France’s Britney

Where’s Alizée today? She’s at St. Andrews in Scotland, where her husband is playing golf.

Wait. Alizée isn’t a screwed-up mess like her contemporary, Britney Spears? How can that be? She was so provocative!

Alizée must have been exploited and turned to drugs to cope with the madness. What? That didn’t happen? She got married, became a mom, and makes money with product endorsements!

Alizée’s daughter Annily

The thing that seems to be screwed-up are France’s un-American liberal values, that allowed Alizée to be so well-adjusted!

Self-Regulation Self-Deception

Brooksley Born was one of the authors of the official government report on the 2008 financial crisis. I bet it was Born who insisted on putting this knock against Alan Greenspan in the preface.

FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES OF THE FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS IN THE UNITED STATES
January 2011

“More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and others, supported by successive administrations and Congresses, and actively pushed by the powerful financial industry at every turn, had stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe.”

Speaking of banks, I am the victim of attempted fraud. A check I had mailed to the contractor replacing the deck was stolen somewhere between the post office and the contractor’s office. It was modified by the crook, who deposited the check in an ATM. Thanks to the notification settings on my account I caught it in time. Any withdrawal over $100 shows up in e-mail and as a text message. Lots of stress and hassle getting it all straightened out this week.

The Death of Innocence

A comic book fan on Facebook has been posting Sunday installments of the original Superman comic strip, in sequence, from the 1940’s and 50’s. They were illustrated by the highly competent and prolific Wayne Boring.

In 1968, Boring was one of the DC artists whose drawing style was considered old-fashioned, and the publisher stopped giving him work. After a brief and unsuccessful stint at Marvel, Boring eventually settled for working as a security guard in Florida. A very un-super fate for one of Superman’s premier artists.

Wayne’s run on Superman, both in comic books and the syndicated strip, pre-dated The Adventures of Superman on TV, and it extended past the end of the series. This installment appeared on Sunday, June 14, 1959. Two days later, George Reeves committed suicide.

I was watching the TV show when I learned that Reeves had killed himself. I don’t know how old I was, but it’s unlikely I knew about it right away, because I was not quite yet four years old. I couldn’t have been older than six, because we were living in Wisconsin.

What I remember is my older brother telling me that Reeves thought he really could fly and had jumped out of a window. However old I was, I didn’t believe him, partly because I didn’t want to stop watching the show, and partly because my brother liked to tease me.