My First Film: The Self-Interview

When Paul McCartney recorded his first solo album in 1970, it was a solo album in the truest since of the term; he wrote all of the songs and instrumentals, he played all of music himself, he was the album's producer, and he recorded it at home on a Studer four-track tape machine.  He also promoted the album by putting out a statement to the press in the form of a self-interview; he asked himself questions that he himself answered.  Well, I just made a movie short by myself, and since I not only wrote and directed it myself, I filmed and edited it myself, did it all on a laptop at home making AI video segments on Google Gemini, and created not just a character but also created the person playing the character, I thought I could talk about it in a post here in which I interview myself and ask myself about the movie short.  I wanted to invite me, but I chose to interview only myself.  Two's company, but three's a crowd.

Q:  Is this movie by Steven Maginnis alone?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Can you discuss the title?

A:  I'd rather I didn't.

Q:  Why not?

A:  Because I wish I'd thought of a better title. (laughs)

Q:  Well, let's discuss the title anyway.  A Mime Unmasks.  And Talks . . . And Talks . . . And Talks.  As anyone can gather, it's about a mime artist who spends most of the movie out of costume and doing most of the talking.  What inspired you to make a movie about a mime artist who dominates a conversation when not performing?

A:  Well, that's an old joke Marcel Marceau once made; if you get mimes talking when they're not performing, they never stop.  And they don't, really.  When Harpo Marx, who was a mime without ever being called one, talked in public for the first time at a live event, he talked so much that people thought he would never shut up.   

Q:  And in this movie short you've made, Thelma [pictured above], the young woman who performs as a traditional street mime, talks almost non-stop for ten minutes describing her act and explaining her approach to the art of mime.  How did you come up with such a monologue?

A: Well, I'm a journalist by trade, and on the way to becoming a regular reporter for a hyperlocal news site, I wrote three profile articles on mime artists, all women, one of whom, a woman named Catherine, is a mime in the French, Marceau-esque tradition, and the Marceau-style mime, with the white face paint and gloves and the simple costume, is the sort of character most people think of when they think of mimes, so I used that.  The other two mime artists were living-statue performers.  

Q: But you still used stories from all three women about their experiences as performers, is that correct? 

A: Yes, I blended elements from all of their experiences, and that's what makes it fiction.  Another thing I should point out is that Catherine only performs at events, really, and I've never seen a French-style mime perform on the street or in the park.  I ad-libbed the monologue as I wrote it, because I'd already had the experience of writing the three articles.

Q: Although Thelma is identified as a mime, she spends most of the film out of costume and character, with only brief footage of her performing part of the way through, while the film opens with her in costume and makeup only to set up the scene in which she takes off her hat and gloves and removes her mime makeup in a time-lapse scene.  Why make her a mime at all?  Why not make her a folk singer?

A: I wrote a short story about an aspiring male folk-rock musician from Nebraska living in Manhattan and trying to make it in music, and he meets a female folk singer in the vein of Joni Mitchell or Jennifer Warnes while she's performing in Central Park and he is looking for a place to play in the park himself.  They become a couple.  So  I did the street-musician thing already.

Q: Gotcha.  So Thelma is a mime, and you show examples of her performing as a mime and wearing the traditional mime costume, but you really want her to present herself as a real woman who talks about being a mime artist.  Do I have that right?

A: Yes.

Q: I see you've made Thelma a black woman.  You very rarely see black women perform as French-style mimes.  Why is Thelma black?

A:  It was an accident, really, she was created through AI out of an experiment I was doing with a picture from someone I follow on Flickr, where I post my pictures.  This guy I follow on Flickr took a picture of a mime walking in a parade that we both attended, and the mime happened to be a black woman.  I tried to take a picture of her myself, but it didn't come out, and of course, I thought she would make an excellent subject for an on-spec profile article, seeing as you rarely do see black women involved in mime, but it took me months to learn her identity, and once I did, it turned out that she wasn't interested.  Anyway, when I learned her identity, I saw a picture of her online without makeup, and now I took the picture of her from the parade and made a vertical-format film with AI that would show her without makeup, taking off her makeup, just to see if the face that resulted would match her real-life appearance.  It didn't, so I threw it out.

Q:  If you threw it out, how did you make a movie out of it?

A:  I sent it to my laptop's recycling bin and, just before I permanently deleted it, I thought, wait, I'd already made a video using AI as an experimental exercise, what if I did something serious with this clip?  So I saved it and began to make the movie.  

Q: And that's the clip that opens the short?

A: Ironically, no.   It was a vertical-format video, so I made a new one from the same Flickr photo in horizontal format.  I originally thought I could use the vertical-format film to represent the imaginary box that street mimes always pretend to be in, or something like that, but I thought my movie would look classier if I made it horizontal all the way through.   And besides, Thelma is a serious artist.  She doesn't do the box.  Or the rope pull.

Q: Understood.  So was this based on an interest in seeing female mimes on the street and trying to visualize them without their whiteface? 

A:  Completely.  When you see someone performing on the street, a musician, a juggler or a break dancer, they look like anyone else on the street, and they're performing in an accessible and familiar manner; they're not performing as characters, they're just putting out their music, their art, their skills.  Mimes are obviously different.  And when you're a man and the street mime you see is a woman, you want to know the person behind the persona even more so than if it were a male mime, because you think there might be a beautiful face behind that painted white mask.  You also want to hear her talk.  You try to imagine a nice voice that is not unlike the adorable gestures and facial expressions she makes when she's performing a light-comedy mime piece.  But there is also the frustration of possibly never knowing.    

Q:  You didn't lean so much into the latter curiosity, the voice.  Thelma is talking to one person throughout, and she makes it clear that she knows that person was hoping to see her without her makeup on but doesn't suggest that she figured that this person wanted to hear her voice.  Why is that? 

A: Too easy.  Any street mime can break character to take time out to collect the money in the tip jar or something like that, and he or she can talk in whiteface and probably will talk to someone who compliments his or her performance.  Any street mime can break the silence.  How many of them unmask in public?   

Q: Hey. I'm asking the questions here.

A: Then I'll answer my own question.  If you counted all of the street mimes who removed their makeup as soon as they finished a show, you'd be able to do it on one hand with fingers to spare.

Q: Fair enough.  So the movie begins with Thelma in full mime makeup, she takes off her disguise, reveals herself to be an attractive young woman, and then talks about what it's like to be a professional mime artist.  Why so much detail?

