Swampman, Jesus, Aliens, Sweat Pea and More
On this day in 1671, Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempted to steal England's Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.
Legend has it that his body was exhumed, to make sure that he didn't fake his death, such was his penchant for trickery!
His epitaph:
Here lies the man who boldly hath run through
More villainies than England ever knew;
And ne'er to any friend he had was true.
Here let him then by all unpitied lie,
And let's rejoice his time was come to die.
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It's National Lost Sock Memorial Day. I wonder if it's intentionally 3 weeks before the regular Memorial Day. Either way- never forget.
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Gretel asked me tonight which author was put in jail in Russia. I thought- she's not talking about Dostoevsky is she??? I asked her which one she was asking about. She said it's the one that they were going to shoot but then they let him go at the last second. That's Dostoevsky! I guess I did tell her about that. I asked her why she was thinking about Dostoevsky and she said she didn't know. Bizarre!
May 9, 2023
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Henri Bergson- "For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly."
Reminds me a bit of Bob Dylan, and a lot of Donald Davidson's Swampman thought experiment.
"Suppose a man is out for a walk one day when a bolt of lightning disintegrates him. Simultaneously, a bolt of lightning strikes a marsh and causes a bunch of molecules to spontaneously rearrange into the same pattern that constituted that man a few moments ago. This “Swampman” has an exact copy of the brain, memories, patterns of behavior as he did. It goes about its day, works, interacts with the man’s friends and is otherwise indistinguishable from him. Is the Swampman the same person as the disintegrated fellow?"
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Gretel asked me why people have a birthday party for nobody. I asked what the heck she was talking about. She said there's no such thing as magic, so Jesus can't be magic, so he can't live up in the clouds, so he can't be real, so when they have a birthday party for him they are having a birthday party for nobody.
Uhhh, that wasn't what I was expecting her to say!
Me- Well what if Jesus was real but not magic? Could we have a birthday party for him?
Gretel- That's OK.
Me- Well you're lucky, because that's Christmas. What about the people on the space station though? They live above the clouds.
Gretel- Clouds are made of dust and water so you can't walk on them. There is a lizard that can walk on water and a bug that can walk on water but you cannot walk on a cloud.
Me- You're right, it would be magic for a person to walk on water, but what about the people on the space station above the clouds?
Gretel- They are going around the earth like they are in an airplane, but they are not living above the clouds after they died because that would be magic and that can't happen.
Then Zuzu went on a riff about aliens. It was an enjoyable conversation!
May 9, 2020
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Little Richard left us on this day in 2020. “My music made your liver quiver, your bladder splatter, your knees freeze — and your big toe shoot right up in your boot!”
Here he is with four fans
Gretel and Zuzu paying tributev
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0ukLmnnC6MJZs9FNKh6CNXNNcmMHH9TJW5QQkvyystCHtPEQ2FbqhsCtHhh91xyjFl&id=741063511&mibextid=irwG9G
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Gretel took the plunge and held Bub.
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Steven Wright- "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met."
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Nothing better than playing racquetball with a nice mild-mannered gentleman for the first time and halfway through the game you make a bunch of nice shots and they miss a critical shot and scream out, "FUUUuuuUUUuuuUUUUUUCK!!!" Those have been some of the best moments of my life. Happened again tonight. I found out later that he's a piano professor, which of course makes it all the funnier.
May 9, 2019
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Trump fired Comey! Imagine the cognitive dissonance it would take to believe this is not a cover-up.
May 9, 2017
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The Comey thing is the perfect example of Trump politics at play. Do something shocking that on the surface is a perfect example of corruption, such as firing your FBI director for investigating you. All of his True Believers contended the left just has it all wrong. Then well after the fact, looking back, obviously he did it because he didn't like that Comey was investigating him, and 100% of us would agree. And of course the guy did it on the anniversary of the Nixon impeachment hearings.
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George W. Bush's attorney general, John Ashcroft, was born on this day in 1942. All these guys that I hated, it shocking to find these days that we're on the same side, democracy and truth. Honestly, I don't know if he is on that side, but with a certain type of person you can assume it.
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If you think the prophet Mohammed is invisible, does every blank piece of paper count as a representation of him? More importantly, if the terrorists come to realize this will they blow up every Staples and Office Max?
