I've blathered about a gazillion times here how much I really like getting the Wegman's in-house brand stuff - it's usually cheaper, I usually really like the packaging and it makes me feel like I'm a part of a team - so of course yes I am well-pleased to find out via The Atlantic that the rest of the Universe is finally catching up to me:
The house-brand boom has been made possible, in large part, by the fact that grocery stores, because they sell a lot of goods under one roof, know basically everything about how you eat—when and where and how often you shop, what you buy, in some cases what you don’t buy. Big packaged-good brands, on the other hand, have much more limited data: They mostly rely on what the grocery stores themselves tell them, and what they can glean from consumer-data companies such as Nielsen. My local Whole Foods, for instance, knows that yesterday, I bought a bag of fusillotti, a hunk of parm, and two lemons at 6:11 p.m.; the fusilotti maker knows only that it sells Whole Foods a certain number of cases of pasta a month.
The people in this book work a lot, and earn very little. Sleeping in cars, crashing with friends or paying for a decrepit room in an extended-stay hotel, they are “trapped in a sort of shadow realm.” Politicians have been incentivized to define homelessness narrowly, including only people living in shelters or on the street. A true measure of homelessness in America would be six times the official figure, Goldstone writes, pushing the number up to more than four million. “There Is No Place for Us” offers an immersive narrative of how five Atlanta families found themselves in the direst of straits yet statistically invisible: “They literally did not count.”
Every once in a while I wonder if when I die I should leave behind thousands of The New Yorker crossword puzzles spelling out crazy shit so people will think I was way more interesting than I ever really was.
"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't YOU make the greatest catch in another Gold Glove inning on the diamond years & years ago?"
Sigh. Yes I did, faithful readers, YES I did:
...and I know I'm gonna hafta dive for a shot at it, and at the last possible moment I lay my lithe, sinewed, testacled young body out and make what if it had ended there would've been considered the best catch... READ MORE HERE
I don't consider myself to be a man of great wisdom and I don't think anybody ever looks to me for advice but as I see all the young people in my life growing closer to adulthood there's one piece of advice I would like to pass on to them: don't ever try to pick up your coffee mug that's filled with scalding hot coffee right after moisturizing your hands.
There’s a lot of absolutely crazy rich people shit on Entourage that needs to be seen to be believed and lot of just kinda crazy stuff in general but the single-most implausible thing throughout the entire series is that we’re supposed to believe that every morning these 20-something dudes (except for Drama of course) blazing through every hot young thing in Hollywood gather at the kitchen table every morning to eat a large breakfast, I mean camon people I was born in the morning but it wasn’t THIS morning, puh-lease already with that shit please.
1) I've hated Seth Rogen’s The Studio since I for some reason started forcing myself to watch it, but the sixth episode may be the dumbest episode of television I've seen in s long, long time.
2) The final scene of Freaks and Geeks is absolutely incredible but they almost ALMOST ruined it with the over-the-top blatant reach for the heartstrings with the sister asking the retarded kid to dance (I don’t really remember so much emphasis on the retarded kid before watching the pilot this time, I mean did they just absolutely terrify this poor basted every 5 minutes of every single day for 12 years, dafuck??), but all these years later when the sister sees the brother dancing it's oh oh here come the waterwortks over here at Xmastime Corporate.
3) I’m not even gonna do a “if they made Freaks and Geeks today it’d be set in 2006" thing, so you’re welcome.
4) Entourage’s Johnny Drama is the Grapes of Wrath (the book not the film!)of sitcom characters in that he’s great when you first watch him but as the years go on & life beats you down a little bit he just gets better & better; he is in danger of entering my all-time Top 10.
5) I was inspired by a co-worker’s 3rd-grader to watch ALF for the first time in a hundred years & I never realized how crappy the family was – everything ALF said was hilarious, and everything they said was zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The thing totally shoulda been a one-man show; if ALF was around today he’d crush it as a podcaster.
6) ALF calls to have a pizza delivered but instead of delivery he says "for travel"; was that ever a thing? 🤔🤷♂️
6) You people should be watching more What’s Happening!!
I'm giving Heir Trump until July 14, my birfday, (and the day of WE'RE TAKING THE FUCKING MONEY!!)to pull his inevitable declaration of some bullshit national emergency in order to move the gears of dictatorship fully in his direction a lá Germany's Enabling Act in 1933; if he does not, then the first 500 Xmastime fans to let me know I was wrong will get a $5 gift certificate from Sweetfrog. Good luck!
