As Elaine Benes would say,"that's a big coincidence."

The cover of the latest New Yorker, on the right, is obvious in its meaning. The cover on the left is from the week before (dated April 25 but we all know that magazine cover dates and, what's the term? drop dates? are different).  The adoring-fans-in-red-and-blue-with-guitar-in-foreground issue arrived in my mailbox after Prince died on April 21. I remember thinking, very briefly, wow, that was fast. I even thought, oh that's clever, they used red and blue, which of course together makes purple. The title of that cover art is Closing Set, appropriate title for a farewell to Prince, who was a great guitarist, something I didn't appreciate until after he died. 

Today the Purple Rain issue arrived so I checked on Google just to be sure I was right about the magazine devoting two covers to his death. I mean I get that he was beloved, talented, and successful but two covers? In the New Yorker? 

No, they didn't devote two covers to him. The left cover is by artist R. Kikuo Johnson and is described by him in the New Yorker this way:

“Everyone in Brooklyn is a d.j., so I rely on my much cooler friends to take me out,” the artist R. Kikuo Johnson says. “I have been taken to many one-night-only warehouse parties—I love dancing—but this was my first time at the Palisades,” he continues, referencing the underground venue in Bushwick that was the model for his cover of this week’s issue.

I say R. Kikuo should be credited with some unconscious foreknowledge. 

-------------------

**From "The Statue," Seinfeld, April 11, 1991:

RAVA: Yes, that's all, a coincidence!

ELAINE: A big coincidence.
RAVA: Not a big coincidence. A coincidence!
ELAINE: No, that's a big coincidence.
RAVA: That's what a coincidence is! There are no small coincidences and big coincidences!
ELAINE: No, there are degrees of coincidences.

Remembering Stephen Colbert by Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, Issue 1224

The American political scene has lost one of its towering characters with the untimely demise of Stephen Colbert. He was 50. Feared by many, hated by some, watched by all, Colbert leaves an uncertain legacy for the media he revolutionized and the culture he altered. Without him on TV four nights a week, there is a truth-shaped hole in our national political discourse. "Anyone can read the news to you," he announced when The Colbert Report debuted in 2005. "I promise to feel the news at you."

He kept that promise, which is how he came to define our era. For so many of us, Colbert sums up the optimism and idealism of the Bush years, along with his hero and mentor Bill O'Reilly, whom he called Papa Bear. "I emulate you," he once told O'Reilly in a poignant appearance on Fox News. "I want to bring your message of love and peace to a younger audience. People in their sixties, people in their fifties – people who don't watch your show."

As a boy, Colbert idolized Richard Nixon and Geraldo Rivera, and he once spoke of his dream of growing up to become Nancy Reagan. His family heritage was Irish – "I could sit toe-to-toe at a potato table with anybody" – and he remained a lifelong devout Catholic. As he once explained on his show, "Catholicism is clearly superior. Don't believe me? Name one Protestant denomination that could afford a $660 million sexual-abuse settlement." But he remained open-minded. "I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Jewish or Muslim. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior." 

As a child, he pronounced his family name "Coal-bert"; it was only later in life that he adopted the French pronunciation, "Coal-bear." As he explained, it was all part of his plan to sneak past the gatekeepers of the left-wing media. "It's a French name, just to get the cultural elites on my side," he told O'Reilly. "Bill, you know you’ve got to play the game that the media elites want you to." In 1983, he legally changed his middle name to "Gettysburg Address."

His rise in the media world was swift and ruthless. Soon after joining The Daily Show in 1997, Colbert attracted national attention for his uncompromising passion for the truth. As he put it, "When I think about truth, I touch myself." After Jon Stewart took over The Daily Show in 1999, it became America's most hard-hitting TV news program, with Colbert as its breakout star. (He also stole Comedy Central's 2002 roast for Chevy Chase, whom he hailed as a "comedy lamprey, just sucking the joy out of everything it touches.")

He was the kind of "Blame America Last" pundit who thrived in the post-9/11 years – able to reduce complex issues to common-sense tidbits, uninhibited by facts. He introduced America to the twin principles of "Truthiness" and "Wikiality," where anything is true if it feels true, or if someone claims it is, correctly predicting, "The revolution will not be verified."

If there was a moment when he officially took over as America’s leading political thinker, it was the night he hosted the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, speaking directly to President George W. Bush, who sat with him onstage. "Tonight it is my privilege to celebrate this president," he announced. "We both get it. Guys like us, we’re not some brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We’re not members of the 'factinista.' We go straight from the gut. Right, sir? That's where the truth lies – right down here in the gut."

