore Show died in 2021, which is beyond absurd even if they were all 150 years old.
But one survivor so far has been Sonny Curtis, who wrote and performed the unbelievably great & iconic opening theme song. Of course, Curtis' history in rock runs deeper than most, having joined Buddy Holly's Crickets in 1958 and taking over his lead vocal duties after Holly's shocking death in February of 1959.
Curtis also wrote a scrappy little rock number called I Fought the Law.
Hang in there, Sonny!!!!!!!!
The Evolution of Youth
Like anyone, The Catcher in the Rye had a hold on me in my youth. But at the end of the day, Holden Caulfield is your average Williamsburg hipster in a nouveau-rock art fusion no-bass-included Japanese haiku band; Holden we're fairly certain will simply end up at another private school for fellow rich kids, and in a few years he will look back on his melo-dramatic teen years and laugh. XMASTIME
In other words, he would become Pete Campbell.
The Gen X version of course is when you're 19 you watch Reality Bites and think Winona Ryder should be with Ethan Hawke, and as you get older you realize there's no way she should be with that space moron and she should sprint into Ben Stiller's corporate sellout arms.
Wings, Baby!
F-Bomb
I'll be ever'where — wherever you look.
Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there.
Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll fucking be there.
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
LIFE IS A ROLLERCOASTER
Life. It's really happening, isn't it?
State du Moi
Monday, January 24, 2022
Finally
The Whole Foods Food Final Showdown: organic or not? This week will be the ultimate test. Good luck, peanut butters!
Opportunity Blown
I've worn the hell out of Never Mind the Bullocks, It's the Sex Pistols since I was 15 years old, and its in listening to my favorite podcast right now that I'm reminded - what if Malcolm McLaran had taken a minute from being obsessed with endless media stunts passing off the band as a bunch of untalented puppets of which he was the puppetmaster and instead realized holy crap, this is an incredible band with an amazing album?
The most blatant moment of course is him pushing the rest of the band to fire bass player Glen Matlock....WHO HAD ONLY WRITTEN ALL THE SONGS FOR THEM!! It's like if in 1996 Phil Jackson decides to cut Michael Jordan, claiming its his system that will win 72 games and the title, and not Jordan.
Whack, man.
Warning, People
Might be extra nostalgic/sentimental today. Woke up to Peter Dinklage on Maron's podcast; so far, he hasn't mentioned living at 100 Metro but dammit I'll be listening.
And another podcast is talking about the pilot episode of Newlyweds, the Jessica Simpson/Nick Lachey show that hit the cultural zeitgeist at the very peak of my (and let's be real, everybody else's) obsession with "reality tv". Yikes.
Sunday, January 23, 2022
Quote du Jour
“I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you for helping me. I almost feel as if You ought to be grateful to ME, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity...I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by giving you an opportunity of assisting me. ”
This lines up perfectly with a book I read years ago about poverty, and the belief during the Middle Ages that the poor existed on Earth for the very purpose of the rich getting to feel better about themselves by helping them:
...the poor existed solely as a vehicle to help the rich gain salvation through alms (and in general feel good about themselves. Sound familiar?) Geremiek quotes Life of St. Eligius:
"God could have made all men rich, but he wanted there to be poor people in this world, that the rich might be able to redeem their sins."Later flipped by the author by suggesting "God wanted rich people in the world in order that they might help the poor." After which you may find yourself asking "Why didn't God just make all people rich?" Either way, if we are to agree that God exists, do we really think he would've created thousands of people whose sole purpose was to suffer and go without so that those who had been blessed with so much good fortune in the first place (apropos of nothing but birth) might better their own chances of getting into heaven by throwing some bones to the poor every now and again? Seems like if there was a God running this show he coulda come up with a more dignified, less-suffering way, no? To say nothing of wasted lives. Doesn't the life of the poor soul he gave aid to equal the life of the rich man "passing the test" of alms-giving? No?
Saturday, January 22, 2022
Warehouse Du
January 19 marked the 35th anniversary of the release of Warehouse: Songs and Stories, Husker Du's final album before they blew up in everybody's faces. Via HERE:
Hüsker Dü’s tumultuous demise was defined mainly by the animosity between the newly sober and increasingly business-minded Bob Mould and the bare-footed, laissez-faire Grant Hart. After all, they were the band’s songwriting pair and, more accurately, internal rivals. The tension between the two reached its nadir on the group’s last studio collection, double LP Warehouse: Songs And Stories, which turns 35 this month. It marked the end of the trio’s prolific, if ultimately short-lived, 1983 – 1987 output, and it hosted Hart and Mould’s epic final showdown. The album was their sonic battlefield, its length born out of stubbornness and unwillingness to compromise as they hurled three-minute blasts of buzzing fury back and forth in quick succession.