May 9, 2015
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I was at the grocery store tonight with a baby whose nose started running like Forrest Gump. I didn't have anything to wipe it with......and I don't think I should tell you how I solved the problem.
May 9, 2015
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My scheme to have my baby fall in love with The Wizard of Oz worked more perfectly than I ever could have imagined. I wonder if I can make her fall in love with Eraserhead just as easily...
May 9, 2015
Postscript- The answer, obviously, was no and that I shouldn't have tried.
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Paper Moon was released on this day in 1973.
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On this day in 1990, Norm MacDonald's first Network television appearance, on David Letterman.
https://www.cracked.com/article_38165_norm-macdonalds-network-tv-debut-on-letterman-is-delightfully-1990.html
And years later, his gem of a Necrophiliacs Anonymous joke.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/FJ3VVVUyXrnh8R58/
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Abolitionist, John Brown, was born on this day in 1800. Pete Seeger:
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
But his soul goes marching on…
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Country Music star, Hank Snow, was born on this day in 1914. A great quote:
"It's really sort of morbid, but she said her mother wanted to see me all her life. And when she died, she made just one request: that a picture of me be put into her casket. So somewhere in England, I'm in a casket."
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Screenwriter James L. Brooks was born on this day in 1940.
"Screenwriting is no more complicated than old French torture chambers, I think. It's about as simple as that."
I bet a majority of us feel the same way about our job.
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Singer-songwriter, Tommy Roe, was born on this day in 1942. Sweet Pea is just a quintessential oldie. Emma and I first bonded over it.
I went to a dance just the other night
I met a girl there she was out of sight
I asked a friend of mine who she could be
he said that her friends just call her Sweet Pea
https://youtu.be/JCKXxJRgVgc
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Tony Gwynn was born on this day in 1960. I remember that year he almost hit .400. Here's Greg Maddux talking about him in the Washington Post after he left us in 2014.
“You just can’t do it. Sometimes hitters can pick up differences in spin. They can identify pitches if there are different release points or if a curveball starts with an upward hump as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. But if a pitcher can change speeds, every hitter is helpless, limited by human vision. Except for that [expletive] Tony Gwynn.”
Top praise!
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On this day in 1992, as a Phillie, Dale Murphy hit his 398th and last home run.
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Another notable birthday- Rosario Dawson (1979)
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James Jones left us on this day in 1977. Joan Didion reflects on his legacy in In the Islands:
"Certain places seem to exist mainly because someone has written about them. Kilimanjaro belongs to Ernest Hemingway. Oxford, Mississippi, belongs to William Faulkner, and one hot July week in Oxford I was moved to spend an afternoon walking the graveyard looking for his stone, a kind of courtesy call on the owner of the property. A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image, and not only Schofield Barracks but a great deal of Honolulu itself has always belonged for me to James Jones."
And later...
"He had bought a beer and gone back to Paris. In June of 1977 he was dead and it was not possible to buy a copy of his great novel, his living novel, the novel in which he so loved Honolulu that he remade it in his image, in any of Honolulu’s largest bookstores. “Is it a best-seller?” I was asked in one, and the golden child in charge of another suggested that I try the psychic-science shelf. In that instant I thought I grieved for James Jones, a man I never met, but I think I grieved for all of us: for Jones, for myself, for the sufferers of mean guilts and for their exorcists, for Robert E. Lee Prewitt, for the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and for this golden nitwit who believed eternity to be a psychic science."
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A mysterious ancient Roman dodecahedron. Nobody knows what they were for.
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Huffington Post- Obama Backs Gay Marriage
Welcome to 2012 Obama. (Remember 2009? when Democrats won both houses of Congress with a mandate? That might have been a good time to show support.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/obama-gay-marriage_n_1503245.html
May 9, 2012
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Daniel Dennett- "I think that there’s a sort of mirror image, an opposite of scientism, which has a real tin ear for the breathtaking awesomeness of science. All you have to do is listen to David Attenborough or Carl Sagan or other brilliant expositors of science to see just how jaw-droppingly beautiful the world is."
http://religiondispatches.org/churches-can-no-longer-hide-the-truth-daniel-dennett-on-the-new-transparency/
May 9, 2015
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Damn, these two...
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Politico- He Alone Can Fix it: Time for Trump to Testify on Russia Ties
Huh, odd to think that's even possible. And yes...it WOULD clear it up. (Or incriminate him.)
http://politi.co/2q1euob
May 9, 2017
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Knockout compilation. Kubrick's one-pount perspective.
https://youtu.be/flq0t4jrqJQ
May 9, 2020
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The Hill- Trump reflects on Mother’s Day, says in his mother’s eyes he ‘couldn’t do any wrong’
It's not often I agree with Trump, but when I do I feel like I should admit it.
Trump- "I had a great mom. I loved my mom, and she loved me, which... is probably not easy to do. She was so good to me. I couldn't do any wrong, which is a big problem. Maybe that's why I ended up the way I ended up. I don't know. I couldn't do any wrong in her eyes. I don't know."
So he gets it! Yes, the way he ended up is a big problem! He's right, it's VERY hard to love him, and that's putting it way too lightly.
*BTW, to Trump, people who love him are his mom, detractors are his dad.
http://hill.cm/HeVEYFU
May 9, 2020
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Happy Mother's Day.
https://youtu.be/0wGCjMYB1Kk
May 9, 2021
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I thought of a name for a gay baseball-themed porno: Ate Men Out. I can't be the first person to think of that, can I? I'm not going to Google it and find out.
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Einstein- "I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be."
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Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow- "You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures."
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Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story- "Well, the results are in, and once again Microsoft CEO Bill Gates is the richest man in America. Gates says he is grateful for his huge financial success, but it still makes him sad when he looks around and sees other people with any money whatsoever."
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David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature- "Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous."
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Henry David Thoreau- "The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer."
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Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind- “Monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: To argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe—and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.”
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Sendak- “A woman came up to me the other day and said, ‘You’re the kiddie-book man!’ ” Mr. Sendak told Vanity Fair last year. “I wanted to kill her.”
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Emerson- "The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."
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On that note, we'll end on a limerick for good measure:
Said a madam named Mamie La Farge
To a sailor just off of a barge,
"We have one girl that's dead,
With the hole in her head -
Of course there's a slight extra charge."
Addendum
Lincoln's Hippest Pig
At a roadside diner in the early thirties a traveler asked Ernie Edwards for a sandwich with a "slice off of that pig hip." With that, the name of Route 66's arguably most famous diner, the Pig-Hip, was born.
For almost 60 years Ernie ran the restaurant, passing along great stories (and great food, I've heard) from the road's past. He officially retired in 1990 but kept the building open as a museum. I stopped in and talked to him for a few hours on two occasions.
He told me about helping poor travelers during the depression- he'd give them some money and they'd always pay it back once they were on the feet in Chicago. He said he used to do a few favors for Al Capone in exchange for him helping to keep his restaurant open. He told me what the favors were, but if I'd tell you I'd have to… tip off the feds that you've been cheating on your income tax.
He showed me some of his inventions- a hot dog electrifier and a square ice cream scoop.
He told me how he and Colonel Sanders each had small businesses in the thirties, and both had a chance to franchise at about the same time. Colonel Sanders did, and so we have KFC. Ernie opted to fight Hitler instead. Think about that a second- Colonel Sanders made his fortune by choosing to not fight Hitler.
Ernie provided a great life for himself, his wife and all of their children and didn't have to mess with the genetic codes of chickens to do it.
Steak and Shake tried to sue him for using their trademarked colors- black and white.
Ernie and I have identical views concerning the war of, er,… the war on terror.
He's almost 90 years old, lives next to his former business and will still come over and talk for hours to anybody who happens to pull up.
So I was sad to see recently that the Pig-Hip Museum burnt down. This was huge news for the town of Lincoln, Illinois- incidentally the only place named for Abe Lincoln before he became president. According to legend, he christened the town with watermelon juice… whatever in the hell that means.
A local paper took this picture of Ernie in front of the Pig-Hip as it burnt.
I don't know about you, but I think there's a big lesson to be learned from it. Namely, if you can smile while your business for 70 of your 90 years burns to the ground, you sir or ma'am have checkmated death.
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