Cross Town Thoughts
Some things still happen this year. We celebrated Dr. Husband’s 72nd. Even though he cooked us a fabulous veal chop with vidalia onion fig sauce, french beans and garlic roasted potatoes dinner.
We did get him a Magnolia Bakery cake. And mAdBen had Tommy Chong personally wish him a Happy Birthday.
But. No Marathon last Sunday. Nor fireworks. Foil capes. Families running over West 74th toward CPW to congratulate.
We still get to vote today. Semi-normal.
As college students, we had to type footnotes on the bottom of each page in our term papers. Back then, with an IBM Selectric, even with the backspace eraser, that meant re-typing pages for days. Just to organize the stupid format so everything fit. And. We had to read all of the footnotes in a text, which seemed so tedious.
Later learned to love great writers’ footnotes. Many were better than the core work itself. David Foster Wallace had the funniest footnotes ever. They could go on for pages and were laugh-out-loud biting wit.
Nephew Matt Levine is the DFW of Finance, with a happier ending. Matt’s Bloomberg Money Stuff column is stuffed with clever footnotes. For that and other stuff, he is profiled in the NYTimes.
One of the few rainy mornings on the South Fork this summer. So. Checked into reality for a bit.
Michael J. Sandel’s Column – New York Times caught my eye. That disdain for non-college-educated voters is the last acceptable prejudice. Labeling groups with condescending remarks such as “people who cling to their god and their guns” or “baskets of deplorables”.
Suggestion to media elite:
Read J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. For the first time or again.
Semantics matter. Defund the Police does not mean Reform the Police. Once you have to explain you’ve lost the cause.
Black Lives Matter elicited backlash from some who took issue that all lives should matter. It took a long time, but now has become the accepted slogan of racial injustice by law enforcement. CHAZ has been dumped and replaced in Seattle for some stupid reason.
Make America Great Again. MAGA is immediately recognized as the Trump supporters’ brand. Whereas Hillary’s was I’m With Her. What?
A new ad attacking Biden has the tag So Wrong for So Long. Don’t have to explain it, so it sticks. Does Biden even have a bumper sticker?
C’mon Dems. Tag lines work. Get better at it!
Schwab PGA Tournament storyline coincidentally apt. Harold Varner III in contention. One of few ever Black golfers to win or even play. Without galleries, it’s up to Nick Faldo to give us some good gossip. Like Bryson deChambeau drinking crazy amounts of protein shakes. Thus, the gut. Hasn’t improved his annoying slow rudeness.
Knives Out. Don’t see many movies. But. This got major nominations and awards? For ensemble. Okay, good cast, mostly bad acting. Daniel Craig’s accent was distractingly awful. Original Screenplay. Really? Pretty flimsy. Campy at best. Must have been a bad year for film.
Traveling through current parts unknown, it is fitting that we remember Anthony Bourdain today. Lamenting the loss of this visionary poet, raconteur, chef as we pass by shuttered bistros and shattered dreams.
Nostalgic for Tony’s New York of debauchery and mystery. What would he do to resurrect the City and its dining scene.
We didn’t have enough to worry about. Now the racial injustice protests have spread across the entire country. Even here outside our window and all over the Upper West Side.
And. Yes. There is still that other pandemic. Doesn’t look like these crowds are social distancing or wearing masks. Which is worse? Getting Covid or hit by a bullet? Such choices.
Maybe we should all get into a SpaceX rocket and get outta here!
Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino’s re-writing of the Manson Family murder spree. Brad Pitt a happy-go-lucky hero.
Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood. Period piece with anachronistic wish-list of political correctness. Rock Hudson as his true Roy Fitzgerald. Pedantic message-laden editing that re-casts racial, social & Oscar history.
But. Happy endings are necessary now more than ever.
NYTimes article about Ronan Farrow’s “Resistance Journalism”. In other words, he did not prove many of his inflammatory conspiracy theories. Sound familiar? Journalism is an anachronism in this media environment. Cable News always has a clear bias and agenda as do most networks. Newspapers have had a point of view for decades. It’s rare to find any true journalists anymore. Ronan Farrow is clearly not one, either. Most people are happy to read what they want to believe on the left or right, that matches their righteous indignation and moral outrage. But. It’s a sad commentary on what once was an honored profession.
Frank Bruni wondered whether it is better to vote for a “confused” or “corrupt” candidate. Is that the choice we’re left with? If Biden’s bumper sticker is I’m not Him, it’s as uninspired as I’m with Her was in 2016. No driving message to vote FOR.
And. While I’m at it. If Sports announcers don’t change their remote commentary to fit the times with a lot more enthusiasm and detailed color, it’ll be a boring slog without fans or multiple cameras in real time. The Skins golf exhibition was unwatchable for more than ten minutes.
Rodrigo Márquez is the son of Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.
Rodrigo writes a letter to his late father in today’s NYTimes. He wonders what Gabriel would think about the current coronavirus given his plots around an insomnia pandemic and cholera. Perhaps that luck and fate determine whether one suffers and dies alone or surrounded by love.
Ironically, Rodrigo’s film Four Good Days about addiction was screened at Sundance this past January where it is said the coronavirus may have had the earliest detected spread in the U.S.
Side Trek . NYC 