I agree with only some of this...

Ranking Every Episode Of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer"  on Buzzfeed.

I do agree with most of the low-ranking episodes. And I do get behind the anti-Riley sentiment, completely. And I'm so glad they called out "Flooded" which was the dreariest Buffy episode of all time.

But I will never get why so many rate the "Hush" episode so highly. One of the primary reasons for watching Buffy is for the dialog - and the episode has no dialog.

I also don't get why people say they don't like Season 6, and that it's "so dark." Hello? Guess which season Buffy dies in? Seasons 1 and 5. Not Season 6.

No, in Season 6 Willow raises Buffy from the dead. In Season 6 Buffy and Spike have the hottest sex ever shown on network television (and the Buzzfeed list rightly mentions how unusually explicit the episode "Smashed" is.) Season 6 has one of the most popular episodes, the musical "Once More with Feeling" episode.

Season 6 has the funniest bits with "the Trio" and it has the most tragic and dramatic bits with Dark Willow the season's "Big Bad" - especially when Dark Willow and the Trio collide.

And how awesome of a switch-up is the whole premise of Willow as the Big Bad? In every other season the Big Bad was some scary supernatural alien force. In Season 6 Big Bad is a character who was completely mild mannered and good, but gone berserk on magic and grief. Only Spike has a more extreme character arc, in the other direction. Oh, and Amy who turns herself into a rat in Season 3 and is turned back to herself by Willow in guess which season? That's right, Season 6, and in fact in the episode Smashed - truly one of the greatest Buffy episodes.

Oh, and in Smashed Amy and Willow join magical forces to punish homophobes.

Best episode ever.

There are a few crappy episodes, but Buffy Season 6 is the absolute best. The other seasons in order from best to worst:

Season 5
Season 3
Season 2
Season 1
Season 4
Season 7

I certainly don't count any of the Buffy comic books as actual "seasons" although some misguided souls do.

Lilias Yoga and You

Lilias Folan is a little old lady now, but she was a yoga maverick back in the 1970s, and my first introduction to yoga was through her public television show Lilias, Yoga and You.

You can watch an entire episode from the 70s here. I find Lilias charming in her earnestness and her suburban housewife-hippie chick vibe.

People Magazine did a profile of Folan in 1980.

Originally from Pound Ridge, N.Y., Folan was born Lilias Antoinette Moon and known thereafter as "Muffin" ("Can you see Muffin, Yoga and You?" she asks with a giggle). Her parents divorced when Lilias was 2, and her mother remarried several times, sending her daughter off to boarding school at the age of 9. Lilias later spent two years at Bennington, continued her art studies in Italy and returned home to an early marriage and postpartum depression.  

"I had everything," she says. "A successful husband, two children, a lovely home and a boat in Long Island Sound. But there was a longing in me that just wasn't filled up. I had the blahs." A doctor prescribed exercise, and Lilias spent three years in psychotherapy. Then she discovered yoga. "From the beginning I felt better as a person and a woman," she says. "Also, no one was into yoga then, and part of me liked being a little weird. If anyone asked me at parties, I'd get my leotard and do a headstand. It wasn't until I crashed into a coffee table that I saw how ridiculous it was."  

When her husband, Bob Folan, now president of his own transport company, was transferred to Cincinnati in 1967, Lilias went along and taught yoga. "The anxiety and depression had begun to lift," she recalls, "and I needed a broader, deeper vision. Slowly I began to feel a call." In 1970 she began a series of instructional shows for the local PBS affiliate. By last fall she was carried in 193 cities, pulled in 150 letters a week and boasted converts to yoga like Alan Arkin and Carol Burnett. 

Folan has her own Youtube page.

Lou Grant

One of the things I like about watching the Mary Tyler Moore show is that Lou Grant reminds me of my father. My dad, who has been dead for ten years this June adored Lou Grant - I think he related to him - they definitely had quite a bit in common. Lou Grant was probably the primary reason why my father never missed an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show on Saturday nights.

Ed Asner, who played Lou Grant was five years older than my father, so they had the same cultural references - although Lou Grant was supposed to be a little older than that, which is why he served in World War II, whereas my father served in Korea. Lou Grant was a solid family man, and had a nice paternal relationship with Mary Richards, and was pretty conservative, like my father.

Ed Asner is not a conservative - he's a pretty hard-core lefty. It's widely believed that this is why his spin-off from the MTM show, Lou Grant, was canceled in spite of the fact that it was doing very well in the ratings. I've still never seen the Lou Grant show, I will put that on my to-do list after I watch the complete run of MTM.

So it's hard for me not to feel lots of affection for Ed Asner, and I'm glad he's hanging in there at 84.

Mary Richards is stalked and it's just hilarious!

The phenomenon of stalking and the serious consequences it can have were not recognized during the run of the Mary Tyler Moore show, and so when they wrote Episode 19, in Season 3, about Mary being stalked it was played entirely for laughs.

And worse...

Warren the stalker tells Mary he loves her after one date, and then proceeds to pester her for weeks in spite of her giving him no encouragement at all. Mary asks Rhoda to tell Warren's friend to tell Warren to "bug off."

Instead of bugging off, Warren pays to have the message "Warren loves Mary" on a billboard across from where Mary works, and Lou Grant thinks it's funny. Next Warren shows up to demand Mary come to lunch with him. She refuses to go to lunch and so Ted Baxter tells her she's taking the "hard-to-get routine too far." Then Warren handcuffs himself to Mary, and says "now we're prisoners of love" and tells her the maitre d' at the restaurant has the key so she has to go with him.

Instead of somebody calling the police, Mary is forced to go to lunch with Warren, and when she comes back she is crying, but no longer handcuffed. At least they don't laugh at her, and Lou offers to assault the guy. Mary says it's her own fault for being afraid to hurt his feelings.

By the end of this treatment Mary is cowering in her apartment, with the drapes closed and refusing to answer the phone because she's afraid, that after Warren doing "something humiliating to me for the last eleven days in a row" she's afraid of what he's going to do next. Rhoda comes by and tells her it's her fault because she's "afraid to make a scene."

Mary decides that she won't be afraid to make a scene in the future. So the writers of the episode, Jim Mulholland and Mike Barrie, resolve the stalking like this: soon after the scene where Mary is cowering in her apartment, she is having a "normal first date" at a restaurant with another man, and Warren appears with a mariachi band and a cake that says "will you marry me." Mary naturally assumes it's for her because it's the most logical assumption. So she makes a scene, and it turns out the cake is for another woman that Warren is asking to marry.

But because Mary made a scene, it ruins any chance she had with the other guy. They even have a scene at the end of the episode where she calls the guy and tries to explain why she made the scene - and since stalking wasn't a concept back then she doesn't have the words to explain it, and just gives up and hangs up on the guy.

