On being out of touch

 As a boomer of 73 I do my best to keep up with the trends.  It's a full-time job just learning the multiple variants of hip-hop and the current rosters of baseball teams.  I give myself a pass on things like reality TV, most podcasts, and mysterious sports like pickleball.  One has to sleep sometimes.

Perusing the papers today, I got an inkling about the many loops I'm out of.  For example, I would never have guessed that Patrick S. Tomlinson holds the title Most Swatted Man in America.  I had to look him up.  Mr. Tomlinson (who has no Wikipedia entry, itself a little odd) lives in Milwaukee and writes science fiction, another area where I have little expertise.  I don't know what he has done to piss people off but some 17-year-old in Florida has dispatched SWAT teams to his house 47 times -- not on his own but through a service he ran called Torswats.  For a quite reasonable fee this punk would send heavily armed police not only to writers but to mosques, high schools, Black churches, politicians and judges.  I feel I should buy one of Mr. Tomlinson's books just to show support, but I don't have time to read the books I own now.

Please, who is Gina Carano?  It seems she was one of the stars of a "space western" series called The Mandalorian (Google is getting a workout today) until she began annoying her co-workers with Xitter posts about how the 2020 election was stolen and how Republicans are just like Jews in Nazi Germany.  Lucasfilm and Disney decided to drop her character and the inevitable lawsuit followed, charging sexual discrimination and wrongful termination.  The Guardian reports that other actors I never heard of are also claiming their careers were damaged because they support the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the Palestinians in Gaza.  To which I can only say, that's show business.  No one has a right to a career in entertainment -- if the public doesn't want you, you're done.  We old people remember the McCarthy era, and this is a long way from having your passport revoked or the FBI opening a file because of your incorrect politics.  At least you don't feel pressure to move to Russia like Paul Robeson, or to the UK like Sam Wanamaker, Jules Dassin, Carl Foreman and many others.  When Tom Smothers died a few weeks ago, we were reminded that CBS cancelled his show because it annoyed Nixon.  Those days could return if Ms. Carano's candidate wins in November.

 

This is Corina Mrazek Gonzalez, carnival queen of the Canary Islands.  I'm glad she won, because that costume was clearly a lot of work.

Tucker Carlson's propaganda mission to Moscow is a stunt to us, but Europeans take it seriously.  He may be sanctioned by the entire European Union.  To find out why, search Russian Eurasianism, the interesting proposal that Moscow is the "third Rome" destined to rule the world (or as much as the fascists can grab) in the name of "Christian civilization."  Then try to sleep soundly.  (Any chance Tucker could fly part of the way home on Aeroflot?  Maybe a plane with no brakes?)

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will testify to the House Armed Services Committee on February 29 about his failure to notify the White House when he was hospitalized with a post-surgical infection last month.  I smell another doomed impeachment attempt.

The king of England is a non-smoker who is intermittently vegan, never eats lunch, follows a daily exercise regimen used by the Canadian air force and has cancer.  The queen, a smoker, is fine.  I just thought I'd throw that in.

Thank you for indulging my self-indulgence today.