The March/April 2017 edition of Playboy has hit newsstands, and after a full year of showing no nude photographs Playboy has returned flesh to its pages. They’ve also revamped the magazine for the second time in a year, ushering in a new new era with this month’s issue.
I’m in it too.
And, no, I’m not naked.
A full review next week.
My local community center got a little ink over the weekend following a “meeting” held there this past Friday night. The gathering was a sort of town hall event, though the guest of honor did not show. No, not the President, but rather one of the congressmembers elected from his party despite his raging unpopularity. (Hehe.)
Representative Barbara Comstock (“R”-Virginia), my elected representative in Congress, is far from my favorite legislator, but I think she’s 100% right on this issue. She’s within her rights to stay home, and I advise other GOP lawmakers to do the same. It’s a neat little trick that’s being played out in community centers around the country these days: angry citizens, upset with Trump or the world or their own miserable lives, call together a “town hall meeting” or some such thing and “invite” a dignitary or two, then flop in incredulity when such dignitaries do not show.
When the KKK invites Barack Obama to its Grand Wizard powwow, are we surprised when he doesn’t go? It’s a trick, and I think the same principle applies here. (I’m just thinking now of the government software program that is reading Obama and KKK in the same sentence and is red-flagging this blog.)
Dear Republican legislators, whether you favor the President or not: When you’re “invited” to a town hall meeting that sounds a little like a suicide mission…
Stay home.
Basketball legend and current President of Basketball Operations for the Los Angeles Lakers Magic Johnson has come under criticism the past 48 hours for selecting Rob Pelinka as the Lakers’ new general manager. Pelinka, you see, is white, one of now a sea of white GMs in a sport dominated mostly by athletes of color.
(Pause for effect.)
Magic has been criticized.
(Pause.)
Magic, for those of you who have been hiding under a rock since 1979, is himself of color.
(Pause.)
That’s all.
A page-two article in the “Business” section of my local paper (that’s The Washington Post) is headlined “The working-class job that Trump could actually save.” There are about 100 reasons why I knew from the word go this piece would be ridiculous, a list at the top of which I’d find don’t take advice from The Washington Post.
The “working-class” job in question is—wait for it—cashiers, the second-largest occupation in the country according to government types who are paid to keep track of those things. The article’s author, a Mr. Allan Sloan, says that “supporting [editor’s note: I’m reaching for my wallet here] the nation’s 3.5 million cashiers could help preserve the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of low-paid people…”
And it can be done “at minimal (or perhaps no) cost to consumers!”
(Exclamation added. Sentence, sadly, all too real.)
The author’s evidence?
Mandated gas station attendants in New Jersey.
I swear to Jeebus.
In 1949 the State of New Jersey banned consumer-operated gasoline pumps, among other things enshrining the employment of gas station attendants all over the state. At no cost to the taxpayers! One-eyed economists everywhere have been smiling for nearly seven decades.
Mr. Sloan writes that the number of cashier jobs in the United States was the same in 2015 (the most recent year for which such numbers are available) as it was in 2005. Ten years of no growth in the cashier industry even though the U.S. population has increased by 7.6 million!
Those cashier jobs have obviously been exported to China, no?
Of course it is automation that has rendered some cashier jobs unnecessary. Ex-cashiers can say hello to bank tellers, buggy whip makers, and Blockbuster Video employees. Personally I think that self-checkout lines are the greatest thing since pump-your-own gas devices, but that’s me. Or rather, it’s all of us. Think about it. If those things weren’t being used, they wouldn’t be there. If customers still wanted a guy to pump their gas (paying a little more to do so), they’d be there too. The answer to this question always involves a mirror.
Mr. Sloan’s advice to President Trump? He can “do a lot of good for cashiers and himself by publicly leaning on retail chains to preserve those jobs or even add to them.”
I think just outlawing new technology would be a lot simpler. And in the words of Mr. Sloan… “We’d all win.”
Because going around like 19th century Luddites breaking all those self-check machines would just be silly.
