A year ago, before the pandemic, Joe Pera sat down with Stephen Colbert for a low-key conversation. Two nice guys, both very creative, with different approaches to comedy. Joe is the opposite of raging screamer comics like Lewis Black.
Here’s a video Joe put on YouTube today.
This video features a Holy Grail record playing setup from the glory days of Hi-Fi. A Garrard 301 turntable and 12″ SME tonearm, both from England, and an Ortofon SPU cartridge from Denmark. The stone base is obviously new, as part of a restoration.
How much would this gear cost? The cartridge alone, the one component still in production, starts at $1000, so don’t ask. The record is from the year of my birth.
Irrepressible Lily and her incorrigible brother Alfie.
TCM recently showed Pinky, a 1949 film with Jeanne Crain playing a young black woman returning home after passing for white in Boston, where she graduated from nursing school. This video of the complete movie is set to start at a point that I assume pushed the limits of what the censors allowed.
One of the assailants states the obvious. “What a build on her… oh, you’re pretty… you’re pretty… you’re real pretty.” Maybe it’s possible to be not only too white, but too beautiful for a role, because film critics have said Crain was miscast, despite her Academy Award nomination for best actress.
Director Elia Kazan was a founder of the Actor’s Studio, and he favored emotive acting, so of course he didn’t care for Crain’s understated portrayal of Pinky. But Crain was on the set before Kazan, who was hired after Ethel Waters had John Ford fired.
It’s good to see reporters refusing to let Trump repeat lies to their faces, and it’s fun to watch his reactions.
My previous post was about the difficulty in reconciling Trump’s supporters to reality. Here’s a deeper and more academic dive into the topic.
Newt Gingrich began the Republican descent into the party of culture wars during the 90’s, and Trump completed the transformation. I’m sure there must be white, college-educated professional men who know that Trump is a lying con man, but they liked his pro-business, anti-tax policies. I bet they secretly admire Trump’s swagger and his “grab ’em by the crotch” boasting.
Neither of the political extremes are going to accept any movement towards the other side. Trump’s hardcore base of working class supporters think of politics as Wrestlemania. So Democrats could likewise play rough and continue to call them willfully ignorant deplorable suckers, but that won’t help. What’s the alternative? “There, there, we know you’re disappointed. We’ll show you where you went wrong,” would be condescending. Maybe with Trump on the way out there are enough Republican moderates willing to risk coming out of hiding to make a difference.
