Category Archives: Popular Culture

Bright Star

We did take a break from plumbing last night to go see the musical at the Ahmanson. It had some of the same cast as the Broadway production, including the lead, who was fantastic. Here’s the original review (spoiler free, with which I largely agree).

I saw Steve Martin live when I was young, during the Carter administration, and he was doing his SNL schtick, with the arrow through the head. But even then his banjo playing impressed. We also saw his band with Edie Brickell (co-author of the musical) at the Hollywood Bowl a couple years ago. I really think that Steve Martin is one of the most talented men of our age.

[Tuesday-afternoon update]

Jon Gabriel defends Steve Martin from James Lileks. I don’t often disagree with James, but Jon is right.

[Bumped]

Busy

Watching football while replacing all the plumbing under the kitchen sink. Trap is clogged, and while we were renting it a decade ago, some idiot glued in two-inch ABS down there that’s impossible to get apart without cutting it off. It will give me a chance to get the disposal off to replace the old web in its throat, and put in separate traps for each sink, plus make it much easier to work on in the future.

[Monday-morning update]

Well, that turned into an adventure. Ended up replacing everything under the sink, including disposal, and still not sure I solved the drain problem, and won’t know until I go get an extension for the dishwasher drain hose.

[Monday-morning update]

Got all the plumbing put together, and determined that the drain problem was indeed downstream. Just paid a plumber $160 to snake it, and now it’s running clear. All in all, job cost about $450, but that included a powerful quiet new disposal. Hate to think what a plumber would have charged to do everything I did.

The Trump Takeover

In another thread, I learned that, apparently, I am not to criticize the God-King. Jonah is getting tired of it, too:

What I find so shocking is not so much the capitulation but the terms of the surrender. Or, rather, I should say the term — singular — of surrender, because there seems to be only one requirement expected of Republicans: Lavish praise on Donald Trump no matter what he does or says. Or at the very least, never, ever criticize him. Policy is an afterthought.

Yup. This is a cult (just as it was with Obama). Of course, I feel even more free to dispense such heresies, given that I’ve never even been a Republican. And then, this:

I’m more interested in the psychological factors animating commentators and the rank-and-file Trumpublicans of the GOP.

They also talk about wanting to get things done and the importance of fulfilling the Trump “agenda.” But they reserve their purest passion and most sustained vitriol not for people who don’t vote with Trump, but for people who do vote with Trump but who also refuse to remain silent. The same holds for Trump himself.

Why? Well, in the president’s case, the answer is obvious: his own Brobdingnagian yet astoundingly fragile ego. Because Trump cares so little about policy, he can forgive policy differences quite easily. What he can’t forgive is anyone even hinting that the emperor’s new clothes are, at best, invisible to the naked eye.

He’s a child. I’m glad she lost, I’m glad he’s stealthily rolling back regs, and I’m glad that he’s fixing the judiciary, but I weep at what someone in the same position, not so flawed, could be accomplishing.

The Art Of The Deal Writer

Trump is the same man-child he was at seven as he was at seventy:

“Along the way, he failed to develop the qualities of character that most of us do in the natural course of growing up to a greater or lesser extent – honesty, empathy, generosity, reflectiveness, the capacity to delay gratification and appreciate or subtlety and nuance, and above all a conscience, an inner sense of right and wrong,” the writer said.

This rings very true to me, based on my own external observations.

But Obama is a man-child in his own way, as well. Another similarity between the two.

Lisa Bloom

Wow. Like her mother, she really is a hypocritical piece of work:

‘You know what is truth, Lisa? I feel like people should know that you’ve been calling my literary agent and saying there’d be money for me if I got on the “Harvey’s Changed” bandwagon?’ the actor wrote.

‘You told her that I should care about HIS reputation. How HE has a family now and how HE has changed. Well, guess what? I’ve always had a family and that didn’t stop him from assaulting me.’

[Update later morning]

Hollywood’s masculinity deficit.

Harvey Weinstein Destroyed Hollywood

Now what?

What does this all mean? Hollywood is worse than you thought it was, even than I thought it was. And I worked there for years, observing things close up. These people — led by Weinstein as the local Henry VIII, now decamped for Europe for an Anthony Weiner-style rehab — have solidified themselves as some of the biggest hypocritical fakes in recorded history, deceiving themselves even more, if that’s possible, than they deceive the rest of us.

Can you imagine how it’s going to be watching this year’s Oscars as they coop up awards while making political pronouncements on whatever cause strikes their superficially conventional (but personally sick) fancies, especially if those causes express veiled contempt for the morals of those clods in flyover country who are supposed to be their audience?

Speaking as a member of the Academy since the 1980s, I won’t be watching. It’s over for me, especially since Joan Rivers is no longer with us to lend a certain amused cynicism to the vulgar orgy of self-congratulation. And I suspect I won’t be alone. Hollywood has become the new NFL. People will soon be turning it off.

As he says it’s an opportunity for conservative investors. Which they’ll miss.

[Thursday-morning update]

More thoughts from Allahpundit:

Middle America has always suspected the movie industry of being a den of perverts, cutthroats, and sociopaths. Now here’s Weinstein apparently proving it’s worse than everyone thought. And as more comes out on others, it may get worse still.

Yep.