The Replacements' immortal Hootenany came out 42 years ago today; I will now wow you nice people by ranking the songs from my most favorite to my least favorite YOU'RE WELCOME, EARF!
Color Me Impressed 'Within Your Reach Hayday Treatment Bound Take Me Down to the Hospital Hootenanny Lovelines Willpower Buck Hill Mr. Whirly Run It You Lose
Back in (I think) the year 2000 I wrote an email to Peter Jesperson, former manager of the Replacements and their discoverer (if that’s a word). I forget what I wrote to him about, I was probably blathering/gushing, something embarrassing I'm sure, and I *think* I somehow sent him mp3s (did we even have those in 2000???) of the EP I'd released a few years earlier.
He wrote back, maybe amused I had named my band Hayday after a Replacements song. So he writes me a very nice email and then at the end includes a story about the song Hayday: after the album had been completed, Westerberg came up with the song and made them reconstruct the mobile studio they’d just dismantled after two months of recording, fighting with everybody who tried to tell him they were finished recording the album. Immediately after they were done recording Hayday Westerberg then officially declared the album finished. Not an amazing story, but an insider’s point of view and insight on the actual making of one of the records I love.
I swear to you this email existed at one time, even if I can’t seem to find it (eff you, Hotmail!!!) although it's kinda weird I've never heard or read this story anywhere else? Anyways, this is all of course an excuse to raise a glass to one of the most original, fun, brilliantly “fuck you for even thinking I even give a fuck” albums of all time.
My buddy’s 15 year-old kid made mac & cheese the other day & of course after eating about 3 bites she left the rest in the pan on top of the stove for a coupla hours; when her dad eventually saw the orange mound of glop in the pan that was hardening more & more by the second he was like “Dafuck, how could you just leave this here like this?”, turning the pot upside down for effect; she stared at him for a second, you could hear the virtual rolodex inside her head furiously flipping through any excuse to get out of having to wash the pan, before finally landing on “I wanted to let it air out for a while” and skipping away out of the kitchen, leaving her father open-mouthed in horror & me jealous I’d never thought of that one before. 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
The other day a female friend & I were walking up to Home Depot & a gawky teen was standing by the entrance doling out the big orange carts & when he asked us “would you like a cart?” I quickly replied “no thanks, she can walk”; we were walking out 30 minutes later & the kid was still laughing when he saw us. 🤗🕺🤣🤣🤣
...there's been something at the tip of my brain for a while now re: morphing "regrets" into "regreats" but I haven't cracked it yet, will keep you nice people posted...
On January 16, 1980, McCartney was arrested on the spot and whisked away to the Tokyo Narcotics Detention Center. For nine days, McCartney lived as “Inmate No. 22,” sharing meals and daily chores with Japanese prisoners.
“He just looked like any other prisoner,” said one former detention officer who spoke anonymously years later. “He followed the rules, spoke politely, and didn’t complain.”
Despite his compliance, McCartney’s celebrity status created a media frenzy outside the detention center. Thousands of fans camped out near the facility, holding vigils, singing Beatles songs, and pleading for his release. Japanese tabloids splashed his mugshot across their covers, while the Western press treated the incident like a Shakespearean tragedy, relishing the dramatic fall of an idol.
Macca in jail for 9 days? Interacting with normal people on such a primal basis, the conversation of which I'm sure had to have been seen to be believed? And was almost a year before John Lennon's murder so people were panicking if THIS was the REAL final death knell of The Beatles, their chances of ever even thinking about reuniting officially dead now thanks to Paul's carelessness PLUS the fact that as insane as it is think now, there really was a glimmer of worry that it was certainly possible he'd never be allowed out; I can't believe I've never brought this up before but how has this never been turned into a movie or short Netflix series? The comedy, the pathos, the international drama, the "responsible" Beatle's recklessness, this could have it all, people!!!