A:  Because most street mimes are rank novices who are untrained and only imitate what they've seen.  That's why so many people hate mimes.  Because they see them pretend to be trapped in a box or mock passersby, and they mug a lot, and they're not conveying anything meaningful.  And that's the stereotype.  And it's a stereotype commonly referenced by people who should know better.  Like the folks who make TV commercials.  I once showed my mime friend Catherine an old diet-soda commercial from the eighties that's now on YouTube, with a "mime" lady in whiteface and a unitard mugging for the camera and drinking an imaginary glass of imaginary soda and showing off her slender finger at the end. Catherine told me that people who put on whiteface and pretend to hold something for comic effect are cosplayers and what the woman is doing in this commercial is not mime.  And she's right, of course.

Q: That commercial must have been an inspiration for your movie.  The woman in it is wearing whiteface and she has an attractive figure, and you can't see her real face?  That must have been torture for a man with a normal sex drive.

A: You better believe it!  You might say that commercial subconsciously inspired my movie, but any woman dressed as a mime, whether a real mime or a cosplayer, is going to get me wondering what she looks like under her whiteface.  If I had never seen this commercial back in the eighties, I likely still would have made this movie.

Q: Before we get back to the movie itself, did you ever find out who that woman in the diet-soda ad was?

A: It was model and actress Susan Hess.

Q: Oh, yeah, she was lovely!

A:  She still is, and she's a film producer now.  I highly recommend her 2009 indie feature movie Not Dead Yet, which she produced and starred in. 

Q: So Thelma takes the opportunity to explain mime and express verbally what mime is and how she approaches it.

A: Yes.  And because she's not wearing her mime makeup when she's talking, it doesn't feel creepy, because you see her face as well as hear her voice.  

Q: Why not more examples of Thelma performing?

A: I'm not sure I wanted to make it that sort of movie.  I wanted to keep her unmasked and out of character so viewers would get to know her as an ordinary woman, an ordinary woman who happens to be a street performer who is mysterious when she's in costume and in character.  I wanted to explore Thelma as herself.  Her monologue is like a one-woman show, only when not in character.

Q: Let's talk about Jim, the young man she's addressing. What's his story?

A: We learn about Jim through Thelma.  He stays offscreen all the time, and Thelma explains Jim to us by acknowledging his body language, but she's the only one whoever sees his body.

Q: Why not have Jim onscreen with Thelma?  And why not make the movie a dialogue instead of a long monologue?

A: Well, the answer to that is simple - this movie is made entirely with AI, Google Gemini, and I'm not savvy enough or patient enough to write out a dialogue in ten-second video segments, ten seconds being the maximum length of a Google Gemini-made video.  That's why I didn't show Thelma performing a mime piece for longer than ten seconds.  If I tried to create a part of a larger mime piece longer than ten seconds, I'd go bonkers trying to join the ten-second segments together to create something coherent.

Q: So you conveyed Jim's personality through body language that only Thelma sees?

A:  Yes,  and not just during Thelma's monologue but in references to his behavior while he was watching her perform, when he was looking at her simultaneously conveying enjoyment of her show and curiosity and an intense desire to see her real face underneath her clown white with the frustration of wondering if he'll actually get to see the "real woman" behind the mask.  He conveys, through displays of nervousness and pained facial expressions that Thelma sees and correctly interprets, his guilt for eyeing her with a feeling of sexual curiosity in what her real face looks like.  He can't hide his shame and embarrassment.  

Q: That sounds intense.

A: It is.  But she picks up his vibes, first when she's in character before the story in the movie begins, then when she's talking to him out of character and costume.  And she responds with kindness and sweetness, revealing herself psychologically as well as physically, and calling him "honey."  As the short progresses, Jim slowly learns to relax.  Thelma becomes relaxed herself.  When she finishes removing her mime makeup, she no longer needs to wear her hair pinned up, so just before her monologue begins, she lets her down literally, then as she talks about herself, she is letting her hair down figuratively.  And Jim appreciates all this.

Q: But he still doesn't talk.

A: No, but he continues to betray his own psychological composition, looking sad when Thelma talks of the abuse she gets from passersby or shock when she shows him a picture of a commercial gig she did that shows her in a costume even more off-putting than the one she wears for her street act.  And he does little things for her, like gather her stuff together and hold onto them for her so it doesn't get lost.  But one important reason for him not talking is that he's listening.  The reason that mimes talk a lot when not performing is because they develop while onstage a pent-up frustration to communicate verbally like any other person.  Jim doesn't need to talk to get Thelma to appreciate him.  He only needs to listen.

Q: And the viewer only needs to listen to get to know her.  But isn't it ironic that the mime does all the talking and the young man from her audience communicates corporeally? 

A: Yes, and I was also paying tribute to Mel Brooks when he made Silent Movie in 1976 and gave Marcel Marceau the only spoken line - one word - when I gave Jim one word to say, which is his answer to Thelma's question regarding his name.

Q: Clever.  Before I move on, is there any reason why you named your mime lady Thelma?  It's not a common name these days, it seems. 

A: Well, back when I was thirty and writing mainly as a hobby while trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, I had a similar idea for a story about a mime lady meeting the man who becomes her boyfriend after a street performance, and I was going to name her Thelma then.  But I hadn't met any mime artists before, and I really didn't know much about the art itself, so I wasn't ready to create a work of fiction based on a fictional mime artist.  I must have seen that name around somewhere at the time. 

Q: Let's talk about the one thing most people never want to talk about, and that is race.  Thelma is a black woman, and as you said, you decided that presenting her as a black woman would make her a distinctive figure in a performing art dominated by whites. But she identifies Jim as white by mentioning his hair and eye color, and you never bring up race anywhere else in the film.  Why is that? 

A: Why should I?  I establish that Thelma is black at the very beginning because her outfit shows her dark brown skin, and once I establish that Jim is white through Thelma's attraction to his hair and eyes, and that's enough.  Besides, talking about race would be a dialogue.  Thelma is the only one who talks, the only one you see, so to hear her talk about race alone would sound like a lecture.

Q: So your goal was to tacitly acknowledge the two different races of the characters without making it the centerpiece of your movie?

A: Exactly, because Thelma is talking about herself as a mime artist, not as a black woman.

Q: But white face paint on dark brown skin . . . that's a jarring contrast, isn't it?

A: Of course it is.  If I had created Thelma from a picture of a real-life white female mime and made her Caucasian, the effect of white facial makeup against flesh-pink skin would have been jarring enough, but as I had a picture of a real-life black female mime, I created Thelma from that and made her black.  Ironically, Google Gemini actually created a Caucasian female mime from this very same picture I used, but I thought, no, I was creating a fictional female figure from a picture of an African-American woman dressed as a mime, and so I wanted the mime lady in my story to be African-American. 

Q: You mean Negro.

A:  I do, and it's a legitimate anthropological term, like Caucasian, but we still can't use it because it sounds too much like a six-letter word I myself would definitely never use.

