Finn is a really long cat ..read more

The Bird, The Cage & The Forest by Max Ernst. We begin with a brief health update. I’m on the disabled list for Jazz Fest. It’s the first time I’ve missed it since I moved to New Orleans. I can’t do all the walking and standing involved in festing. Wait until next year. My recovery hasn’t exactly stalled but it has slowed down. It reminds me of charging an iPhone. It’s easy to get to 90% but the last 10% is difficult, My long range prognosis is good, but the short range reality is frustrating. Oh well, what the hell. Frank Zappa composed this week’s theme song for his 1969 album Hot Rats ..read more

It’s another minimalist Friday Cocktail Hour with only two versions of the week’s tune. I blame the hypnotist, y’all. Hypnotized was written by Bob Welch in 1973. It was one of Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hits in the pre-Buckingham-Nicks era. It’s got me hypnotized… We begin with Fleetwood Mac: Richard Perry was the hottest producer in the business when he worked with The Pointer Sisters: That’s it for this week. Even if I can’t go, let’s drink to the first weekend of Jazz Fest. It’s what Mac, Irma, Allen, and Aaron would want. Never argue with them ..read more

Medea Escaping by Marilyn Belford. There’s been a lot of hand wringing and drama from otherwise sensible people such as Dahlia Lithwick and David Kurtz over yesterday’s Supreme Court argument. It was terrible, rotten, and horrible BUT people need to stop expecting the Supreme Court to save us. The Roberts Court can’t even save itself. In a sane world that argument would lead to a swift and unanimous opinion with a trial to follow forthwith. This is not a sane world. We have to deal with the craziness and rise above it instead of shrinking in its face. I’ve written many times about the need to ..read more

Screen grab of a Dave McCormick senate campaign commercial, showing the hedgefund CEO hanging out in a place he wouldn’t be caught dead in without camerapeople nearby. Pennsylvania held its primary this week, which was kind of hidden in the news due to the presidential nominations being locked up, and also one of the nominee’s trial opening on Monday. And oh yeah, something about campus protests (you may have heard about that). The biggest sign that there is an election coming up is the number of campaign commercials. They are increasing. I live in a pretty red area in general despite being 10 ..read more

Another day, another Costco box. Perry Mason is not English but his humans fancy British crime shows, which is apropos of nothing ..read more

One of the few moves in the direction of transparency SCOTUS has made is to allow the streaming of oral arguments. I’ve only listened a few times because I’d rather read transcripts or summaries by lawyers better versed in the facts of the case. This time. we’re all depressingly familiar with the facts of the case and the bonkers argument made by Team Trump. Remember when I talked about MELOB aka the moral equivalent of live blogging? That goes for today: It’s not just for the Trump porn star hush money election interference trial. This is the pregame part of the post with snide remarks and i ..read more

It’s been a busy political week and it’s not over yet. Here’s some music to read court transcripts by. This time I am going to focus on some of my favorite choral music (in no particular order). First up is Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville:  Summer of 1915”. Just about everyone knows Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”, but there’s more to his catalogue than that. The text is an edited version of a poem of the same name by James Agee. I have always especially loved this part: All my people are larger bodies than mine, … with voices gentle and meaningless like the voice of sleeping birds. One is an a ..read more

Wednesday is the day off in the Trump porn star hush money election interference trial, so David Pecker has not finished his testimony. He’ll bring more wood tomorrow, but I’ll be focusing on the Supreme Court’s belated absolute immunity hearing instead. Once again, I came up with a swell title, David’s Peckermony, so I had to figure out how to use it. When in doubt, do a Top Ten List. It’s time to dust off my thesaurus. I just lied like Defendant Trump; I used Thesarus.com. The list is less about David’s Peckermony than his life as a tabloid scumbag. All the words apply to the Indicted Impea ..read more

I have a mostly hate/partly tolerate relationship with NextDoor. It’s useful for when there is a widespread power outage, but mostly it’s spam and scammers, with an occasional wingnut political post (I live in West Virginia so it comes with the territory). The other day I saw this post: Hello fellow mountaineers! I am one of you normal folks and I am running for office to try and stop the federal government from taking more of our money and freedom and liberty. We have 6 kids and I work 3 jobs just to pay all the bills. Was I intrigued? Hell yeah. So I went to his website. He’s Bryan McKinney ..read more