It will never fail to amuse me that neither David Bowie nor Queen thought the song "Under Pressure" was really much good at the time, and it actually only got to #29 in the US charts. "Ice Ice Baby" & Mercury's death seemingly revived its rep. The video for "Under Pressure," which I remember from my VH-1 youth, burned itself into my memory banks the first time I saw in a way few other videos ever did ("Once In A Lifetime" is another obvious one). Neither Queen nor Bowie appear in it. It's all intercut images. Haunting.

I hate that song, and Stephen Stills was a notorious cad and drug-addled megastar, but here's something else to note about Stephen Stills: the guy could play guitar damn well, loved playing with blues, R&B, and soul giants, would do it for free, and was *thrilled* by this cover.

https://twitter.com/polanskydj/status/1661566468666867716

NORMIE TAKE: Stephen Stills? The CSN guy? That hippie shit is so lame.

GALAXY BRAIN TAKE: Stephen Stills was the proto-John Mayer prove me wrong the beats all fit right down to being an actually technically wonderful player.

10th century Arab geographer Ibn Hawqal wrote an entire book, sadly lost to us, about how disgustingly ignorant peasants of Palermo were during the period of the Arab conquest of Sicily. Apparently they couldn't carry on logical argumentation and primarly grew & ate onions, raw. If you know anything about me, you know that I too would have hated 10th-century Palermitans.

I am going to do something foolish, and attempt persuasion on the internet. I will try to explain to the partisan or inexperienced why Alito's interview is a huge deal, and why it cannot really be gainsaid.

https://twitter.com/EsotericCD/status/1652071277773946880

First of all: SCOTUS Justices do not give interviews freely, or lightly. They know every word of theirs is under scrutiny. This was not a street-corner interaction caught on a bystander's iPhone. This was a carefully arranged WSJ interview held for weeks before publication.

I hope everyone understands there is a centrally coordinated campaign against the legitimacy of SCOTUS behind this rash of phony stories about purported financial conflicts (ones actual lawyers know are BS). I mean, approve or disapprove, I don't care. But know that's it's an op. For example, I'm being told now that it's a "scandal" (?) that John Roberts' wife works in legal placement and recruiting.

Uh. Why? Why is that a scandal? Only idiots or the dishonest would think that a problem. (Lawyers all know: no conflict.) Should she have quit her job?

Ban TikTok, yes. But not like this...not like this. My latest for @NRO: nationalreview.com/corner/we-need… I am not attuned to the paranoid style of politics, but it strikes me that signing off on legislation so potentially and immediately abusable by the state is like setting the welcome mat out for Dracula along w/a fresh pint of blood & an invitation to come on in and sit a spell.

I still regularly put on the YouTube compilation of every single Norm Macdonald Weekend Update. It's amazing to hear now-classic jokes utterly flopping, hear one immortal line after another (famous jokes literally following sequentially). Inspiring.
youtube.com/playlist?list=… Hearing it all consecutively also gives you wonderful insight into how Macdonald (and writing partner Jim Downey) honed their running gags, zeroing in on observations from the mid-'90s that made the entire audience gasp with laughter because you weren't supposed to...just SAY it.

So I guess I understand why everyone loves BAND OF BROTHERS now. Just finished the second episode, watched the BBC reboot Moriarty get killed by a grenade (that guy is always either "dead at the end of the episode" or the villain), Damian Lewis say a silent prayer, and I'm hooked.

I've never seen HBO's BAND OF BROTHERS. Damian Lewis will forever be either the turncoat hostage who improbably got elected to Congress and then was executed by the Iranians OR a man valiantly fighting psychic alien shitweasels to me.

But I have HBO Max.

Should I bother? Gosh, it's a shame; I was prepared to spend the weekend binging this series, but based on the overwhelmingly negative ratings in the responses I guess I'll just watch the entire Michael Bay TRANSFORMERS series instead and livetweet that.

You really just can't overstate how fundamentally satisfying Sun-era Johnny Cash (mid-to-late '50s) was. I've listened to approximately 527 separate live Grateful Dead performances of this song. But as great as Jerry & Bob are, the gut-level simplicity of Johnny's original? That's what makes a man want to sing at a bar.

