"Where's Charlie?"

It's hard to write funny, usable satire about Overcomber Don some days.  I'm not like the radio personalities on NPR who chuckle vacantly over the week in Washington even at the rosy-fingered dawn of Armageddon. And if I can't find spiffing fun in the day's events I'm of no use to anybody because my gnashing of teeth and venting of spleen morning til night is not worth the hearing. I say it freely. Protect us from the grinding of tongues.

Sorry Wash –– not much to say today but I promised I would check in daily.

This has been one of those days when "our side," patently the side of decency righteousness Christhood and truth, seems to be losing. Like Norman Mailer said to Dick Cavett on his eponymous show, "I believe that God and the Devil are in combat and regrettably the side of the good is losing. Now I really must leave you and the studio audience at home." He quite remarkably got up off the couch and left the talkshow set.

Norman he wasn't a great writer but he was great to have around for a while as a public intellectual. I wouldn't go so far as to say, "Oh for a Norman Mailer today," but it beats George Sanders talking to Seth Myers who is standing in for Charlie Rose.

Where is Charlie, incidentally.
Wasn't he supposed to return in March?

"They Call Him Big Jim."

I didn't understand why Don Lemon called FBI Director James Comey "Big Jim" until yesterday, when TV showed footage of him sauntering into the hearing, verily towering above all the other participants like they were Japanese people scrabbling about on the Tokyo subway. The man is six foot eight. It was a stalwart performance Big Jim gave, fending off the seething little southern Republicans who wanted to berate him with bulging eyes and tense jaws (who the fump is "Trey Gowdy" after all?), and I almost forgive him for handing the election to Trump in the first place.

My only other comment on Big Jim Comey is this. It's:

Has anybody noted (the obvious size difference notwithstanding) the Director's slight resemblance to Dr. Daniel Kane, noted expert on the Lower East Side poetry scene?

Squint and it's there.
Don't and it isn't.

Other matters. Last night Trump was busy entertaining the Iraqi prime minister, enjoying towering over him. He maybe imagined that he was six foot eight. He maybe imagined that he was Big Jim. Do you remember around the time of the inauguration, he "joked" with obvious chagrin to Comey, "You're more famous than me now Jim!"

Many a thing said in jest, Combover Don!

(I Googled "Trump how tall," and found that he is six foot two. Invokana and Melanoma are both five foot eleven apparently. I could not with comfort enjoy towering over them, pretending I was Big Jim Comey. I would have to pretend instead that I was Dr. Daniel Kane.)

("Donald Kane.")

Then I googled "Iraqi prime minister how tall" and it must be the essence of optimism, of faith in technology to hope that such a factoid has been recorded on the world wide web. His height must remain a mystery to everybody but his wife and his Savile Row tailor.

While I was watching that fifth-tier news story about Trump and the Iraqi prime minister I noticed Trump's hair again. Well how can you not notice it. It is an insult to the American flag. I said to wife, "It isn't even there. It's the exact same colour as his bald pate. It's a mirage –– a castle in Spain –– a phantasy –– a parody –– an aporia –– an absence in the body politic –– sprayed on –– a non–thing –– a lie –– a turn–off –– a discarded weave under the BQE –– a not–in–itself not–of–itself –– unglaublich." It is, as I have said earlier, without countenancing the obvious pun, a trompe l'oeil. You could get a migraine trying to make sense of it. It is a migraine.

He is in actuality a baldheaded man but through the permanent enslavement of numerous otherworldly wizards he maintains this illusion –– the weird echo –– of some hair there. The shadow of a hint of his former head of hair,  a few chicken scratches on an essentially bald head –– a sketch –– notes towards a hairstyle. A few lines drawn on sideways by a madman with a ruler. His hair is like Charlie Brown's,  –– crossed with Hitler's:

 

M.K. Price tried to comment on this site on this subject, as our tonsorial correspondent in England. He was frustrated by the apparatus so forwarded me his remarks via email. I quite cavalierly presume that he still considers his comments apt for public consumption, and they follow:

23 years ago a barber told me that the hair on top of my head was not what he called "real hair". The thick blonde horse shoe above my ears and around the back, that was "real hair", but the dry, sun bleached, thinning thatch atop was not real, and never could be, however much I cultivated it. Soon after I chopped it off and the Unreal Hair never grew back.

Donald Trump has used his money and sheer brass balls to maintain his Unreal Hair for 70 years; he represents the absolute best possible outcome for those in Unreal Hair Denial and he still looks terrible. No man can defeat Unreal Hair.

Pricey, this wasn't the Fat Barber in Canterbury, was it? He used to harangue me for the fineness of my hair. Like the stagecoach robber Black Bart, the "PO–8" who used to leave doggerel verse at his crime scenes, and who cursed the "fine haired sons of bitches" who trod on his "corns."