So in other words, the writers of the show have set up a situation where Mary cannot win: when confronted with a man who won't say no it's either her fault because she's afraid to make a scene, or she'll be punished for making a scene by being humiliated and losing a guy she likes.

Don't ever let anybody tell you that feminism hasn't made things better for women. Things may not be perfect now, but it was much worse 40 years ago.

Well it didn't bother your third husband

Well I'm in the middle of season 3 of the Mary Tyler Moore show and I am getting a little tired of the fact that some guy falls in love with Mary in every other episode. Sure I know, she can turn the world on with her smile, but this is getting ridiculous.

In episode 12 the sixteen-year-old boyfriend of Phyllis's daughter Bess falls in love with Mary. Although it is portentous that she asks him: ""Does't it bother you that I am 15 years older than you are?"

Seven years later Mary Tyler Moore married her mother's doctor Robert Levine, who is eighteen years younger than her.

Tea Reviews

The Tea Reviews web sit I linked to yesterday doesn't list Awake in its top ten best teas, which are:

Rank	Tea	Average
#1	ThepuriTea Red Dragon Pearl	9.85
#2	Jacksons of Piccadilly Fair Trade Assam	9.75
#3	Mariage Freres Marco Polo	9.67
#4	Canton Tea Co. Superior Bai Lin Gong Fu	9.65
#5	American Tea Room Toasted Fig Pu Er Blend	9.57
#6	Culinary Teas Chocolate Mint	9.50
#7	American Tea Room Organic Yunnan Golden Ne	9.49
#8	T-oolongtea.com Ruaysui Sky Crane Honey Bl	9.47
#9	American Tea Room Ruby Black	9.43
#10	Art of Tea Classic Black	9.38

Call me a purist but I don't think tea mixed with flavors like Fig and Chocolate count as real teas. But the American Tea Room Ruby Black and the Art of Tea Classic Black sound pure - and without added flavors.

American Tea Room is their favorite tea company, and I have to say, their Arya Diamond 2013 First Flush Darjeeling SFTGFOP1 looks primo.

I recommend Tazo Tea

They sell Tazo Tea (pronounced tah-ZOH) in the health food section of my supermarket so I hadn't really bothered with it. But now that I'm watching what I eat more these days I tried it and to my surprise it's really good - better than my former favorite brand the British Twinings.

Actually the only Twinings that is really good is Darjeeling. But the Tazo version is even better and the Tazo English Breakfast is way better than the Twinings version. They don't just call it "English Breakfast" though, they have to be fancy and call it "Awake."

At least they just call Darjeeling, "Darjeeling." Although that might be because Darjeeling is its own brand - it's like Champagne, in that it has to come from a specific place - one of the designated tea estates in the Kalimpong area of Bengal. Darjeeling even has its own logo.

Apparently Tazo has been bought by Starbucks, and I have to hand it to Starbucks, they know quality. And I'm sorry, I like their coffee too. I've been told it's not that great, by people who know coffee but I really don't know coffee. Before I ever tried Starbucks, in the late 1990s, my idea of coffee derived from whatever they made at the office. I prefer tea anyway so never really thought much about coffee.

I have to say, the first time I had a Starbucks latte it blew my mind. I didn't know a coffee drink could taste so good. Now latte has too much milk for my taste, and I switched to cappuccino, and I think it tastes great too.

I still like tea better, but it's harder to get good tea than good coffee - although it seems that Starbucks, which makes Tazo available in its coffee shops, has solved that problem too. Although it is annoying that they call everything from Tazo a "tea" when actually, unless the main ingredient is the leaf of the camellia sinensis it isn't really tea, but rather an infusion, or as Wikipedia would have it, a tisane.

Here's someone else who really likes "Awake."

Moving on up

Another fashion observation - the woman on the right is wearing the most modern-looking dress that we've seen yet on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, in this episode from season 2 from 1972.

And the woman on the left of course is the actor Isabel Sanford before she got the gig as Louise Jefferson.

Norwegians would

Speaking of zany MTM fashions...

WHAT is this thing that Mary is wearing? Is she supposed to be Mary Queen of Scots? And for a date with Principal Kaufmann from Room 222?

I don't remember the outfit but strangely enough I do remember the conversation where he tells her that she isn't his type, he needs a "meat and potatoes" kind of woman and she's more like "dessert." Although in my memory I thought Lou Grant said those lines. Thought it's impressive I remembered that much dialog from decades ago.

Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum!

Zephyrus and Hyacinthus. Attic red-figure
cup from Tarquinia,  c. 490 - 480 BCE

This is one of the best things I've ever found on the Internet, this Corpus of Ancient Vases.

I've been fascinated by ancient Greek vases since art school, and here I find that someone has done the sensible thing of collecting information about all ancient Greek vases known to humanity and making that information available in one place - and making it browsable and searchable.

These vases are so fascinating for many reasons - there are so many of them - Wiki claims there are over 100,000 in the CVA - that they give vivid insight into the social customs and beliefs of these people. One of the most riveting being of course the fact that the ancient Greeks were very OK with homosexuality, and scenes of men embracing, courting and even having sex appear on lots of vases.

My favorite type of Greek vase is known as "red figure" - the drawings on those vases are the best of all, thanks to the red images allowing a nice use of brush to create the inner lines. The black figure vases, which preceded the red figure, while beautiful in their own right, tend to have fairly primitive drawings.

They had plenty of other subjects besides homosexuality of course, but their openness about homosexuality is so fascinating because it's such a contrast to our own culture, even now in the age of gay marriage.

And thanks to the Greeks' unashamed love of beautiful men, the men on the red figure vases are often quite cute. Many of the men in ancient Greek vases are often actually desirable, which is much more than you can say for the vast majority of the men depicted in old (if not exactly ancient) Indian or Japanese erotic paintings.

In the case of Indian art the men invariably have cheezy little moustaches, but if they didn't you might think they were women, they have such feminine faces.


And in the case of the ancient Japanese erotica all the men look like they're balding, thanks to the fashion of the time.

I do like the elegant lines, but that fat balding baby look just does not do it for me. If they didn't have arranged marriages their society would have surely died out from lack of female desire.

And don't even get me started on what was supposed to be hot for European men prior to the English Regency period.

So I plan to do lots of checking out of this online Greek vases  repository - not just for the cute guys though, but also just to see some of the vases I've never seen before. Although there are 100,000, only about 100 are shown on the Internet, and museums rarely show their entire collections all at once.

To get a sense of how many vases there are, I've done a  search on just red-figure vases, with the inscription "kalos" (the boy is beautiful) on the vase, and only those in the catalog that have images. The search resulted in 538 vases.

Admittedly the vase images that tend to get reproduced the most are those with the best artwork, but it's still fascinating to look at even a poor drawing by somebody from two thousand years ago.

Fashions on the MTM show

In this image you can see the strange 70s fashions of the Mary Tyler Moore Show - Mary going braless under a hot pink turtle neck and Phyllis wearing a horrendous monstrosity that makes my eyes hurt. Only Rhoda looks modern in her all-black ensemble, except for the gigantic red-white-and-blue scarf she's wearing in her ponytail.

I don't remember the crazy colors because we had a black and white TV.

I also don't remember that Mary went braless. What a unique moment in TV history - I don't think anybody today on TV would go braless.

In this episode Phyllis asks Mary to tell her daughter Bess about sex. I don't remember that either, but it's possible that my mother made my father turn off the TV at that point. So I don't remember that Bess tells Mary that she already heard about sex, because another kid told her about it, and she didn't believe it at first.

That's how I found out about sex too - some kid in school told me, and that was my reaction too - I thought the kid made it up to gross me out. Only when I read my first adult non-fiction book Black Like Me, which describes some sexual situation (I forget what now) did I believe it was true.

"Liking sex” was the preferred euphemism for making or consuming porn

I read something in the NYTimes today which reminded me of our buddy Antonia Crane because it's about attitudes of people in the wonderful world of commercial sex. The writer is at a porn convention:

Instead, over the next few days I found myself absorbing one unrelenting, expertly media-trained “celebratory” paean to commodified sex-positivity after another, and feeling more and more depressed by the hour. The conference’s best-known attendants seemed to respond to all but the most ingratiating questions by swiftly shaming the interlocutor. The porn stars stuck to their talking points and stayed on message. “Liking sex” was the preferred euphemism for making or consuming porn. Conversely, harboring even the slightest ambivalence about porn meant that you categorically “hated sex” and were out to ruin it for everyone else. 

A dominant narrative soon emerged at the conference, in which pornography — and not the Victorian kind with the bloomers and the spankings or whatever — was presented as a bastion of orgiastic disinhibition; a filthy fun-times Arcadia from which sprang nothing but joy and empowerment and marriage and children and unicorns. 

Like all good stories, this one had a villain: “the girlfriend.” A sex-hating, man-foiling human barricade whose cruel, withholding ways sent armies of disconsolate men into the tender embrace of their “favorite” porn stars daily. I was taken aback. I was a girlfriend! I mean, I wasn’t that girlfriend. But the more this version of reality was reified throughout the event, the sadder, the more isolated, the more diminished I became. The worst thing about it was how overwhelming the experience was, and how deviant it made me feel.

It's clear that Antonia Crane has the same attitude, with the slick way she tried to conflate protestations about using sex slaves with disapproval of prostitution. Her message is the same: if you have complaints about any sexual scenario, it means you are anti-sex.

Now I'm sure that Antonia Crane believes she's against rape. But it is clear from her response to commenters in this article that as far as she's concerned, what Max did - having sex with a sex slave, knowing that as a sex slave she couldn't give consent - was a regrettable minor indiscretion.

Now unfortunately Max will never be caught and punished for rape, but what he did was in fact, rape, and he should be punished for it. And it doesn't matter how "remorseful" he is. Instead Crane tells him - and any other rapists - that what they did was understandable human weakness, and it isn't really rape if you pay someone for it.

Antonia Crane makes her living as a dispenser of commercial sex, or more recently as a raconteur of the glories of dispensing commercial sex. And she is vigilant about protecting her product - if she acknowledged that people who use sex slaves are guilty of rape, she'd just ruin the good times for some people, who, like Max either have had sex with sex slaves, or just don't care if the prostitute they are using is a sex slave. You don't want to kill any potential customer's woody with guilt or concern for other human beings' welfare. The attitude that Crane is promoting is that anybody who isn't cool enough to simply brush away concerns about sex trafficking must hate sex.

Antonia Crane, rape apologist

I was amazed and appalled by this "honest" and "human" article which I found via Slate in which sex worker Antonia Crane interviews a former john and he admits to using a woman who was the victim of sex trafficking, knowing she was:

Rumpus: But it’s not consensual. It’s coercion. It’s sex slavery.
Max: And I felt very remorseful when I learned this. And then I did it again.

Crane wants you to believe that this is just a sad but understandable human weakness. In the comments beneath the story she exonerates Max and herself:

It’s clear from the comments above (particularly Mia, Laurie and LDB) that this is a topic where people experience strong visceral feelings. I found Max’s transparency about his experiences with women in the sex industry brave and honest. What’s interesting is human desperation. I don’t think that being a kind, generous client in that situation makes Max a self centered, unfeeling asshole. It makes him honest and human. The disdain that some of you have for this client is, sadly, what my article exposes. You helped me do that. It’s not an article about sex trafficking, but the places we hide ourselves and the ways we connect with people sexually. I’ve never met anyone who condones sex slavery. It’s a horrendous, monstrous thing. Perhaps his interaction with them was a bright spot in their day. Have you ever talked to a woman who has been pimped out and sold? Have you ever given her money? Shelter? 

See it's "human desperation" and the article wasn't about sex trafficking so why are you people making such a tiresome big deal about it? And unless you have personally tried to rescue sex slaves, you are a big hypocrite to point out that having sex with someone who is being held against their will in the sex trade is rape. How dare you insinuate that Max paid the slave master to rape the slave!

Max isn't some poor guy reaching out for human companionship, he's a rapist. And Antonia Crane is fine with rape and she finds you weird and puritanical for having such qualms.

It's people like Antonia Crane who help the sex slavers do what they do. And she's not ashamed to tell the world about it, because she is a moral cretin.

She has a blog - here we see Naomi Wolfe giving her tacit approval to rape apologist Antonia Crane.

More on Moore

So in episode 19 season 1 of The Mary Tyler Moore show Murray has his play produced and the show is trashed by a local critic, but it turns out the critic hates everything, including My Fair Lady and Hamlet.

This inspired me to see what critics had to say about the MTM show back in the day. Well the New Yorker, which can't STFU about the current TV series Girls had nothing to say about the original Girls.

But the New York Times's John J. O'Connor wrote this weirdly snarky review about what is now generally agreed to be the gold standard of television sit-coms, on April 21, 1971:

"Mary Tyler Moore" is a sitcom. 

That is not my latest contribution to the literature of graffiti. That is a fact. A sitcom, as the trade pros would have it, is a situation comedy, one of the most fragile, abused and perishable of television formats. For one super-successful "I Love Lucy," there are probably a couple dozen super-embarrassing duds. A few still manage to survive, though, and at least occasionally are worth closer inspection. 

