Glaringly hot with just a faint whisper of a breeze this late-afternoon Saturday here in California’s Central Valley — we’re just under 100 degrees right now, but forecast to enter the dreaded triple-digit zone tomorrow and boil into maybe 110-to-113 territory by the middle of next week.
Welcome to the future.
And of the future, the ugly-shit news from so many fronts has clamped a lusty hold it seems on my posting the last couple of weeks. This happens on occasion, more lately, when shit comes together at the proverbial sad, depressing crossroads and I sink into despair on the reckoning of planet Earth, and America. Especially with the saturation point of the giant, orange turd T-Rump, whose fat-ass face is plastered all over the whatever-sized screen you’re watching everywhere all at once. Since earlier this month I’ve been in a kind of literary funk, which happens when I let shit play on the brain too heavily, though, how to avoid such horrid goings-on found all about the nowadays is truly the question of the moment.
Maybe old age has something to do with it. I think I’ve aged more the last five/six years than any other subset period of personal history — and why? (I wrote about the last bout of this problem here.)
And, of course, the debate on Thursday didn’t freaking help. Joe Biden was horrible — I watched the first half and gave up midway, it was just too much. Joe looked, talked, and acted weird like a character in some weird-ass movie. Yet he posed no threat in his shitty appearance.
T-Rump was immeasurably worse. He lied and lied and lied and then lied even more. Even in the simplest takes, he made up random shit without a blink and the moderators (Jake Tapper and Dana Bash) didn’t do shit to stop, or slow it down. A citrus-tinged mug of a clown throwing lies in the air like candy mints without explanation.
And then the panic — asshole after media asshole cried Biden should step aside. WTF?
Steve M. had the best lede on the subject yesterday morning: ‘I watched a great deal of the post-debate analysis on CNN. While I agreed with the commentators that President Biden had a terrible night, I was furious when they all seemed to agree that Biden didn’t look capable of serving for another four years. I found myself shouting at the TV: You all realize that he knows this stuff, right? You know he gets it, even if he struggles to get the words out. Why aren’t any of you — even the Democrats — saying that?‘
Yeah, why?
And it doesn’t matter anyway:
it is not clear that a different nominee would actually be doing any better than biden pic.twitter.com/Nam9cMiE97
— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) June 29, 2024
Jill Biden reflected reality: ‘“Joe isn’t just the right person for the job. He’s the only person for the job … As Joe said earlier today, he’s not a young man … And you know, after last night’s debate, he said, ‘You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel that great.’ And I said, ‘Look, Joe, we are not going to let 90 minutes define the four years that you’ve been president.’”‘
Anyway, in more shitty news also from this past Thursday, Martin Mull died at 80 (only five years older than me!) Mull’s passing was announced yesterday by his daughter.
I absolutely loved him, ever since the 1970s, as one funny, way-droll guy. Straight-faced with insanity.
And here’s one wondrous example-fling with another dearly departed wonder:
Oh no!! I just this moment heard about this. He was a wonderful man and a brilliant artist and an unfailing wit. And I was fortunate enough to get to work on two series with him and really loved him. I used to listen to his comedy albums when I was in high school. https://t.co/zBn4d31uss
— Mitchell Hurwitz (@MitchHurwitz) June 29, 2024
Let’s close this sad-poker post with some rain-cloud induction from Annie Lennox:
Despite the grinding sorrow, or not, yet once again here we are…
(Illustration out front: M.C Escher’s ‘Hand with Reflecting Sphere,’ also known as ‘Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror,’ and found here.)