Their friction wasn’t the only pressure surrounding Warehouse‘s recording and release. David Savoy, Hüsker Dü’s long-term manager, took his own life on the eve of their national tour (an event that Mould cited as “the beginning of the end”). Hart’s worsening drug use was making life difficult as well, so Mould abruptly canceled said tour part-way through and without conferring with his colleagues. Therefore, their farewell was far from a jubilant valediction. Still, their swansong manages to deliver subtler goodbyes—back pats to fans, parting aperçus, and future plans—within its fuzzy folds.
Of course, I've blathered on and on for years on Xmastime about much I love Grant Hart. In particular, it's his playing and singing on Husker Du's live album The Living End that brought to life much better versions of the songs on Warehouse, which can seem like one long, compressed song. Warehouse has plenty of good songs on it but should've been shorter, and better produced. It's nobody's favorite Husker album, but it does have the greatest liner notes of all time:
Sometimes you feel real old, older than you are. Check the aches and pains, the hairline, the demands of life. Responsibilties, responsibilities. Worse things have happened to all of us; the circus wasn't as good as you though it would be, the movie stunk, etc., etc....
Punching the clock, punching the wall, hating your boss. You can't go if you don't know, and you can't know if you don't go. and everybody in the world has their own song in their heads. The best songs ever. Problem is figuring a way to get them out and present them to others.
You've got to know where the brakes are. Enjoy life at a realistic pace. You crazy youngsters, what with your nightlife and everything. And it's important to trust other people, while putting stock in yourself as well. Reevaluating your priorities, checking yourself daily.
Not everyone is a victim of circumstance; conversely, nobody should feel like a martyr all the time. Problem? It's hard enough to communicate these days; some of us don't even get the chance. Some others don't know they have a chance.
When you travel frequently, you find a lot of images. And sometimes, you have to try and make the best of a bad situation: more often than not, we grin and bear it. Other times, you learn to enjoy some small facet of your predicament. Nothing too elaborate, just an attempt to adjust priorities. Revolution starts at home, preferably in the bathroom mirror.
Example? Winter always comes too soon. This year was the worst I can remember, except when I was five years old. Pushed open the front door, got lost in the snow.
Friday, January 21, 2022
We are Living in Exciting Times (No No, I Mean It This Time!)
And getting to see your favorite band on tv, which was also unthinkable.
But today? Today, we can see that The Replacements are the answer to a question (or rather the question to an answer) on last night's Jeopardy!, so I guess if you live long enough, you'll see some wild shit.
PS - and if you had told 15 year-old me that one day Husker Du would be featured on PBS my wig woulda flipped right off my goddam head!
Mukluks: Bob Zimmerman (no not that one)
RIP Meat Loaf
I've always championed Paradise by the Dashboard Light as being one of rock's greatest performances, with it starting out at an 11 and just getting higher and higher from there. Rock opera at its peak, with great singing along with the Wangerian/Spectorian influences of its writer, Jim Steinman. Say what you will about him weighing 300lbs and being just in time before MTV came along, but this song may be the single greatest distillation of every high school boy's Saturday night fantasy, from previous generations to beyond. Well done, Meat. So long.
Wow du Jour
You know your band is somewhat successful when eventually your road manger gets his own Blue Plaque 😳🇬🇧🕺
Trippy du Jour
Life is About Discovery
I have an almost militaristic policy about eating a sandwich of which every bite includes the cheese being on TOP of the meat, to the point that I almost always glance first before biting. But just now I accidentally bit into my turkey & cheese sandwich with the cheese on the bottom and WOW! The cheese landed on my tongue and was delightful; normally, as I'm realizing now, it just gets lost being tossed around in the roof of my mouth. People, I now must humbly ask....have I been eating sandwiches wrong this whole time? 🤔
Xmastime 10 Years Ago Today
Apparently 10 years ago on this day I first started blathering about the brilliance of Tom Hollander, here killing it in Freezing before creating and starring in the fantastic Rev a few years earlier. I love this guy so much he's just one role away from being considered for the Xmastime Hall of Fame!! (Stay by your phone, Tom Hollander!) Do yourself a favor and watch all three episodes of Freezing on YouTube!