The "Mary Tyler Moore Show," already on TV's crowded re-run trail, can be seen Saturdays at 9:30 PM over the Columbia Broadcasting System. Among the magic few, it is a new half-hour comedy series this year that actually will be returning next season. 

The format? Mary, a bachelor girl perched precariously around age 30, works for a TV news station in Minneapolis, where - as the bouncy introductory song puts it - she "just might make it after all." So the situations revolve around Mary at work as indispensable secretary-Girl Friday, and Mary at home, as an attractive unmarried on the brink of affairs as numerous as the series is long. 

All right, already, it's a format, no better or worse than most formats. There's the potential for mass empathy, with all those bachelor girls out there in the real world, along with their families and myriad suitors. And there's the potential for longevity, with Mary looking healthy enough to keep cavorting at least until the ripe old age of 45. 

With little or no need for character development, the emphasis is on plot, and that is the key ingredient in the long-running television series…
The creators, writers and producers of the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" are James Brooks and Alan Burns. The plots tend to be breezy, somewhat inane and, after three minutes, utterly predictable. It's all much like your average Broadway comedy. And of course there are the contemporary "swinging" touches, much in the way pre-marital sex and a certain eight-letter word were used to update the cliche format of the film "Love Story." 

Within the familiar plots, however, the viewer can find a good many first-rate bits and pieces. The program's strongest points are the actors. Miss Moore's Mary is a most agreeable bundle of leggy charm. And her two steady friends make effective foils - Cloris Leachman as Phyllis and especially Valerie Harper as the wise-cracking Rhoda. Miss Harper, currently in Broadway's "Story Theater," can pick up a piece of candy, mutter "I should just apply this thing directly to my hips," and manage to make an ordinary line very funny. 

At the television station, Mary's boss is Grant, played to a superb Edgar-Kennedy slow burn by Edward Asner. Grant's complimentary nature runs to exhortations such as "Keep up the fair work, Murray!" Murray (Gavin MacLeod) is the resident copy supplier, and Ted (Ted Knight) is the egomaniacal newscaster, complete with silvery mane… 

…And so it goes in the world of situation comedy. Nothing terribly significant but, on the Mary Tyler Moore Show" at least, enough to pass a pleasant half hour.

Some thoughts:

"Certain eight-letter word"? What does that mean?

The critics adored that line "can pick up a piece of candy, mutter "I should just apply this thing directly to my hips" - they always mention it.

What does Edgar-Kennedy slow burn mean?

Oh, never mind, found it.

Something else I discovered - thanks to the MTM show I learned that they packaged ice cream in Minneapolis in 1970 like Chinese takeout. (Mary Richards had her tonsils out and everybody kept giving her ice cream.)

How awesome would it be if they both ended up as president of the US?

More young politicians... although some of these are certainly not my "favorites"

Financial regulator humor

I did find this piece in the New Yorker pretty funny...

Excerpt:

Dimon: Now, in terms of a fine . . .
Holder: Yeah.
Dimon: I was talking with some of the guys here and we were thinking, like, a billion maybe would be good.
Holder: Huh.
Dimon: Were you thinking that would be a good number?
Holder: No-o-o.
Dimon: Oh. What were you thinking, hypothetically?
Holder: Hypothetically? Not less than thirteen.
Dimon: Thirteen. Wow. And that . . . that would be as in billion?
Holder: Yes, definitely billion.
Dimon: Of course. Because thirteen million . . . I mean, my pants are worth more than that . . . ha ha . . . I’m kidding, they’re not, they’re just regular pants. I just think the word “pants” is . . . Anyway. Wow. So thirteen billion.
Holder: Yeah.
(A long beat.)
Dimon: So you feel like we were . . . were bad, the guys and me, at the bank here.
Holder: Pretty much, yeah.
Dimon: Huh. That’s so weird, because we weren’t thinking that at all. We were thinking, you know, we made a lot of money and that that was, like, good.
Holder: Interesting. I guess for me it’s how you made the money?
Dimon: Not sure I understand. Why would that matter?
Holder: Well, over here it’s kind of the . . . what’s the word . . . the essence of the whole thing.
Dimon: Like . . . rules and stuff.
Holder: Exactly.
Dimon: Like that . . . what do you call it . . . Vulcan Law?
Holder: Volcker Rule.
Dimon: Yeah, that one. That’s funny, because we didn’t really take that one very seriously. We actually have a copy of it up on a wall and people kind of point at it and laugh, because, I mean, it’s just funny.

American Theatre mag asks: Can an online database bring transparency and efficiency to the play-submission process?

And the answer is no.

No matter how great a database it is, producers still have to - or designate somebody else to - read the damn script.

They quote Adam Szymkowicz in this piece - it seems like I can't go anywhere online anymore without running into Szymkowicz. He's interviewed a whole bunch of playwrights. How that makes him the go-to guy for an article about a play database and getting producers to read playwrights' scripts is apparently because one out of his 600 interviewees said:

"It is logistically impossible for theatres to have an open submission policy. There are too many plays and not enough time to read and consider them all. I would like to change that."

What I would have been interested in finding out is how Szymkowicz ended up writing the dude-bro "romantic" comedy web series Compulsive Love.

Bruce Norris likes to imagine he's some kind of rebel

I thought that Clybourne Park sounded like bullshit and had no desire to see it - and although I can't really decide until I read it (I will not pay to sit through it) I think this article makes some excellent points: Guthrie Theater's smug and offensive "Clybourne Park" perpetuates the illusion of a "post-Civil-Rights" society .

But Domesticated sounds even worse. I thought it sounded like standard evolutionary psychology bullshit when I read this pre-opening article in the NYTimes a couple of weeks ago, and the reviews make it sound even more obnoxious:

I’m not diagnosing Norris, as the harpies diagnose Bill, with “you just don’t get it” disease. Domesticated is a play, not a manifesto. But with its biological framework and Big Picture perspective, it does sometimes seem like a treatise. Near the end, Bill offers the topic sentence: “In the last 50 years, we’ve reached a remarkable turning point in history where, in a precise inversion of how we treated you … anything a woman could possibly want is universally construed as good, and all of a man’s desires — for all intents and purposes — are bad.” 

Sounds like Rush Limbaugh or some Men's Rights Activist.

Norris's belief, which is absolute gospel in evolutionary psychology circles, is that men are naturally polygamous and women are naturally monogamous. And the history of the world is women forcing men into marriage.

But actually the history of the world is the history of the sexual double-standard: wives and mistresses and prostitutes for men and extreme punishments for women who stray - or even wear the wrong clothing at the wrong time. And this is in fact true in some places in the world right now. And the only way for anybody to buy into the bullshit tenets of evolutionary psychology is to deny that reality.