Man who moves out of the city for the calm & quiet of the suburbs spirals into madness from being pummeled 24/7 by the jet engine noise of his neighbors' constant & never-ending leaf blowing. LOOKING FOR INVESTORS!! 💰 💰 💰 💰
There's been something in the air about my beloved What's Happening!! recently, maybe partly due to the incredible thoughtfulness of a fellow fan, or the fact that I've posted 5 times about it just in the last 7 weeks, but there's a buzz in the air about the show - maybe due to it coming up its 50th anniversary next year? - or that I just texted this clip to someone last week - so I was thrilled when longtime Xmastime buddy James S, a fellow fan who understands the world always needs a little more What’s Happening!! in it, hipped me to this mini-reunion a few days ago on the Today Show. 🤗🕺❤️
Remember good ol' child genius detective of our childhoods, Encyclopedia Brown?
These books follow a formula where the first chapter involves Brown solving a case at the dinner table for his father, the local police chief. When Chief Brown barely tastes his meal, that is a cue he was handed a difficult case. He pulls out his casebook and goes over it with the family. Encyclopedia solves these cases by briefly closing his eyes while he thinks deeply, then asking a single question which directly leads to him finding the solution.
I wanna see a series that follows up the next day when Chief Brown gets laughed out of the police station once again after trying to explain that his dumbass kid has cracked another case. 😜🤣🤣🤣
— He owns Lisa Murkowski’s whispered fear: “We are all afraid... retaliation is real.” — He owns the purges of civil servants who tried to do their jobs while Trump loyalists like “Big Balls” and Elon Musk fired anyone not in lockstep. — He owns the dismantling of our national security infrastructure; gutting the FBI, neutering the NSA, and kneecapping agencies that track hostile foreign actors. — He owns the future Trump emergency declaration (particularly if there’s a terrorist attack) that will install him as dictator-for-life. — He owns the death of American credibility on the world stage and the economic depression his tariffs and chaos will provoke. — He owns Trump’s lies that Kilmar Garcia has MS13 tattoos on his hand, a gaslighting characteristic of dictators like Putin, Pinochet, and MBS. As Rep. Maxwell Frost said of Trump’s willingness to lie to imprison people: “Today it’s Mr. Garcia, tomorrow it can be any one of us.” — He owns the increasing deaths of women in states with near-total abortion bans. — He owns the stolen votes of millions who might have stopped this rolling catastrophe but couldn’t, because John Roberts’ Court helped rig the system against them. — He owns Doge, Musk, and “Big Balls” destroying America’s diplomatic and scientific primacy in the world.
And now, Roberts faces the destruction of the very branch he leads. If the judiciary can no longer check power, what’s left?
The short final season of The Conners - 7 episodes??? - caught me off guard so I don't have a lot to say other than it's insane that we just said goodbye to a cast of characters I was first introduced to when I was 16 years old. Roseanne's an all-time Top 10 sitcom & The Conners more than held up on their own in the end; a quick search on Xmastime can keep you down a rabbit-hole of my thoughts on the subject for more than just a little bit.
On Day 1 of my administration, not to be confused with the Earth-changing Day 1 of my administration, I will immediately outlaw fireworks; they're fucking stupid, they're fucking dangerous and they reward idiocy but most of all they absolutely terrify dogs so....why do we need these always-disappointing things anyway?
I've worked my way backwards throughout the Wordle archive, desperate to get from 96% to 97% after having been stuck on 96% for seemingly fucking forever after, presumably due to at least 10 of my 42 misses being in the very beginning before I ever figured out whatever the fuck Wordle even was 😡😡😡😡, and now I find myself down to the last one I haven't solved yet. Will this be the one that FINALLY tips me over to 97%? 😲😲😲😲
I will keep you posted, this much I promise to you nice people!!!
And since I am a man who is true to his word, I now present WORDLE: WILL XMASTIME FINALLY HIT 97% AFTER COMPLETING EVERY WORDLE IN HISTORY (SO FAR), a play in one act:
One thing everybody always like to agree on is no matter what a fucking idiot goon he is, Trump is a marketing genius, and of course it turns that like everything else he's absolutely shitty at that too:
“The United States was more than just a nation. It’s a brand. It’s a universal brand, whether it’s our culture, our financial strength, our military strength …. America rose beyond just being a country,” Griffin said Wednesday at the Semafor World Economy Summit in Washington. “It was like an aspiration for most the world. And we’re eroding that brand right now.”
Nobody's ever accused me of being a political genius but I have a feeling that if on January 21 Donald Trump had announced "hey you know what the economy is actually pretty rocking right now let's just keep it going" and immediately lowered taxes for rich people & literally did nothing else he'd be carried through a third term like Oprah Winfrey after giving cars to everybody in her audience.
If Jesus knew he was the son of God then why would it be a big deal for him to face death? He knew he was gonna “sit at the right hand of the father & play all the original arcade Pac-Man he wanted to blah blah blah..." then what was such a big deal? It's like reading about Galahad just kinda breezing into the scene at Camelot being preordained to find the Holy Grail without breaking a sweat; what was the fucking point? Without true suffering can you really base an entire religion around a martyr? 🤔🤷♂️
You can talk about the tons of super-hot bikini chicks littered throughout Entourage all you want but my list begins and ends with Dana fucking Gordon, thank you very much.
CONUNDRUM: Does this read visually, particularly with the blue trash can for perspective, such that an "oh shit looks like ______ was pissed!" joke reads as a short joke?
I've never gotten a lot of compliments in my life but I'll always remember the first time at band practice I played Pete Buck Hill for Dish & he said it reminded him of Brian Eno's Needles in the Camel's Eye; I'd never even heard of the song but I knew I was supposed to feel good about it and I did.
The New York Dolls' Trash is a good song, really fun/everything you want the Dolls to be, but the backups throughout it are so incredible, somehow both in their sound itself and the myriad emotions they somehow effortlessly connote, that they should have realized it and started all over with a much better song that is worthy of these backups. - XMASTIME
It's always bugged me over the years re: "who exactly sang those backups?" until just I remembered hey why not just ask ChatGPT so I can turn my own brain to much even earlier than expected. 👍
Here's the song, I'd never heard it before but you can pick up the melody for the backups right away, really beautiful. 🕺
I'd 100% watch a tv channel entirely devoted to random people walking us through their company's office perks. Food in the pantry, ping pong table in the break room, free martinis on Fridays whatever, let's see it!
I don't really know enough about our collective feelings or thoughts on popes throughout our living history but I always thought it was kinda weird how anytime anyone mentioned Pope Francis the first thing they'd mention is how surprised they were at how nice he seemed. 🤔🤷♂️
Derek Jeter's Flip Play gets a lot of love - and deservedly so - but this relay throw is crazy in that it's a perfect throw and that's it's just crazy; why hasn’t this one made the rounds before? Obviously I saw it live when it happened but I don't even remember it, which is insane because 1) it's such an amazing play 2) it was in the World Series 3) it was the Yankees/Mets World Series of all World Series. 🤔🤷♂️
I have a feeling we're about to hear about a big, strong bishop coming up to Trump with tears in his eyes, "Sir, sir, you must be our next Pope..." while the tried & tested "you know, people are saying..." works its way into the story a few times.
Easily the best Pope I've experienced in my own lifetime, the one who most represented what I would like to think I'd espouse if I was a Pope, of which there is little to no danger that I currently am aware of.
I've worked my way backwards throughout the Wordle archive, desperate to get from 96% to 97% after having been stuck on 96% for seemingly fucking forever after, presumably due to at least 10 of my 42 misses being in the very beginning before I ever figured out whatever the fuck Wordle even was 😡😡😡😡, and now I find myself down to the last one I haven't solved yet. Will this be the one that FINALLY tips me over to 97%? 😲😲😲😲
I will keep you posted, this much I promise to you nice people!!!!
I've gotten sucked into a binge watch of Entourage, which I haven't really watched since it wrapped up 14 years ago, and while there's still plenty of eye-rolling going on I hafta admit it's not nearly half as stupid as I remember, and the show is nothing if not the very definition of a fun, endlessly compelling watch (these people knew how to end an episode so you wanted to start the next one right away before the streaming NEXT BUTTON ever became a thing). I also didn't remember how long it went on, 8 seasons (one of which was 20 episodes!), and I wish I had video from the time to witness me surely losing my mind when the whole "Vinny wants to do the movie about The Ramones!" plotline was cooking. So we'll see how long this goes, as the bishop said the the county clerk signing in the vicar behind the cheese shop.
I do hafta stand by what I've said before about watching the show: just like overeating or masturbating, it feels really good at the time but the second you're done you feel gross & loudly declare "never again!" before pretty much immediately doing it again.
PS - and just like I thought throughout the show's run, I'd be even happier if the show was 100% just about Drama/Lloyd/Ari but hey.