I'd visit the barber's with naive dreams of a certain haircut, even a photograph pathetically gripped in my hand, and I would leave with a mohawk because he had butchered me so badly, whittled me down to a nub. I spent most of the 1993–4 season with a mohawk, my default look. In that long season, almost daily, that Mercury Rev line would come into my head on waking: "Waiting for your hair to grow." *

SO much for Donald Tripp–– that gorilla with mist on his head!

_________________________________________________

* Note for Pedants: The album version of "Boys Peel Out" (on the excellent Boces) has the line "Waitin' for the phone to blink... prayin' for your hair to grow..." However, the EP Bronx Cheer has a version called "Suzanne Peels Out" where they do indeed say "Waiting for your hair to grow."

"Dog and Beth on the Campaign Trail."

On the campaign trail I saw an ugly thing. An awful crushing of hope, all too symbolically resonant of this recent election over all. Like "Big Jim" Comey I see fit to sit on these things for months and months, deliberating uselessly until it is totally redundant to remark upon it.

Then I remark upon it.

Last summer Dog and Beth Chapman were going out for a meal at famous Craig's in this town. The paparazzi –– incredibly –– followed them as they went in to that restaurant, asking them who they were voting for. You could have predicted the answer, or so you would think.

Dog looked even more exhausted than ever, he was even redder in the face than before, so red he was purple, but he planted himself squarely on the spot in front of the cameras, perhaps guilelessly grateful and proud that TMZ was asking his political opinion. He waved away his nervous PA, who kept trying to delicately drag him off camera like a recalcitrant nonegenarian. He stood firm like Gary Cooper and held out his arms palms downward and half-squatted in place, his preferred posture to make a public statement. Now he gently repeated with obvious good will and earnestness some words of wisdom he "onct hyeard Dolly Parton say," which were:  Never influence your public on who to vote for because you will always disappoint somebody.

Nice sentiment.   (You might well wonder, "Who the fuck takes political advice from Dog the Bounty Hunter?" But then you might also ask, "Who the fuck seeks political advice from that oold fart off Duck Dynasty," whereupon you'd find yourself also answering, "Oh yes, Steve Bannon and behind him all the assembled Red States, infinite their sagacity!")

In a show of supreme naivety Dog said, "But hain't this been a great race, hey boy? Whoo! It's been the very best my bruh! America can still have a great election!" Like it had been the Bicentennial. He then raised his thumbs up and grinned, showing off the new dentures of which he is justly proud, even if they make him look strange and eerie and off-kilter and gone badly wrong in all his earthly works.

Dog might have been the first and only person to on record opine thuswise about the recent election "cycle". CNN is not calling his agent asking if he will sit on a panel across from David Brooks, Katty Kay or that especially attractive blonde. Duane has not been asked to "sit in for" Charlie Rose.

The uncynical moment, these few seconds without bile, this delicate and noble show of political magnanimity and bipartisanship by Dog, seemed to hang in the space/time continuum like a silver crystal raindrop for half a minute. For that trice, that mite of time, the world seemed youthful again. Then Big Beth Chapman came clomping back along the boardwalk to take Dog by the ear and holler hectoringly at the cameras, "Don't be a chump, vote for Trump!"

You could imagine "Dogger" stuttering, in his most henpecked way, "But dear I just told them what Dolly Parton said about––" and her cuffing his bald spot and booting him into the restaurant by the worn seat of his pants.

I do believe and recollect that was the last time I saw Duane Champman alive.

"How to Describe Trump's Hair."

"Mister Don Trump"

Trump's hair.

Like a bread roll constructed from mist.

Like a plainly bald man walked into an off-colour cobweb and this was what stuck to his cranium,

Like a crash helmet crafted from the finest filigree gossamer.

Trump's hair the ghost of real hair.

What hand were equal to draw it –– what poet can write of it?

Not me apparently.

"Trump A First."

                                   

 

Trump's Presidency.  In the lead-up to the election I had a joke I never made, which was, "Whoever wins this will be a historic first. If Hillary wins, we will have our first female President. If Trump wins, we will have our first orang-outang President."

I withheld this zinger from society, not out of consideration for Trump, but out of consideration for orang-outans, which I like those great apes a lot. Indeed it is bad libel on those good old men of the woods. I could have said, "Trump the first baboon," but even though I like baboons less than orang-outans, and the coloration of baboons is less apt than that of orang-outans besides, I still didn't want to say that about baboons. They get a bad rap already and some of them are nice.

Eventually, months later, when Trump had won the Election and we were into his farcical reign, I thought of a version of the joke that was acceptable to me. "If Trump wins, we have our first mentally ill President."

Then I thought, "Nixon."
In the voice of Seinfeld saying Newman.

"He is our first autistic President."

My final version: "When Trump won, it was a victory for orange people. He is our first orange President."

_______________________________________________________

Historical / literary precedent note:

Thomas Love Peacock's satirical novel Melincourt (1817) imagines an orang-outang being elected to the British Parliament. The joke was resumed by John Wagner and/or Allan Grant in 2000AD when they had an orang-outan named "Dave" elected the Mayor of Mega City One.

