Whoa

From Bloomberg:

President Donald Trump pressed then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to help persuade the Justice Department to drop a criminal case against an Iranian-Turkish gold trader who was a client of Rudy Giuliani, according to three people familiar with the 2017 meeting in the Oval Office.

Tillerson refused, arguing it would constitute interference in an ongoing investigation of the trader, Reza Zarrab, according to the people. They said other participants in the Oval Office were shocked by the request.

It’s really beginning to feel as if floodgates are opening, walls are closing in, and clichés are taking over this sentence.

Among the oranges

[Click for larger fruit.]

“Ah, South California”: I love that line from Paul Simon’s song “Punky’s Dilemma.” Elaine and I just spent a few days there — in the state, not the song, hanging out outdoors and in- with our daughter Rachel, her husband Seth, their daughters Talia and newborn Josie, and our son Ben. Parks, pizza, Play-Doh, and pumpkins. And helping out. And early nights. And much happiness.

Marshall Efron (1938–2019)

Marshall Efron, a mainstay of The Great American Dream Machine, has died at the age of eighty-one. The New York Times has an obituary. I was a GADM fan and a Marshall Efron fan. I think I even wrote him a fan letter. His comedy was heady, subversive stuff for a bookish, skeptical high-school student. I still remember “Olives.”

Who can it be now?

[From a Mucinex DM commercial. The blur of the banner is there in the original. Click for a larger view.]

I’m sorry, but having seen it, I can’t unsee it: the gob of mucus with the glasses really does look like our president’s Mr. Fix-It, Attorney General William Barr. Please don’t let that get around.

“An important Rubicon”

On CNN today, a talking head referred to “an important Rubicon.” Merriam-Webster:

a bounding or limiting line

especially : one that when crossed commits a person irrevocably

A Rubicon is by definition important. Ask Julius Caesar. Or Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd.

Not prolific

The word prolific is all over the news today, in the phrase “most prolific serial killer in U.S. history” and the like. Merriam-Webster’s definitions:

1 : producing young or fruit especially freely : FRUITFUL

2 archaic : causing abundant growth, generation, or reproduction

3 : marked by abundant inventiveness or productivity // a prolific composer

Prolific comes from the French prolifique, which itself goes back to the Latin prōlēs, offspring. The word’s associations with new life and creativity make it a particularly grotesque choice for characterizing a killer. Worst or deadliest is more appropriate. No one should honor a killer as prolific.

Nancy vs. Lucy

Olivia Jaimes on Nancy Ritz and Lucy van Pelt:

Lucy is a more nihilist Nancy. Nancy, for all her complaining, is an optimist with an overpowered sense of self-efficacy. I feel like Lucy wakes up some mornings and thinks “What’s the point?” Nancy thinks that too, but then she remembers that bread exists. I think they would be friends, though maybe they’d prefer just to admire each other’s hustles from a distance.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Still not smoking

I smoked my last cigarette on October 8, 1989, thirty years ago today. I smoked for fourteen years, trying a wide variety of brands but always going back to unfiltered cigarettes, in packs or handrolled. “Only a modest quantity of unfiltered cigarettes,” to borrow Stanley Dance’s characterization of Duke Ellington’s smoking. Ellington of course died of lung cancer. I wonder where I might now be had I continued smoking.

Cigarettes haunt me, at least mildly. “Mild”: now there’s a cigarette word. “Outstanding — and they are mild” was a slogan for Pall Mall. That was Ellington’s brand. I stopped to stare at a Pall Mall pack in a store display last week, because I still admire the venerable design. Like Camel and Lucky Strike, Pall Mall is increasingly difficult to spot in the wild.

Here’s a bit of my great and unmatched wisdom: if you smoke, quit. You’ll want to quit eventually, and the longer you smoke, the more difficult quitting will be. And for Pete’s sake, don’t vape. There’s no future in being a nicotine addict, or in not being around at all.

And two more cents: we’ve hit a great moment in the annals of American doublethink now that states are banning vaping products until they’re proven safe while cigarettes, which we know cause disease, are sold everywhere.

Related reading
All OCA cigarette posts (Pinboard)

[Stanley Dance: in his The World of Duke Ellington (1969).]

Unfit, unwell

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2019

If he’s doing a Vincent Gigante, that, too, makes him unfit and unwell.

“It’s always the same”

From No Greater Glory (dir. Frank Borzage, 1934). A watchman (Christian Rub) and his janitor friend (Tom Ricketts) watch two gangs of boys fighting. “So much fighting,” the janitor says. “And all over an empty lot.” The watchman, missing one arm, sets his friend straight:

“It ain’t an empty lot. It’s Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, Manchuria. It’s any war, every war. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow — it’s always the same.”