The other day I noted that British National Treasure Del Boy Trotter is the most American of British characters, and tonight I'd say that The Ramones, long considered to be as American a band as a band could possibly ever be (their logo is from the US Presidential Seal, Johnny was a right-wing lunatic who praised Bush in their Hall of Fame, they dressed like a 1950s American fantasy memory), are the most British of American bands in that all of them absolutely worshiped the British Invasion to the exclusion of almost all other music and Joey never hid how much he mimicked the British singers throughout their first album, as witnessed in the example below.
Sometimes I worry that I should turn off all the Christmas lights I have throughout my apartment whenever I go downstairs to Wegman's in the name of not burning down my building but then it occurs to me well, when I go to my bathroom for an extended period of time (cough) I don’t turn them off and that amount of time & the amount of time I spend on an average Wegman's trip are just about the same so now I’ve decided to just shut the fuck up & not worry about it.
We've gotten so bored with how insanely technologically mind-blowing our phones are that songs on Spotify play videos throughout the entire song & whenever I notice them they mostly just annoy me for existing.
I'm a day late but not only did I want to remind everybody that Wings debuted 35 years ago yesterday, but the very first joke they ever made was apparently about someone getting chopped into bits by an airplane propeller. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
My band Hayday played a show at the Talking Head in Baltimore back in like 2003 & the club was owned by a member of Baltimore legends The oranges, who let us sleep in the club overnight so we didn't hafta pay for a hotel.
Long story slightly less longer, including this needlessly long sentence itself, me & The Barber decided we were gonna stay up all night running thru songs for the next night's show in Richmond & then SOMEone decided "hey let's break open a bottle of whiskey from the bar while we play" and so next thing you know we were outside on the sidewalk suddenly in need for that hotel room.
People have been rather smarmily asking "will you please stop?" "well Xmastime, if your WE'RE TAKING THE FUCKING MONEY plan is so brilliant how about you give us the details?"
1. Find a candidate who's willing to go around the country yelling that Democrats need to be the party of WE'RE TAKING THE FUCKING MONEY
2. Bark that while you'll join Democrats on social issues/foreign policy/ etc while in office, all you're fucking here for is to deliver to the people the WE'RE TAKING THE FUCKING MONEY movement; tell them God sent you if it gets idiot evangelists to vote for you
3. Get a coupla billionaires who hate Trump - and if they don't exist by now it's certainly not my fault - to back you
4. Once elected, pounce on any excuse to declare a national emergency, therein allowing you to do anything you want without even a sniff of an impediment
5. Crank out an executive order declaring that because of the national emergency I'm giving everybody in the country $10M a month until I decide to stop (yes the 1% will be getting it too, the cost will be worth it & otherwise they'd be fucking exhausting with the levels of corruption to get their mitts on the $$ anyway so just let them have theirs too and move on)
6. Ta-DA! Now everyone in the entire country (the world's next!) can live their lives with dignity & happiness, free to do whatever it is they're lucky enough to love while living the incredibly short lives we all do; all by simply doing shit Trump & Co. are setting precedent for every day now.
If I was the Democratic party I'd accept the times we're in & would campaign 100% on WE'RE TAKING THE FUCKING MONEY. Everything else in my fever dream wannabe socialist brain can happen after we get in the White House but until then, I believe the only way the Democrats can have a comeback the size & impact of Trump's nightmare that is MAGA is to be the party of WE'RE TAKING THE FUCKING MONEY.
The show woulda been a lot better if they'd made the Vince character like the character they first envisioned the President to be in The West Wing:
Sorkin had not initially intended to feature the president at all. He envisioned the series as focused on the White House senior staff who execute and advise on major policy and political matters. "Then I felt that would become hokey," he said. "We'll constantly be just missing the president. As he walks around the corner, we'll see the back of his head."
Nobody who's watched Bill Maher's long slow slide to the Right over the last few years is even remotely surprised at his pathetic lapdog bitch dinner at The White House with Trump; Maher's long loved trying to play both Devil's Advocate and The Most Reasonable Person in the Room, his weekly manic self-congratulation every time he scolds Democrats not to burn down their neighbor's house for being a Republican is fucking exhausting, so it was no surprise to watch him dance on lasers while pre-admonishing his audience and practically patting his own head "WHO'S A GOOD BOY!!!" over his ASTONISHMENT!! that Trump could act like a normal human being for two hours (I would like to be in the room when Maher watches the show & sees what a pathetic little 6 year-old he looked like relaying to us about Trump asking for his thoughts on world events; Maher thought he was at the Yalta Conference without seeming to recognize he was part of a forum that included Kid Rock, some guy from the UFC, the old host of The Apprentice & some other guy who, incredibly, is the loser of the group). Over this past week everybody sprinted to their YouTube channels to roll their eyes at Maher's bullshit "tell us you want permission to go full-on MAGA without actually telling us you want permission to go full-on MAGA" performance below.
