We are the first human beings to see a Mars sunset. Its quite a thought. pic.twitter.com/cM5UJojiPy
— David Smith (@davidingolcar) November 28, 2018
I, at least, need a quick respite break… been trying to clean out some of the vast clutter of ‘potentially useful links’ I have stacked up on my machine…
Looked for a gif to perfectly encapsulate my life on this particular Thursday and there it was…
Behold, the Dung Sisyphus. pic.twitter.com/uw2WoQQkQP
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) November 8, 2018
There’s a coyote outside. You know what that means: coyote vest time! pic.twitter.com/Pj164giawL
— Amina Akhtar (@Drrramina) December 3, 2018
— ?? FlowerChild ?? (@TaraFirma84) June 12, 2022
Elizabelle
That last one. LOL. Perfect. And the little doggie in the coyote vest. Looks a tad like Lovey (Thurston’s sister).
Baud
That first tweet clearly says it’s from East Midlands, England. Nice try,
SiubhanDuinne
Okay, every single ONE of those is the best godsdarn .gif I have ever seen in my life. Thank you, AL.
Steeplejack
Oh please oh please oh please.
Alison Rose
@Baud: MARS HOAX
Bill Arnold
I am wondering whether tomorrow’s Pence-focused hearing will bring us more about this, which may be nothing, or may have been some criminal sedition:
Pence Refusing to Get in Secret Service Car on Jan. 6 ‘Chilling’: Raskin (THOMAS KIKA, 4/23/2022)
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack:
If that’s what’s going on behind the scenes, I forgive them for cancelling today’s hearings!
NotMax
‘@Steeplejack
Hoping to catch you on a respitey thread. IIRC you are a watcher of MHz.
By any chance have you sampled Murders at Barlume (same production team as for Inspector Montalbano)?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Check this out. Jason Alexander, aka George Costanza from Seinfeld, is a pretty good singer. I read he was classically trained and was on Broadway before he made it to television. He was in a lot of commercials in the 80s. This one stuck out to me the most lol:
Jason Alexander 1985 McDonald’s Ad
The New McDonald’s McD.L.T.!
It’s catchy in a little corny kind of way
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Steeplejack:
Absolutely they should. Let’s gooo!
jnfr
Love Mars so much. I joined Twitter in 2008 so I could follow Spirit and Opportunity and I still love space twitter.
That last photo is excellent. Thanks for that.
debbie
@Steeplejack:
What will this crowd out of the hearings?
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
speaking of old songs making a come back, I was watching new Watergate series “Gaslit” and it used the early 70s folk-rock song “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight” by Richard & Linda Thompson and it’s GREAT. I had never heard it before.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
I hope this is part of their plan—if such a plan exists—to drip-drip-drip hot niblets every day to be devoured by the short-attention-span press.
Gin & Tonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Lots of crossover between the stage and TV, especially with shows filmed/taped in NYC. Here’s Detective Lenny Briscoe with a little Broadway number
ETA: Not technically Broadway, Broadway-ish.
NotMax
‘@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Check out a very young Mr. Alexander in the trailer for the Broadway documentary “The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened.”
debbie
@David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch:
I have loved that song forever!
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
I saw only a few episodes before MHz got nuked from Cox Cable here, and I never got around to subscribing to MHz—which I should do. I just could never figure out whether there was a difference between doing it through Amazon Prime or stand-alone. Now thinking Prime is probably okay.
But I digress. The episodes I saw were pretty good, but I don’t think I saw enough to have a solid opinion on the whole series. I will say that Young Montalbano sucked big-time.
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: This is better, and actually Broadway.
Alison Rose
@Steeplejack: That’s a yes from me.
zhena gogolia
You’re like my husband who said I hear Barbara Stanwyck made some movies before the big valley @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
tom
OT: Christopher Schurr, the cop who killed Patrick Lyoya during a traffic stop, has been charged with second degree murder and fired from the Grand Rapids (MI) police department.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2022/06/15/christopher-schurr-fired-grand-rapids-police-department-patrick-lyoya/7637840001/
Jay
Burnt out by stress today.
Power went out at noon today.
SWMBO forgot to pay the Hydro bill.