N.B. Dave was a good mayor. He was assassinated.

"I Am Not Curious, Orange." Or, "Trump L'Oeil."

I get the feeling Trump has been stung more than a leetle by the harsh words of the "Press" –– the "Media" –– that amorphous awful hydra that of one mind crawls across the Republic like a many–armed leech.

Poor guy! I say this because he was on TV yesterday and I said to my wife, "Is there something wrong with the TV? Or am I dreaming? Trump isn't orange."

I started thumping the TV in time–honored fashion, even though it is a flatscreen. I sort of batted at it.

Trump was pink with almost white hair. He was the colour of a heart attack waiting to happen.

He looked like the brother in Trading Places that is not Don Ameche.

Yeah –– Randolph Duke.
Remember how he ended up?

"I don't think Hillary's fit for office!"

Trump looked like a classic old Republican!

He'd had a do–over.

"He must have really been stung by those Cheetos placards on the marches," I mused. "Trump is no longer the new orange."

Poor guy's awfully thin–skinned. Unlike an orange!

He's more like a nectarine.

His hair remains a foul four-dimensional enigma.
His hair is an M.C. Escher trompe l'oeil, pun intended.
Has this pun been used yet? Can I copyright it?

All the criticisms leveled at him, all the awful things they have said about him, all true, and the worst one for him was that he looks like a Cheeto. "They can call me a steaming turd and a Nazi, but when they say I look like a Cheeto it's too much."

MELANIA: Donaldt, dolink, come on back to der sunbed Gott in Himmel vey ist meir.

"Obama Versus Osama: Trump Trumped."

[2017 Update –– I wrote this in 2011. Donald Trump is now President of the United States.]

Shall I be that pioneer, with the first of the Obama/Osama conspiracy theories? B'lieve I shall.

Where were you when Osama's death was announced?, asks the boring man who seems to permanently dawdle around the water-cooler, always looking for a "water-cooler moment".

"I was watching Celebrity Apprentice," I answer icily. "Now let me get a cup of water."

Last night Celebrity Apprentice had droned on inconsequentially and without any clear narrative, as it usually does, for the better part of its two-hour duration. It was reaching its "climax" - the boardroom sequence in which the losing team has to fight and bellow among themselves for their "very survival". That game slapper NeNe Leakes had spent the whole episode bawling and growling incoherently at Star Jones. Donald Trump was sitting across the table from them, squinting contentedly like mad Pontius Pilate, as the black folks squabbled for his pleasure.

("Is Donald Trump a racist?" –– David Letterman.)

It was all going Trump's way, then, until suddenly the broadcast was interrupted with the announcement that President Obama was about to make an "emergency statement".

"This cannot be an accident," I remarked to my wife. "Trump rides Obama about his birth certificate all week and Obama just happens to make an emergency announcement while The Celebrity Apprentice is on?"

Could it be, I merely ASK, that President Obama has had the opportunity to kill Osama Bin Laden at any time he wanted, and that he only struck yesterday - he only gave the kill-order yesterday - expressly so that he could make the announcement during Donald Trump's weekly two-hour slot on Sunday night?

Could it be, I say, that the death of Osama Bin Laden was merely a stroke of one-upmanship in that bigger battle betwixt Obama and Trump?

Mull on that a while, Mullah Omar. Here's an anecdote. When the news was broken, my wife had retreated to the shower, so when I shouted through the apartment, "Osama is dead!" she - in the shower - thought I was saying "Obama is dead!" For a moment, for her, it was a very different reality from the rest of us.
Actually, when I think about it, it is habitually a "very different reality" for my wife from "the rest of us".

[TYPE AND MOTIF INDEX OF HUMOR J1772: "One object thought to be another." Or K2150: "Innocent made to appear guilty." Subset: "School of jokes based around the amusing confusion between the similarity of the names, Obama and Osama."]

THREE QUICK JOKES.

-----Well, Osama is dead and that is that. He shan't be back any time soon. "Ding dong." We shall not see his like again, &c. I am only slightly anxious because I have been putting the blame on him for everything that has gone wrong in my personal life for the last ten years and suddenly I've lost that stand-by - that "wingman" if you like. Who to blame, now my scapegoat is gone?

-----Incidentally, in the name of fairness, I should note that Jenks Whittenberg was the first one with the news of Osama's death. He had claimed that Bin Laden was dead way back in October 2001. Certainly Jenks was slightly premature, but you have to admire his uncanny prescience withal.

-----I was a bit disappointed that Obama didn't pull Osama's decapitated head out from behind his lectern - or even (as my wife suggested) film the announcement while squatting athwart the corpse of Osama.

TO SUM UP:

"Osama Bin Laden is dead," Obama announced gravely on the television.
"That's all well and good," I responded, "but more importantly: who was fired on The Celebrity Apprentice?"