Colbert kept following that gut, and America followed along. He ran for president in 2008, only to be denied his spot on the ballot due to behind-the-scenes manipulations by the South Carolina Democratic Party. He hosted the March to Keep Fear Alive in 2010, and wrote the bestselling manifesto I Am America (And So Can You!). But his greatest achievement was The Colbert Report. There was nothing like it on TV – yet that's because everything on TV was like it. Colbert was no different from most of his fellow media pundits – he just went a step or two further. In the Colbert era, America got far more Colbert-like, to the point where Congress seems to be reciting his transcripts verbatim. ("Net neutrality is Obamacare for the Internet" – that's not Colbert, it's the junior senator from Texas.)

Colbert will be remembered for his personal courage after his 2007 wrist injury, which inspired him to campaign against "wrist violence" with his WristStrong bracelets. (It also inspired him to get addicted to painkillers.) He will be remembered for his tireless crusade against bears. But most of all, he will be remembered for truth. Nobody summed up the current state of the American mind as brilliantly, as honestly, as terrifyingly as Stephen Colbert. It's somehow fitting that he left us prematurely and under such mysterious circumstances. He will be missed – even if someone very much like him returns to the airwaves in the coming months. Yet the culture of truthiness will survive him. With or without Colbert, we're all still living in the Colbert era, with no end in sight.

 

Fall is the most beautiful month.

I think that's a fact, not an opinion--speaking only for the area surrounding my house of course. Spring is light green, summer is green, winter is gray and brown.

I'm so sorry to report, to those who don't already know, that Estorbo, a NYC cat who had his own blog, died yesterday. This was a sweet, funny blog, with Estorbo's human mother interpreting (channeling?) the "beeg blad Dominican cad."

On having children.

 

This is a book I read a few years ago. I have zero, and I mean zero, memory of the book so I'm going to break one of my informal rules and read it again. I was reminded of the book (it's short stories, not a novel, which partially explains why it didn't imprint on my brain) when I read an interview with actress Frances McDormand who starred in the HBO miniseries based on the book. In the interview she said this:

About children: "... the minute you smell them there’s a pheromonal reaction between the parent and their child. My son smelled like a cinnamon bun, and that smell entered into my biological being, and it became an imperative that I keep him alive at all costs, so then there’s this monster—this tiger, or lion—that comes forward in you to protect them. And it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t matter if they become men or women. The whole point of a teenager driving you insane is because they’re supposed to wear you down so you can fuckin’ die sooner and get out of the way, because it’s their place.

This passage speaks to me. My children didn't wear me down during their teen years and they're not wearing me down in their early adulthood. But my gut tells me that Frances is right.

And the 2-night, 4-hour miniseries that aired Sunday and Monday nights was wonderful. She's a great actress.

I'm not anti-hunting, and not even anti-gun, but I AM anti-NRA. Blood on their hands.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.”

Excellent revision suggested by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

May 23 through June 10, 2014: Santa Barbara, Seattle, Las Vegas, Portland. And how many more that didn't make headlines? 

Another loss, but he made it to 86 so that's not bad. And we still have Cavett. I hope there's some kind of heaven so Vidal can see this headline.

I'm really getting weary of all these great writers dying lately -- Nora Ephron was one I failed to note on my blog. (Talk about a funny lady -- and a class act.) At least Ephron, Hitchens, and Vidal leave behind books to be read and re-read.

And for anyone who loves a good political confrontation check out Vidal vs Buckley discussing life as we knew it in August 1968 here. Please do not watch if you'll be offended by the words "queer" and "crypto-Nazi." In my opinion Vidal won the battle because he never really lost his cool and he didn't lunge out of his chair the way Buckley did.

You've probably seen it a lot by now but just in case you haven't...The Onion, from today.

Original here.

Clarence Clemons: 1942 - 2011

From the NYT:
Mr. Clemons’s first encounter with Mr. Springsteen has become E Street Band lore. In most tellings, a lightning storm was rolling through Asbury Park one night in 1971 while Mr. Springsteen was playing a gig there. As Mr. Clemons entered the bar, the wind blew the door off its hinges, and Mr. Springsteen was startled by the towering shadow at the door. Then Mr. Clemons invited himself onstage to play along, and they clicked.

“I swear I will never forget that moment,” Mr. Clemons later recalled in an interview. “I felt like I was supposed to be there. It was a magical moment. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love. And that’s still there.”

I know it's not a popular topic but the way we die is so important that it SHOULD be a popular topic.

This is a great article for everyone who expects to die. Or expects to help a parent die. Or is interested in modern medicine, or the crumbling health-care system. If nothing else, I suggest you read it to see one of the rare cases of a physician being humble.

Marv Hurwitz, 1933 - 2010

Best friend to so many. He will be missed by all. Susan summed him up well.

I think it's time to give up on this lavender. All the others have come back but this shows no signs of life.

I don't like giving up on plants.