I badly wanted to see the documentary, The Rainbow Man, which covered the life of Rollen Stewart, a fascinatingly obsessed character. But that was not to be, it seems to be unavailable for streaming. Ditto one of my favorite movies ever, Dadetown, which doesn’t seem to be available any more in any format. But nonetheless, SP and I persisted, and we saw two movies this weekend which were individually and in aggregate MUCH better than Jaws. Both were black-ish comedies, a genre we love, being dark-hearted cynics. Quick Change was a Bill Murray vehicle that somehow we had missed before. Totally non-profound, just light and well-crafted entertainment. And young Geena Davis. Like Adam Sandler, I always find Randy Quaid annoying and not at all funny or likeable, but I was mostly able to ignore that and enjoy the rest. You’ve seen it all before, but its rehashed well. And we had both seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels before, but in the deep, deep past, so we gave it a re-watch. And it was even better the second time around. It’s apparently difficult for Michael Caine to make a bad movie. Liberal application of a pretty awesome bottle of wine did not hurt the humor for us.

But you didn’t come here to survey what light entertainment we’ve been viewing, you want NEWS, you want LINKS.

Today is the birthday of Henri Poincare (who anticipated chaos theory by nearly a century and relativity by a few decades, oh, and did I mention group theory in physics? Smartest person in modern history? Very likely.), Duke Ellington (arguably the greatest American composer), and Luis Aparacio, the slickest-fielding shortstop I ever saw.

The annual White House Press Corps Circle Jerk went as expected, and managed to confirm every stereotype of the media. When you’ve lost NPR, you know you’ve succeeded.

In the meantime, the reduction in tensions in Korea seems to be going far better than anyone expected. I’m sure there’s a dark cloud somewhere in the silver lining because Trump.

Privacy? PRIVACY? Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

This story has STEVE SMITH written all over it. But the question unanswered in the story was, “What ever happened to the potato chips?”

As year 20 of Abbas’s four year term as head of the PA kleptocracy rolls around, Palestinian Arabs get to have a say over which of his closest associates gets to grab the graft when Mo finally snuffs it. And the American news media seems to think that shooting violent attackers in the legs is far worse than shoot-to-kill.

An example of the headline writers’ art. Yes, we’re all going to die in a huge astronomical fireball. Those wacky scientists!

Well, fuck.

And in Old Guy Music, another tune my band used to cover from a band that is not well-remembered these days. Pity, they should be. Enjoy the delightful guitar playing, we sure as hell did.