So Clybourne Park was about race, and Domesticated is about gender, so when is Bruce Norris going to write about homosexuality? Of course a straight white man would be the perfect playwright for that topic too. By all means give him another commission.

And here's that asshole dissing Angels in America:

When I received the Steinberg Award, Tony Kushner made the introductory speech and talked about the greatness of theater and so forth, and I realized as I was sitting there, that my father— 

But Tony Kushner didn’t introduce you, John Guare did. 

Tony Kushner went first. 

Right, but then John introduced you, and he called you a suicide bomber, which I have a feeling you’re about to demonstrate. Go ahead. 

I’m just saying, my father, who lives in Texas, is not in any way related to theater. Not only has he never seen Angels in America, ostensibly the most important work of theater in the past twenty years, as we’ve all been told, he’s never heard of it. So if the most important work of theater goes unheard of by a hard-working citizen of the U.S., what does that say about how important theater is? 

I think it says more about your father. 100 years from now, more people will remember Tony Kushner than your father. 

I suppose so. I’m not sure Angels in America is that important. I certainly don’t think the plays I write are very important. Angels came and went in a cultural moment and it excited a lot of people, and it probably led to other things like Will and Grace, but I don’t know if it’s “important.”

100 years from now more people will remember Tony Kushner than this douchebag and his ignorant Philistine of a father. I guarantee it.

This is him again:

“I would say it’s not about a mission to unmask the privileged bourgeois hypocrites,” he says of his oeuvre, “and it’s not a campaign to bring down the American way of life. I guess, if I were to be really pretentious about it, it’s a campaign to bring down the species. I think as a species we have some big problems that are insurmountable. I think we are kind of doomed, and our responsibility is to just be perpetually vigilant to our worst tendencies.”

Oh brother.

Of course he's worshipped by the idiots who run theater. Because he's so macho and manly and uncompromising. And a suicide bomber. Jesus fucking Christ. I realize that in order to make a playwright cool you have to emphasize how his work will be painful and how rigid and uncompromising and macho he is, but really? "Suicide bomber"? He must be the best playwright of them all. 

And it's not like evolutionary psychology is such a taboo - most of the writers for the NYTimes, and plenty of other so-called liberals, completely buy into gender essentialism. Bruce Norris is not a rebel in the slightest. 

Not surprisingly, professional racist Steve Sailor loved Clybourne Park. I bet he's going to love Domesticated too.

The Tree That Owns Itself

I discovered The Tree that Owns Itself a few weeks ago via my Facebook friends They Might Be Giants.

According to Wikipedia:

The earliest-known telling of the tree’s story comes from a front-page article entitled "Deeded to Itself" in the Athens Weekly Banner of August 12, 1890. The article explains that the tree had been located on the property of Colonel William Henry Jackson (no relation to the photographer).[1] William Jackson was the son of one James Jackson (a soldier in the American Revolution as well as a Congressman, U.S. Senator, and Governor of Georgia), and the father of another James Jackson (a Congressman and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia). He was the brother of Jabez Young Jackson, also a Congressman.[2][3] (William Jackson was reportedly a professor at the University of Georgia, and is sometimes given the title of Doctor. The nature of his military service and the source of the title "Colonel" are unknown.[4]) Jackson supposedly cherished childhood memories of the tree, and, desiring to protect it, deeded to it the ownership of itself and its surrounding land. By various accounts, this transaction took place between 1820 and 1832.[5] According to the newspaper article, the deed read:
I, W. H. Jackson, of the county of Clarke, of the one part, and the oak tree… of the county of Clarke, of the other part: Witnesseth, That the said W. H. Jackson for and in consideration of the great affection which he bears said tree, and his great desire to see it protected has conveyed, and by these presents do convey unto the said oak tree entire possession of itself and of all land within eight feet of it on all sides.

I couldn't help noticing this bitter fact - if the transaction granting the Tree ownership of itself happened between 1820 and 1832 it means that for around thirty or forty years there was a tree in Athens Georgia that owned itself, while millions of human beings in that state and adjoining states did not own themselves.

Other famous trees.

Honeygate!

This might be my favorite response to cranky old man Richard Dawkins telling the TSA to get off his lawn.

Skepchick has some excellent responses.

Even Joyce Carol Oates gets into the act.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Oh no you don't! 

I've seen episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore Show both as an adult and as a child. But I don't remember the episodes I saw as a child, and certainly didn't get the jokes, and I've only seen a few episodes as an adult, including the notorious "Chuckles Bites the Dust" and the one my great grand-uncle Iggy Wolfington was in - his entire dialog is "What is she, nuts?"

My father adored the show, especially Ed Asner's Lou Grant, and never missed an episode. And it was one of the few shows my mother didn't consider too risque.

When the show started I was too young to stay up to watch it, and by the time it was ending I was a teenager, out hanging with friends and missed the last seasons. This was before the Internet or even VCRs (Videocassette Recorders in case you forgot.)

But since there is the Internet now, you can watch the entire show's run on Hulu, which is what I'm doing. It's a strange experience, part nostalgia and part a new appreciation for the show. It's forty years old but I have to say, it seems pretty modern, or at least no less modern than episodes of Friends.

Although there are moments when you realize how old it is - in season 1, episode 6, Lou Grant is talking about what a great job it is to be a sportscaster - 20 minutes of work a night and for that you get a whopping $20,000 a year! 

I vaguely remember the opening credits of the first season, but it's so different watching it from an adult perspective. It's starts with a cross cutting between Mary driving down the highway to Minneapolis and what looks like a going-away party held at Mary's prior job. Just as she's leaving this middle-aged guy in glasses tries to get a kiss from Mary and she's all - oh no you don't! So what I'm wondering is, who are these actors and do they ever get any credit anywhere for these opening sequences?

Another observation: Rhoda Morgenstern is supposed to be so fat and dumpy compared to Mary, and yet she is gorgeous - you could cut glass with those cheekbones. What were they thinking? And on top of that, she has some of the best lines in the show, especially in her rivalry with the ever-annoying Phyllis over who gets to be Mary's best friend.

I wish I could look like the Charcoal Donut lady

The New Yorker reports that this Charcoal Donut image has sparked a racism debate in Thailand. Apparently Thailand is a pretty racist place, and having light skin is all the rage there. But I think this woman looks amazing. Although I don't like the color of the lipstick - it should be darker and redder - I don't think they should have tried to match the Dunkin Donuts logo color so slavishly.

