Because MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry said this…

How stupid can you be and still be a college professor? No limit!

This guy.

Used to do a lot of business in the Bahamas. They thought I was this guy. Holly-Wood-Movie-Star.

Bad attitude. Yet I was always nice to the desk clerks.

Baffled. Until I figured out it was this guy.

Name of Billy Drago.

But I shot him down in my home town of Bridgeton.

Gotcha. I was always that fast. Ask my wife.

And then I was so dead.

But I’m not really him. I’m a poet and a killer. You know how that goes.

Because I’m still Instapunk. And that’s what I do. Every damn day.

From top to bottom. All in a death spiral.

Unless it’s not.

What do they say? The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Oh. And then the super-uneducated millennial lefties come in. Cool. If you point out they don’t know anything, you’re ad hominem. I could live with that. If any of them were hominem in the first place. Know that’s not correct in Latin grammar. But I’d hate to trigger them by using the correct word ‘homo.’

P.S. There was a guy who tried to lecture me about World War I at the Charles Murray page. Lloyd Thomas Sloan. We went back and forth. Now he’s removed himself and all his comments from the thread. The way lefties are. Lose and slink away. I never stop. Why this is still Instapunk.

Zevon and Tearson. How to sum it up. The basis of all that was great in rock and roll. Michael Tearson was our little cross-eyed monster. He talked slow. He loved the music. That was MMR in a nutshell. The Radio Station. WMMR, Philadelphia.

Haven’t listened to rock music stations for ten years. Then, this week, I just turned off talk radio. Local guy named Dom Giordano. Got on a tear about a poll about Trump and Carson. Women Don’t like Trump. Women Don’t like Trump. Women Don’t like Trump. Women Don’t like Trump. And so on. Caller makes a perfectly good point. Carson got beat up in the mass media. Got a bump in the polls. Giordano right back on his narrative. Therefore, Women Don’t like Trump. Women Don’t like Trump. Women Don’t like Trump.

So. I. Bailed. First to my wife’s awful station, WMGK. Then to the Radio Station of my youth. WMMR. You know how long it takes to hear a Stones song on WMMR? About five minutes. Makes me sad. I hear them all the time. Don’t need ancient DJs to play them for me. But it’s better than hearing lame brained radio hosts pretending they know what they’re talking about. Just a shot away from hearing sense.

Can’t watch news, can’t listen to news or commentary anymore. Any. More.

Your face and your neck can be okay. Your tummy can be flat, or flattish, and you don’t have to look at your own butt. You might not be bald yet. But the hands. You see them every day. And they keep getting more gnarly. Turning slowly into claws. How you know you’re getting up on seventy. How you know you’re old.

But guess what. They’re your hands. Knuckles have been sprained, digits have been broken. They did the hard work, the punches, the caresses, the good and the bad. They’ve done amazing things for you. Been everywhere, explored everything, felt everything with the most exquisite touch, hard and soft and hot and wet. No wonder they get old. It’s okay. They’re yours. Don’t sweat it.

Carlos Sainz Jr. Yeah. He’s the best looking. Where wouldn’t he be? But basically they all are.

She loves them all. And the speed. And the cars. And the sound. It’s all good for her. Right now, we’re watching the U.S. Grand Prix. Lewis is winning so far. And he likes dogs.

Not as pretty as Carlos. But pretty enough.

What could possibly be better?

It was Shakespeare who said it best: “Life is a bitch and then you die.”

Oh. He didn’t say that. Well, he should’ve.

“Why are you rooting for New Orleans? You like Andrew Luck, all Stanford and everything. You said the Redskins should never have taken their first draft pick to choose a quarterback who’d have a knee injury in his first season. You said Luck was the natural heir to Peyton Manning in Colts Kingdom, where you’ve always lived as far as I can determine. And now, today, you’re cheering on Drew Brees and the slapped-ass Saints.”

Taking this rationally and in order. Don’t like Andrew Luck’s beard. Plunkett established the rule that Stanford quarterbacks don’t have to be as good looking as all the other quarterbacks are. But there’s a limit.

And where did we get the rule that no Colts team can ever have a running game? Is this some religious thing nobody told me about?

And I’m not nearly as anti-new Orleans as I sometimes seem. Because I do love Zydeco. If you don’t know what that is, look it up. No, I won’t be visiting Nawlins anytime soon. Not fond of the smell of sewage in a modern city. But I do love that music.

So, today, I’m rooting for the “Who Dat” bunch. Ça va.

Every day is No Bra Day.

Why the Brits do better gardening shows than we do. No bras. Charlie not only knows her plants and things, but she also goes slinging and slonging through the garden like a mesmerizing force of nature. Haven’t watched HGTV since Ground Force went off the air.

One last look.

Ivy makes her nipples hard.

Here’s the thing. We really love each other. So last night we were playing the “Our Song” game, which most people can play with top points. Wind Beneath My Wings ring a bell?

Of course we turned it into a competition. Several hours worth. Phil Collins, Foreigner, Cyndi Lauper, Warren Zevon, Edith Piaf, Puccini, Neil Diamond, Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Van Morrison, Tom Waits, Rossini, Jeff Buckley, Heart, and not Pat Benetar or the Stones, although I was tempted by “She Was Hot.” Truth is, we have an endless number of songs that are “ours.” We could dance to them in public and without caring what anyone thinks. Because we are always us, and we make everybody else so pissed at us we have to hang together. And we like it, like it, yes, we do.

The last dance WILL be ours.

And thought is our rhythm.

Nobody EVER tears me a new one. But Patricia.

Not good news. My wife hates Texas. And Mexico. Left to her own devise, she’d kill’em all.

Here’s my best attempt at climate control.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GX5pARmaQeY

“When a beautiful woman shines, it is the sun that’s envious.”

— John Donne or Jim Morrison. Who cares?

One of these guys is named Michael Madsen and one is named Tom Sizemore. They’re both “actors,” which they do by cocking their heads sideways and acting tough. They’re also both drug addicts and whoremongers, like, you know, all real men are.

John Garfield

In 1942, my dad was stationed in the North African theater of the war. John Garfield came to buoy up the troops. He was a tough guy too. They laughed at him. Because when it comes to tough guys, there’s a thing called acting.

Acting is, uh, acting.

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 this.

And nowadays would look like this. (See below.)

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.

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.

Yeah. riding for a fall. Stay strong, Owls. Everybody else, listen to the No Security intro and focus on the team.

We can do this, Owls. We really can. Just imagine them moving like the blue-collar astronauts in Armageddon and listen to the music. You get the idea. A Philly term: Atty-tude.

Tom Selleck. 6′ 3″ and built like a WWE fighter.

Already established that we like the show. But the more we watch, the more puzzled I am by the genetic anomalies in this All-American family. We’re all still grieving for the long dead wife of Commissioner Reagan. But we can’t help thinking there’s a skeleton, or two or three, in her closet.

Take Danny, the macho take no prisoners Reagan son. What is he? 5′ 6″? Really? What side of the blanket did he come from?

And the ADA daughter, who looks like she has an eating disorder we don’t normally associate with brawling Irish Catholic cop families.

5′ 5″ maybe. And the bone structure of an ultra-WASP graduate of Miss Porter’s and Mount Holyoke. Not computing here.

Which brings us to Number Three Son.

What? What? 5′ 3″ with lifts? Go on witcha.

Not trying to be nasty. Just genuinely nonplussed here.

The funeral of Yuri’s (Dr. Zhivago’s) mother.

They’re rereleasing this monumental milestone in film history on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary. I noted this somewhat flippantly at Facebook, assuming, wrongly I suppose on reflection, that everyone in the movie audience knows of it. But it doesn’t play on TV, hasn’t for many years, and so I want to make the case for finding it and watching it.

It’s the work of the great British film director David Lean, who didn’t think a movie was worth making if it didn’t last three hours and torment your deepest emotions. Doctor Zhivago is a romance set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution. Its stars are, in order, the vast Russian landscape, the impossibly beautiful Julie Christie, the lambent eyes of Omar Sharif, and the haunting score written by Maurice Jarre.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=old4K4Tpo8c

If it’s occurred to you at some level that they don’t make great movies anymore, this masterpiece will cement your suspicion to a certainty.

When there was still such a thing as romance.

I’ll close with the immensely superior sound quality of this version of Kontakion from the first clip. (Be advised, the new Zhivago promises to equal this quality.)

The greatest actor of all time.