My mother said this ended his career. She was right. But then he had another career. Compare and contrast.

Because, you know, you know, when all is said and done, he was the best ever.

Got to see him in person one time. Thought I’d be seeing a tottering shell. In Cincinnati. He was magnificent. It was open air. I was married at the time. She said, “Oh my God.” Before it was a thing. How good he was.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lvDNy5RS2eU

P.S. Have to share this because it was so cute. My mother used to dance all alone to this song. Have you ever seen your mother dance all alone? Perfect beauty in middle age.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLXRlv43gsnQ2MHV2uzEzIFEdS4MC3_Eee&v=xlVF8ZOTWmM

Life is like that.

And like this too.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3OwIRmlJJWs

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BFB8N4BNIko

I wish there were some way to save us. But there isn’t. You know.

Ain’t it grand?

Trump supporters being naughty to the press.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is ready to fight Joe Biden, after the Vice President said he’d like to take Trump “behind the gym.”

“I’d love that. I’d love that. Mr. Tough Guy,” Trump said during a rally in Florida, after highlighting Biden’s comment.

“You know, he’s Mr. Tough Guy,” he said.

Trump continued, mocking Biden for merely talking tough.

“You know when he’s Mr. Tough Guy? When he’s standing behind a microphone by himself,” he said.

Trump appeared willing to take Biden up on his offer.

”Some things in life you could really love doing,” he said as the crowd cheered.

It got all, like, smaller on her.

WikiTakealeaks has just released another stream of damning text messages from Hillary and her slave subalterns. Among the new revelations:

— Can’t remember the names of TV and movie stars once idolized in youth. Clark who? Gary who? Cary who? Hedy who? Christopher Walken. Who?

— Often stumbles and nearly falls making the trip to the coffee machine for that first cup of morning joe.

— Has to hang onto various pieces of furniture just navigate a smallish room.

— Gets mysteriously angry with longtime friends who say dumb things they think are smart.

— Uses four letter words a lot more now than before.

— Has no idea just how bad a football team Yale has this year.

— Thinks Mariska Hargitay is getting fat but can’t remember the name of her TV show.

— Has to splay feet going downstairs in the morning to avoid falling all the way down.

— Laughs suddenly for no reason, as if some voice in the head said something amusing. Startles and alarms everybody in the room.

— Keeps switching eyeglasses trying to find a pair that works, then loses them all in a matter of moments.

— Can’t find anything to wear that doesn’t look too old, too young, too dumb.

— Somehow causes light bulbs to burn out just by turning them on.

— Can’t do arithmetic sums in the head anymore.

— Can’t remember that Sammy and Rikki are not Shroedinger’s Greyhound, alive and dead at the same time.

Oops.

Those leaks weren’t about Hillary. They were about me. Why I’m voting for Trump.

Have it on good authority I’m a deplorable racist idiot. Can’t remember who said it, but it must be true Because HILLARY.

The French! Racine! OMG.

October 23, 2015

Had a French teacher back in the day. You know. A real teacher. Navy vet. Holder of six radar patents. He heard about the reading list for the French AP exam and clapped Camus’s The Stranger on his desk. “Gentlemen,” he said. He always called us gentlemen. “I’ve been told you’re supposed to read this book if you want to do well on the AP exam. Here it is. If you want to read garbage, I offer it to you freely. But you will not read it in my classroom.” He was six feet tall, white haired, taught us in odd moments about the meaning of modern art and anything else that took his fancy, and we all feared and idolized him.

So. We hewed to the classics. No women writers, for example. (I did a search for “not very good women writers, French, and came up with this list.) One thing Mr. Miller taught us you might not know. The great moments in drama — you know, plays — are few and far between. Most critics say these moments have happened four times. Mr. Miller said only three.

The Greeks. Aeschylus, Euripedes, and Sophocles. Skip ahead a millennium and you get to the English. Shakespeare, and on his best day, Marlowe. Then came, belatedly as usual, the French. Racine and Corneille. Who really honestly actually were almost as good as Shakespeare.

Racine did Phaedra. Corneille did El Cid. Who back in the day would have looked like Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren or thereabouts.

Regardless. Racine and Corneille were both great. Not that millennials would know. Uneducated tools. Shakespeare? Who?

