Yes indeed. We see every day what a golden age of gun ownership looks like. Take a bow!

*************

First stop of the NRA bus is Montana, where folks will gather to thank the organization for their suicide rate. We’re Number One!

In February 2011, fashion designer John Galliano made antisemitic and racist remarks to patrons at a Paris café, including yelling “I love Hitler,” telling individuals “your mothers, your forefathers” would be “gassed.”

There were actually two – recorded – instances of Galliano screaming this stuff in cafes, and UD feels certain there are more, unrecorded.

Once caught on tape, Galliano went the Mel Gibson route, whining about how his many drug and alcohol addictions make him a bad boy. But Youth Wants to Know: How do you be the head of Dior and a totally out of control addict screaming Hitler shit in cafes? UD understands how you can be the head of Dior and a murderous anti-semitic drunk … times being what they are in France… But if you are so unwary as to get filmed shrieking about gassing Jews? That’s what’s running Dior?

Anyway, the Met was well on its way to rewarding Haute Hitler with a solo show, but then a bunch of New York Jews decided this was all a bit much.

A new house is going up next door (asking price 2 mill), and he saw me photographing the spontaneously combusting zucchini (we didn’t plant it; my theory is that Munro Leaf, author of Ferdinand the Bull and last owner of our house, did, and that the area was too shady for them to thrive… until the construction guys took down some big ol’ trees). The beautiful yellow flowers are out.

These Old West shootouts! Keep the guns coming.

But did they drag his body to the roof, pour petrol on it, and burn it to a crisp? There’s a right and a wrong way to do things.

If there’s Hebrew writing visible on your car, you can expect a friendly salute and sieg heil from one of our employees!

AKA Saturday night at James Madison University.

Be there when Aarau goes wild again — exactly the way they go wild in America!

One difference — a DJ who was there said ‘he had “lost an important friend” and would withdraw from performing for a period of time.’

‘Round here we stick our head back up and get set for the next one.

…speaks.

… but the law school he was planning to attend has rescinded his admission anyway.

… Lake Canada.

… you’ll come a-flying Malaysians with me…

Whooooops.

Separation of church and state, doncha know. Apparently Americans feel strongly about it.

I think a big reason UD (and much of the country) is crying on Day Two over Dolly Parton is that her voice had the sun of America in it. Not just Tennessee; if it were just that, they’d only be crying in Nashville. Singers like Pavarotti and Parton – the great, rare, singers who make many of us cry – carry something spectacularly, miraculously, expressive in their voice.

Obviously both were technically perfect vocalists; as with Yuja Wang at the piano, you never have a moment’s anxiety about the slightest slip, the smallest dip in energy or sostenuto. The high notes were always there. Big powerful Pavarotti even did falsetto.

There are many wonderful vocalists who sing with these qualities. But I ask you: When did you last shiver listening to Renee Fleming? People like Parton had something more. Immenso giubilo, “the douceur, if that is the word,” the brilliancy of being in the world — somehow Dolly Parton had the heft to make this existential lift. In two notes I always knew Parton and no one else was singing because everyone else lacked this intense infusion of joy, conveyed with super-ringing tonal clarity. It took nothing from religion or romantic love or nature worship or whatever. It was itself, the thing itself, the human capacity for earthly delight. Motiveless mirth.

Her death ends, at least in real time, the pure dance she let us dance with her.

… there’s the dramatic rise of the far right in Germany.

If [Chancellor Friedrich] Merz briefly became a leading figure in optimistic media narratives about liberal democracy fighting back against extremism — alongside wounded-duck Emmanuel Macron in France and since-deposed Keir Starmer in Britain — that didn’t last long. After 15 months in power, Merz’s popularity has sunk to sub-Trump levels, while the AfD seems poised to become the largest party in upcoming state elections in Saxony-Anhalt…

[T]he failure to suppress the fascist uprising speaks to fundamental flaws in liberal democracy, and … the bitter lessons of the Trump/Biden/Trump era may prove instructive…

It may be necessary for Germany to go through its own period of far-right triumph, which will be especially painful for obvious historical reasons, in order to convince the public that fascism (whether old-style or new) offers no legitimate answers to inequality, alienation or global disruption. Those who stand up for their ideals and principles without compromise, and seek to communicate them clearly, certainly won’t win every election, and they may well suffer for their convictions. But they also have a better chance of turning the tide against tyranny than the professional prevaricators in business suits with bankers standing behind them. We’ve tried that, over and over. It has never worked.

Andrew O’Hehir, Salon