Q: Conceded. So you're saying that the contrast of Thelma's white face paint and brown skin are driving Jim crazier than the contrast of, say, a Caucasian mime lady's white face paint contrasting with pinkish Caucasian skin.

A: Exactly.  When he's watching her remove her mime makeup, and seeing her warm brown complexion replacing the dead-white face paint, his brain is entering a higher pleasure zone.

Q: I did research for this interview--

A: Why would you do research to interview me?  You are me. 

Q: I am the interviewer.  I am he.

A: You are me.

Q: I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. 

A: I see what you did there.  So about your research . . .

Q: Yes, I did research for this interview, and I learned that when a mime of the opposite sex unmasks, you get a rush of dopamine that rewards you with a sense of pleasure as a form of relief.  But when her skin is much darker than her white face paint, it's like the mother of dopamine rushes, as if it were all held back by the Hoover Dam and the removal of the whiteface creates a rush too big for the spillways and it breaks the dam to bits. 

A: Precisely.  But I don't think I need Thelma, who understands Jim's reaction to her mime face and her removal of it, to get into that.

Q: Fair enough, but why can't Thelma or Jim at least acknowledge the racial difference beyond differences of appearance? 

A: Because Thelma's race doesn't matter to Jim, just as Jim's race clearly doesn't matter to Thelma.  Jim clearly enjoys her company and wants to be with her, and the only thing that matters to him about her race is that her racial features are what make her so beautiful - her chocolate complexion, her jet black hair, her dark, soulful eyes . . ..  I know it's a meaningless cliché to say, "I don't see race," but Jim clearly doesn't either because he's too busy enjoying her beauty.  When you see Angela Bassett or Alfre Woodard on the movie screen, you're not thinking, "What a pleasant looking female African-American," or even, "What a beautiful black woman," you're thinking, "What a beautiful woman." And in a color-blind society, well, that's the way I've always heard it should be.

Q: He wants to marry her?

A: Good one.  I didn't get that far in the story.  

Q:  Without revealing the ending, can you tell me if Thelma and Jim become a couple like your street musicians in your short story?

A: I'll only say that Thelma realizes that Jim is her biggest fan.  You can draw your own conclusion. 

Q: Fine.  How is the reception to the movie so far?

A: Great.   It's only gotten three dozen views up to now on YouTube but the response has been very positive.  Many friends of mine have seen it and they love it.  But a few of them steadfastly refuse to watch it because it's all made with AI and the woman in the movie is an artificially created person, not an actress.  I have one friend who is a professional actress who told me that if filmmakers use AI to replace real actors, that's the end of the acting profession.

Q:  Understood.  I'll bet you're conflicted too.

A: I looked at Thelma with her natural face as I was putting the movie together, and I thought, "Wow, what an incredibly beautiful woman!"  And she doesn't exist.  I did my job too well.  What was really weird, is that I would give Google Gemini prompts for Thelma as I was bringing her to life - "Have her laugh here."  "Make her pause."  "Have her shrug when she finishes her sentence." Mundane commands like that.  And then, as I was creating more ten-second clips and editing them together, she seemed to be laughing in the video segments even when I didn't command Google Gemini to make her laugh.  And when I saw the first cut, she came across as a cheerful, warm, vivacious woman.  She had taken on a life of her own.  The power of AI had freaked me out - but in a good way.  I got the character I wanted, a young woman who could be the perfect girlfriend. 

Q:  Does she become Jim's girlfriend?

A:  I'll only say what I said before - that Thelma realizes that Jim is her biggest fan, and you can draw your own conclusion. 

Q:  Given the reaction you got from friends who won't give AI the benefit of the doubt, give it a chance, do you feel guilty for using AI to make a short movie that you could have made with a black actress?

A: I'm a Roman Catholic - guilt is what I'm best at!  Yes, I know that the pope has expressed concern over AI taking over and ending professions that previous technologies could never replace, like acting.  But I labeled the movie as AI and I have been very straightforward that I used Google Gemini to make it that there's no real actress playing Thelma, and I worked to make it superior to the usual AI slop. But AI critics remain unmoved.  I have problems with AI myself, but making an eleven-minute movie short to express your vision isn't going to end the world.  

Q:  Will you ever remake this movie as a movie made with real film with a real actress in a real setting if you get the chance?

A: Well, sure, if I get the chance.   But I don't think I'll get the chance.  I don't know a twit about how to make a movie in the real world, with real equipment and a cast and crew, and even if I did, I don't have the money to make the movie.  I guess if I did have the resources, I could make it, because I'd certainly need a lot of help.  

Q: If someone offered to fund you to make this movie the old-fashioned way, you'd accept the money, I take it? 

A: I take it. 

Q:  Perhaps if you remake this film short with real equipment and people, you can expand it and give Thelma more scenes in which she can perform mime pieces.

A: I suppose I could do that, show her performing a five-minute routine before she takes off her makeup, so that the payoff of seeing her real face is bigger. 

Q:  Isn't it ironic that you show Thelma unmasking to reveal her "real face," yet her natural African-American face isn't real at all?

A: I'd rather not think about that.   

Q: Any ideas for continuing the saga of Thelma and Jim?

A: I've had some germs of ideas for future storylines, but nothing concrete.  I don't think I have any more stories about mime that I learned from those three profile articles that I can use.  And I don't want to go down the AI rabbit hole and immerse myself in the technology so much that I can't get out.   

Q: Any more experiments?

A:  I made a one-minute video based on the picture that started this whole thing to see if I would get a different face.  I got the exact same face - with a different hairstyle.

Q: She looks like she's ready to be a director or mainstream actress, maybe that could be your next short movie?

A:  Like I said, I haven't come up with any concrete ideas.

Q: Well, it certainly feels like it's a lovely film, with a beautiful idea.  How much of Jim is you?

A:  A lot of him is me.  I've always been interested in women in the performing arts, and women who live bohemian lives.  I am also always open to dating a woman of color, because someone once told me I should not rule out dating a woman of color, because maybe the woman who can love me better than any other woman ever could is a black, Hispanic, or Asian woman.  This movie short brings together those three attractions to women - performing artists. bohemians, women of color.  But also, in this movie, at least, I feel like I brought a young black woman and a young white man together, they come from different worlds, and they are genuinely attracted to each other, and that indeed is a beautiful idea, an idea as beautiful as Thelma herself.   

Q: Well said.  

A:  And the link to the movie short is here.

Q: Well, thanks for granting this interview.

A:  It's been a pleasure knowing me.

Hiding Out

I've been hiding out, working on projects that have nothing too do with this blog, as you could plainly tell from the AI-generated movie short I made, because I didn't want to bother with Trump.  But Trump has made it clear that he still wants to bother with us.