No internet, no land line, and only my phone, ( which doesn’t have the account info), had a partial charge. Then of course, navigating through the “contact us” process, hoping the phone didn’t die.
Power is back on now.
Ken
@Baud: The Martians first landed in Surrey, but I think later projectiles targeted the Midlands, as part of the encirclement of London.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Steeplejack: Ooh. Shiny!
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Hearing that always kills me, because you are such a classic movie buff.
Have you told him that she was also a Ziegfeld girl (photographed here by Alfred Cheney Johnston—NSFW)?
arrieve
@Gin & Tonic: One of the first Broadway shows I ever saw when I moved to New York in the early 80’s was 42nd Street, starring Jerry Orbach. I never saw Law & Order until it was ubiquitous in reruns and so didn’t realize that he was on the show.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
Wow, he was really young there!
UncleEbeneezer
@Steeplejack: Lock. Her. Up.
Steeplejack
@Jay:
Bummer. Glad it got sorted out.
S Cerevisiae
Edited to erase the comment, it was irrelevant.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Yes, he’s fully filled in on Ruby’s story now, and has seen Christmas in Connecticut, Double Indemnity, Ball of Fire, and Remember the Night multiple times.
gwangung
@Gin & Tonic:
Nominated for a Tony on that, and WORLDS away from the show where he DID win a Tony….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GajWG0D9tsI
kalakal
@David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch: The eponymous album is wonderful as well. Richard Thompson’s one of my favourite all time musicians. From Fairport Convention, with Linda and as a solo artist, so much great music
zhena gogolia
@gwangung: That’s what I remember him in. (from TV)
Delk
Speaking of Mars, in honor of Paul’s upcoming 80th birthday I listened to “Venus and Mars” this afternoon.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Gin & Tonic:
Somebody else I never knew had some real singing chops. Orbach was fantastic in this clip
Amir Khalid
@S Cerevisiae:
If Mickey D’s ever holds a slogan contest here, my entry will be “McDonald’s — It’s Almost Like Real Food!”
ETA: Dang.
JoyceH
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Surely unintentional, but I get a real Music Man vibe from that commercial! Smooth, fast-talking con man pops up to convince the town folk that something that never seemed problematic before was actually a real problem, and hey, he’s got a solution!
JoyceH
@Steeplejack:
Ditto ditto ditto! The way stuff keeps popping up, the hearings might wind up renewed for a second season by popular demand, and carry over through the fall.
Let’s subpoena Ginny every other day until Clarence decides that heck, maybe it’s time to retire.
Delk
The hot stays hot and the cold stays cold but the styrofoam just stays.
Sister Golden Bear
Reposting since the thread downstairs is dead, and this turns out not the be an official respite thread, and I’m feeling saltier than a stadium pretzel…
The FTFNYT published yet another (at least the fourth so far) moral panic hit piece on trans kids and trans healthcare for kids That’s Just Asking Questions.
It’s currently getting eviscerated on Trans Twitter. The article bared quoted trans kids themselves (I believe only one), but instead give a platform to a parent who was overtly transphobic towards their kid, the same set of “conversion” therapists who always get quoted (and who they were warned about), and linked to an anti-trans group that publicly poses as moderate, but posts on their Substack that they’re the equivalent of the French Resistance battling Nazi (i.e. trans people). And there’s pretty anti-LGB as well.
It’s large-scale concern trolling about a problem that doesn’t fucking exist — they couldn’t cite a single actual example of trans kids receiving necessary healthcare without an assessment. But they’d rather worry about imaginary cis kids than actual trans kids.
We’re not trying to turn cis straight kids into trans queer kids, we’re trying to make sure our trans and/or queer kids don’t end up as dead kids.
All this by a journalist who’s done good reporting elsewhere. But there’s something about trans people that causes cis people to lose their damn minds.
Happy Pride…. Did I mention how tired I get having to post about this kind of shit.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
You know, back in December I watched Christmas in Connecticut all the way through for the first time in years, and I found it really thin, which surprised me. The whole “fraudulent Martha Stewart” MacGuffin didn’t hold up—even as a MacGuffin!—and there were other things that bugged me, like how the nurse became Dennis Morgan’s fiancée and then ended up with his sidekick. And criminal underuse of S.Z. Sakall.
