The Birth of American Television, and More

The first American television broadcast was on July 2nd, 1928, ninety-six years ago today.

David Foster Wallace- "Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests. It's all about syncretic diversity: neither medium nor audience is faultable for quality."

He said that Alexis de Tocqueville noted in 1830 that American culture is devoted to easy sensation and mass-marketed entertainment. We are into, "spectacles vehemant and untutored and rude," that "stir the passions more than to gratify the taste." That's definitely us- de Toqueville had us pegged nearly 200 years ago.

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Betty Grable left us on this day in 1973.

She had perhaps the most famous legs of the 20th century, insured for a million dollars back in the mid-40s. I wonder what they're worth now.

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A homeless person pooped in our backyard. NIMBY tends to have a negative connotation!

July 2, 2023

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Don Drysdale left us on this day too, in 1993.

Mickey Mantle- "I hated to bat against Drysdale. After he hit you he'd come around, look at the bruise on your arm and say, 'Do you want me to sign it?'"

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George Carlin:

Rights. Boy, everyone in this country is always running around yammering about their fucking rights. I have a right, you have no right, we have a right, they don't have a right... Folks, I hate to spoil your fun, but there's no such thing as rights, okay? They're imaginary. We made them up! Like the Boogie Man... the Three Little Pigs, Pinocchio, Mother Goose, shit like that.

Rights are an idea, they're just imaginary, they are a cute idea... but that’s all: cute and fictional. But if you think you do have rights, let me ask you this, where do they come from? People say, 'Well, they come from God, they're God-given rights.' Aw fuck, here we go again... the God excuse. The last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument, 'It came from God.' Anything we can’t describe must have come from God...

Rights aren't rights if someone can take 'em away. They're privileges, that's all we've ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter and shorter.

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One of my favorite jokes:

An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.” A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

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I once saw an old gravestone that gave me some really good advice: "Reader, my early fate you see. Wisely prepared to follow me."

I've been following that advice for about 25 years, and I think tonight I found out what it's about. When you are 46 years old, don't run when it's 93 degrees out.

Hi buddy no no no no I'm too tired I'm too tired.

See that last sentence? I hit voice-to-text, but then Gretel rushed in and started messing with me. I can't remember what I was going to say next, but there's no way it could have captured the scene more perfectly.

July 2, 2020

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When I think of 21st century military dominance, the first thing that comes to mind is... well obviously tanks.

July 2, 2019

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Do you think nuclear bombless Iran is jealous of Trump's love affair with nuclear-armed North Korea? Quite an incentive to get some nuclear bombs!

July 2, 2019

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Fun at the pet store.

July 2, 2017

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The fundamental attribution error in human reason, from The Self Illusion- "When others screw up it is because they are stupid or losers, but when we screw up it is because of our circumstances."

July 2, 2016

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The Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel left us on this day in 2016. These are some of the wisest words that were ever spoken, from his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

"And then I explain to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe."

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The bad news- Pepper puked on my front seat on the way to work. The good news- Pepper had it cleaned up by the time we got there.

July 2, 2015

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An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first orders a beer, the second orders half a beer, the third orders a quarter of a beer, and so on. After the seventh order, the bartender pours two beers and says, “You fellas ought to know your limits.”

July 2, 2014

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I saw Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris last night. Of the 30 or so people in the audience I'd guess 10-12 were Asian girls in the early 20's. Is there a better explanation than the one I'm thinking of?

July 2, 2011

Postscript- I saw a poll one time that concluded 2/3 of British college women would have sex with him. That has haunted me ever since!

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Did you know I have a hedge maze in my backyard? I do, but it's a pretty crappy maze. It's just one strip that separates our backyard from our neighbor's.

July 2, 2010

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Rattlesnake Beans

Sloth relayed to me this conversation he had with a farmer. He knew I'd love it. 

Sloth: You have rattlesnake beans about ready to harvest? 

Farmer: WHAT? I don't have any beans with a stupid name like that! 

Sloth: Well what beans do you have? 

Farmer: Dragon tongue beans. 

Perfect.

July 2, 2009

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Charles J. Guiteau shot President Garfield on this day in 1881. Ramblin' Jack Elliott wrote a song about it.

The wound was actually somewhat minor. He died 80 Days later, after losing a hundred pounds. His doctors somehow poked and prodded the wound with their unwashed fingers. For some reason they thought it would be wise to feed him through his butt instead of his mouth. What was Guiteau's defense? "The doctors killed him; I just shot him."

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Amelia Earhart was last heard from on this day in 1937 as she flew over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first equatorial round-the-world flight.

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Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ending segregation in public places. I assume Clarence Thomas wants the Supreme Court to revisit the law.

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Roger Federer stunned Pete Sampras in the fourth round of Wimbledon on this day in 2001. That day is seen as the changing of the guard to the new era dominated by Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.

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Hermann Hesse was born on this day in 1877.