Why I recorded the soliloquy of Phaedra from Racine’s play. I should rerecord it, because I forgot that women’s soliloquies are always at high volume and not controlled. But I’m tired at the moment, and I’m asking you to imagine that some Phaedra could internalize her insanity. To some degree. Perhaps not. But I’ll rerecord it tomorrow. Okay? Here’s the poor English version:

PHAEDRA: Ah! cruel Prince, too well
You understood me. I have said enough
To save you from mistake. I love. But think not
That at the moment when I love you most
I do not feel my guilt; no weak compliance
Has fed the poison that infects my brain.
The ill-starr’d object of celestial vengeance,
I am not so detestable to you
As to myself. The gods will bear me witness,
Who have within my veins kindled this fire,
The gods, who take a barbarous delight
In leading a poor mortal’s heart astray.
Do you yourself recall to mind the past:
‘Twas not enough for me to fly, I chased you
Out of the country, wishing to appear
Inhuman, odious; to resist you better,
I sought to make you hate me. All in vain!
Hating me more I loved you none the less:
New charms were lent to you by your misfortunes.
I have been drown’d in tears, and scorch’d by fire;
Your own eyes might convince you of the truth,
If for one moment you could look at me.
What is ‘t I say? Think you this vile confession
That I have made is what I meant to utter?
Not daring to betray a son for whom
I trembled, ’twas to beg you not to hate him
I came. Weak purpose of a heart too full
Of love for you to speak of aught besides!
Take your revenge, punish my odious passion;
Prove yourself worthy of your valiant sire,
And rid the world of an offensive monster!
Does Theseus’ widow dare to love his son?
The frightful monster! Let her not escape you!
Here is my heart. This is the place to strike.
Already prompt to expiate its guilt,
I feel it leap impatiently to meet
Your arm. Strike home. Or, if it would disgrace you
To steep your hand in such polluted blood,
If that were punishment too mild to slake
Your hatred, lend me then your sword, if not
Your arm.

As read by me in the original Greek, here:

Oh. The fourth age of drama? Moron critics think Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams made that happen. Did I use the word morons already? Then I’m out of useful adjectives.

If she does have a link, I’ll be a proud papa. I, a lowly writer, made this tiny movie of silly news stiffs, and every image, word, and sequence was chose by MEEEEE!!!!

Or someone who looked very much like me. There can’t be that many skinny blond old guys with cool shades who don’t live in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Russia, or possibly Scotland, uh, Ohio.

THE XOFF NEWS TEAM. A book you never knew you needed. Just like us Scots. From Ohio.

Sure they do. Maybe why they should stop dismembering their babies by the millions at abortion mills and shooting each other by the thousands in Chicago.

Yeah, you and what army? Priceless lech. Not as big a lech, though, as he is a joke.

Really. The only sexual contact this old fool has is what he steals by groping women at state occasions. Does he actually think no one knows what a disgusting dirty old man he is? I guess not. That would go nicely with his 75 IQ.

I hate him. I’ve hated him ever since he led the senate mob that lynched Clarence Thomas. Rot in hell, Biden.

David French has been assaulted by the Trump People.

I’ll get to the French thing in a minute. First, I’m going to say my goodbyes to Facebook. Goodbyes. I’ll still be here doing my thing, going back to where I belong. Here’s what I said a couple years back on the subject of going home.. Should have paid attention to what I was trying to tell myself.

Poking Around

Johnny Last Chance Garage

Yeah. Come back to an old place, especially from your youth, and everything seems smaller.

When you were a kid, the Coca Cola cooler seemed big. It’s not. It’s also rusted and broken. But that’s okay. If you have an Amex card, you can still get a cold king size glass bottle of coke. If you’re a billionaire.

I’m tired of pretending. Even the ones who think they know don’t. Intellectually maybe, they have some appreciation of the dire circumstance. They see Godzilla emerging from the sea at the city’s edge. What they don’t see, and never will, is that everyone alive now beckoned Godzilla, asked him to come in one way or another. By the fights they refused to fight, the narrow ambitions they pursued while the giant stomped closer, the semantics they used to deflect responsibility from themselves because all they cared about was their families. As if families will exist when freedom has been extinguished by a reptilian moron.

Got a scuffed old cowboy boot with a bone boot chain. Propping it on the porch rail. Want to fight? I welcome it. Come. Fight. All you millennial slackers. I’m the elder now. And I don’t care about your feelings anymore. Such freedom. You have absolutely no idea how much more I know about everything than you do.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh. I can breathe again.