Eh, maybe I just watched it on a grumpy night. But I much prefer Remember the Night now.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
He needs to see Stella Dallas and The Lady Eve too!
Sister Golden Bear
In Baltimore last night, someone torched a Pride flag hung outside a row house, destroying three homes, with two people seriously injured and critically injuring three more.
All the Republican/reactionary Christo-fascist (but I repeat myself) frothing-at-the-mouth hatred being directed against LGBTQ+ people (and others obviously) is inciting stochastic terrorism that’s going to end up getting people killed. To them that’s a feature, not a bug.
Happy fucking Pride…
(A reminder, Pride wasn’t born of a new to celebrate being LGBTQ+, rather our right to live without persecution. So instead of wondering why there isn’t a Straight Pride, be thankful you don’t need one.)
Jay
@JoyceH:
he’s good in Young Sheldon cameos.
trollhattan
Coyote vest is a hoot.
“Not him, Harry, he looks mean.“
Suzanne
@Sister Golden Bear: as the mom of a trans kid, I have to say that nothing that the transphobes describe about the healthcare aspects of transition matches my experience. Spawn’s doctor is amazing.
MisterForkbeard
@Steeplejack: My guess is that if they’re only “considering” it, it’s not a pure smoking gun like “I know we totally lost but we need to overthrow the country and make up as much crap as we can” and probably more like “We need to do literally everything we can to assure a Trump win and punish the Democratic traitors who cheated in this election”
So in other words, totally inappropriate for her and her husband but not anything that Republicans would admit is improper or needs any changes.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: it was a gold watch? So many great lines. The plot isn’t the attraction
Jay
@Sister Golden Bear:
Some cis people.
But keep posting as much as you can stand it. We need to “be aware”.
geg6
@Elizabelle:
Lovey adores a fashionable vest. The color is her favorite!
raven
@kalakal: None better
Richard & Linda Thompson – A Heart Needs A Hom
Tongues talk fire and eyes cry rivers
Indian givers, hearts of stone
Paper ships and painted faces
The world’s no place when you’re on your own
A heart needs a home
raven
Want to be crushed some more?
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – The Way it Will Be (2004)
I’ve never been so disabused
Never been so mad
I’ve never been served anything
That tasted so bad
You might need a friend
Any day now, any day
Oh my brother, be careful
You are drifting away
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
The plot isn’t the attraction, but the clunky parts of it actively get in the way (more so than usual in the genre).
I was reminded how . . . amiable Dennis Morgan is, and how many movies he was in with so few memorable ones (Kitty Foyle and God Is My Co-Pilot in addition to this one). Maybe he didn’t get quite the right material at the right time.
Jackie
@JoyceH: I seem to recall the first 6 Hearings are possibly only the beginning, with the possibility of more…?
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
“McDonald’s — It’s Almost Like Real Food!”
No, no it’s not.
I may be prejudiced, I have gotten severe food poisoning from McDs.
MagdaInBlack
@Sister Golden Bear: I appreciate every one of your posts, and I too am sorry you have to keep posting them. I do not understand why we cannot just leave people alone and let them live their lives.
stinger
@zhena gogolia: I’m smiling just reading those titles!
Elizabelle
@geg6: Yes it is. Looks kind of like Lovey Pink — look, it’s Mauna Loa erupting.
raven
@Ruckus: We just happened to watch the “Chicken Nuggets” scene on the Wire tonight.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Yeah, he made some real stinkers. Those ones with Jack Carson — snooze
Scout211
For Pride Month, POTUS signs Historic Executive Order Advancing LGBTQI+ Equality During Pride Month
Laws would be better, but EOs are a good start
Biden launches plan to protect transgender youths’ health care
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch:
The “record” (remember??) that came from was remarkable.
Here’s “Has He Got A Friend For Me“, for example.
Sister Golden Bear
@raven: Priceless! And not wrong.
Steeplejack
Five Easy Pieces (1970) coming up at 10:15 p.m. EDT on TCM, for those who haven’t seen it in a while. Oscar nominations for best picture, original screenplay, actor (Jack Nicholson) and supp0rting actress (Karen Black).
