If anyone is wondering, Fran Lebowitz was great. Maybe that’s the wrong word, though. You don’t go to see Fran to laugh until you pee; it’s more a matter of chortling. She’s not a standup comic, but a wry observer of the world around us, and her friends. She told us about Martin Scorsese, and that photo by Peter Hujar, and Charles Mingus, who came for Thanksgiving at her parents’ house one year.

And she said something about Democrats in Washington. Yes, yes, they can’t get anything done when they’re in the minority and are blocked on everything, etc., but they can do one thing, she said: They can amplify the feelings and opinions of their constituents, and those constituents are furious.

This got a big response from the crowd. And yet, Michigan’s two do-nothing senators, both Democrats, continue to not do just that.

I read a review of Virginia Giuffre’s book, discussed at midweek.

The critic, Emma Brockes, puts her finger square on what I’ve been wondering since we all saw all those photos of Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book:

But so much focus has been put on the prince that after reading this book, it wasn’t him I thought about most; it was the casual visitors to Epstein’s New York mansion, the illustrious men and occasional woman whom Giuffre says she encountered at dinners there.

In respect of these people I’d like to ask: who the fuck did they think the 17-year-old at the table was? What did they think she was doing there? Only Melinda Gates, who met Epstein once and cited him as a factor in the breakdown of her marriage to Bill Gates, sensed what apparently none of these people could put their finger on. Giuffre quotes from a statement made by Gates after her meeting with Epstein: “I regretted it the second I walked in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified.” It was an insight that evidently escaped geniuses like the MIT professors Epstein continued to advise long after he’d become a convicted sex offender.

Ex!act!ly! It’s my belief that they knew exactly what she was doing there, and didn’t care. Rich people make their own rules. Also this guy…

The closest we get to a fresh allegation is Giuffre’s description of one of the scores of men Epstein forced her to have sex with as a “politician” and “former minister”, who choked and beat her almost unconscious, but who, she writes, is too powerful to name.

…is said to be Ehud Barak.

OK, then, time to wrap the week. The east wing of the White House is a pile of rubble, my massage was heavenly (“you’re very symmetrical,” the therapist said as she worked on my back), and it seems a good note to end on. The pedophiles and current crisis will still be there on Monday.

Do I have any photos to share? Not really. Here was the whiteboard workout for my Wednesday lifeguarding shift. Swimmers, give it a try:

Have a great weekend.

Because it felt like a grim duty, I forced myself to read an excerpt of “Nobody’s Girl,” Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir. You’ll recall she was the first, and highest-profile, of the Epstein victims to go public. It was published in The Guardian. It’s as sad and awful as you’d expect, but this passage, about sex with the no-longer-titled Prince Andrew, caught my eye:

Back at the house, Maxwell and Epstein said goodnight and headed upstairs, signalling it was time that I take care of the prince. In the years since, I’ve thought a lot about how he behaved. He was friendly enough, but still entitled – as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright. I drew him a hot bath. We disrobed and got in the tub, but didn’t stay there long because the prince was eager to get to the bed. He was particularly attentive to my feet, caressing my toes and licking my arches. That was a first for me, and it tickled. I was nervous he would want me to do the same to him. But I needn’t have worried. He seemed in a rush to have intercourse. Afterward, he said thank you in his clipped British accent. In my memory, the whole thing lasted less than half an hour.

It took a few minutes for the image to swim up from the depths of my memory:

Remember that? It was 1992, and Andrew and his commoner wife, Sarah Ferguson aka the Duchess of York, were separated. She’d traveled to the south of France for a restorative weeklong holiday with a then-unknown Texas “financial advisor,” and the paps did what paps do:

The 55 pictures over nine pages showed a topless Fergie rubbing sun cream on to the head of her balding financial adviser, kissing him, lying under him and letting him kiss or lick – the actual activity has since been disputed – her toes.

The question of whether Andrew or Sarah were into foot play when they married, or whether one introduced the other to it, or if it just happened spontaneously, remains open. Me, I don’t judge, I just notice. A longtime reader of this blog once messaged me that when someone says, “check out the pair on her,” he first looks at her feet. I’d much rather have my feet rubbed than kissed, and tomorrow I’m cashing in a nearly expired gift certificate for a 75-minute deep-tissue massage that I hope will include a little attention to the ol’ dogs.