It’s not incremental. It’s factorial. I’m breathing this tremendous sigh of relief. The cars go by. I’ve shown you my work and you don’t comprehend it. You drive by. I breathe. Do you understand that? It makes me free. Now, when I dream, my dreams are not so bad.

I’ve got an old Triumph in Johnny’s Garage. I’m kick-starting it now. But I’ll be back in an hour or so for a king size Coke unless there’s a 16 oz RC Cola in that magnificent artillery bottle.

As I said, you have no idea what all is in my head.

Robert Laird via Johnny Dodge at 6:51 PM, Febuary 15, 2014.

**********************

So David French is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore.

“Trump’s alt-right trolls have subjected me and my family to an unending torrent of abuse that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I distinctly remember the first time I saw a picture of my then-seven-year-old daughter’s face in a gas chamber. It was the evening of September 17, 2015. I had just posted a short item to the Corner calling out notorious Trump ally Ann Coulter for aping the white-nationalist language and rhetoric of the so-called alt-right. Within minutes, the tweets came flooding in. My youngest daughter is African American, adopted from Ethiopia, and in alt-right circles that’s an unforgivable sin. It’s called “race-cucking” or “raising the enemy.” I saw images of my daughter’s face in gas chambers, with a smiling Trump in a Nazi uniform preparing to press a button and kill her. I saw her face photo-shopped into images of slaves. She was called a “niglet” and a “dindu.” The alt-right unleashed on my wife, Nancy, claiming that she had slept with black men while I was deployed to Iraq, and that I loved to watch while she had sex with “black bucks.” People sent her pornographic images of black men having sex with white women, with someone photoshopped to look like me, watching.”

Okay. Bad stuff. I’ve been through some of it myself, thanks to genial Internet maestro Glenn Reynolds who threw me under the bus for one post. I got called every name in the book all over the Internet, “eat shit and die, motherfucking racist” being the consensus theme. So I sympathize with Mr. French and family. I do.

On the other hand, David French actively participated in a massive, organized verbal gang rape of Donald Trump because he has bad hair and didn’t go to Yale like politicians are supposed to. David French actually ran for president FOR ONE DAY and then stopped. Weak. You make yourself look weak and, guess what, the morlocks will attack.

It’s called consequences. You act like a shit and people will act like shit back. And there are a lot of them and they know more about being a shit than you or Glenn Reynolds do.

So I’m of two minds about the whole thing. Yes, I’m sorry that the wife and kids were insulted, threatened, and subjected to abuse they didn’t deserve. But I’m also wondering if National Review will learn anything from the barging in of reality to their prissy, snotty enclave on the snob-right.

Probably academic anyway. National Review will be closing its doors soon, leaving a lot of families out in the cold. That will probably hurt more than nasty pics and videos you don’t actually have to watch. Because you do need a paycheck to fund your hubris in a moldy opinion journal.

After Rikki, we’re all done in.

Like me, he’s tired. Really truly.

Our teenager is exhausted too.

And the cats are confused. Honestly.

And you know what? I don’t care any more. I write good stuff you don’t read or comment on. Ten books. Nothing to say by you. You just don’t care. What do I do?

I guess she reminds me of my mother. It’s just so, what’s the word? Touching.

There won’t be any damn bishop on hand. Like as not there will be a frail in a collar supervising who’s never heard of me.

1. My sister will get up in the pulpit and read a long, bad, lugubrious poem about how much she loved me because she’s such a nice person even though I was always a dick. Talented but a dick.

2. Nothing else. Nothing will change for the better or worse. The nobody in the pews won’t care because there’s no reason they should. There will be only the one half, my better half, who will go home and do this.

1/2. Play 12 hours straight of Rolling Stones at Volume 11. Then the world will finally be at peace.

His name is Malcolm Baldwin. He’s a star.

His bio says he’s 5′, 7.75″. Horse pucky. He’s 5′, 1.125″ or I wouldn’t be able to show this pic of him standing tall behind a Lotus Europa.

Yesss. There he is. See?

Therefore. The three things you can’t do if you’re a 5′, 1″ action hero.

1. You can’t be a villain in a Clint Eastwood movie.

2. You can’t be a villain in a Clint Eastwood movie.

3. You can’t be a villain in a Clint Eastwood movie.

Because, you know, Clint Eastwood is tall.