Adolescent libertarian fantasies

I love how the Mighty Krugman can be counted on to trash Ayn Rand on at least a monthly basis, as in today's NYTimes column:

So what’s this all about? One reason, the sociologist Daniel Little suggested in a recent essay, is market ideology: If the market is always right, then people who end up poor must deserve to be poor. I’d add that some leading Republicans are, in their minds, acting out adolescent libertarian fantasies. “It’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now,” declared Paul Ryan in 2009.

And what "this" is all about is the Republican war on the poor, which of course would be inspired by that eccentric hack novelist who got her first big break in life from the Bolsheviks.

As Krugman says:

All of this hostility to the poor has culminated in the truly astonishing refusal of many states to participate in the Medicaid expansion. Bear in mind that the federal government would pay for this expansion, and that the money thus spent would benefit hospitals and the local economy as well as the direct recipients. But a majority of Republican-controlled state governments are, it turns out, willing to pay a large economic and fiscal price in order to ensure that aid doesn’t reach the poor.

Astonishing only if you weren't already aware of what a bunch of evil freaks Republicans are.

Hey Jude

Paul McCartney and Julian Lennon (John Lennon on the right in the background) Jane Asher, Paul McCartney Julian Lennon Paul McCartney, Julian Lennon, Jane Asher Julian Lennon and Paul McCartney during the making of "Magical Mystery Tour" McCartney and two of his biological children

Probably the most wonderful aspect of Paul McCartney's character is his concern for children. This isn't generally commented on, because for most people being a good father-figure is not an especially interesting trait in a rock musician, for all its rarity. Mackenzie Phillips, who had the misfortune of a bad father, has a wonderful story about McCartney: “I must have been five or six – we were with dad in L.A. for a visit. His fellow band member, Cass Eliot (the other ‘Mama’) had a party at her house in Laurel Canyon. We walked into Cass’s house and there was Paul McCartney and George Harrison. When I saw Paul McCartney, I glommed on to him like a baby groupie. He kept saying, ‘Go on love, get up and dance.’ In a rare moment of shyness, I demurred. I was afraid people would laugh at me. He insisted. I refused. The exchange circled, a teasing game between a little kid and a world-famous musician. Finally I broke down and started dancing. The adults began to point and laugh at the little five-year-old dancing for the rock star. I turned bright red and burst into tears, but then Paul McCartney started consoling me. I was no dummy. I liked being consoled by Paul McCartney. The more he comforted, the more tears I summoned. Finally he picked me up and carried me into a hammock that was suspended in the middle of Cass’s dining room on a pulley. Someone hoisted us up, up, up. The ceilings were two stories tall and we were suspended fifteen feet in the air. I was still snuffling. Paul snuggled up with me until I finally calmed down and eventually fell asleep. The two of us napped together in that hammock, suspended high above the party. You could say I got high and slept with Paul McCartney.”  I imagine few men in her father's world were in any way paternal. I certainly can't imagine any of the other Beatles, let alone someone like Mick Jagger, paying attention to a child in the middle of what was almost certainly a drug-filled extravaganza. McCartney's most famous father-figure relationship (outside of his own five children) was with John Lennon's first son, Julian, who said:  “Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit—more than Dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seems to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and my dad.” And of course that relationship was the basis for one of McCartney's best songs (John Lennon called it one of his masterpieces) "Hey Jude." Elvis Costello considers it the Beatles' seventh greatest song. "I was going out in my car, just vaguely singing this song," McCartney said, "and it was like, 'Hey, Jules. . . .' And then I just thought a better name was Jude. A bit more country & western for me." The opening lines were "a hopeful message for Julian: 'Come on, man, your parents got divorced. I know you're not happy, but you'll be OK.'"

Emily Yoffe is crying all the way to the bank

Emily Yoffe's response to the responses to her blame-the-victim piece in Salon is no surprise - she feels she was attacked by ignoramuses and the politically correct. Then she ends with this:

Talking about things women can do to protect themselves from rape is the third rail, they said. But why be a journalist unless you’re willing to dig into difficult subjects and report your findings? My story churned up a lot of outrage, but I remain hopeful it will start some conversations and prevent at least some sexual assaults.

And by "outrage" she means lots of hits for her article.

Yoffe and her supporters believe that there is a pernicious group of people out there encouraging college women to get blind drunk. And the ultimate Group - as David Mamet capitalized it in OLEANNA when he wanted to invent an organization out to destroy men by any means necessary including through false rape charges - is of course feminists. Yoffe quotes Anne Coughlin:

Over the years, I have had students tell me that feminists were doing them a disservice by not raising these questions. One student told me that she had been taught that we were living in a brave, new world for women, that women could drink as much as they wanted and that the women would be safe, that the law would somehow keep them safe. She and her friends learned, through hard experience, that the law—and new feminist views—could do no such thing, and she wished that she had received a more subtle, nuanced message about how to proceed in a changing culture.

It must be true because Anne Coughlin has anecdotes from some unnamed students over the years.

So those crazy feminists are going around telling women they can drink as much as they want and they'll be "safe."

But Coughlin and Yoffe aren't mad at feminists for being callous about young women choking on their own vomit. The only thing that really concerns them is feminists leading young women to believe they can act unladylike and expect to avoid inciting a rapist.

Now it's time for Coughlin and Yoffe to provide evidence - who are these feminists out there imploring women to get falling-down-drunk? It's time to name names.

Yoffe is simply a garden-variety scold,  exactly what you find from the man and woman on the street, as this British study demonstrates - who believe that if it isn't drinking, it's flirting or wearing revealing clothing that causes rape:

A third of Britons believe a woman who acts flirtatiously is partially or completely to blame for being raped, according to a new study.
More than a quarter also believe a woman is at least partly responsible for being raped if she wears sexy or revealing clothing, or is drunk, the study found.
One in five think a woman is partly to blame if it is known she has many sexual partners, while more than a third believe she is responsible to some degree if she has clearly failed to say "no" to the man.
In each of these scenarios a slightly greater proportion of men than women held these views - except when it came to being drunk, when it was equal.
In fact more women (5pc) than men (3pc) thought a woman was "totally responsible" for being raped if she was intoxicated.
Support groups described the findings as "alarming" and "appalling".

Yoffe does allow one criticism:

But I agree with critics that the education of men is an important issue and I should have hit it harder...

But I am not holding my breath waiting for Yoffe to write an article scolding men for getting drunk and raping. That's just not contrarian enough, and she wouldn't get nearly the publicity.

Thinking of violas

My current music theory course is looking at string quartets - two violins, viola and cello, and I've been thinking of violas, which are the definition of "second fiddle" - so I did some searching for viola music and found this orchestral arrangement of Bohemian Rhapsody which I quite like. The viola is standing in for Freddy Mercury's lead vocals.

I also like how the orchestra handles the rock-out guitar bits at 4:35.