BUT.
I haven't heard anyone else say one word about the part of the show that should be getting attention for being "proof" of Maher's complete submission to MAGA: at some point he brought up Trump's tariffs - it was (is) impossible not to on a show about current events - but before he could even get the word out of his own mouth he smacked the table in an Oscar-worthy performance, barked "BORING!" as exasperatedly as humanly possible, bitched that tariffs are just too boring to talk about & then...moved on to the next topic.
"Too boring to talk about?" From the guy who's spent the last three decades braying to anyone who'll listen how HIS show isn't for celebrity gossip jerkoff sessions, they're for real talk about serious subjects? "Too boring to talk about?" From the guy who delights in talking about growing up in a household that talked politics & world events at the dinner table? SUDDENLY, after three decades of no subject ever being too mundane or in the weeds it JUST SO HAPPENS that tariffs, during the moment in which they're literally the single-most newsworthy subject in the world, TARIFFS are the breaking point for tedium & so gee whiz let's move on to something else WHICH I can't remember but I'm guessing wasn't that the Kardashian sisters are at it again.
To me that was the moment to point out as being Maher's Shibboleth to Trump; I'm sure he'll continue to say he disagrees with Trump whenever there's an easy opportunity without repercussions, but anytime there's some real shit Trump doesn't want him to go against you better believe Maher will keep his trap shut (to say nothing of him surely never calling Trump a "whiny little bitch" again, RIP Bill Maher calling Trump a whiny little bitch 😔).
Not a big deal, like I said none of Maher officially becoming Trump's little bitch was a real shocker anyway but it is a surprise that I haven't seen anybody else mention this. 🤔🤷♂️
Of course it won't be a surprise when Trump repays Maher for his new loyalty by shitting on him the first chance he gets.
One silver lining of DOGE is that when the time comes & the 99% finally realize that instead of standing around waiting for a bunch of the wealthiest people in the history of the world to suddenly become interested in sharing the wealth in a way that promotes human happiness and human dignity they need to (digitally) storm the Treasury and TAKE the money, Dipshit Muskolini & his Merry Band of Dippershits have shown it's possible.
Of course we all know Steven's gonna swoop in and bang Trishelle, you could smell it the second poor Frank started openly pining for her, but I don't know why Steven made a point of repeatedly telling Frank "oh man she's totally into you, she really likes you maaaaaaan" before doing it. 😡😡😡😡
Trump has spent his life braying over & over what a macho man #1 Alpha dog he is but then suddenly the other day claimed to be totally helpless in asking El Salvador - a nation of 6 million people - to return the man he wrongly sent to jail there; one of the (many) sad things about this fucking dipshit is you KNOW the quickest way to get him to crack & get the guy back is to question his manhood, earnestly taunting him like a 2nd-grader on the playground, "oh what do you mean, can't get him back, you're not powerful enough? Is he bigger than you?" etc etc. It's fucking sad, but he's incapable of ever doing the right thing for an even semi-normal reason so this is the shit we're dealing with, so.
The first coupla years in my apartment building I'd wander down to the lobby mailroom to check my mailbox maybe once a week, I mean who gets real mail anymore?, but I'm starting to notice I'm getting the urge to go down once a day whether I think I've got mail or not.
My dad wasn't a very social guy - not that I'm aware of, anyway - he mostly worked & went home and stayed to himself, so I don't have a lot of (or any) "oh man I hung out with your dad at ______ and we had such & such a time" stories out there from people, but the few times people have remarked on running into him have been going in or out of the Post Office.
