​On Monday, Trump sent out a couple of tweets praising himself for the great deal he got in his trade talks with China.  In case you missed them amid the morass of tweets, they were --

And then another, four minutes later --

Never mind that after the Trump tariffs China actually signed a deal with Russia for soybeans rather than the U.S.  And never mind, too, that what he says about China buying products has zero to do with lowering trade deficit.  (As an economist explained, the way this works is that the added income into the U.S. would only be used to buy Chinese-made products, which keeps the deficit the same.)  But never mind all that.  Because the bigger problem is that yesterday -- the very next day (you can see the timestamp on his two tweets above -- Trump had a brief Q&A with the president of South Korea.  And in one of his comments, Trump said -- "I'm not pleased how the China trade talks went."

No, really.  Barely 24 hours later.

Today's question, class:  How on earth does he expect ANYONE to believe anything he says?? If he doesn't think North Korea follows his tweets & words, he's wrong. 

Just because National Security Director (sic) John Bolton (sick) can go on the TV over the weekend and with as straight a face say that it's a good thing the planned-meeting with North Korea is so soon because that means Trump doesn't have time prepare for it and can instead just get a real, human assessment of Kim Jong-Un doesn't mean the rest of us have to buy that -- because it's not how world diplomacy and de-nuclearization talks works.  This is like the guy in my college dorm sophomore year who would stand in the hallway goofing off with everyone on the last night before his term papers would be due, having waited until then to write them because, as he insisted, "I think better under pressure."  And get an F.

(And yes, that's true, though I can't swear he would get F's.  However, what's also true is that the next year he was elected president of the Inter-Fraternity Council on campus. Just the kind of guy you'd expect to be president of the frats!  My only concern is that today he's working in the Trump administration...)

"He actually put us all at risk" takes on a new and substantive resonance when it's backed by reality.

On Sunday, after attending a music event out in the Agoura Hills at the Paramount Ranch, I drove back an hour to go with my pal Mark Evanier to a concert by Audra McDonald at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.  So, though this was the second part of the long day, I'll deal with it here first.  I'll get to the earlier part of the day soon.

Mark had called me the evening before, and even though I knew it would involve a lot of driving and re-scheduling, I figured I should give it a go.  I like Audra McDonald's work very much (it's hard not to), though I'm not at all a die-hard acolyte.  I'd seen her with Mark last year in a much smaller venue that was more of a conversation with song, where she chatted with Seth Rudetsky who accompanied her on the piano for the few numbers she sang.  (I wrote about it here.)  Sunday was worlds different.  And that was the point in going, to compare the differences. 

Mainly, rather than being interviewed and a piano, she sang for two hours with the L.A. Opera orchestra behind her.  We're so used to not hearing full orchestras these days -- including at musicals with pared down bands -- that the music alone was glorious.  Soaring and rich.

Wonderful too was her chatting between numbers with the audience, something I find too often missing in concerts.  The performer just stands there and sings most of the time, and you could just as well bought the CD and had close to the same experience.  Her chatting was warm and personal, often very funny, and occasionally touching.  Much of it is scripted, I'm sure -- that's hardly a complaint.  A well-planned show should have prepared material -- but it was clear that a good amount was off-the cuff.  For instance, responding to the audience when she'd ask them questions.  Or at one point, after screwing up the lyrics of a song. she quipped, "Maybe I should have told you it was okay to sing along."  (Or something like that.)

And as for her singing -- well, yeah.  She does have a set of pipes.  And it's not just that her voice is so strong to the point where you wondered why she even bothered with a microphone, but it's her interpretation of numbers that sets her standard, whether funny or emotional.  Most of the selections were from musical theater -- most classic numbers, with some that were lesser-known to most of the audience, but also several fairly new works since she's a big champion of developing new songwriters.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable afternoon.

There was one particular song that stood out from the others as different.  It was one of those new ones written by an Australian singer, Kate Miller Heidke, who she talks about meeting, and being SO taken by the song because it spoke so incredibly personally to her down to the details of a very emotional period of her life.  As such, she apologized in advance for the language being very different from the rest of her concert and work, but it was too spot-on to what her own thoughts were, that they had to be sung as is.  

I couldn't find a video of Audra McDonald performing song, but did find her recording of it on one of her albums.  And since it was done in concert, it fit well enough.  So, here it is, "The Facebook Song" --
​

As a bonus, here is a video of the song performed by its writer, Kate Miller Heidke.  As you'll note, it turns out that Audra McDonald did change one lyric -- the very last line which she softened.  Ms. Miller Heidke sings it as intended.