I am thinking about this because it keeps me from thinking about the White House being torn down to build what will no doubt be the ugliest, tackiest, goldest monument to Tubby ever, one that I believe we should allow a full squadron of graffiti artists to deface as soon as he leaves. Assuming he leaves.

Let’s also turn our attention to other, more substantive matters. Roy has a nice piece on Zohran Mamdani. Dunno if it’s paywalled, but here’s a passage Dems should be paying attention to:

It should be mentioned that part of Mamdani’s success is his willingness to champion policies the voters actually want instead of making up excuses for why they can’t have them. Cheaper housing, lower cost of living, higher minimum wage — those are all easy layups. Even his promise to protect people from ICE goons reflects a growing consensus across the country at large.

These policies are reflexively treated by the Prestige Press as outside the mainstream, but if they are, it’s because those guys put them there, not because voters don’t want them.

Why did Trump win? In part, because he promised things people want. Yes, most of it was transparent, obvious bullshit — how’s that better, cheaper health care working for you, Kentucky? Is it infrastructure week yet? — but it worked for a man with a known track record for lying. Why can’t it work for those of us who deal in good faith? It seems it’ll be easier to make NYC buses free than design a national health-care plan, but what do I know? I know enough about public transport to know that fares are a small portion of system revenue, and the more people who can take public transit into a densely populated city, the better it is for everyone. I’ve been taking my beloved DDOT 31 bus down to Wayne State when weather permits, and I’m reminded again of how pleasant it can be, to throw your bike on the rack, ride downtown, retrieve the bike and cycle the last three-quarters of a mile to campus, without having to worry about parking. Besides, I’m taking a creative writing class, and we’re into poetry now. I need to hear the songs of my people for inspiration. and you hear them on a bus. Here’s something I heard the other day: “Hey, beautiful, I like your glasses.” And he was talking to me!

Anyway, go Zohran. Let’s try you for a while.

OK, I gotta think about exercise, a shower and dressing for the evening — going to see Fran Lebowitz tonight with a friend. Hope the remainder of your Wednesday is swell.

Hi there. Sorry the comments on the previous post were closed. I posted that on my re-downloaded WordPess mobile app, thinking it might make posting on the fly easier. Didn’t realize it defaulted to closed comments; I just thought you guys were not into it yesterday. I need to find that setting and fix it.

How’d your No Kings rally go? Detroit’s went swimmingly, but as this is the third one, I’m no longer surprised by that. The first one, in…April? Yes, April 5. That one was a revelation, seeing thousands of people coming out to say, essentially, We Can’t Believe This Shit, And We Object. That was a moving march up and down Woodward, no speakers, just fellowship. The second, in June, was held at Clark Park, and was stationary; we came, held up signs, but didn’t listen to the speakers. (I kept hoping they’d put on a rousing playlist, but no.) This one, at Roosevelt Park under the newly renovated Michigan Central Station, was also a speaker-forward event. We walked around, took some pictures of the best signs, stayed a decent interval and left to enjoy a couple beers in the warm October sunshine.

The important thing is to show up. Be one of the millions who are not OK with what’s going on. There won’t be a quiz on the speakers’ remarks.

One guy was yelling about Palestine, with a sign that accused Biden, Harris and Trump of complicity in genocide. I pegged him as yet another Arab-American Jill Stein voter. It was a nice day, so I didn’t want to ask how the new regime was working out for his countrymen and women in Gaza. (As of Sunday? Not well.)

But it was the Grosse Pointe demonstration that was truly heartening. Officially it was for the Pointes, Harper Woods and the east side of Detroit, but it was really robust — a couple blocks of people covering the sidewalks at a busy corner, shaking signs. I didn’t stop because I was en route to Detroit, but honked the whole length of the demonstration. It was a long honk.

So we head into the cool months — I have to assume this will be the last one until spring — knowing we’re not alone, that millions are as horrified and distraught and angry as we are.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t seen this, you should see this:

This is what you-know-who posted early Sunday morning, after the No Kings protests had largely wrapped. I know none of these know-nothings care what the rest of the world thinks about us, but I do, and so should you. This is not just literally disgusting, it’s horrifying in what it says about the man who posted it. I wear my Is He Dead Yet? T-shirt with pride, but also dread.