What things are learned, and what things are inside us? For instance, over the past few decades I've gotten into the habit of once I lock into a flannel shirt to wear at home everyday I like to do just that. Meanwhile I remember my father doing the same from time to time; in particular I remember him wearing out a red & white striped shirt with a big tear in one of the elbows. Did I choose to do my own shirt thing because of watching him, or is it just one of those things passed on from father to son or is it just nothing at all because of course who doesn't like the comfort of a well-worn favorite shit every night? 🤔🤷♂️
As I'm someone who's loved songs their entire life and has spent a lot of time trying to write them, people are usually surprised when I tell them that whether it's writing or listening the music always comes first and matters more than the words; a point I never really seem capable of explaining but it just popped in my head right now that the next time it's brought up I'll simply say what I mean, that while the words can hit you it’s the music that moves you.
It's funny that pretty much every single person on Earth loves different kinds of art forms & we love the idea of & stories about starving artists and yet unlike almost every industry in the world we seem to relish making both the barriers to entry and success as difficult as possible for anybody to scale or sustain, to the point of scorn & derision even as we enjoy their art.
I'm not sure what I'm more concerned about, that I've become the "let's see if I can get everything into the dishwasher all in one load" guy or that I've become really good at being the "let's see if I can get everything into the dishwasher all in one load" guy.
Is Del Boy Trotter, a true British National Treasure of all British National Treasures, actually the most AMERICAN Britcom character of all time? He refuses to accept his own station in life, always pushing to make the climb to the next rung of social strata, and has a BOUNDLESS optimism that no tragedy life threw at him even dampened just a little bit, so....am I right? 🤔
a-HA! According to CHatGPT I am! 🤗🕺🇬🇧
Del Boy Trotter from Only Fools and Horses is not typically seen as the most “American” of classic British sitcom characters—he’s a proud South Londoner through and through—but he does embody some qualities that are stereotypically associated with American pop culture, especially the classic “self-made man” and the relentless hustler.
Why Del Boy could be seen as American: • Entrepreneurial spirit: Del is constantly hustling, trying to make a fortune, and believes in the dream of striking it rich (“This time next year, we’ll be millionaires!”). That’s a very American motif—the idea that anyone can make it if they hustle hard enough.
• Optimism: No matter how many times he fails, Del stays positive and convinced that the next deal will be the big one. That resilient optimism is often seen as an “American” trait.
• Love of material success: Del’s dreams are about moving up in the world and enjoying the good life—another classic American sitcom theme.
• Swagger: Del Boy’s confidence, brashness, and charisma would fit well in American sitcoms, especially those with lovable schemers.
But, here’s why he’s still so British:
• Class awareness: Del’s world is rooted in British class dynamics, and his accent, slang, and references are so specifically London.
• Setting: The humor and struggles are embedded in the context of Thatcher-era Britain, with all its particular economic and social realities.
• Sentimentality: The show’s warmth, focus on family, and nostalgia is much more British in tone than most American sitcoms.
In summary:
Del Boy is probably the closest thing to an “American-style” main character in classic British sitcoms, but he’s also deeply British in ways that would never fully translate to an American show. If anyone comes close, it’s him—or possibly Basil Fawlty for sheer audacity, though he’s less of a hustler and more of a misanthrope.
Paul McCartney is such a sacred cow of unchallenged greatness that even Donald Trump's dumb ass won't try to use Get Back for his dumb immigration shit.
...or is it kind of strange that we've had (so far) a combined 25 years with sitting presidents who were born in the 1940s & we've also had (so far) 0 days with sitting presidents who served a single day in Vietnam, the defining event of their generation.
According to Republicans if your kid reads a book with gay people in it and eventually becomes gay it’s the book's fault, not the kid's fault, but if that kid then walks down the hallway slaughtering their classmates with an AR-15 it’s not the gun’s fault, it’s the kid's fault. Got it.
You're one of the most powerful people in the world within a group specifically created to impart power, a part of which includes keeping a check on the president so fuck you & fuck off with this weak shit.
Gee, if only you were part of the single most powerful group of people in the world who could literally wave their hands and make all of this stop...
I learned you don’t hafta necessarily be pretty to be a model. If you have the freakishly right body, they can live with the rest. Ironically, the same can be said for an offensive lineman in the NFL. - Xmastime, 2008
According to the Vogue Business fall 2025 size inclusivity report, of 8,703 looks in 198 shows and presentations, only 2 percent were midsize (defined as U.S. size 6 to 12) and only 0.3 percent were plus-size. (Plus-size and midsize models are also known as “curve models.”) This was worse than the representation in the spring shows, which took place in September and October and included 0.8 percent plus-size looks and 4 percent midsize.
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