RIP Lou Reed

Waiting for the Man in France.

   

The cast of characters from "Walk on the Wild Side."

The entire American Masters documentary available on Youtube.

 

Dramatists Guild videos

I was torn between a session with David Ives and the Julia Jordan keynote address at the Dramatists Guild Conference in June 2011, and ended up picking the Jordan speech. It was a great speech and I wasn't sorry I picked it, but I wasn't happy to miss the Ives session. But while looking for Dramatists Guild videos I came across the video of the Ives session. Early in the video you can hear the Jordan audience make noise - Ives and the other guy make a joke about it. The Jordan speech was in the auditorium directly below the Ives session room.

Although since that session I have developed somewhat mixed feelings about David Ives.

You put a spell...

Finally, the latest NYCPlaywrights video is done.

Neil Patrick Harris as Hedwig - sheer genius

I don't know who the writer in Flavorwire is talking about here:

There’s a lot of disagreement, at least in the online commenting world, on whether or not this is inspired casting.

Because anybody who knows anything about NPH or Hedwig realizes that this is a match made in heaven.

I saw the original Hedwig and the Angry Inch when it was at Jane Street, although I missed author John Cameron Mitchell's run in the title role. But it's thanks to an interview he gave to Terry Gross on Fresh Air that I decided to take myself and my then-boyfriend - who loved the show - to see it.

My daughter, who still resents me for not taking her to see the off-Broadway run, is ecstatic about the Broadway production with NPH and what I'm worried about is that it will be so huge we won't get tickets.

I did take her to see the movie version but it's not the same.

And I'm not complaining about the actor I saw who replaced Mitchell, Michael Cerveris, who is actually a more accomplished actor than Mitchell, and speaking of whom, is now in another show I want to see, Fun Home, based on the work of Alison Bechdel, of Bechdel Test fame.

I also think this is absurd:

...a hard-edged show like Hedwig doesn’t exactly have the family-friendly subject matter that the biggest hits on Broadway feature. (This year’s Tony winner for Best Musical was Kinky Boots, to be fair, but that drag queen-fused musical featured songs about accepting and loving yourself and others. Hedwig, on the other hand, features a song about a botched gender-reassignment surgery.) 

What? Does this writer know nothing? The time has surely come for Hedwig - and with NPH it's going to be huge.

The New Yorker's Girls obsession

Well I thought I was done writing about Mikki Kendall, but I jumped into a Facebook argument between Susan Brownmiller and the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum. Brownmiller posted a comment that she had been left out of Jezebel's feminist encyclopedia, which she found out via this NPR interview.

I couldn't resist pointing out that Brownmiller had been accused of racism during Mikki Kendall's #solidarityisforwhitewomen hatefest, and mentioned the ageist attack against Steinem and other feminist pioneers by Elena Haliczar and Versha Sherma. I also pointed out how much Kendall hated "Girls" because she thinks that Lena Dunham is racist because her cast is white. I knew that Nussbaum, like half the New Yorker staff, had written glowingly about the show.

Nussbaum's reply:

I sometimes have issues with other feminists, and other critics, and other writers in general, male or female, and when I do, I try to make reasoned arguments for the problems with what they've said. Things like an activist Twitter hashtag tend to catalyze responses I find illuminating, other ones I find cheap or harmful, and so on. That's the nature of these kinds of internet blowups. Including the one about Girls, which was searing, but which I personally found pretty helpful in thinking about diversity on television, even when I didn't agree with individual critiques of the show.

If Kendall ever finds out how much Nussbaum likes "Girls" I don't think Nussbaum would consider her critiques helpful - I think she would find herself accused of racism by Kendall.

Kendall's actually a lazy blogger - much of her karnythia Tumblr account is reposting of others' work and her just agreeing - although that's pretty much how most Tumblr accounts work (not a hotbed of originality) and that's why if somebody accuses you of racism - as Mikki Kendall did of me when I disagreed with her assertion that John Lennon and Yoko Ono were/are racists - it may be reposted many times, which is why it appears high on a Google search results list. 

Kendall posted a long screed against Lena Dunham ("Girls" is her project) written by somebody else here, and at the end just says, with her trademark grace and discernment:

Out of curiosity, how old do white women have to be before they’re responsible for their racism?

I've never seen "Girls" and so have no opinion on the show. Everything I've heard about it made it sound irritating, so I've been in no hurry to see it. And the fact that the New Yorker staff has such an obsession with it is also annoying. And I use the word "obsession" advisedly:

Here is Emily Nussbaum on Girls, in the New Yorker.

Here is Emily Nussbaum on Girls, again, in the New Yorker.

Here is Emily Nussbaum and Rebecca Mead on Girls in the New Yorker.

Here is Erin Overby on Girls, in the New Yorker.

Here is Patricia Marx on Girls, in the New Yorker.

Here is Richard Brody on Girls, in the New Yorker.

Here is Richard Brody on Girls, in the New Yorker.

Here is Richard Brody on Girls, again, in the New Yorker.

Here is Richard Brody on Girls, yet again, in the New Yorker.

Here is, yes, Richard Brody on Girls again, in the New Yorker.

Hilton Als defends Lena Dunham, and Girls, against charges or racism, in the New Yorker.

Guess who, on Girls again, in the New Yorker.

Margaret Talbot on Girls, in the New Yorker.

Anna Holmes on Girls, in the New Yorker.

Anna Holmes on whether Girls is racist, in the New Yorker.

Lorrie Moore on Girls, in the New Yorker.

Meghan Daum on Girls, in the New Yorker.

Oh dear god, Brody again on Girls in the New Yorker.

Why is this 70-something man

so obsessed

with this

television show

by Lena Dunham

called "Girls"?

Anyway, Salon is still publishing ethics-free Mikki Kendall's work, they just published something a month ago called The Real Mommy Wars. I will say that Kendall has made a leap, professionally - she doesn't blame white women for everything that's wrong with the world, at least not explicitly, and she doesn't make scurrilous accusations of attempted murder against anyone. But sad to say, it's her defamation inclination that gives her work any originality at all. Here's an excerpt from the article:

We need a conversation about the war on poor mothers, on disabled mothers, on indigenous mothers, on trans mothers, on mothers who are not in heterosexual relationships, on mothers who are migrant workers, on mothers doing the most with the least. Feminism is supposed to be about making it possible for all to achieve equality, not about playing games of one-upmanship.

You don't say. Feminists have been saying this since the first issue of Ms. Magazine.

Kendall wants you to believe, though, that feminism has been about one-upmanship. She doesn't provide any evidence for this implication though, but evidence is not the Kendall way - she says whatever the hell she wants and you are to accept it, purely on her authority. 