This, by the way, is what the vice president posted yesterday:

[image or embed]

— JD Vance (@jd-vance-1.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 3:32 PM

I guess he really is the worst stereotype of the American hillbilly: Mean, parochial, clannish, violent.

But let’s not dwell on the bad news as the week starts, OK? Seven million of us showed up yesterday. That’s something. Have a good one. Here’s a cute dog to cleanse your palate:

Still thinking about the other side. See you at the demonstration, brothers and sisters.

The older I get, the more of a grammar-and-usage pedant I become. The dumbass slang that every generation has can chap my ass, some days. The other day I saw the word obsessed to describe about 20 different things, from makeup to some nutritional supplement. I scrolled on, and learned that a particular influencer had declared this sweater made me reevaluate my entire life. That’s a powerful sweater, dear. You’ll be wearing that one a while.

Obsessed is up there with iconic in that it seems to be slung about most often by young women with vocal fry. OMG I am obsessed with this yoga mat. My new lip color has my husband shook. Kate introduced me to ate, which apparently means “to do well.” How were the shows in Canada? Oh, we ate.

Good to know.

I bring this up because… well, I’m not sure why. I saw a set of photos from Chicago this morning that were absolutely shocking, and in psychological self-defense, I needed to think about grammar and Uncrustables (amusing story, gift link) and respond to texts about the latest posting in the Wedding Attire Approval subreddit. Another old-person rant incoming: What the hell with these ridiculous wedding dress codes? When did people forget how to dress for a goddamn wedding? Going to a funeral? Wear black. Wedding? Something nice that’s not white. Job interview? Like the neatest, cleanest person who holds the job you want. Why complicate it, and where the hell do young people get off demanding black tie, especially at a time when virtually no one owns formal clothing anymore? The only wedding couples I’ve known who asked their guests to wear special clothing were getting married in non-traditional ceremonies and faiths, and even then they’re optional.

Maybe if we stopped shlepping through life in PJs and slippers, we wouldn’t have to do it this way.

That Uncrustables story is a wealth of information. As I recall, Uncrustables — basically a PB&J empanada busy moms keep in the freezer — were not favored by young Kate, so I only bought one once, at Cedar Point. But evidently they’re a cult favorite, and not just of children:

They’re not just a staple for kids (and the harried parents who have to feed them), they’re being wolfed down by the thousands in NFL locker rooms. Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce, a.k.a. the future Mr. Taylor Swift, revealed on his podcast that he scarfs down Uncrustables “probably more than I eat anything else in the world.” They’re often found at the finish lines of races, to refuel runners with carbs and the macronutrient of the moment, protein.

Who knew? Not I.

Those Chicago photos were really awful.

I was at a political fundraiser Friday. Never mind who– Oh, let’s not be coy. It was for Jocelyn Benson, who’s running for governor as a Democrat. I wasn’t there because I am a huge fan, although I think she’ll be the nominee and as usual, the people on the other side are ghastly. I was there because the event was being held at a friend’s former house, and she wanted to see it, three years later. I donated to justify having a glass of wine and some little phyllo-wrapped cheese things.

The wild card in the 2026 Michigan gubernatorial race is Mike Duggan, outgoing mayor of Detroit, who’s running as an independent. He’s not just any third-party flake, and has a chance to spoil either party’s chances, depending on the nominees. Given that Duggan has been a lifelong Democrat, it could easily be the Dems. Given that he has coddled the Detroit billionaire class (en route, to be fair, to transforming at least part of the city), it could also be the Republicans.

I mentioned this to someone during the chitchat portion of the evening, and she confidently asserted that Benson has little to fear from Duggan. And she knows this how? “AI says so.”

Which is the long way around to saying that in a very short time, a shocking number of people I know have integrated ChatGPT into their lives. They ask it the current value of a particular classic car, the chances of rain a week from Tuesday, to tell them a joke. Condense this document I don’t want to read. Give me some questions to ask this person when I talk to them. And so on.