BONUS: at the time I had no idea the blowhard in the scene was played by Blackadder's own Tim McInnerny 🤗
Scene-Stealing Character du Jour
I stumbled upon Freezing, a short-lived BBC series from a coupla years ago, squealing with glee because both the Lord and Lady of Downton Abbey were in it, but the entire series was quickly stolen by their agent friend Leon, a funnier Ari Gold - he doesn't even say a word in the first minute and a half in the scene below, but still steals it with his looks. Last seen by me in the HBO John Adams mini-series as the uber-creepy King George III.. Everything he said and every look he gave was hysterical. Highly recommended!
Newbery Deez Nuts
The Newbery Award for young adult fiction has officially been around for 100 years now, and there's some thoughts about whether or not if should put some old titles out to pasture:
In contrast with many adult novels that won accolades decades ago, prize-winning children’s books can have especially long lives. Do the math: Your teacher assigned a 25-year old-book because it was a “timeless Newbery.” And now that book is in your child’s hands, and it’s, what, 50 or 60 years old? That’s in part because there is a common misconception that childhood itself is universal and static. Any childhood “first,” from that first lost tooth to the first time behind the wheel, can feel immutable. Are kids’ experiences really that different than they were a generation ago?
But the world has changed, and the idea of a “typical” child has been blown apart. Many of us are increasingly aware that American childhoods can look very different from one another, varying with race and ethnicity, geographic location, economic status, and many other factors. This has always been true, of course, but until very recently, the imagined child reader was monolithic. So your favorite Newbery from childhood may now seem out of touch, hopelessly uncool. Worse yet, it may feature offensive viewpoints and stereotypes.
I don't really understand why older books need to be somehow scrubbed from the face of the Earth. Babe Ruth won the home run contest all the way back in 1926, does that mean we remove him from the record books? Can't we just keep the titles as they are, and if somebody wants to read them they can and if not then who cares?
I am now filing this whole idea under, "Who Cares?"
"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “if we beg you strongly enough will you share with us which of these Newbery Award winners you've read?"
Sigh. Yes I will, faithful readers, YES I will:
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien
Sounder by William H. Armstrong
The High King by Lloyd Alexander
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
A few random Xmastime kiddie lit thoughts HERE you're welcome very much.
Thoughts on the Always Delightful Matt Walsh
1. I will always find him a delightful guest and will always be interested in whatever he's working on
2. I am sick to death of hearing about the inner workings of the Chicago Improv industry
Questions. I Have Them.
Ice Ice, Baby
But since the storm has left so much ice laying around I haven’t called upon my Uber Eats delivery angels, as I’d feel like an asshole asking them to slip and slide over a sheet of ice to bring me some coffee & shit I really don’t care about all that much anyway. Which reminded me of back in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1995 after an ice storm had covered the entire town in a layer of ice. You can probably guess how prepared any town in Mississippi is about these things in the first place.
I was sitting around my apartment with my roommate Rylo, bitching about wanting to have food delivered but none of the usual suspects - and by “the usual suspects in Mississippi in 1995” I of course mean “Dominoes” – were delivering because of the dangerous ice on the roads. One of us remembered hearing that the local, shitty grocery store, the kind that barefoot women could smoke in while doing their shopping, had a delivery service. (James? James Grocery Store? James Food Center, something, can’t recall the name exactly but if it’s still operating I will be, in a word, amazed.)
“I don’t know,” Rylo warned me, “it’s kinda being a dick asking them to come out with all this ice everywhere.”
“Nah,” 23 year-old me said, “I’ll just ask, what’s the worst they can say?”
It turns out that the worst thing they could say was to inform me that their usual delivery service was for senior citizens and the disabled, and, particularly with the incapacitating weather, was I a senior citizen or disabled? (Said to me over the phone with a curiously high amount of doubt, I might add here.)
I thought about all the bags of insanely trashy food I could get with just a little bullshitting, but a severe look of disapproval from Rylo had me begrudgingly hanging up the phone.
You’re welcome, healthy delivery folks from (insert name of local, shitty grocery store here)!
Thursday, January 20, 2022
ANNOUNCEMENT!
