Shortly after I posted yesterday’s bleak assessment, this arrived in the mail:
As usual, The Onion is one step ahead.
The bad news today was that That Fucking Guy has pretty much declared himself President-for-Life. The good news is that that life is looking shorter and shorter. Between bruised hands, swollen ankles, and increasingly flagrant mental deterioration, it’s hard not to feel like the vultures are circling.
I know, I know… we’ve thought that before. Like 100 times. But let me have my little daydreams.
I do find myself wondering what happens under President Vance. On the one hand, the authoritarian infrastructure they’ve been setting up will still be there. On the other, no one likes J.D. Vance, and TFG’s weird mystical hold on his voters will immediately evaporate. It should be chaos, and in one version of the future, he and Miller and Bannon and maybe Elon tear each other limb from limb in the struggle for power.
Again: Let me dream.
Meanwhile, I’m being told there was a “cabinet meeting” today where, for more than two hours, TFG’s hand-picked team of brown-nosers took turns gushing about how awesome he is. (Personally I can’t and won’t watch that shit.) It’s all so… so… gauche. I mean, who wants that? And who is so broken inside that he’s willing to let the world see that he wants it?
Sigh. Well, with apologies to Marlon Brando, I can’t think of any more dialogue today. Let me turn you over to Garrett Graff, who says what I’ve been trying to say only more eloquently and coherently.
Oh and one more thing. Here’s a song that made me feel better for 5 minutes today. Play it loud.
So the United States of America is a military dictatorship now, in case you didn’t get the memo. Somehow they snuck this one in on us while a lot of people were on vacation; you’d think it would have been a bigger deal.
Worse, we didn’t even get a guy who looks cool in sunglasses like Qaddafi; instead it’s a bronzer-smeared buffoon, a failed casino operator in his dotage. To be insulted by this fascist, to borrow a phrase, is so degrading.
In truth I don’t think El Pendejo de Mar-a-Lago is competent enough to pull this off himself: One senses the hand of the reptilian that goes by the human name “Stephen Miller.” That seems to be who is more or less running the country these days. What a beautiful world.
Working my way through the Sunday Times over the course of the week, as I do, I just came across this delightful correction on page 17:
Because of a production error, the article misquotes John Waters on what a Maryland film censor said to him about his 1974 feature “Female Trouble.” Waters said she told him, “You can’t have that cunnilingus scene,” not “You can have that cunnilingus scene.”
This led me to wonder what corrections I might be missing during the week, and if they appear on the website — which they do. But only the last four days are shown (there were no corrections on August 18 — good job, proofreaders!), and there’s no apparent way to go back further.
This one appeared yesterday:
An article on Aug. 2 about Edinburgh’s Festival Fringe described incorrectly the ’70s band that features in “Philosophy of the World.” The band, the Shaggs, was a real band, not a fictional one.
And if you know the Shaggs, which I do, you can understand why that confusion might occur.
But all this is neither here nor there really. I just felt the urge to post something this morning. As you were.
It brings me no joy to say this, although he is aging quite gracefully. The recent documentary on Apple TV portrayed Steve as a man who has pretty much figured out how to live, enjoying the company of his family and his best friend Martin Short (they ride bikes together, do live and TV comedy, and keep up a constant stream of back-and-forth insults).
But 80 is getting up into the big numbers and raises the specter of a Steveless world, a dreadful prospect indeed. Then again the great comedians sometimes live long: Carl Reiner made it to 99 and Mel Brooks, who turned 99 this summer, is still making movies. So we might have 20 more years of Steve, and by then I’ll be almost 80 myself. Jesus.
Books Acquired: Classic Crews, Harry Crews I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, Philip K. Dick The White Album, Joan Didion The Caltraps of Time, David I. Masson Against the Country, Ben Metcalf
Books Offloaded:
Progress Made: The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, Kyle Arnold The White Album, Joan Didion
Books Finished: Radio Free Albemuth, Philip K. Dick I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, Philip K. Dick Messiah, Gore Vidal
The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those who he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way; not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not. —Philip K. Dick
Last summer I noted that Bishop James Pike, friend of Philip K. Dick and model for the character of Timothy Archer in The Transmigration of…, was “the subject of a famous essay by Joan Didion,” and added, “I guess I’ll have to read that now.”
As the relevant volume, The White Album, is a famous and popular one, I figured I was sure to run across a used copy in my compulsive bookstore forays. But it never happened. Well, if nobody’s selling their copy, it must be a great book, right? So finally I broke down and resorted to eBay. And so far I am quite impressed.
The title essay, which takes up the first 50 pages, is quite a thing — a wide-ranging memoir that bounces from intimate personal details to widescreen cultural commentary. The Beatles do not make an appearance, but the Doors pop up, as does Linda Kasabian of Manson Family fame.
It is followed by the Pike essay, which turned out to be a wry, pitiless, pretty convincing takedown of the man PKD lionized. In Didion’s portrait Pike is almost Trumpian in his heedless narcissism; the sort of man who, when unpacking a new dress shirt, lets the packaging fall to the floor and never thinks of it again. Brilliant and driven, but with his head in the clouds… which may be why he and Phil got along.