I know I, too, use AI; I’m not naïve. I use Google, which now gives you an AI summary of your results whether you ask for one or not. If they sound fishy, I double-check them. I should always double-check them, because I’ve gotten straight-up hogwash more than once.

The other day, while lifeguarding, I couldn’t get the pace clocks — the natatorium wall clock that counts seconds in big digits, so swimmers can time their 50s and 100s — working correctly. So I turned them off with a shrug, figuring every minute spent fiddling over it is time I wouldn’t have eyes on the water, and that’s more important. Someone piped up, “Ask AI! It’ll tell you!”

The ones that really floor me are those who use AI to essentially do their jobs for them. The product is obvious — bland, anodyne, with the weird absence-of-humanity feel to it, which are then sold to clients. Sooner or later, the client will figure out what they’re being served and think, logically, what do I need this clown for? Way to put yourself out of business.

Do any of you do this? Is it worth it?

I finally figured out the pace clock via the time-honored tradition of asking someone who had the job before me. It turns out you have to set one to Lead and the other to Follow, and they sync themselves and work just fine.

It was a good weekend. Not much bloggage, but here’s a gift link: How a bad man got a good paramedic fired because he didn’t like what she said about Charlie Kirk.

Have a good week, all.

It’s color season.

Late but welcome, fall has arrived. I always note that there’s a week’s load of laundry a couple times a year that contains both shorts and at least one flannel shirt, and I guess it’s this week. It was 70 and muggy when I got up Tuesday morning, currently struggling to reach 50. Dinner last night was adjusted from chicken on the grill to BLTs. Can’t deny it: It feels great.

Check with me in another month, when the whining begins.

So. The week began at a gallop and has slowed to a forward canter. Coming back from my creative-writing class at Wayne State, on surface streets to avoid the freeway parking lot, I listened to “All Things Considered,” and wondered after a spell if it might be wiser for me to just quit paying attention to the news altogether. In an interview with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, he said (paraphrasing), “President Trump doesn’t read, and doesn’t know what ‘insurrection’ means.” The reporter, with her Bias Alert going WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP, said, “I think the president would disagree with you on that.” Gee, thanks, I feel so much better now. We wouldn’t want to let an American governor get away with speaking the truth, would we?

But I can’t stop, because that’s how I’m made. Before that, I heard the last few moments of an interview with Beth Macy, who has a book out this week. She was on “Fresh Air,” and had an op-ed in the NYT Sunday, and has this piece in the Atlantic today. Title: “What Happened to Ohio?” and yeah, it’s a gift link. It’s about Urbana, where Alan started his newspaper career and from which Macy hails. Turns out it’s not the place she grew up:

I was most shocked by what I gleaned from people I’d known the longest. My childhood friend Joy, a Black lay minister who had conducted my Mom’s celebration of life, revealed that she didn’t believe George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin. My niece’s husband, a type 1 diabetic, turned down not one but two life-saving transplants because the donors had taken COVID vaccines. When I spoke with my sister Cookie about my oldest son, Max, who was about to marry his husband, she used the Old Testament scripture from Leviticus to condemn homosexuality.

A friend asked recently what it felt like to spend time in a place I had once loved but no longer connected with, and I had to admit that my predominant emotion was pain. Often, I’d leave two or three days before my rental was up, eager to return home to my husband, my dog, and my largely privileged circle of friends who don’t espouse beliefs that repulse me.

Sigh. When does this shit end? Do we ever get out of it? I’m skeptical.

It’s been my experience that one of the best experiences one can have with art is to find a great piece of it before you know too much about it. There’s so much commentary, especially about movies — review shows, reviews, talk shows with clips, internet content, all of it. Don’t get me started on interviews with actors, etc., where SPOILER ALERT appears literally one word before the spoiler.

So, with all that said, I won’t spoil anything, or tell you too much, or anything at all. Just go see “One Battle After Another” and thank me later.

That was the highlight of the weekend, which was, as usual, filled with chores and, this weekend, yet another summer weekend — temps in the 80s. It won’t last past Monday, and I guess I should be sad, but I’m ready for fall.

And with that, I’ve kind of emptied my already shallow bin. Let’s try for better later this week.