The tsunami of disasters that is the Trump administration is SO overwhelming that it's easy to forget news stories that would have sunk any other administration at that instant.  Sure, it helps having a complicit Republican Congress that is will to overlook obstruction of justice, abuse of power and conspiring with foreign enemies in order to enable him, but it's oh-so-much more than just that.  Even a story like yesterday's about Trump ordering the Department of Justice to investigate itself for their investigation of him is merely just "one of the latest," not even the otherwise Banner Headline of the Year.

And make no mistake, the DOJ's investigation is an investigation of Trump.  His own lawyers have said that the Special Counsel called him a "subject" of the investigation.  And you'd generally think that the subject of an investigation shouldn't be allowed to investigate their own investigators.  Well, okay, I think that, but maybe "law and order" Republicans think differently.

But that's just yesterday's news.  As is -- sorry, was -- the story of yet another Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr. and Erik Prince (who lied to Congress about not being there), along with representatives of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates during the campaign.  And we know how stories like those push others out, like last week's high school massacre in Texas and Trump's bizarre near-silence on it (old news), Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen laundering hush money for a porn actress and the Russians (old news), the missing SAR bank files for those payments (old news) which now seem to have been restricted by the Treasury Department, and the Senate Intelligence Committee issuing a report that confirms the intel services findings that Russia did try to influence the election ordered by Putin (old "fake" news).  And those stories pushed out the story of Trump's staffer who "joked" (supposedly...) about John McCan dying -- with no public apology yet, despite one being promised.  And that pushed out the many stories of the seemingly-unending scandals by EPA Director Scott Pruitt...

And on and on and on.  Pushing one Trump administration disaster out of the headline for the next one.

All of which made me realize a story long-since forgotten which is one Democrats should continue to be pounding on, since -- although it's not a "scandal" in the non-stop salacious or criminal Trump meaning of the word -- it's one which has had direct and profound impact on the public and will have even far-more down the line.  Yet it's one that has been largely overlooked because it's been relegated to Way Old News -- which in this administration is usually anything more than five days ago.  And this is ancient, almost prehistoric, all the way back in 2017.

And no, I'm not even talking about how the "tax cut" for the richest Americans added $1.5 trillion to the national deficit over the course of 10 years.  (Quick side note on that:  I Remember that photo op Trump took with Harley Davidson motorcycles? (VROOM!) Well get this -- the company took their big corporate tax cut and are closing a U.S. factory & moving it to Bangkok, Thailand. AND they used their tax cut to buy back stock for themselves! But it gets even better!  Harley Davidson is based in Milwaukee, WISCONSIN. The home state of...yes, Paul Ryan,  the sycophantic Speaker of the House who enables Trump.)

No, no, not the massive debt issue of the "tax cut," I'm referring to another result entirely of that "tax cut" -- which is so easy to forget since it was a give months ago, another lifetime in Trump Years.  It was how when Trump and the Republican Party voted for that "tax cut" bill to get rid of the individual mandate which gutted the Affordable Care Act.

That's how disastrous the Trump administration has been.  That SO many awful things have happened SO often and SO regularly on a near-daily (sometimes hourly) basis that it's easy to forget that in the midst of one of its most harmful actions -- adding $1.5 trillion to the national deficit -- even that wasn't bad enough, and they destroyed health care. 

And the reason it's especially easy to forget this is because the removal of the individual mandate, which among other things will cause 13 million Americans to lose health coverage, is because that action doesn't take effect until 2019...after the mid-term election.  (Republicans were very smart and even more cowardly about making sure of that.)  So, most Americans at this point have probably totally forgotten all about that.  Forgotten that in the GOP's unending effort to "Repeal and Replace" the program, they not only weren't ever able to figure out how to "replace" it -- but couldn't even properly "repeal" it.  And so, they just shredded the thing.

Shredding is easy.  Replacing is hard.  As we've seen, since Trump and his GOP band of merry men (robbing from the poor to give to the rich) STILL haven't come up with that Trump-promised "better, cheaper, beautiful health care" replacement.  Or...well, ANY replacement, for that matter.  