Start saving those shekels everybody, big book release coming soon in 2022! 🤗🕺😜👻 #theweddingparties
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Dafuck du Jour
Xmastime 10 Years Ago Today
I'll be honest, the high-concept comedy with the one got a legit LOL.
NEWT'S EX
Sully IS MUSING re: the impact of Newt's ex coming out and giving an interview about his asking for her blessing to continue and affair. I find it hard to believe the interview will have any negative impact on Newt. Everyone has long known his cheating and hypocrisy and nobody seems to really mind - in fact, this "attack" from his ex might spur Newt more towards that most hallowed of GOP positions, The Victim, and he can blame the left-wing media, the lamestream media, the media, non-real Americans, Jesus-hating Americans, foreigners, European foreigners, the French, people who like ice cream, A-Rod, Letterman, dogs with missing legs, dentists, clowns, rodeo clowns, clown college professors, Clowns for Literacy, shortstops, left fielders, gays, Gisele, the 1943 Chicago Bears, Asians, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, birds, Eli Manning, Menudo, Johnny Carson, people that work at Frito-Lay, the Gilmore Girls (cast and crew), people that wear sunglasses indoors, animal trainers, Woody Allen, the Bad News Bears, The Bad News Bears remake, snakes, those things you shake up and it snows inside, bees, killer bees, killer whales, whales, Frank Whaley, popcorn, farts, armpit farts, squirrels, toilets that make you hafta hold down the lever until it's done flushing, cake, Tony Dorsett, Sweet Valley High, waiters, journalists and the president for what is surely a liberally-rigged attempt to crush the spirits of noble patriots and Jesus, along with his lovable, scrappy sidekick, Baby Jesus.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwww
I believe I speak for everybody when I point out that the term "hot desking" sounds like someone just farted there?
The Beatles du Jour
Video of the late George Martin shot by his son, explaining to his granddaughter about signing The Beatles. "They were the kind of people you just liked to be with."
I don’t normally share anything personal but this my dad from a while back explaining to my daughter he signed the Beatles. Ordinary people do extraordinary things. Great decisions are made for the simplest reasons. “I figured if I like them this much other people might too” ❤️ pic.twitter.com/j4bf96b4zS
— Giles Martin (@mashupmartin) January 19, 2022
This Still Bugs Me
Via EPISODE 3:
I really don’t understand why John & Paul are so jazzed about George’s For You Blue but couldn’t be bothered to spend five minutes on All Things Must Pass.
Same thing later with I Me Mine. Wtf?
"And please, let me guess...you idiots like Burger King's fries more than McDonalds?"
Me & OFAH!
In the 10 years since writer/creator John Sullivan has died, David Jason has been steadfast in stating that without Sullivan, there would be no more Only Fools and Horses episodes.
But the other day Jason, maybe feeling the mortality of being 81, said thusly:
"I've always loved Del Boy, who is such a wonderful loser. I would love to revisit him, I need someone to write me a script."
Looks like I'm about tho write the script of my lifetime, friends!
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
(Pulling My Hair Out/Screaming)
"I of course welcome a calm & rational
discourse on our opposing viewpoints but I feel sorry for him because
he's not funny anymore...", as if you at any time were some arbitrator of
comedy anyway is just fucking eye-rolling. Shut the fuck up with that shit already, asshole.
Everything Sucks and We are Doomed
Ezra Klein was chatting with Zeynep Tufekci from the New York Times, who said:
If the world was vaccinated, if people for whom vaccines didn’t work as well had immediate access to functioning antivirals that were really effective, maybe we could develop antivirals for other things too. And then we had airborne mitigation so that the burden from influenza and other diseases also fell.
It’s amazing. You’re not just getting rid of the pandemic part. You’re also preparing yourself for a much better future. And here’s the part that always gets me. We are in such a wealthy moment in history, and our science and our technology is so advanced, relatively speaking, obviously, is that there is nothing but getting over our dysfunction that’s holding us back.
If you’re in 19th century, and you’re just puzzling over yellow fever, and you don’t even have germ theory, and you don’t understand mosquito vectors— it’s hard. It’s really hard. I read those histories, and I’m kind of going, it’s the mosquito. I want to give them clues, but they’re looking around, and they — of course, it’s hard. They can’t do it.
But right now, we have everything in place. You literally have the cake making thing. You just need to sort of stir it the right way. And it’s our dysfunction that’s holding us back. It’s the global, political dysfunction, our US-specific dysfunction. It’s our — it’s the whole thing. And, of course, every kind of obstacle is terrible, but that is just stomach pain kind of level painful because we could do it. We have the tools. And just need to kind of get our act together, which this is not — this is potentially hopeful.