You’ve gotta love a game in which the losing team scores 182 points, and the winning team scores 192 without seeming to break a sweat. Such was the theatre last night in New Orleans, where Mardi Gras came early for All-Stars East and West. Special kudos to homeboy Anthony Davis, who scored an incredible 52 points, including 36 on dunks alone. The previous record for points scored in an All-Star game for an individual player was 42, by none other than Wilt Chamberlain. If we were to translate this into regular-season record shattering, Wilt’s 100-point game would have been demolished with 124!
But that’s just silly.
With their convincing win over the Indiana Pacers last night, coupled with a Celtics loss to the Bulls, my hometown Washington Wizards pulled to within two games of second place in the Eastern Conference heading into this weekend’s All-Star break. Five games out of first.
With their band of largely unsung heroes (though becoming less so every day), the Wizards (nee Bullets) have gone from laughing stock for much of my life to bona fide contenders for an NBA title.
And if they win one before the Caps or Nats I’ll just have to laugh.
The two hottest teams in pro sports play in my backyard, pitchers and catchers have reported, and Playboy is reintroducing nude photos.
Does life get any better than this?
It was Leslie Knope who coined the term “Galentine’s Day,” but if the gals from UConn’s top-ranked women’s basketball team prevail tonight against sixth-ranked South Carolina, the holiday will be forever theirs.
For those of you not following women’s college hoops, the Lady Huskies tonight are going for their 100th consecutive victory. One hundred. Their Harlem Globetrotter-like dominance of the sport over the past few years has been almost obscene, yet I’m going to love for it to continue.
Move over, Knope. These gals have got it all.
I very rarely “tune in” to watch anything on actual TV other than live sports, but every once in a while I make an exception to this self-imposed principle. Last night’s premiere episode of The History of Comedy on CNN was worth breaking the rules.
Breaking the rules was sort of the theme of last night’s episode, which featured mostly clips of “old” comedians—mostly from the 1960s—whose material was considered at the time dangerous, scandalous, or even criminal. The life and work of Lenny Bruce was featured prominently, as was the work of Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin. In fact, the best parts of the show were the clips themselves. Of course you wanted to be there, in the club, in the moment, but you’d settle for 10 seconds here and 10 seconds there on your TV at home 50 years later. Seeing comtemporary comedians speak about the old-timers in documentary fashion was the least entertaining part of the program, though it’s tough to come up with anything new to say about how great the seven words you can’t say on TV really are.
I rarely say this, but kudos, CNN, for putting out another series I’m actually interested in watching. Following their success with The Sixties, The Seventies, and The Eighties (all of which I thoroughly enjoyed), CNN again proves that even communist cable channels can produce quality programming from time to time.
Already lost by now in the sea of constant news re: President Trump is his assertion this week that the mainstream media has forgotten and/or underreported terrorism in the past three years, ostensibly covering for the man who used to have his job.
In the 40-hour-a-day news cycle in which we now reside there is hardly a swatted fly that goes unreported or underreported. There is, however, one event, from April 2009, that is, in fact, the underreported terrorist act of the past generation and I take this opportunity to remedy that.
April 3, 2009, 13 people were killed at the American Civic Association, in Binghamton, New York. The shooter then turned the gun on himself, bringing the death total to 14, the deadliest mass murder in New York State since September 11, and still one of the worst such occurrences this century.
Trouble is, you never hear about it.
My usual joke is that Binghamton can’t even get a mass shooting right, but this isn’t about Binghamton, it’s about reporting, and underreporting, as it were.
It’s the great forgotten mass murder of our time.
I think the best explanation for this is not one of politics or journalistic misfeasance. Simply put, nearly all the victims at the ACA were not white. They were not black or Hispanic either, and I don’t think the media (and, sadly, many people in Binghamton), have given them due sorrow.
Underreported?
Well, news teams were there in droves that awful day.
Not much since then, though.
Hard to believe it’s been nearly eight years.
And way too many shootings since.