Kris Kristofferson (1936-2024)

The gifted singer, songwriter, and actor died on September 28th at the age of 88.

There have been many articles and tributes to him. He had a varied career and many of his songs were sung by others and became major hits.

Kristofferson was a Golden Gloves boxer, rugby star and football player in college; received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England; and flew helicopters as a captain in the U.S. Army but turned down an appointment to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville.
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Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such country and rock ‘n’ roll standards as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

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Harper Steele and Will Ferrell talk to Seth Meyers

I reviewed the excellent documentary Will and Harper a couple of days ago about the cross-country journey taken by Will Ferrell and Harper Steel to see what Harper’s experience would be like now that she has transitioned.

The two of them were interviewed by Seth Meyers on his show where they discussed how the documentary came about and their experience making it. Meyers worked alongside the two of them on Saturday Night Live (and made a cameo appearance in the film) and it was really nice to see three funny people who seem to genuinely like each other bantering with one another.

Have I been committing a serious offense against Italian cuisine?

This cartoon brought me up short.

(WuMo)

My practice has been to take spaghetti out of the box and break the strands into four smaller pieces before cooking it. That way I don’t have to go through what (to me) is the tedious business of winding long strands of spaghetti on the fork when eating. But maybe for some, that is the appeal of spaghetti.

Is the GOP trying to alienate women?

It looks like GOP trash talking of women is not limited to just weird JD Vance. Listen to what Ohio Republican senate candidate Bernie Moreno, currently in a tight race with incumbent Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, said.

We don’t have to engage in such thought exercises after Friday, when Moreno was filmed dismissing suburban women’s focus on abortion rights at a town hall (the local NBC affiliate first published the footage Monday): 

“You know, the left has a lot of single issue voters,” Moreno said. “Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ … Okay. It’s a little crazy by the way, but — especially for women that are like past 50 — I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”

The campaign furiously backpedaled, telling NBC4 that he was “clearly making a tongue-in-cheek joke” about the left thinking that it’s the only issue women care about.

Ah, yes, the old “I was just joking” defense, often rolled out after someone says what they really mean that turns out to be offensive.
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How could Mark Robinson be so stupid?

By now, pretty much anyone who follows political news is aware of how Mark Robinson, the current Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina who is running for the post of governor, was found to been a frequent visitor to porn sites where he made all manner of posts in the comments section that would cause his religious supporters to wince, to put it mildly. He had already publicly made incendiary comments about women and the LGBTQ community as well as denying the Holocaust.

While I was aware of the story and posted about it last week, I had not paid much attention to how the reporters managed to identify him as the source of all the comments.

Seth Meyers describes how he was identified and I could not believe how mind bogglingly stupid he was.

The Cybertruck in the wild

There has been a lot of buzz about the benefits and dangers of the new generation of AI software but one thing is clear is its potential for humor. The closest I get to nature are the excellent documentaries put out by David Attenborough and so I really enjoyed this short clip of ‘David Attenborough’ describing the behavior of the Tesla Cybertruck.

Apparently there is a whole reddit section devoted to hating on the Cybertruck.

The morning after the debate

The reviews are in and the general consensus supports my own immediate reaction last night which was that Kamal Harris cleaned creepy Donald Trump’s clock in the debate. At many points she was openly laughing at his nonsense.

Stephen Colbert gave his hot take soon after the debate ended and did a pretty good job at identifying the key points.

Jon Stewart also gave gave his hot take but it was not as good as Colbert’s.


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