It's just fucking sad; it's like at the end of Don't Look Up when Leo simply says, "We really did have everything, didn't we?" Is it just human nature to fucking ruin everything for no real reason?
Awwwwww
My goddaughter & me 9 years ago today! Isn't this just so adora- WAIT #$@!% IS THAT LITTLE SH*T RUNNING AWAY FROM ME WTF?!?!
The Spector of One Year Later
Much has been made of the recent death of Ronnie Spector - and rightfully so - but I'd be remiss to not remember that it was a year ago two days ago that Phil Spector died.
George Martin was the perfect producer for The Beatles, but he never wrote a song himself. And while Brian Wilson used Spector's sound perfectly, he never wrote song lyrics. Meanwhile, here's a short list of songs Spector co-wrote, mostly with the brilliant husband/wife combo of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich:
Baby, I Love You, Be My Baby, Christmas Baby Please Come Home, Da Doo Ron Ron, River Deep Mountain High, Spanish Harlem, Then He Kissed Me, To Know Him is to Love Him, Walking in the Rain, You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'.
NOT too shabby!
Also what's easy to miss is how young he was: when he was pumping out girl group hits he was ONLY 23 YEARS OLD! When The Beatles called him in to save Let it Be he was out of the business and washed up...at 29!
ANYway...of
course he fucked up his legacy with the murder, and I feel for the girl
and her family, but I also agree with what Steven Van Zandt wrote about
Spector after his death:
RIP Phil Spector. A genius irredeemably conflicted, he was the ultimate example of the Art always being better than the Artist, having made some of the greatest records in history based on the salvation of love while remaining incapable of giving or receiving love his whole life.
He was a raving lunatic for sure, but I for one will always be thankful for the brilliant music he gave us, which - unlike him or his legacy as a person - will truly last forever.
If It's Any Consolation I Don't Begin to Understand
35 36 years ago tonight The Replacements played Saturday Night Live, drunkenly blasting through Bastards of Young and Kiss Me on the Bus from their classic Tim album. Besides being the single greatest performance ever on the show IMHO, Bastards of Young famously got them banned from SNL because Paul yelled "fuck" at Bob while going into the guitar break.
This has always been laughable to me - much like the Janet Jackson titty moment from Super Bowl whatever, the moment is only barely perceptible when the video is slowed down and absolute attention is paid to it. I still don't believe Lorne Michaels caught it and really thought it was so terrible; I've always assumed the incident was overblown in the name of Replacements mythology. You can get a beat-by-beat rundown of the "terrible incident!" HERE:
Sufficiently lubricated, the ‘Mats’ dress rehearsal set went off smoothly. The only hitch occurred during “Bastards of Young” — Bob was late coming in on the solo. Westerberg would make sure he didn’t miss his cue during the live broadcast.
Westerberg performed in a state of drunken insouciance. Several times during the song he walked away from the mic in the middle of a verse and casually strolled around the stage as if they were jamming in Ma Stinson’s basement and not to a television audience of eight million. “We just pretended we weren’t on camera,” he recalled.
As the solo break approached, Westerberg shouted toward Bob, just off mic: “Come on, fucker.” The epithet, delivered as he turned his head, slipped past the censors. “It wasn’t really something I planned,” he said. “It was more me saying to Bob, ‘Let’s give it to ’em with everything we got.'”
Jubilation followed the ‘Mats to the dressing room. Everyone agreed they’d delivered a momentous performance. Newly minted Replacements co-managers Russ Rieger and Gary Hobbib were busy shaking hands and slapping backs when there was a knock at the door. “An assistant told me, ‘Lorne Michaels wants to see you in the hall,'” said Rieger. “I’m thinking he wants to congratulate us.”
Instead, Michaels stormed up and began to berate Rieger loudly: “How dare you do this? Do you know what you just did to this show? Your band will never perform on television again!”
Besides, it was only seven years later that Westerberg played the show solo, so what the hell anyways?
OFAH du Jour
Del: What, and they accepted the little sprogs?
Grandad: More often than not...My brother George lied about his age.
Rodney: Pretended he was 18?
Grandad: No, he was 18, he pretended he was 14, they saw through it though. I think it was the moustache.
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