A gang of six

“How a half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election“: just out from The New York Times, “Meadows and the Band of Loyalists: How They Fought to Keep Trump in Power.”

Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan, and Scott Perry (that name is new to me): they’re fascists at work. Expel them from Congress and charge them with sedition.

From the carny world

In The New York Times, Brooks Barnes writes about Nightmare Alley and his life as the child of carnies:

People don’t quite know what to say when I mention my carny past. Some are fascinated, asking if I ever encountered sideshow performers. (Read on.)

Yes, read on.

I’m looking forward to seeing Nightmare Alley. But I doubt that it will outdo the 1947 original. (Elaine thinks that 1947 is our ideal year for movies. We watched thirteen in a row earlier this year.)

Almodóvar in the Times

“To find his American equivalent, you would have to imagine that the director of American Pie went on to make American Beauty and then a film that touches the ugliest aspects of the American Civil War”: from Marcela Valdes’s long profile of Pedro Almodóvar (The New York Times).

Our household is an Almodóvar-friendly zone. We’ve seen eighteen of his films. If I were ever to meet him, I would use the Spanish that remains to me to say “Gracias por sus películas, señor.”

Yikes

Our own Mary Miller ((R, Illinois-15) made the PBS NewsHour tonight. Miller’s brief moment on camera begins at the 1:22 mark in this segment. An unmasked Marjorie Taylor Greene sits behind her.

I wonder who wrote Mary’s lines for her, and what she thinks a “star chamber” is.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts

Domestic comedy

[The shelves were bare.]

“Pepperidge Farm forgot.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Context here and here.]

Frank Cook (1942–2021)

He preceded Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra as the drummer for Canned Heat and later became a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. Here is an account of his life.

Frank Cook gets considerable screen time during Canned Heat’s brief but exciting appearance in Monterey Pop (dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1968). Watch at YouTube.

Related reading
All OCA Canned Heat posts (Pinboard)

Mary Miller, troublemaker

“At the center of it all is freshman Rep. Mary Miller, a member of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus”: she’s hard at work making trouble for her fellow Republicans (CNN).

In office for nearly one year, Miller hasn’t done a damn thing for the people of her district — except make us look like idiots to the world beyond “east-central Illinois.”

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts

“Mandit”?

An NPR reporter pronounced mandate that way, three times in one story: “mandit,” or \ ˈman-dət \.

Perhaps modeled on \ ˈman-də-ˌtȯr-ē \?

Reader, have you heard this pronunciation?

“Some rocks”

[Click for bigger rocks.]

There they were, where two roads meet, or diverge, depending on which way your feet are going. They are large rocks, aspiring to grow still bigger.

Imagine if Robert Frost had been out walking: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / When all at once I saw some rocks.” Then we would have “The Roads Not Taken,” the poet (already with Wordsworth on his mind) having been stopped in his tracks by the sudden stony sight.

Frost’s “For Once, Then, Something” refers to “a pebble of quartz” at the bottom of a well. I think “For Once, Then, Some Rocks” would be a much more satisfying poem.

“Some rocks” are an abiding preoccupation of these pages.

See also today’s Zippy.

[I’m not touching “Mending Wall” — too many rocks.]

From the PBS NewsHour

The PBS HewsHour had a story about whether people feel safe enough to return to theaters. “Absolutely not!” one person said. That made me think of something from Martin Buber that Matt Thomas quoted in a blog post.

Then the NewsHour went to Stephen Sondheim’s house. The house had a trick floor, with a small section of one floorboard that was held to the rest of the board by a metal pin at each end. A reporter pushed down on one side of the section, and it tilted, revealing $300,000.

When the house burned down, the money went with it.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)