In the last year of my mother’s life, we talked a lot about the state of the world. Mom was born in 1928. Can you conceive the changes she saw in her eighty-five years? She asked me over and over why people did the things they did, and I told her that it was because…
Monkeyshines
July 8, 2023
I’ve always loved the word “monkeyshines.” To me it brings to mind disreputable incompetence. Clowns behaving badly. I discovered today that the word first appears in 1828 in a song called “Jump Jim Crow.” The song was popularized by Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, who performed in blackface as Jim Crow. Apparently there was a real…
Thank you, Miss Carol Colman
July 7, 2023
When I wrote Ghosts and Ballyhoo, I had to leave out tons of stuff I wanted to include. There just wasn’t enough room. Also, I’m not interesting enough to publish a multi-volume memoir. One of the bassists who I didn’t mention in the book but who had a huge impact on me is Carol Colman,…
Crazy, lying, violent, old racists who hate everybody
July 6, 2023
There’s a tiny, irrelevant newspaper called the WestView News. It claims it’s the “voice of the West Village.” If so, the West Village is full of crazy, lying, violent old racists who hate everybody. The publisher of the WestView News is a demented, savage octogenarian named George Capsis. He keeps assaulting people in public. In…
Why I’m optimistic
July 5, 2023
You may have heard of Kendall Jones, the teenaged cheerleader who goes big-game hunting in Africa. People call it a sport, but I don’t apply that term to life-and-death struggles. I’d much rather we leave wild animals alone. If there’s a need to cull them, I don’t think we should have our pictures taken cuddling…
The Internet of things
July 5, 2023
A while back I learned a new phrase: “the Internet of things.” Here’s the actual definition. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the…
On mandated forgiveness
July 3, 2023
Louis Zamperini died today at the age of ninety-seven. He was an Olympic distance runner and the subject of Laura Hillenbrand’s book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I read the book and enjoyed it until the end. Zamperini forgave the Japanese war criminals who tortured him, even though they…
They still want to kill you
July 2, 2023
I wrote a post about Caliph Ibrahim, the leader of the new Islamic State. He issued his first official statement as the new caliph; in it, he says that the mujahedin will take over the world. I got a little pushback over that post. It’s a criticism I hear often, so I thought I’d address…
Time for nationwide psychiatric intervention
July 1, 2023
The past couple of days have been truly astonishing. I’ve never seen so many people lose their minds in concert. What we need is nationwide psychiatric intervention. I’m talking, of course, about Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human services et al v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., et al. We’re perilously close to collapse as a…