Even Dr. Birx has her limit, sort of
I hope you, too, remember Dr. Birx’s transparently ridiculous praise of Donald Trump* in late March: “He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data.”
Orange Crate Art
“Free Letters”
The New York Times reports on a theater professor’s COVID-era letter-writing service.
Mystery actor
Recognize her?
Good Reports
Mark Hurst, who wrote the excellent book Bit Literacy, has a new website, Good Reports, with recommendations for online products and services that are “viable alternatives to exploitative Big Tech services.”
Nancy in the wind
“Boy --- what a wind”
To read today
Heather Cox Richardson’s latest Letter from an American might be just the thing you, too, need to read today.
“Nancy 11/1/2020 strip”
Olivia Jaimes once again expands the possibilities of what’s possible in panels.
The death tour, continued
“A group of Stanford University economists who created a statistical model estimate that there have been at least 30,000 coronavirus infections and 700 deaths as a result of 18 campaign rallies President Trump held from June to September.”
Breaking news
Last night I dreamed the breaking news that Donald Trump* was replacing Mike Pence with an unidentified woman.
Saturday night lineup
Is there a viewer anywhere who can name every current Saturday Night Live cast member?
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Tubes watched in the kitchen.”
“Rats!”
The Great Pumpkin and Psalms.
Naked City meta
An actor playing a cop playing a screen hoodlum, an actress playing a nurse, and an actress playing an actress playing a screen airline hostess.
“Mother, I’m a poet!”
A detail from Douglas Crase’s remembrance of John Ashbery, friend and fellow poet.
The daily news, from a historian
Daily news write-ups by Heather Cox Richardson, historian. A good alternative to endless television.
“You’re gonna get better”
That anyone still cheers for this shambles of a human being amazes me.
Naked City exchange names
WAverly and PLaza.
Waller Razaf Costello & Batiste
I was trying to pin it down all through Elvis Costello’s “Hey Clockface” — where do I know those chord changes from? Fats Waller.
Bob Woodward, insightful
“I honestly think this gets to a point where there’s a moral dimension to it.” Gosh, ya think?
“This isn’t Wal-Mart!”
At a local business today, the owner attempted to put us at ease: “You don’t have to wear your mask. This isn’t Wal-Mart!” Elaine decided to mess with him: “We may have been exposed.”
What’s with the Strand?
According to The Baffler, Nancy Bass Wyden, the Strand’s owner, bought “between $3 million and almost $7.9 million” of assorted stocks between April and September. Meanwhile, employees (those who hadn’t been laid off) went without adequate PPE and cleaning supplies.
Mar-a-Lago
That house with the signs and the pool and the lawn furniture all over the place: it would be really immature and small-minded to make fun by calling it Mar-a-Lago, don’t you think?
Buying “shoes”
I was in a shoe store. My total at the register: $501.94. Now there’s a mixture of the mundane and the bizarre, the two poles of my COVID-era dream life.
“Nice, heavy notebooks”
Donald Trump*’s surrogate’s recent presentation to Lesley Stahl of a big bound book allegedly containing a healthcare plan reminded me of Walter Galt’s explanation of the notebook system at his high school. A passage from Daniel Pinkwater’s The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death.
Overheard
“This is a three-quarter-length child.”
Alvin & Company
As a lifelong resident in the world of “supplies,” I’ll miss Alvin & Company.
Deevie and diskey
Slang of the smart set, from Robertson Davies’s What’s Bred in the Bone.
Something Kamala Harris said
“Our democracy is as strong as our willingness to fight for it.”
Bye, Odwalla
Did you know that the juice company took its name from the work of the Art Ensemble of Chicago?
Hi and Lois watch
Here, as in a recent New Yorker cartoon, a dream of blue leaves.