The Start of Summer
The smell of cut grass heralds summer for me.
It’s Memorial Day weekend. For me, it always represented the start of summer. The start of summer meant mowing the grass.
When I was a kid, one of my chores was to mow the grass at home and at my grandmother’s house. I remember riding my 10-speed, holding an empty round gas can, to the closest gas station and filling it up with $5 worth of gas, and then riding back home. Back then, $5 was enough gas for at least two weeks of mowing and probably more.
The mower I used had a primer and a pull start. It rarely started on the first pull, but I never threw my back out trying to start it either. I’d drop a tape into my Walkman (probably Motley Crue or Ratt) and start at the end of my driveway.
I mowed the front yard in a diagonal pattern. At the time, I thought this was cool. My brother, when he took over the duties, decided to mow the front yard in a circular pattern, starting at the large tree in the front yard. His idea was much cooler. I think our parents were just glad they didn’t have to mow the yard.
One time, my brother was sure I had just mowed over his newly planted marigolds and was crying hysterically. I hadn’t, but I certainly took better care in subsequent mowings. Also, be kind to him as he was probably ten at the time, and he picked out and planted them all by himself (with Mom’s help, of course).
Many summers before I was old enough to mow the yard, my Dad lost his wedding ring in the backyard while mowing. I have no clue how this happened, but it disappeared. Several years later, I was unloading the grass catcher and saw a glint of gold in the green. Of course, it was my father’s long-lost wedding ring.
Mowing my grandmother’s lawn was always a treat. It took no time at all, and I didn’t have to bag the grass.
The best part was after I was finished. I’d come into the house, take my shoes off, and she’d tell me to go get a Pepsi from the fridge in the garage. I’d get my Pepsi, and she’d have unfrozen a plate of sugar cookies she probably made months ago and leave a $5 bill on the table.
I’d eat the cookies at the kitchen table and just talk with my grandma about school or what was happening in her ever-present National Enquirer or Star Magazine. I’d give her a kiss and a hug goodbye and be on my way.
I miss those days. I miss my grandma. The smell of cut grass brings it all back.
Be seeing you.
Our Mob Boss President
Jamelle Bouie writes that each US president molds the presidency in his own image and Trump has constructed a “government as protection racket and the president as mob boss.”
So what manner of presidency has Trump devised for himself?
You could call it the pecuniary presidency, a presidency not devoted to the public good or to the preservation of the union or even to some narrow ideological crusade, but to the quest for personal enrichment. A presidency devoted to the aggrandizement of a single person, not to satisfy a grand design for the nation but to squeeze a few million here and a few billion there out of the public coffers for your own benefit.
This isn’t the “honest graft” of Tammany Hall — corruption as the price paid for public improvement. It is petty theft. It’s stealing from the Treasury and using your authority, enhanced by the baroque theories of your allies on the Supreme Court, to make yourself unaccountable. It is government as protection racket and the president as mob boss (a role that Trump has clearly embraced).
I am a professional writer and I had to look up “pecuniary.”
Just to be clear, we are living during the time of the most corrupt administration in history. There has never been an example of presidential corruption like this. Never.
Bond, Casting Bond
They’ve started casting the new James Bond.
Amazon MGM hired Nina Gold to find him. She cast Game of Thrones, The Crown, the new Star Wars films, Conclave, and Hamnet. The first-ever Academy Award nomination for casting went to her this year. Denis Villeneuve is directing.
So they’re not playing around.
The screen test tradition is what gets me. Daniel Craig did one. Even the guys who don’t get the part live on forever in the footage. I kind of like Sam Neil’s screentest. Henry Cavill’s Bond audition is on YouTube right now. You can watch a future Superman read for a different franchise and almost see the path he didn’t take.
That’s the part of casting that always stops me. The careers that almost happened. Guys sitting in hotel rooms with sides from Casino Royale, knowing only one of them gets a life-changing yes.
I have no idea who I want it to be. That’s part of the fun, too.
Lanterns Teaser Shines
HBO dropped a new Lanterns teaser, and the show might actually be good.
That’s not how I expected to feel. The early marketing was strange. They kept stripping the green out of the title. They kept calling it a grounded mystery in the vein of True Detective. I was not convinced.
Then this teaser arrived. Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan, using his ring to forge a dollar bill and feed it into a jukebox. Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart calls him out. Hal shrugs it off the way Hal Jordan always shrugs things off in the comics. Cocky test pilot who somehow keeps getting handed the most powerful weapon in the universe. Chandler nails the type.
Laura Linney is in it. Nathan Fillion is back as Guy Gardner. Damon Lindelof and Chris Mundy from Ozark co-created it with comics writer Tom King. August 16 on HBO.
Coach Taylor with a power ring. I don’t know what I expected. It wasn’t this, and I’m in.
Randy Rainbow Has a Question
Political musical satirist Randy Rainbow’s new one dropped this week. It’s called “Where the Hell Is Our Congress?” and it’s a parody of Raye’s “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”, which has been living in my head since the day it came out.
The bit isn’t subtle. The aim isn’t either. But there’s a craft thing happening that I admire. Rainbow has done this for almost a decade now, and his ear for which songs will carry the joke has gotten really sharp. Watch what Raye is doing on the original first. Then watch what he does on top of it.
So good.