Ironically, Trump himself was found hiding out - in a catering truck.  Apparently the plane given to him by the Qataris is so compromised in turns of security that he had to be smuggled from that plane to a military plane like Elvis trying to escape his fans at Memphis Municipal when Secret Service learned of an Iranian assassination plot. However, he chose to leave his top aides and Cabinet - including the Vice President, who has a beard and apparently was a beard.  

One of those aides, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, was so ticked off that she was left at the mercy of a wild-eyed religious fundamentalist with a beard  - Vance - that she quit rather than deal with Trump again.  Her return from maternity leave, so it seems, was more short-lived than the leave itself; she's now gone into hiding to care for her baby.  Despite her manufactured movie-star looks (her husband must have a Roberta Collins fetish), don't expect a Hollywood ending for Karoline Leavitt; once the kid is old enough for first grade (or nursery school, which I'm sure her husband can afford), I'm sure she'll be hosting a show on one of those right-wing news channels that make Fox News look like the BBC by comparison.

Pete Hegseth has also mostly been also hiding out, having blown the war with Iran and occasionally poking his head out of the proverbial foxhole (no pun intended there) to defend the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier having been at sea for 271 days.  Just to put that in perspective, if the Lincoln had left port on new Year's Day and had been out that long, it would be out through September 27.  And now, it just might be.

Hegseth hasn't lifted a finger to help the men and women onboard the Lincoln, a ship of captive sailors and naval air personnel, though Navy families have certainly given him the finger.  How long is it before naval airmen and airwomen on board the Lincoln get in their planes and fly off?

On a more serious note, some sailors have literally jumped ship, preferring to take their chances with the sharks than have to deal with the the unhealthy "food" being served aboard ship.  😡😠😢 

There is some good news.  Karen Mulder, the Dutch top model from the 1990s who accused Jeffrey Epstein of the very things it turned out he was doing, only to have her modeling career ruined and be sent to a psychiatric hospital, has re-emerged and has posed for the cover of the latest issue of the German issue of Vogue.   She's no longer afraid.  She's no longer hiding. 

Also no longer hiding is Natalie Harp, Trump's blonde answer to Hope Hicks, a woman known for being a lack-of-personality on one of those very same right-wing news channels.  It is extremely likely that she and Trump are having an affair, and Melania - big surprise - is nowhere to be seen.

And Trump's approval rating is so low, it's almost hit bedrock.

All you zombies show your faces, you don't have to hide anymore. 

Except Mitch McConnell, who's likely dead. 

My New Short Film

As promised, here is a link to my short film.  I would have preferred to embed it here, but because I set it to be accessed for audiences eighteen years of age and older, I'm not allowed to embed it anywhere.  

My short film is called A Mime Lady Unmasks.  And Talks . . . And Talks . . . And Talks.  It starts with a female mime in a park at the end of her busking act, and you see her slowly unmask, removing her hat, her gloves, and her whiteface (with the bonus titillation of her undoing her hair) . . . segueing into a one-woman show of a different sort.  Out of character, with her painted mask wiped away and her real face visible for all to see, she strikes up a conversation with someone who had been watching her mime act . . . and she does all the talking.

When you see the woman without her mime face on, you will likely find her to be very beautiful.  Don't bother asking me how I can help you contact her for another acting gig, though, because, again, she is completely AI-generated, like the short movie itself.  She doesn't exist.

Anyway, the link is right here.  

And here is the YouTube thumbnail.  No, it's just the thumbnail that is a cartoon image.

Enjoy.

I Made A Film . . .

I'm sorry I've been away.  First I got distracted by more important matters - like my reporting job - and then I found myself going down the rabbit hole of AI experimentation on Google Gemini.  After a few days, I made a short movie.

The short movie is an AI-generated one-woman show from a mime artist . . . with a twist.  Her show is taking off her mime makeup after busking in the park, getting out of character, and talking to an admirer for ten minutes.  I won't say any more than that about it.  You have to see the film.  

I will say this much about it.  The female mime artist in the film was generated by AI as well.  She does not really exist.

Some of you may know that I wrote profile articles about a couple of female mime artists based in the New York area.  There was a third female mime artist I tried to write an article about, but that effort foundered and eventually had to be abandoned.  Many of the details in this movie are exaggerations of their real-life stories (that's what makes it fiction), while other details are simply - no pun intended - made up.  

I debut the film on YouTube tomorrow (August 17).  In the meantime, I made a promotional preview for it. Here it is.  (This is clearly not going on YouTube.)  Enjoy.

VW Run Amarok

Somewhere along the way, the presidency of Volkswagen of America became a revolving door.  And so, apparently, did Volkswagen of America's priorities for its product lineup.

Volkswagen AG announced a "major overhaul" in both leadership and product planning.  Kjell Gruner s out as president of Volkswagen of America, and a fellow named Marco Schubert - not to be confused with American swimming-team coach Mark Schubert - is taking his place.  Gone are the days when a Volkswagen of America president could last for over a decade like the late, great Stuart Perkins, who took over from his mentor Carl Hahn in 1965 as the Beetle was about to peak and oversaw the introduction of VW's watercooled cars in 1975.  Gruner had only been the leader of Volkswagen of America since December 2024.

The product lineup plans Schubert plans to pursue per the desires of Wolfsburg brass are even ominous.  VW wants to add a pickup to the North American lineup, like the Amarok model (below).  It will likely be built in VW's Tennessee factory.

We likely won't get the Amarok itself.  We might get something even uglier.  There are rumors of a joint venture on a pickup truck between VW and Ford.  Not good.  Ford pickups are hideous.  

As if that weren't bad enough, VW wants to add a full-size SUV.  To respond to the inevitable point that VW already has the Atlas, the company wants something even bigger.  So not good.

Left unmentioned was whether the base Golf will still be re-introduced to the U.S. and Canada once production of the eighth-generation Golf begins in Mexico.  Also left unmentioned was whether the Jetta - the current generation of which is entering its ninth model year this fall - will continue.  Gruner said that both cars represent the soul of Volkswagen for VW enthusiasts, and I would add that the Jetta has been one of the bestselling European cars in the United States for decades.  It is as yet unclear whether Schubert is simpatico with Gruner's position.  Gruner's position no longer matters; he is leaving the company completely.  

If there's any silver lining in this development (and I'm stretching it here), it's that Schubert is coming over from Audi, a VW division that never forgot how to make performance cars, so he might actually favor the gambit to keep the Golf and the Jetta in the North American lineup and bring back the base Golf model.  Just don't ask Marco for a Polo (which has gone electric, the new ID version having just gone on sale in Europe), or any other model true to Volkswagen's heritage, because the brand is undoubtedly doubling down on a strategy to Americanize the brand to pander to American tastes to increase its American market share.  

This is the worst watering down of Volkswagen in the U.S. since 1978, when VW's Westmoreland factory in Pennsylvania began producing "Malibunnies" - Rabbits so Americanized in terms of trim and performance that it had more in common with the Chevrolet Malibu than with Golfs back in Europe.  If Volkswagen keeps going down this path, it won't be Volkswagen anymore.  Not in the New World, anyway.

Todd Blanche Is Attorney General

And he's ready to go after Trump's enemies while protecting Trump himself.

One picture is worth a thousand words.

All That Slop and Glop

The European Union has passed legislation requiring content creators in all member states to identify any Internet content created by AI as just that.  

Don't expect to hear about this in the American mainstream media.  It would only lead to Americans writing to their members of Congress to demand the same thing.  

Personally, I don't mind AI slop, because it's so easy to spot.  See Melania Trump with three legs!  See an "historic picture of the Beatles with John Lennon on left-handed bass!  See a pioneer in a log cabin with an electrical outlet!   And besides, the pictures look more like illustrations than the photographs they purport to be.

As for me, I make AI pictures, but I always identify them because it's the right thing to do.  I'm not talking about magazine covers I remove all of the text from; I'm talking about some of my own pseudo-photographs, made from other AI pseudo-photographs, which I clearly identify as AI.  But usually, I don't have to; my AI pictures are so silly and so ridiculous - made with the intention of mocking AI itself - that they can't possible anything but AI!

And here are some of them. 

Europeans would love me.

Sick

It was Donald Trump who let Anthony Fauci run the COVID response when the pandemic hit.  It was Dr. Fauci who saved millions of people despite the fact that the very administration he worked for got in his way.  While Dr. Fauci led the effort to stop the spread of le covíde, Trump gave his administration the blessing to look for a COVID vaccine in Operation Warp Speed.  The vaccine saved millions more lives.

Now, because Dr. Fauci's pushback against Trump in 2020 has put him on his Trump's enemies list, the Republican Senate is prosecuting and persecuting him over how he handled COVID.

Dr. Fauci did make mistakes in handling COVID.  Because he was dealing with a novel virus.  That's the whole point about a novel virus - you're going to make mistakes in dealing with it because no one knows a twit about it!  

Aware that the Senate committee who subpoenaed him to testify on the pandemic, Dr. Fauci pleaded the Fifth Amendment in response to questions from the committee's GOP members - especially Kentucky's Rand Paul, who put his libertarian values in a blind trust before the committee hearing began.   Dr. Fauci has since been held in contempt.

This has all happened at a time when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is in charge of America's public health and is voicing skepticism about vaccines.  And in the wake of Dr. Fauci's inquisition, leading virologists - may of whom the same Debbie Downers who kept shooting down our optimism like clay targets whenever it seemed that the pandemic was abating (and of course, it wasn't) - are warning that those of us who lived through a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic might live to see another pandemic of such magnitude.  Some of them aren't saying "might" - they're saying "will!"  And an anti-vaccine, anti-science administration is in charge. 

If Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker of the House in January, we should hope that Trump and Vance are taking medical advice from RFK Jr.  Then maybe Jeffries will become President by February. 

Where's Mitch?

U.S. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has not been seen in public since June, and Democratic Governor Andy Beshear, who must call a special election before tomorrow is over, cannot do so without McConnell resigning.  Ir McConnell were to resign on Tuesday, August 4, Governor Beshear wouldn't even be able to appoint an interim senator to serve out the remainder of his term.  A 2024 law passed by Kentucky's Republican state legislature prohibiting Beshear from doing so remains on the books (and will likely be repealed after November 2027 if Kentuckians elect a  Republican governor to succeed Beshear then).

Beshear has taken flak for not doing enough to discern McConnell's fitness to remain in office for the remainder of his term, which expires in January 2027, after which McConnell will retire, but it seems that McConnell has already retired - permanently.  Rumors of his death may be greatly exaggerated, but Beshear can do absolutely nothing to remedy the situation until and unless McConnell resigns or is proven to have already died.  Both of those things are beyond his control, yet progressives in the Democratic Party are using this as a cudgel to swat down his possible presidential ambitions.  They don't want a white guy from Kentucky to be the Democratic presidential nominee - why don't they come out and say it?  (Left-leaning Democrats seem to in for white male politicians from the old border region of the antebellum period.  Look at the lack of respect they gave to Martin O'Malley and Joe Biden.)  Do they expect Beshear to storm into the hospital to demand to see Senator McConnell or else?  That's not how it works.

What happens next in Kentucky is unknown, but if Beshear can't call a special election or appoint an interim senator once tomorrow passes, assuming Mitch McConnell already has passed, Kentucky will be short one senator and the GOP will be short one member in its narrow Senate majority.  That might not be a bad thing.

The Dam Is Barely Holding

Despite refusing to tell Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) who won the 2020 presidential election, Jay Clayton was confirmed to be Director of National Intelligence.  He's actually one of Trump's better nominees, his main qualification is that he is not Tulsi Gabbard.  

Meanwhile, there is another subject that I haven't commented enough if at all on, Trump's appointment of Todd Blanche (above) as Attorney General.  A handful of Republican senators - especially Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who decided that he'd rather be a lame duck than a dead duck (he evidently remembers what almost happened to Mike Pence  on January 6, 2021), and John Cornyn of Texas, forced into early retirement by the Lone Star State's Republican primary voters in favor of the horrible Ken Paxton.   Trump has even threatened to pull the Blanche nomination because of the lack of support.

So far, the dam against GOP election fraud is holding, but just barely.  But there are still dangers to free and fair midterm elections this year.  Clayton may have a little integrity, but he's likely willing to shred it to help Trump nullify votes in key battleground (don't you hate that expression?) states like Georgia (where Senator Ossoff is up for re-election), and even if he isn't confirmed as Attorney General, Blanche, who is all in on Trump's election conspiracy theories, is still acting Attorney General and it ready, willing and able to push for federalizing and rigging elections - with a blessing from a right-wing Supreme Court that supports the unitary executive theory of supreme presidential authority.  

By the way, remember when Madonna threatened to blow up the White House in January 2017?  At this point, I would be quite happy to see her blow up that now-degraded residence by committing an al-Qaeda-style terrorist attack and flying a Lear jet full of explosives and filled gasoline containers into the building with Trump in it. It would eliminate America's two most malignant narcissists at once.  There, I said it. 

The Last Music Video Of the Week - July 31, 2026

"Goodbye" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

The Music Is Over

Tomorrow (July 31), I will be posting a Music Video Of the Week as usual.  But it will be the last one.

You might have figured that out from the fact that I posted last week a video of clip of Paul Mauriat, the French Fred Waring (although Mauriat didn't lend his name to a blender), conduct his instrumental "Love is Blue" for no other apparent reason.

The main reason I'm ending this feature is the same main reason I ended my beautiful-women picture blog last year - it stopped being fun.  I couldn't keep up with the pressure of coming up with a new selection every week, and, while I at first would screen my chosen video in advance, I gave up on that awhile ago because I couldn't be bothered.  But another reason is that my Music Video Of the Week page has largely been ignored.  The week before, I posted the promotional video for the latest Rolling Stones single, which got 1.6 million views on YouTube since it premiered there a month ago; it only attracted seven views, one a day, for the week it was embedded on my Music Video Of the Week page.  And why embed a YouTube video on a blog page for a week when you can see it any time on YouTube itself?

I have to cut back on my blog overall, anyway.  I just returned to my local reporting job after a long hiatus, the hiatus being for reasons that boiled down to franchising issues at the news site's parent company,  and that means less time here.  My blog is not going away - I've committed 24 years to this piece of bandwidth - but I have to focus more on my reporting job.  I'll still be around, but my Music Video Of the Week won't be.  I'm done after this week.

You'll notice that I took advantage of July 31 - that is, the last day of the month - being the the last Friday of the month to end the page.  

Losing My Dinner

For those who wondered when the American mainstream media establishment would finally collapse into irrelevance, the suspense ended with the rescheduled 2025 White House Correspondents' Association dinner this past weekend. 

I can't think of a more disgusting sight in recent memory than Trump donning a "TRUMP 2028" ball cap while giving a monumentally incoherent speech even for him and announcing his fourth presidential candidacy for 2028 despite the fact that he's term-limited.  Members of the White House press corps actually laughed - not at Trump but with him, as if the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution never mattered.  Trump further undistinguished himself with insults directed toward Kaitlan Collins, who had just won an award for her reporting.  As Collins has become famous for holding Trump to account, Trump was eager to bring her down a few notches for insulting her appearance.

She happens to be a beautiful woman.  But, as I learned when I had to shut down my beautiful-women picture blog, that shouldn't matter.

What really made me want to throw up was the behavior of Kristen Welker.  I have already discussed Welker disappointing me and later disgusting me with her acquiescence toward Trump, both before and after the presidential election that forced Kamala Harris into early retirement; Welker, like Collins, started out dealing with Trump nonchalantly and letting him control the narrative.  But while Collins was able to transcend her own supplication and emerge as one of CNN's most fearless reporters, Welker has become an unbearable NBC stooge in the tradition of Chuckles the Clown (formerly Chuck Todd), her predecessor as the moderator of "Meet the Press."  But all of her journalistic crimes before this past weekend are minor compared to what she did at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Welker was actually caught on camera talking to - and laughing it up with - Stephen Miller.    

Stephen . . . Miller.

Stephen Miller, the fascist Trump aide who has thrown migrants in jail for trying to seek shelter in the U.S. and . . . for being brown.  The fascist Trump aide who thinks that people who look like Kristen Welker shouldn't be in this country, and who has his job because Trump was voted back in by people who think biracial people like Kristen Welker - born to a white father and a black mother - are a mistake.  That Stephen Miller.  Not Steve Miller, the rock and roll musician.

Kristen Welker was seen as a bright, sharp TV reporter who also happened to be good-looking back in 2011, when I featured her on my beautiful-women picture blog, and she became my most viewed subject, with comments each made up of a single word - most of those single-word comments being adjectives that complimented her journalistic skills.  I've talked about that before.  At the time I ended my beautiful-women picture blog, Kristen Welker was a big reason I ended it.  Not the biggest reason, but still a big one.  This picture of her enjoying the company of Stephen Miller destroyed any respect I might have still had for her.

I don't even watch or listen to mainstream broadcast news anymore - I haven't since November 2024.  I consume a lot of independent media on YouTube.  Jim Acosta's channel is one of the best.  I hope Kaitlan Collins starts her own YouTube channel when the Ellison family's attempt to buy out CNN's parent company and put Bari Weiss at the head of CNN comes to pass (the takeover is still in limbo) so she can continue her fearless reporting on Trump.  

But even if Kristen Welker were to admit tomorrow that she was wrong and has changed her ways, I'm finished with her.  Given her movie-star looks, not even a Hollywood ending, ironically, can save her career.

Who's Crying Now?

Bruce Springsteen has taken some hits for his vocal opposition Trump, and the latest hit he's taken comes from one of his peers, a fellow rock and roll musician who owes his career to being in the right place at the right time - and to pure luck.

In 1980, Gregg Rolie, the keyboardist and singer from Santana who had started Journey with fellow Santana alumnus and guitarist Neal Schon five years earlier, decided to leave the band.  He and Schon went to a show by a British band, the Babys, whose lead singer, John Waite, would eventually find success as a solo artist.  Rolie admired the prowess of the Babys' American keyboard player and told Schon that he might make a good replacement for him as Journey's new keyboardist.  Schon agreed, and he later approached the fellow and offered him the job of becoming Journey's new ivory tickler.  The musician accepted, and that's how Jonathan Cain joined Journey. one of the most successful - commercially, anyway - rock bands of the late seventies and early eighties, debuting with the band on their 1981 album Escape.

At least that's how I remember the story.  I heard it on MTV years ago.

Now, anyone who knows me would say that I more or less agree with the critics, despite my respect for Neal Schon as a guitarist and Gregg Rolie as a keyboardist (and their first two drummers, Aynsley Dunbar and Steve Smith, are accomplished musicians in their own right, Dunbar as a blues drummer in John Mayall's group and Smith as a jazz drummer), that Journey's music is mostly junk.  It's corporate rock that follows a straitjacketed formula of pumped-up rockers and power ballads, the spectacularly insufferable "Don't Stop Believin'" being a prime example of the latter - rock and roll on automatic pilot.  It's all hackwork, and as a member of Journey at its commercial peak - and as the composer of "Faithfully," another power ballad that led some rock fans to wonder if Lionel Richie had written it under a pseudonym - Jonathan Cain may very well be the biggest hack of them all.

So bear that in mind when I tell you this: Cain said that Springsteen should "shut up" and stop telling people how to vote and what to think of Donald Trump, saying that music should be apolitical and that the sole purpose of musicians is to entertain, not preach politics.

"Guys like Bruce Springsteen should shut up, you know?" Cain said.  "I mean . . . really? Do your art. I try to keep politics out of my music." 

Cain could have stopped there, but he accused Springsteen of lack of patriotism, having just found out after forty-two years that the title song of Springsteen's 1984 album Born In the U.S.A. was not a celebration of right-wing Republicanism.

"And Bruce, I mean, what the heck? I used to like him, and now he’s just annoying. He's an annoying, bitter old man. I mean, stop it. Really. You were born in the U.S.A., weren’t you, dude? So act like it. But even that song, if you look at the lyrics, I mean, it’s a kind of a diss to our country," he said.

Even that song, if you look at the lyrics, it's the thoughts of an embittered Vietnam veteran who can't reconcile the American promise of freedom and opportunity to what he was fighting for in Vietnam, even as he can't get a job in the local oil refinery in his hometown and can't even get any help from his local Veterans Administration office.  Cain speaks as if the concerns of the working class folks that didn't achieve the success that Springsteen and Cain himself did don't matter.

By the way, because Journey was so faceless, even their own fans couldn't name one member besides singer Steve Perry without looking at the credits of one of their Journey LPs, it appears that Cain is the annoying, bitter old man here.  He happens to be only a year younger than Springsteen.  But nowhere nearly as renowned. 

The way Cain attacks Springsteen for being unpatriotic and dismissive of American values - when Springsteen is engaging in the greatest American value of all, freedom of speech, especially in the face of a tyrant like Trump - you'd think Cain was one of those Christian conservatives who think being against Trump is like being against America.  Well, he is.

"Now, people say, 'Well, you’re a Christian, and you’re conservative,' and I’m like, 'So what?'" Cain said.  "I don't preach it on stage. I don't spend ten minutes talking about it," Cain said.

Well, he has his wife do that for him.  See, his wife is Paula White, Trump's spiritual advisor - the chick who famously speaks in tongues at the drop of a hat. "Aka kaka wokka makka koka kola oko uno iki icki kama taka tiki torko ticky tacky kaka waka maka braka ooga ooga ooga ooga chaka!"  She sounds like Fozzie Bear on acid.

Did I happen to mention that this is the third marriage for Cain and White - so much for Christian values, eh? -  and that Cain is notably older than his wife?  She was fifteen years old in 1981, when her schoolmates - and possibly White herself - were buying Journey's Escape album.

But then. younger conservative women marrying older men is the thing these days.  Look at Karoline Leavitt. 

And seriously, where has Cain been all this time?  Bruce Springsteen, critical of Republican politicians?  He just got that?  How far back do you want to go?  During his 1988 tour, Springsteen famously yelled at one of his audiences, "Don't vote for that f**kin' Bush!" 

Being the keyboardist in one of the most popular rock bands of the early eighties is nothing for Jonathan Cain to brag about, as Journey, like most bands of the time, made the sort of bland, unchallenging rock that was as satisfying as a diet soft drink and more bloated - the sort of rock music that led many young listeners to embrace the even more awful sounds of hip-hop and synthesizer-based disco that suddenly flowered like algae blooms after MTV premiered, because rock and roll, thanks largely to bands like Journey, had become that lame.  As you can gather, I don't think Journey is worth the trip.

And it's appropriate that Cain was in the Babys, because when he disses Springsteen, he certainly acts like one.

Music Video Of The Week - July 24, 2026

"Love Is Blue" by Paul Mauriat  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Lindsey

When I heard that Lindsey Graham had died suddenly of a heart condition just a couple of days after turning 71, I was shocked.  And when Americans who despise Trump and his lapdogs reacted in a cavalier manner toward news of Graham's death, I was not shocked.  In fact, I wasn't even surprised.  Because I was just as nonchalant about the news as well.

 

Lindsey Graham's service as a U.S. Representative and as a U.S. Senator from South Carolina was not anything to celebrate.  In fact, apart from Fritz Hollings, I can't think of one U.S. Senator from South Carolina whose service is anything to celebrate.  He spent the Clinton impeachment hearings trying to look like the reasonable Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.  And to be fair, Lindsey Graham was the only Republican on the committee to vote against an article of impeachment against Bill Clinton, voting no on the second article  that held President Clinton responsible for perjury in a sexual-harassment lawsuit and  explaining that he did so in order to give the President "the legal benefit of the doubt" due to an unclear definition of sexual relations used in that case.  That particular article was one of four voted out of the committee and sent to the full House, and it was one of two that did not pass. But at the same time, Graham sai that pursuing the indictment of President Clinton was the surest way to rid the Presidency of the stain of dishonor bestowed on it.

So why did he get behind Donald Trump?  Especially when, as a presidential candidate in 2016 himself, he dismissed Trump as a racist misogynistic xenophobe?   

Graham was probably the most impressive 2016 Republican presidential candidate, which tells you more about the Republican Party's already-declining standards by 2016 than it does about Graham's credentials.

As a U.S. Senator, he was a nice guy who was able to broker deals with his back-slapping, easy-going attitude, but when it came to achieving greatness in the Senate and being talked about in the same breath as Robert Taft, Lyndon Johnson, or Howard Baker, he preferred to attach himself like a leech to greatness, hanging out with John McCain and Joe Lieberman for a shred of tangential legitimacy.  He abandoned policies he'd supported when it was convenient to be for them as soon as it was more expedient to be against him.  

His zealous capitulation to Trump, though, is what Graham is most likely going to be remembered for.  He wanted to curry favor with Trump to, as the song from Hamilton goes, be in the room where it happens.  Now that he's in purgatory for his transgressions, what happens next in Washington may be the sort of horrible thing that wouldn't have happened if Graham hadn't taken sycophancy to new heights under the Trump regime.

Making Spectacles Of Themselves

There was never a greater embarrassment to America than what happened on Sunday.  A narcissistic, blasphemous, talentless hack from the 1980s who got to the top with self-promotion and deception got on the stage at the World Cup final - which Spain won - and humiliated the United States in a display of egomaniacal self-absorption and did not care who was offended and who was appalled by such atrocious behavior.

And what Donald Trump did was just as bad.

What you thought I was talking about Trump just now?  No, I was talking about Madonna. 

In what was the most unnecessary live "musical" event since Woodstock II out on Long Island in 1979, Madonna headlined a show between the two halves of the final game between Spain and Argentina, where she was joined by BTS, Shakira, and the horrible Justin Bieber.  Madge clearly wanted to be part of a global event - anything to promote her latest LP - and she made it clear to her manager that she wanted to headline the show and wouldn't take no for an answer because it was on her "bucket list."

Oh, yes, I understand how long she'd been waiting for a moment like this . . . like, a whole . . . month!   Because this is the first World Cup final halftime show ever staged in the 96-year history of the tournament.

If a halftime show for the championship game sounds wrong for the World Cup, that's because the championship game halftime show is a uniquely and peculiarly American innovation, starting innocently from marching bands in American Football League and National Football League championships and then the early Super Bowls of the late sixties and early seventies before the NFL (which absorbed the AFL and converted the original leagues into "conferences") chose to start featuring pop singers - the more theatrical the better.  And a lot of soccer fans aren't happy about this attempt to ape the Super Bowl, either.  This was just the icing on a putrid cake that was the 2026 World Cup, in which extra teams were added, ticket prices soared through the roof, and breaks for drinks of water broke up the halves into quarters to allow for more commercials for products like . . . bottled water.

Madonna was obviously pleased with herself, saying, "Music makes the world come together."

Yeah, Madge?  What's that got to do with you? 

And then there was Trump.

By going out onto the podium as the Spanish team held up the Cup in celebration, Trump demonstrated why I argued in February 2024 that he and Madonna are exactly alike.  It doesn't matter that Madonna is one of his biggest detractors.  Trump is so obsessed with himself that he's his favorite subject.  Would you want a hack pop singer who's just as obsessed with herself as Trump is with himself on your side?

In Spain, the image of Trump, looking like a cardboard cutout, was edited out of the team's celebration of their victory.  (That's Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, trying to pull Trump aside, by the way.)  And pundits like Edwin Eisendrath are already talking how he will soon be edited out of American life, once we edit him out office (assuming Trump doesn't edit mail-in ballots and black and Hispanic voters out of the midterms).   Madonna, I'm afraid, will never be edited out of our culture.  Her 2008 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and her record-setting singles and album chart action - along with getting TV networks some of their highest ratings whenever she appears on them - have all seen to that.

Both Donald Trump and Madge are my two most eagerly awaited obituaries, in that order.  There, I said it.

Meanwhile, Americans can stop pretending they like soccer so much.  And yes, I'm glad I watched none of this World Cup.  

Platner Ain't The Only Oyster in the Stew

I shouldn't travel abroad when things look like they're quieting down in the U.S. of A., because that's exactly when things happen. Despite some controversies regrading his personal life, Graham Platner seemed to be very competitive in his bid for the United States as the Democratic opponent to Republican Susan Collins, and Platner was fine as long as, after having admitted to having a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo candidacy on his chest and to having embraced communism in a quote on Reddit, he did nothing as bad as Trump has ever done - like, say, rape. Then the roof caved in. 

A former girlfriend of Platner accused him of raping her, and despite his denials of all allegations of rape and abuse against him, the accusations form his former girlfriend were so credible that Platner lost key endorsements from state and national Democrats and eventually had to withdraw as a candidate.

Platner's rise and fall is eerily reminiscent of Gary Hart's meteoric ascent as a presidential candidate in 1988 after this first run for the office in 1984, which of course descended just as meteorically.  Although Hart had never been accused of anything even remotely close to what Platner has allegedly done, Platner has followed the same playbook as Hart - present yourself as part of a new generation of leadership, propose new ideas and policies that aren't so new but are actually common sense, and create a compelling personal narrative that glosses over all of the nasty stuff.  Except that Platner didn't gloss over anything or exaggerate - he lied.  He and his handlers talked about how his Marine Corps service in Iraq broke him but he was able to redeem himself by making a steady living as an oyster farmer, finding the love of a good woman, and becoming a man of the people.  In fact, he had previously been a security contractor in Afghanistan, he's found the love of women not his wife, and this "man of the people" is a prep-school expellee who came from an affluent family whose paternal grandfather was an architect and and an interior designer who designed the restaurant at the top of 1 World Trade Center.  Like his grandfather, Platner has seen his signature achievement collapse into dust because no one took advance warning signs seriously.

Not just the Reddit comments or the Nazi tattoo - also the money problem.  Platner spent so much money in his successful Senate primary campaign against Maine Governor Janet Mills that he had no money left to campaign against Senator Collins.  He was flat broke.  Despite his relatively good standing in the polls, he was in no position to take on Collins without anything resembling a campaign war chest.

Planter is the latest in a series of progressives endorsed by leading figures of Democratic Socialists of America - that includes New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani - who wow primary voters and silence detractors who ask critical questions of their political prowess, only to vindicate their detractors when they turn out not to be who their supporters think they are. These candidates are edgy, they're combative, they're different, they're telling and giving the people what they want - and they're just as amoral and politically vacuous as Donald Trump.  Democrats hungry for change should stop falling in love at first sight with such candidates and give them a closer look before they support him.  

When Platner dropped out of the Maine U.S. Senate campaign on July 10, many people thought he wouldn't come up ever again.  They were wrong, but only because I'm talking about him on a blog nine days later.  And now that I've said my peace, I figure that Platner's name will come up among people looking back at the 2020s the way people continued to bring up Richard Jewell's name over the Atlanta Olympics bombing that happened thirty years ago this month.

Except that Jewell was innocent.  Platner is guilty as charged for his accused crimes. 

The Maine Democratic Party should find a new Senate nominee to go after Susan Collins shortly.  Platner is hardly indispensable; there are plenty of other Maine Democrats who can go after Collins.  All we know for certain at the moment is that the new nominee will not be Janet Mills.  And Platner?  Let him go back to oyster farming.  It's not only all he does best.  It's all he does.

Senator Platner?  Yeah, right, he doesn't even look like a senator, with that piece of brown moss that purports to be a beard.

There's something very symbolic about this picture of Platner standing in front of a doorway with a "NOT AN EXIT" sign over it, given that he's exited all right, but I'm not sure what the symbolism is. 

Music Video Of the Week - July 17, 2026

"Jealous Lover" by the Rolling Stones  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Frozen Out

The Coca-Cola Company's Minute Maid brand recently got rid of their frozen-concentrate fruit beverages, as preferences for ready-to-drink beverages have surpassed frozen concentrated juices and citrus ades you add water to.  But it's another discontinued Minute Maid product that leaves me cold.

Minute Maid also discontinued its frozen full-strength lemon juice, used  conveniently for baking and making fresh lemonade when thawed.  A bottle of Minute Maid frozen lemon juice was equal to the juice of seven lemons, and I didn't go through a single bottle as quickly as I go through seven actual lemons - which I now buy -  in adding a spritz of juice to my iced tea.  You can drink iced tea without sugar or artificial sweetener.  But drink iced tea without a twist of spritz of lemon juice?  It's like eating an ice cream sundae without whipped cream. You might as well drink iced coffee straight.

Needless to say, the act of always having to buy enough lemons to enjoy a cold glass of iced tea is annoying, but I will probably continue to buy them.  Minute Maid supposedly offers full-strength lemon juice in the refrigerated-product section of the supermarket (though I haven't seen it), and other brands sell lemon juice at room temperature - sometimes in lemon-shaped containers - to be refrigerated once first used.  I could easily buy the closest thing to the original Minute Maid frozen lemon juice, but why not go better and just go straight to the source of the juice?

Lemon juice at room temperature?