And that's what Salon considers worth paying to publish. And I thought the New York Times publishing Delia Ephron's anti-the color blue rant was bad.

The Bike Snob said it so much better than I did though...

Can you imagine if you were able to pick a subject you knew absolutely nothing about, write a batshit crazy opinion piece on it, and get it published in The New York Times as easily as a stoned college student calls in for a bucket of chicken wings?

Well, thanks to being born into a showbiz dynasty, this is one of the little perks Delia Ephron gets to enjoy, and she's written an op-ed on Citi Bike that boldly breaks new ground in saying dumb shit.

Exactly. Thank you Bike Snob.

The aesthetic cross of the rentier class

Oh dear baby Jesus, does the NYTimes really need to hire Delia Ephron to write mindless think pieces? She's sixty-nine years old and can well afford to retire.

Although I will say Ephron's Color Me Blue gives those of us in the 99% a through-the-looking glass perspective on how insulated the rich are from those of us in the lower orders.

Ephron has a problem with Bloomberg and with Citibank. Now you're probably thinking it has something to do with the too-cozy relationship between government and the big banks and how that impacts regulations which leads to private gains and public losses, etc.

But no, the issue of greatest import to Ephron is the aesthetic nightmare that is the Citi Bike program. Yes really:

There are many new signs and lights for cars, bike riders and pedestrians to make sure everyone does the safe thing. Good luck with that. The eye is flying around having no idea where to land. Really, standing at that intersection is a surreal experience. It’s as if one has entered the world of a manic martinet. 

It’s fall now. As you stroll in the crisp air through Central Park or down a lovely tree-lined block enchanted by the coppery yellow, burnt orange and flame red of autumn leaves, a bank-blue bike is going to whip by, possibly knocking you down, definitely pulling your focus. 

Then it will be winter and we’ll have one of those blizzards that turns the city entirely white and nearly silent. You will leave your apartment to take in this miracle, trekking down your street, making the first boot marks in virgin snow, and as you turn a corner, your head will suddenly spin toward a gigantic inkblot on the landscape: a stand of 27 bank-blue bikes. A total of 135 Citi Bike signs. You will forget the awesomeness of nature. 

INSTEAD you will start thinking about your bank — how it is paying you barely any interest...

 The Citi Bike program has turned out to be quite popular - "a major success" according to Newsday. But of course it's a major success with the wrong sort of people - the hoi polloi flaunting their indigo impertinence all over Ephron's city.

It turns out that Ephron has been thinking about banks and banking quite a lot lately - she's written two other articles about banks recently, available on her web site: The Banker's Job - bankers have failed Ephron; and Banks Taketh But Don't Giveth - banks aren't paying enough interest.

You'll notice that in two of the three articles by Ephron on banking, she mentions banks paying insufficient interest. This is a rich person's problem as Krugman explains in his blog post John Galt Wants Price Supports:

Lots of people have been having fun with the latest Max Abelson piece on whiny Wall Streeters. One thing Mike Konczal points out is that this is in part the whine of rentiers, angry that their wealth isn’t yielding the return they want:

While they aren’t asking for sympathy, “at their level, in a different way but in the same way, the rug got pulled out,” said Sonnenfeldt, 56. “For many people of wealth, they’ve had a crushing setback as well.” 

He described a feeling of “malaise” and a “paralysis that does not allow one to believe that generally things are going to get better,” listing geopolitical hot spots such as Iran and low interest rates that have been “artificially manipulated” by the Federal Reserve.

People like these are almost always scornful when, say, blue-collar workers complain about declining real wages — hey, it’s just supply and demand, deal with it. And they are contemptuous about claims of price manipulation. But when prices that matter to them — say, interest rates — fall, it’s an outrage. It must be artificial! Because hey, it’s not as if there has been a rise in saving and a fall in investment demand that might be causing low interest rates:

Actually, the only “artificial” thing here is that rates haven’t fallen further, thanks to the zero lower bound on short-term rates. As I’ve tried to explain, we’re basically in a situation of incipient excess supply of savings. Of course interest rates are low.

Krugman had something directly to say about the kind of people who hate Bloomberg for the Citi Bike program back in June:

Well, yesterday I was inconvenienced by the new Citi Bikes: a newly installed line of bike racks blocked the place where I usually cross John Street, forcing me to make a 20-foot detour. Impeach Michael Bloomberg! 

Or, maybe not. But the absolutely hysterical reaction of right-wingers to the bike program just keeps mounting — and in a way that almost makes the program worth it, all by itself. 

Ephron posted a link to her Citi Bike Horror article on her Facebook page, which she leaves wide open. One of Ephron's Facebook friends - with whom I share three Facebook friends, posted this under the link:

Thank you for braving the hate mail you'll inevitably receive for this. Someone had to say it.

That poor thing - she might receive criticism for her silly article - on top of low interest pay-outs and the plague of losers on blue bikes - how does she find the strength to endure?

Love means never having to say you're sorry

I still haven't seen "Love Story" which starred Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neil. I saw the movie, "What's Up Doc?" with two of my cousins and my aunt the late Sister Marie Martin, as I mentioned in this blog post.

So I've finally re-watched WUD and I certainly appreciate it more now than I did when I was an adolescent. I thought Ryan O'Neal was an old man back then, but wow, I can see now what a hottie he was. Hell I think Austin Pendleton is adorable here - if that name rings a bell it's because he's been very active in the New York theater seen lately. And Kenneth Mars is funny as always - Mars you may know from the original movie version of The Producers, where he played Fritz Leibling, the author of "Springtime for Hitler." I had no idea who he was the first time around. It's great to see so many men with long hair - I sure miss the early 70s sometimes.

Also adorable is Madeline Kahn, as the put-upon fiancee of O'Neal's character.

And Barbra - what can you say about her? She has skin like buttah in this movie - and also she's very Bugs Bunny-esque, appropriately, with a hint of Groucho Marx and screwball-era Katherine Hepburn.

And Darren Stephens mother also shows up as an ur-cougar, resplendent in animal print and go-go boots when she first appears, and a bag full of priceless jewels, and in her last scene, with a cute security guard in tow.

The first time I saw "What's Up Doc?" the fact that the audience laughed uproariously at Streisand's final line: "love means never having to say you're sorry" stuck with me. I had no idea at the time why that was funny, but I knew it was a cultural reference that I just wasn't getting. And of course now I know that it was the catch phrase of the movie "Love Story." And it's very funny that O'Neal's response is "that's the dumbest thing I ever heard."

And it's great to see the streets of San Francisco in this movie - I hadn't been there the first time I saw WUD - and it's no joke, those streets are crazy steep - some of the residential areas have such steep hills it's hard just walking up them.