Here is the greatest song that David Crosby ever wrote, and the greatest recording The Byrds ever made. There's a reason you don't know it better, and that story is one of the quintessential David Crosby legends in and of itself. R.I.P. The reason you probably have no idea this song exists is b/c it was a single that didn't chart high, then the band fired Crosby midway through 1967 and declined to include it on the upcoming LP. They did, however, put a horse's head on the cover where Crosby would've been.

Rarely noted: Kurosawa could be pretty witty. This exchange, from SEVEN SAMURAI. SEVEN SAMURAI seems like it should a difficult film for me to sell to you: a 1950s B&W Japanese film in subtitles. But it's not. Look at Takashi Shimura's amazingly expressive face & bearing alone: he evokes Japanese Morgan Freeman, which is precisely his role in the film.

I think I'm going to watch COOL HAND LUKE for the first time. Never a bad time to knock out a classic. I know several references to COOL HAND LUKE via cultural osmosis (look, I was a Guns 'N Roses fan as a kid, of course I caught some stuff). But as God is my witness I did not know until 1 minute ago that the "any man [caught doing x] spends a night in the box" comes from this.

Be that as it may, you can hardly criticize Republican pundits (the pols should know how to dodge a bit) for commenting on a nothingburger like <checks notes> the FBI executing a search warrant on the President at his home to seize classified information he had absconded with.

https://twitter.com/GiancarloSopo/status/1598756379929477147

These are the wages of Trump, my friends. Thus shall they ever be.

This is real genuine fire from Douglas K. Murray.

https://twitter.com/WeAreCanProud/status/1598334823591866369

Apparently it's from a recent installment of a debate forum in Toronto called The Munk Debates. @mtaibbi and @douglaskmurray arguing "Resolved: Do Not Trust The Mainstream Media" and @michelleinbklyn & Malcolm Gladwell in defense. The Nos had it going in but Yes won after debate.

This is, for once, a silly fashion trend that I'd really like to see take off. I like the Big Hat.

https://twitter.com/Sam4TR/status/1596980982804275200

Big hat.
Big suit.
Big head.

Fuentes is weird b/c it almost feels like he started out as a performative caricature of a white nationalist racist type, as an experiment in trying to gain popularity, and then wholly embraced it, becoming even more of a caricature. But everything is utterly hollow at the core. And that's really my only observation about a person I otherwise find to not only be boring, but unworthy of even the effort it requires me to summon focused intellectual contempt. He comes across like a spindly teenager trying on racism awkwardly like David Byrne's "big suit."

I am realizing that one of the worst gaps in the @Political_Beats show archive is our failure to find a guest who loves The Temptations. Not just because the music is endlessly great (much of it truly timeless), but because there's such a great NARRATIVE to tell there too. It works on two levels: the guys in the group themselves and their various clashes (ah, David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks, two OGs of soul), but also the production rivalries and Motown politics of it all. I've wanted to tell this story for years, it's riveting. And the music!

"I started smoking when I was a kid, I think when I was 14 and I thought 'I'll look really cool if I start smoking' because I didn't get along with anybody. So I started smoking, and wouldn't you know it, the most predictable thing happened: I 𝑑𝑖𝑑 look cool." - Norm Macdonald As for me, I started smoking at age 14 literally because -- this may be the single most embarrassing thing I've ever confessed in public -- I really enjoyed having something to do with my hands while I read a book.

It's agonizingly true. I hid it from everyone in high school!

Everyone who wants the MSM to eat a plate of crow over the Club Q shooting and assignation of motives: wait a bit beyond a lawyer's claim in a filing?

The reason I write this is because that's MY first instinct too. And I've been headbutted by reality enough not to trust it. "assignation" is a word that applies to secret romantic trysts at the Dark End of the Street.

the word I was supposed to use was "assignment." alas, no edit button.

Trying to decide whether it's a Thanksgiving Break night where I post happy Phil Collins music, or just get really weird and explain exactly to you what all those Pixies lyrics from COME ON PILGRIM and SURFER ROSA *actually* mean. Because let's talk about "Holiday Song".... Charles Thompson IV, aka Black Francis aka Frank Black, wrote lyrics in his early days for Pixies directly informed by his Assemblies of God religious upbringing. And the implications of them are terrifying.