Alison Rose
@Jay:
I don’t mean to call you out here, but this isn’t a good response. It’s very #notallmen energy and isn’t necessary nor helpful.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Oh, Lord, Two Guys from—ugh!
Kay
@Sister Golden Bear:
They beat “CRT” to death, they beat cancel culture to death – cannot credibly sell another article or substack on those- so they needed a new enemy to vanquish.
Also don’t underestimate how much of it is just about really ungracefully entering middle age:
They love the 1990’s, when they were young and radical. Now they’re older and really cranky. They completely dominate the NYTimes and Fox News. One would think that would be enough. Can’t MSNBC have someone else on?
Suzanne
@Kay: There’s a subset of white dudes who are just horrified to realize that no one thinks they’re cool and no one wants to cater to their tastes.
Another Scott
Interesting DW story on possible effects of the interest rate increases:
They mention Delta in the story. Of course, airlines are notorious for not having net profits for decades (a consequence of the volatility of fuel prices, among other things). Having yet more concentration in the airline industry is probably not a good idea (unless we’re willing to add more regulation along with it).
If interest rates really finally do go back to “normal” levels (where normal humans could earn, say 5% (rather than 0.5%)), there are going to be winners and losers and the economy as a whole will be better off. But there could be severe pain in places, and having that pain happen when workers are doing reasonably well (like now) is probably a best case timing-wise.
We’ll see!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
@Alison Rose :
It’s fine to call me out on my verbage.
We all need allies.
Most people don’t care about a huge chunk of the “culture wars” the TERF’s and Christofacists are trying to “sell”.
While on the one hand, a bunch of their targets have to constantly remember the danger they are in, they should also try to remember all the support they get from friends, family and even strangers.
It’s not the 70’s. There is a tiny minority of nutcases out there, trying hard to make life difficult for people we know and love, and because they have seized control of a political party, (even here in Canada), they have greatly amplified their hate and have adopted eliminationist rhetoric and in some places, legislation.
We, us allies, need people to remind us (constantly) about what is happening, and we need to be allies.
Kay
@Suzanne:
Fewer words, same message:
It’s free too! Don’t even have to pay for a subscription.
Kay
@Suzanne:
It’s a shame, although I never had any use for Taibbi I’m sure some of them had “ideas” or something at one time. The feminists don’t talk about feminism anymore, the Leftists don’t talk about workers or class, the centrists don’t talk about whatever centrists talk about – public/private partnerships- whatever- it’s all this “woke” and “we are being cancelled” shit. It’s its own subject. They don’t have any identifiable ideology or beliefs other than this, which is why they moved so easily Right. It swallowed them as writers and thinkers. Still seething about the 1619 project. And why arent they on MSNBC! Riddle me THAT!
pluky
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Been on Broadway! Try 1989 Tony for Best Actor in a Musical
Ken
Where are you getting 0.5%? Can you hook me up with them? is it illegal? I don’t want to do anything illegal. Well, not too illegal. Come on, man, I’m desperate here. I’ll give you a cut of a fifth of what I get.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jay: stolen from Stonekettle:
Or gender identity, or sexual orientation.
There’s 99 problems in the world today, but a rhetorical generalization ain’t one.
frosty
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): That was great! Actors have to train and be good at a lot of stuff we don’t see. Singing, dancing, horseback riding! Thanks for this.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kay:
debbie
@Kay:
Kennedy certainly knows from wack jobs.
Jay
@Sister Golden Bear:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
I didn’t take it as a burn,
I just wanted to remind you that the world is now filled with allies.
One of the things that pisses me off the most about the current crop of homophobes, is that they are going after kids, children, the most defenceless with terrorism.
Layer8Problem
@debbie: Vanderbilt and Oxford education, and yet still looks and sounds like Mr. Haney in a nicer suit.
Another Scott
@Ken: :-)
E.g. Vanguard Brokered CD, $1000, 1 year, several FDIC banks are offering more than 2.5%.
(Rates have gone up since I last looked!)
NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. CAVEAT EMPTOR. UNDERSTAND THE RISKS OF BROKERED CDs. THIS COMMENT IS WORTH WHAT YOU PAID FOR IT.
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tony Jay
@Steeplejack:
Yowzer. So Barbara Stanwyck and Cobie Smulders are totally related, yes?