This massive international art exhibit has opened with surrealistic performance art from Russia: Sergey Lavrov gave an “absurd” interview on Italian television, in which he called Hitler a Jew.

… decided that name wasn’t quite … appropriate … or … haha… decided it was too appropriate… there’s been a dynamic linguistic reappraisal going on in the sports world generally.

For instance, now that Little Leaguers all over the country have been dropping and rolling on the field as bullets fly, we’re beginning to revisit some baseball slang that, if used, could cause pandemonium.

Words and phrases currently being assessed include:

bang-bang play

battery

dead red

fireman

five-tool player

heat

moon shot

platoon

twin killing

bleeder

base hit

hit and run

shot

slugger

Gevalt.

… as Gerard Manley Hopkins would put it if he were writing his famous poem today. How could anyone who knows, even a little bit, our simulacral world, be surprised that the notorious Washington Post opinion piece currently ruining April Heard’s life wasn’t even written by her?

Over the past decade, more than 1,000 crime guns have been traced to Firing Line Inc., a gun store in South Philadelphia that federal inspectors have cited for failing to stop straw purchases, losing track of weapons, refusing to run timely background checks and a lack of reporting on suspicious buyers.

In 2017, after several warnings, A.T.F. officials concluded that the owner “failed to maintain accurate information,” but they allowed the shop to remain in business, in part, because inspectors must prove intent to shutter a licensed dealer. Since then, 399 new crime guns have been traced to the location, according to Brady.

[In perhaps the most shocking declaration about a nuclear holocaust delivered on Russian television in recent months, Simonyan concluded that the idea “that everything will end with a nuclear strike, to me, is more probable than the other outcome. This is to my horror, on one hand, but on the other hand, with the understanding that it is what it is. … We are all going to die someday.“]

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From a Russian documentary about Nikolay Chernyshevsky:

Nihilist: Ve believes in nossing, Lebowski. Nossing. And tomorrow ve come back and ve cut off your chonson.

The Dude: Excuse me?

Nihilist: I said we’ll cut off your johnson!

Nihilist #2: Just think about that, Lebowski.

Nihilist: Ja, your viggly penis, Lebowski.

Nihilist #3: Yeah and maybe we stomp on it and squoosh it, Lebowski.

… in which she versifies words found in a newspaper article. Other examples.

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INGENUITY HELICOPTER

The parachute, intact,
Its suspension lines
Trailing from the back-
shell, lies in olivine
Along the rocks.

The salmon surface pocks.

This otherworldly wreckage
Has a supersonic message.

My detachment, while alarming,
Shows no obvious signs of charring.
You and your scribe study chaos control.
All to calm my fiery roll.

… both young brilliant athletes – leaders on notable college teams – and both suicides. Meyer died last month, Bernett just the other day. Also last month, a young runner at the University of Wisconsin – Sarah Shulze – killed herself.

Shulze’s parents wrote that her effort to balance “athletics, academics and the demands of every day life … overwhelmed her in a single, desperate moment.” And impulsivity is indeed the mark of most youthful suicides; the same incredible energy that propelled many of these people to academic as well as athletic heights turns against the person herself when she – who knows? – suddenly and catastrophically falls short of her self-demands. Or is it that a hyper-intense life is vulnerable to collapse when for whatever reason the intensity flags, the adrenaline drops?

When I say who knows, I really mean who knows. We can mark these recurrences, common characteristics, etc. But the act itself remains shockingly obscure.

Bullet-riddled baseball is a uniquely American rite of passage, from the big boys of Congress to the Little Leaguers.

Mr. Orban found support from Mr. Trump, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and from the Italian populist leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. But they are all gone, as Mr. Jansa is expected to be…

For UD’s completely bored take on Hungary, go here.

Oh, and note to Vermeule and the brethren: Reserve your Budapest Baptismal Blowout today! While you still can.

… the Russian police.

Only two channels these days: You can watch Johnny Depp fall to pieces, or watch Vladimir Putin fall to pieces.

High-steppin’ strutters now limping into old age, grandiose world-conquerors who’ve lost it all, both of these woman-haters currently bloat and tremble on the global stage as their badly over-played machismo bites them in the butt. Women, says Depp, famously, are “cum-guzzlers”; Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton represent, in their freakish rise to male power, a personal insult to Vlad.

To be sure, one of these people might destroy the world, while the other has merely a film career to nuke (if you want to throw in Will Smith – currently staging a reincarnation in India – go ahead), but both offer the riveting and enlightening spectacle of the power of delusion and the delusions of power. Putin pursues a hopeless war; Depp presses one hopeless lawsuit after another, with profound carnage along the way. Our role is to be disgusted (and, in the case of Putin, afraid) as we fail to take our eyes off of the very worst outcomes of a reactionary ethos.

… silver linings. And of course there’s Macron’s victory over Le Pen.

Newsweek.

… dinner before tomorrow’s ceremony awarding Stewart the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The whole thing’s vegan. She snapped a pic of the first course: