This, That, and a Whole Lot Less

The worst thing about 2025 coming to an end is the knowledge that 2026 will be worse.  But not as bad as 2027.

As 2025 lurches to a close, I ought to tend to some unfinished business . . ..

First, the inevitable update on two folks named James - a woman named by her father and a man named by his mother.  Letitia James and James Comey were both indicted by the Injustice Department as part of Donald Trump's retribution campaign, but both cases were dismissed in court.  The details of their indictments are moot, so I won't bother with them here.   John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, is still under indictment on eighteen counts related to the mishandling of classified documents, and as much as liberals would love to see Bolton go to the slammer (liberals are against the chair), he's clearly being indicted for all the wrong reasons. 

Meanwhile, Jennifer Welch (above), co-host of IHIP, the I've Had It Podcast, seems to have had a change of heart about Roman Catholics.  She recently told fellow podcaster Tara Palmeri that she actually admires Catholics for their devotion to their faith and their constant study of their faith and the Gospels, adding that if she were believer of God, which she is not, she could never be a Catholic not because of a patriarchal priesthood but because of all of the constant study involved.  She also says that Catholics are nice people who, unlike evangelicals in her home state of Oklahoma, don't try to convert anyone so aggressively.  So, I guess that means I ought to go back to listening to her and Angie Sullivan's podcast.

I write this blog post, meanwhile, with the knowledge that Brigitte Bardot just died at the age of 91.  Social media has gotten to the point that you don't even need to check news sites online or television news programs to find out that someone has died.  When Facebook friends who don't know each other from Adam and Eve simultaneously post pictures of a French actress and sex symbol who hasn't been culturally relevant since Renault stopped making the Dauphine, you can put two and two together.  No, those were not pictures of Claudia Schiffer.  The death of the woman her fans famously called B.B. fellows the death of another European movie star and glamour icon known as C.C., Italian actress Claudia Cardinale.  (Note: For those who have started following my blog just recently, no, my girl cat Claudia is not named for either Claudia Cardinale or Claudia Schiffer.)  I hope both of them are remembered for their earlier films, and hopefully not the spaghetti western they did together in the early seventies.  (I saw about five minutes of that movie; that was all I could take.  Both actresses were celebrated as icons, but you'd never have known it from this particular movie.)  

I was never incredibly enamored with Bardot or Cardinale, but their respective passings this year is still a bitter reminder that the era of European cinema and culture that they represented died long before they did.  And going into 2026, it makes me fear for the health and well-being of France's Catherine Deneuve, 82, and Italy's Sophia Loren, 91.  The European Union ought to seriously consider some protective measures for both actresses - put fences around them, maybe, declare them Continental treasures, perhaps get UNESCO to grant them World Heritage status - just so we can at least keep them around a little longer.