From Demian- "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."

From Steppenwolf- "Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest."

From Narcissus and Goldmund- "We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement."

From Peter Camenzind- "I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us."

From Siddhartha- "When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal."

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Polish poet and essayist, Wisława Szymborska, was born on this day in 1923. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

“When I pronounce the word Future,

the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,

I destroy it.”

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Larry David was born on this day in 1947. Is there anyone in American comedy who has come up with more hilarious scenarios? The first one that always comes to mind is when he asks his Native American gardener, Wondering Bear, about Cheryl's itchy vagina. Wondering Bear tells him what to do, he tells Cheryl, Cheryl's offended since it's something so private, Larry tells Wondering Bear that Cheryl's offended. Wondering bear tells Larry that if Cheryl went to the white man doctor, the white man doctor would have looked. Perfect.

Just yesterday I reminded a friend that I've been discriminated against twice in my life- once on a Native American reservation where I was student teaching, when a student called me "white boy," and another at work about 10 years ago when she got pissed and called me a "bald bastard."

She said that it wasn't racist. I agreed and told her that it was bigoted! 

I quoted Larry- "We're a group!"

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Jose Canseco was born on this day in 1964, known for baseball, hitting home runs, steroids, and having a baseball bounce off his big steroid head and over the fence for a home run.

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The endlessly quotable French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, left us on this day in 1778. 

"Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces."

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Phillies great, Ed Delahanty, was either pushed, fell, or jumped over Niagara falls on this day in 1903. He had been kicked off a train, drunk and disorderly, threatening other passengers with a straight razor.

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Ernest Hemingway chose to leave us on this day in 1961. The first paragraph of farewell to arms is a knockout, perhaps the best paragraph ever written. It almost puts me in a trance when I read it.

“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swifly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterwards the road bare and white except for the leaves.”

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Vladimir Nabokov left us on this day in 1977.

"Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece."

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Other notable birthdays- Thurgood Marshall (1908), Tom Cruise (1962), Yeardley Smith (1964)

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Other notable deathdays- Lee Remick (1991), Fred Gwynne (1993)

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In "Big Red Son," David Foster Wallace mentions the suicide of porn actress Alex Jordan, which occured on this day in 1995, noting that her suicide note was made out to her pet parrot that had recently died.

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James Stewart left us on this thing in 1997. He's well known for his movie It's A Wonderful Life, where he harassed and naked teenager who was hiding in a bush, saying with great enthusiasm, "WELL THIS IS A VERY INTERESTING SITUATION!" The world would be better off without creeps like that. Am I right?

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You're welcome to come over and sample my white currant sorbet. BUT ONLY ONE BITE!

July 2, 2011

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The Atlantic, July 2, 2017- Donald Trump Is Testing Twitter’s Harassment Policy

What would happen if Twitter suspended the president's account for him inciting violence against the media? That's what I'd call a modern-day presidential problem.

http://theatln.tc/2sv9Ilg

July 2, 2017

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Indiewire, July 2, 2017- Twin Peaks’ Is More Satisfying If You Stop Trying to Figure Out What It Means

"In an age of customizable entertainment and lazy viewing habits, we need Lynch more than ever to wake us up to the wonders of the moving image — and its capacity to dissect the world as we know it. Don’t expect a light at the end of the tunnel; it just keeps getting deeper."

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/07/twin-peaks-2017-david-lynch-what-it-means-1201849586/

July 2, 2017

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In the run up to the 2016 election, Trump joked he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes. 

By the 2020 election, it was a true statement. I mean, if Trump suggested the guy committed treason, he had it coming, right? 

So here we are going into the 2024 election, and somehow the Supreme Court has now given Trump the authority to shoot someone on 5th Avenue, as long as it's part of some nebulous "official act." The location and method that he carries out his official act doesn't matter, does it?

Let me tell you something, anything Trump does, he will consider an official act. Does he strike you as the kind of guy who has limits?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/trump-immunity-seal-team-6/

July 2, 2024

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Our 20-year-old tarantula molted. She hadn't molted in several years, I figured she was done with it. Some of the best moments of my life have been a result of tarantula-skin-related pranks. Glad to have a fresh skin for my toolbox.

July 2, 2023

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I finished this book today, after realizing that I had been reading it for about 10 years... I started it before Gretel was born. Maybe now I'm smarter.

July 2, 2023

Postscript- Found this pic from 9 years ago.

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Someone heckled Patton Oswalt and he responded with a long, angry tirade ending with, "You're going to miss everything cool and die angry."

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Ricky Gervais- “It seems to be true, particularly in middle America, that those most militant about using up fossil fuels, don’t actually believe in fossils”

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Albert Einstein- "It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

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Jung- "There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."

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Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary- "Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others."

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Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses- "Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true."

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Ernest Hemingway- "The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over."

Addendum 

Ernest Hemingway- "Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting."