Domestic comedy

[Reading the Nutrition Facts.]

“The Chessmen are twice as healthy as the Milanos.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

The best and the brightest

How did Peter Navarro make it to the White House? As reported in Vanity Fair in April 2017, Jared Kushner was at work, sort of:

At one point during the campaign, when Trump wanted to speak more substantively about China, he gave Kushner a summary of his views and then asked him to do some research. Kushner simply went on Amazon, where he was struck by the title of one book, Death by China, co-authored by Peter Navarro. He cold-called Navarro, a well-known trade-deficit hawk, who agreed to join the team as an economic adviser. (When he joined, Navarro was in fact the campaign’s only economic adviser.)

The Washington Post revived this bit yesterday.

[“Simply went on Amazon”? I’d quibble with simply, but Jared Kushner does seem simple. The alarmist red is mine.]

“It’s Automatic”

[Zippy, March 7, 2018.]

Today’s Zippy, “It’s Automatic,” channels a postcard explanation of what to do in a Horn & Hardart Automat. In 2017 Zippy himself was patronizing an Automat.

I have a dim memory of sitting in an Automat with my friend Aldo Carrasco, sometime in the early 1980s, having cake and coffee. Or pie and coffee. Or something. The Automat felt as depressing as hell. I don’t think I knew enough then to appreciate the place.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard) : Automat beverage section : New York, 1964: Automat : One more Automat

Russia and Rex

The March 12 issue of The New Yorker arrived in our mailbox yesterday. About a fifth of this issue’s pages are devoted to Jane Mayer’s article “Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier.” One stunning excerpt:

One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Mueller’s investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.” The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy — and an incoming President.

As fantastical as the memo sounds, subsequent events could be said to support it. In a humiliating public spectacle, Trump dangled the post before Romney until early December, then rejected him. There are plenty of domestic political reasons that Trump may have turned against Romney. Trump loyalists, for instance, noted Romney’s public opposition to Trump during the campaign. Roger Stone, the longtime Trump aide, has suggested that Trump was vengefully tormenting Romney, and had never seriously considered him. (Romney declined to comment. The White House said that he was never a first choice for the role and declined to comment about any communications that the Trump team may have had with Russia on the subject.) In any case, on December 13, 2016, Trump gave Rex Tillerson, the C.E.O. of ExxonMobil, the job. The choice was a surprise to most, and a happy one in Moscow, because Tillerson’s business ties with the Kremlin were long-standing and warm. (In 2011, he brokered a historic partnership between ExxonMobil and Rosneft.) After the election, Congress imposed additional sanctions on Russia, in retaliation for its interference, but Trump and Tillerson have resisted enacting them.

In the news yesterday (I know it was in there somewhere): sanctions are supposed to be coming soon. “In the next several weeks,” according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Check’s in the mail.

[And now I wonder if Sam Nunberg’s media tour was timed to deflect attention from Mayer’s article. A search of the CNN website suggests that the network has left the article untouched. Mayer has appeared on two MSNBC shows, Morning Joe and The Rachel Maddow Show.]

“Black as a giant tortoise”

Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity, trans. Phyllis and Trevor Blewitt (New York: New York Review Books, 2006).

Stormy weather, yes, with no scandal-related pun intended. Zweig’s fiction is so often the stuff of a great black-and-white film.

Related reading
All OCA Stefan Zweig posts (Pinboard)

Walking, not a sport

“Walking is not a sport. Putting one foot in front of the other is child’s play”: Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking, trans. John Howe (London: Verso, 2014).

I like the spirit of this book. But there’s considerable repetition, and too many abstractions and unsupported assertions. After all, walking, for some people, is a sport, and for others, it’s impossible or nearly so. The translation is often ungainly: “One can plunder the streets delicately like that for ages.” This book is best borrowed from a library. The library is best reached on foot.

Mystery actor

Do you recognize her? Leave your best guess as a comment, and enter as often as you like. I’ll drop a hint if necessary.

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A hint, before I go for a walk: This actor is best known for a role in a television series.

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Another hint: the role involved a struggle with the bottle, or with a bottle.

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Solved! The answer is in the comments.

More mystery actors
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

Sam Nunberg Day

It appears that March 5 has been designated Sam Nunberg Day.

All I know is that if you’re serious about ducking a subpoena, you slip out of the country, quiet-like. Today’s mediafest is a stunt, meant, I think, to let Nunberg’s “mentor” Roger Stone know that his mentee will not betray him.

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A better guess, maybe: Nunberg is presenting himself as an inherently unreliable witness. I’m not crooked enough to understand how these people think.

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The Washington Post offers four theories.

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Another thought: a Stone prank to discredit CNN and MSNBC.

[Sam who? The Ballotpedia biography is much more helpful than Wikipedia.]

Sinatra’s last performance

Here, in audio only, is Frank Sinatra’s last performance, from the Palm Desert Marriott Ballroom, Palm Desert, California, February 25, 1995. The occasion: a short performance for the closing of the Frank Sinatra Golf Tournament. Six songs: “I've Got The World On A String” (Harold Arlen–Ted Koehler), “You Make Me Feel So Young” (Josef Myrow–Mack Gordon), “Fly Me To The Moon” (Bart Howard), “Where or When” (Richard Rodgers–Lorenz Hart), “My Kind Of Town” (Jimmy Van Heusen–Sammy Cahn), and “The Best Is Yet To Come” (Cy Coleman–Carolyn Leigh). Sinatra is no doubt reading lyrics from teleprompters throughout. The orchestra is led by his son, Frank Jr.

My favorite moments:

~ in “I've Got The World On A String,” the choice Sinatra word marvelous (with mid-Atlantic prounciation) substituting for beautiful
~ the second chorus of “You Make Me Feel So Young”
~ the mid-Atlantic pronunciation of worship in “Fly to the Moon”
~ all of “Where or When,” with a singer sounding decades younger
~ all of “The Best Is Yet to Come”

That last song here sounds to me like the best of the six. The start is not promising — Sinatra asks “Who wrote this?” and misses his entrance. His pianist, Bill Miller, covers perfectly. I love the “aah” at 21:08 and the way Sinatra softens his voice in the final bars, before shifting to a growl. As in “Where or When,” he sounds like a much younger singer.

According to Jonathan Schwartz’s eyewitness account, “And Now the End is Near” (Esquire, May 1995), Sinatra was supposed to sing just the first four songs, a short set put together by Frank Jr. Thank goodness that the impromptu additions did not include “My Way” or “New York, New York.”

Years later, on his radio show, Schwartz said that he had asked an Esquire editor if the magazine would be interested in an article about what would be Sinatra’s last performance. How did Schwartz know it would be the last? “Trust me on this,” Schwartz told the editor. The event drew no other notice from the press.

Frank Sinatra died in 1998. On his gravestone: “The Best Is Yet to Come.”

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At some point both recordings disappeared from YouTube. The link to Jonathan Schwartz’s radio show had Schwartz‘s account of the performance and just one song, “The Best Is Yet to Come.”

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July 31, 2020: The performance is back on YouTube, this time with video. Get it before it’s gone. That one’s gone. But here it is again.

From my dad’s CDs

I’m still making my way through my dad’s CDs: Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Ivie Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Mildred Bailey, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Art Blakey, Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins, Clifford Brown, Dave Brubeck, Joe Bushkin, Hoagy Carmichael, Betty Carter, Ray Charles, Charlie Christian, Rosemary Clooney, Nat “King” Cole, John Coltrane, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, Matt Dennis, Doris Day, Blossom Dearie, Paul Desmond, Tommy Dorsey, Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Stéphane Grappelli, Bobby Hackett, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Dick Hyman, Harry James, Hank Jones, Louis Jordan, Stan Kenton, Barney Kessel, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, Peggy Lee, Mary Ann McCall, Susannah McCorkle, Dave McKenna, Ray McKinley, Marian McPartland, Johnny Mercer, Helen Merrill, Glenn Miller, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Red Norvo, Anita O’Day, Charlie Parker, Joe Pass, Art Pepper, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, Boyd Raeburn, Django Reinhardt, Marcus Roberts, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Rushing, Catherine Russell, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, Artie Shaw, George Shearing, Horace Silver, and now, Frank Sinatra, about two days’ worth of Sinatra.

Here, via YouTube, from Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958), are two of what Sinatra called “saloon songs.” My dad never smoked, never drank, and almost certainly never set foot in a saloon. These songs are just great music, saloon or no saloon:

“Angel Eyes” (Matt Dennis–Earl Brent)
“One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” (Harold Arlen–Johnny Mercer)

The arrangements are by Nelson Riddle. Bill Miller, Sinatra’s longtime pianist, is prominent on “One for My Baby.” Both songs resist embedding. Which reminds of the Irving Gordon song: “Unembeddable, that’s what you are.”

With Sinatra behind me, four smaller mountain ranges have come into view: Jo Stafford, Art Tatum, Mel Tormé, and Lee Wiley.

Also from my dad’s CDs
Mildred Bailey : Tony Bennett : Charlie Christian : Blossom Dearie : Duke Ellington : Coleman Hawkins : Billie Holiday : Louis Jordan : Charlie Parker : Jimmy Rushing : Artie Shaw

[Once in a great while, I played this recording of “One for My Baby” at the end of a semester. Perfect for a class that let out at 2:50.]