When life grows a little overwhelming, as it’s been this week… Listen to me. “This week.” It’s Wednesday. And already we’ve had a whatever-that-was at Quantico yesterday, a government shutdown, deepfake racist AI coming from the Oval — it sometimes becomes too much. When I’m feeling outmatched by reality, I go to Reddit.

Reddit, the platform where no trivial topic is too small to create a community of fellow travelers to waste time discussing it all. My current fave subreddits: John and Carolyn and Wedding Attire Approval. In the first, lonely women rehash the lives and deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, endlessly. A typical post might be a closeup of Carolyn, and a question: Do you think she had very subtle rhinoplasty? Comments: 85. It’s really amazing. Wedding Attire Approval consists in large part of innocents wandering into a den of bitches, posting photos of perfectly fine dresses and asking if it’s appropriate for a guest at a wedding. The answer, frequently? NO. Forensic analysis of this dress reveals it was once carried through a room containing white thread! Therefore it cannot be worn to any wedding or wedding-related event!

I’ve known that women shouldn’t wear a white dress to a wedding — that’s for the bride — but I swear, these lunatics make up rules I never heard of. No white to a bachelorette party. No white to a rehearsal dinner. And the latest is when someone will post a photo of a light pink or pale blue dress, but it gets the veto because it might “photograph” white. Or a stunning floor-length dress with a white collar could be photographed from the wrong angle, suggest the guest might be the bride, and RUIN ALL THE PICTURES.

I know the great thing about the internet is, there’s a corner for everyone, and if the algorithm didn’t push it into my face all the time, I could forget it exists. But it does, and I can’t.

Meanwhile, here’s an analysis of the event at Quantico yesterday (gift link, natch):

It was a speech unlike any other and just like every other.

…Several hundred military commanders turned up at Quantico on Tuesday morning. Some had flown in for it from places as far away as Germany, Brussels, Japan and South Korea. They sat mostly in silence as Mr. Trump talked for 73 minutes about the same things he talks about almost every day, no matter where he is or to whom he is speaking.

He talked to the generals about Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the infamous autopen. He talked about the media. He talked about tariffs and the border. He talked about the time he went to a restaurant in Washington to eat dinner. He talked about not being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize he felt he had earned.

He talked, in other words, exactly the same way he talks to rally crowds and the sycophants who gather around his table at Mar-a-lago. Only the military brass didn’t do what those crowds do — laugh and smile. They sat mostly stone-faced while President Wetbrain talked for…73 minutes. He told them he wanted American cities to serve as “training grounds” for soldiers; in other words, that he expected American troops to kill and wound Americans. What did he expect? Cheers? Clearly he did.

Lucian Truscott quotes from the same speech. It was chilling, not just because of the kill-your-countrymen thing, but the fact this man is obviously losing his marbles:

He began by attacking Biden, naturally, complaining that “We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling down stairs every day – every day, the guy’s falling down stairs – and I said, that’s not our president. We can’t have it. I’m very careful, you know, when I walk down stairs, I walk…very…slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just, try not to fall, ‘cause it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen, and it became a part of their legacy, you know. Walk nice and easy. You don’t have to set any records. Be cool! Be cool when you walk down, but don’t…don’t bop down the stairs. The one thing with Obama…I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs, I’ve never seen…da-da-da-da-teh-deh-bop-bop…I’ve never seen…he would go down those stairs, bop-bop, he wouldn’t hold on, he’d go down those stairs, I said, it’s great! I wouldn’t want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually, bad things are gonna happen, and it only takes one. A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell. We had nothing.”

And let’s not let that be overshadowed by this:

There were Black generals and admirals sitting amidst their white counterparts in that audience in Quantico today. Not one of them, white or Black, could have missed the rank racism when Trump imitated Barack Obama “bopping” down a set of stairs. Trump said he “never seen” anything like it, as if he were describing a tight end in a football game catching a difficult pass. None of them missed the racism when Trump mentioned, in speaking about “the nuclear” that there are two “N-words” you can’t say. Every person in that room knew what the other N-word is, and they got it that Trump was complaining that “political correct,” as he called it, had stopped its usage.

Ugh. Our president.

OK, I have an interview coming up that I must prep for. Carry on, enjoy your Wednesday, and we’ll see how it goes.