It's my hope that when it comes time to campaign in earnest for the mid-terms and Republicans try to make the "tax cut" their one and only notable "achievement" -- assuming that adding $1.5 trillion to the deficit can be considered an achievement -- that Democrats themselves try to remember to remind the public that along with that gift of a $1.5 trillion deficit comes a bonus, the forgotten, upcoming destruction of health care.

​Cheers.  To your good health...

If you missed the season finale of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Tina Fey, they had one particularly-fun standout sketch and song.  Here 'tis --

On Friday, I read a headline on the Raw Story news site that I found absolutely hilarious.  It read, "Arizona Republican running for US Senate seat wants to build a wall to keep Californians out."  Okay, yes, I know you probably think that either I'm lying for a joke or that I mis-read the source and it's actually from The Onion.  After all, no "serious" and self-respecting politician -- not even an overtly-pandering Republican trying in soul-crushing desperation to appeal to the most highly idiot-racist portion of the base -- would do something so eye-rollingly and uproariously stupid.

​So, here's the screen shots to prove it.

So, there you are.  See!  I was telling the truth.  Yes, a real-life pandering Republican who is actually and honestly running for the United States Senate (!!!) is suggesting that Arizona build its very own wall in order to keep out its fellow-citizens -- U.S. residents from a state with the fifth largest economy in the world, bigger than even Great Britain.  Hey, if it works for Trump and Mexico, why not Arizona and California?  (Okay, okay,, it hasn't worked for Trump and Mexico, but now that's just quibbling)  

Never mind the pure idiocy of trying block the Interstate Highway system.  And never mind the pure idiocy of not recognizing that one would be able to...well, simply drive around the border and just come in from Nevada.  (Which would be REALLY EASY, taking you about 10-20 miles out of your way.)  Or come in from Utah.  Or from Colorado.  Or from New Mexico.  Or for that matter, come in from real Mexico where there isn't a wall.  Unless, of course, Martha McSally plans to have Arizona build a wall around all its borders and keep everyone out.  That doesn't appear to be her crackerjack plan, though.  It's just to build a wall at the Arizona border with California.  And never mind the concept of merely getting an airplane ticket and just plopping in that way -- or take the train -- since after all you don't need a passport to go from one state to another.

And by the way, lest you think that Martha McSally is your garden variety right wing nut job, someone running for the U.S. Senate on one of those loopy 3rd party "Americans Against Sanity" ticket.  Oh, no, she is actually an already-elected United States Congresswoman "representing" Tucson in the 2nd District.  No, really.  

To be clear, her intent is not to keep out all Californians with her really cool Arizona Wall.  It's that she doesn't like all them illegals in California and is afeared they'll come into Arizona.  Because, apparently, you see, Arizona doesn't have any illegal Mexicans in their state, despite sharing a border with Mexico that is 2-1/2 times longer than the California-Mexico border.  And despite the fact that if the Mexicans who came into California actually wanted to really come into Arizona in the first place, they could have...well, come into Arizona in the first place, rather than take the roundabout route of initially going into California and then take a right-turn and "Go East, Young Man," reverse Horace Greeley and travel into Arizona. 

But here's the thing --

The reason I find this story so hilarious is not why you think.  It's not for all those reasons I've noted that the dear Rep. McSally (R-AZ) has come up with for her truly idiotic, racist idea.  If for another reason entirely -- which says a lot given how truly idiotic her racist idea is.

No, the reason I find the story so hilarious is because -- I wrote it as a joke 12 YEARS AGO!!  In fact, almost to the day!  This real news story about Ms. McSally was published on May 18, 2018.  I wrote my joke story in the Huffington Post on May 16, 2006. 

And by the way, after I published it -- and I swear to you this is true -- there were several user comments who thought it was real.  I couldn't believe that I had to explain to them it was a joke.  Now, yes, I know that we now have evidence from Martha McSally that an idiot Republican Congresswoman made almost the exact same suggestion and meant it.  But not only do we now live in a post-Trump world where such idiocies are possible...but, more to the point, when you read my article you'll see how even more intentionally over-the-top it is as a way to satirize such racism as highly and blatantly as possible.

And yes, I am proud, gobsmacked and just a little bit nauseated to say that I presaged Trump.

Here was that article.  May 16, 2006

A private citizens group in Illinois today announced plans to build a wall along the Indiana border to keep out those they say are streaming across the unprotected state line.  The problem, they say, has been growing for the past 30 years.
 
“Ever since the oil refineries in Gary began closing in the mid-1970s, people there have had to find other income,” states the leader of the group, T. Herbert Duffy.  “They’ve been streaming into Chicago ever since.”
 
Duffy’s organization was founded four months ago in mid-January.  “We didn’t actually care about immigration,” he acknowledges.  “We just got together because it was so butt-numbing cold that all anyone could do was sit in the basement shivering.  So we came up with the idea of this club.” 
 
At first, the only agenda item was to complain about shoveling snow.  It was only after the Spring thaw came that the illegal Indianan idea popped up.  “Our wives kicked us out of the basement, and we needed another problem or they’d make us come home.  That’s when Phil started complaining about having lost his job, and blamed the Illegals from Indiana.”
 
Although the man had worked in a Galesburg tractor factory that had closed in order to manufacture cheaper overseas, the Minutepeople still knew they had their issue.  “It just pissed us off, all those illegal Indianans sneaking into Illinois to steal our jobs and womenfolk.  A couple of six-packs will do that.”
 
The mission grew from there.  Starting from only five disgruntled men, they began recruiting, and found that there were enough people who wanted to get out of their house or meet singles that the club grew to its present total of 57 Minutepeople.
 
“That wasn’t our original name,” Duffy acknowledges.  “We wanted to call ourselves Minutemen.  We even had a lot of t-shirts made up.  But someone thought there was another group with the name.  Back in the Civil War or something.  [Editor’s note:  it was the Revolutionary War.]  We figured it was better not to get sued, so we changed it.”  A similar situation impacted the women in the club.  “We had intended to call them Minutemaids, but we got a ‘Cease and Desist Order” from the orange juice company.  So, we’re all Minutepeople.”
 
The name has its own sense of history, Duffy relates.  “My wife would ask me to take out the garbage, mow the lawn, and I’d all always say, ‘In a minute, honey.  In a minute.’  The name just stuck.”
 
As attention to the wall-building grows, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has announced that he is ordering members of the State National Guard to the Illinois-Indiana border.  “We will be sending four National Guardsman,” a spokesman for the Governor’s office reports.  “There are going to be a lot of drunk guys with loaded firearms in the hot sun, and we don’t want another Dick Cheney incident.”
 
At present, the wall along the Illinois-Indiana border stretches 12 feet.  The Minutepeople hope to have it completed by the end of August, though Duffy figures late-Autumn.
 
Many experts figure that it will take at least several hundred years.  Some suggest longer.  “With soil erosion and the natural corroding of cheap materials they bought,” states Lawrence Eberhardt of Eberhardt Fencing, “within 30 years they’ll likely have to start repairing their earlier work..  Then, each year the later-construction will begin falling apart.  This could stretch until eternity.” 
 
Duffy and the Minutepeople remain undaunted.  They insist they will finish the wall.  It’s a mission now to the club.  “I know some people have said this is all racist, but that’s not true.  If Indians want to live in Indiana, that’s fine.  We have some right here.  But wherever you live, you don’t enter somebody else’s land uninvited.  That’s been true in America ever since the Pilgrims landed in America.”
 
Duffy is clear to insist, that it’s not just Indians the Minutepeople want to protect Illinois from, but all Illegals.  The problem, he says, is that there aren’t enough border guards in Illinois.  “Or actually, any.”  That’s when they knew they had to build the wall.  “To keep all illegal immigrants out.  All.”
 
When asked if that includes illegals from Kentucky, Duffy hedged a little.  “That’s the really squiggly part of the state border,” he noted, “and it’s pretty hard to build a wall on something that shape.  We can bend our metal piping a little, but not that much.”
 
However, the Minutepeople are concerned about illegal immigrants from Missouri.  “In some ways, they’re worse than Indiana,” the Exalted High Poobah noted.  “Who wants all those St. Louis Cardinals fans here?!  The Cardinals suck..”  But the Minutepeople don’t have any plans to build a fence along the Illinois-Missouri border.  “No, that’s why God created the Mississippi River,” states Duffy.  “If anyone from Missouri tried to swim across, their fat butts would sink.”
 
The river, however, is only the first line of defense against both the Missouri and Iowa borders.  “If any Illegal tries to drive into Illinois over bridges, you can see them coming.  And since it’s mostly single file, that makes them easy to pick off.  Also, we’re buying landmines to plant along the shore.”
 
That only leaves the Wisconsin border to the north.
 
Duffy admitted that initially the Minutepeople had forgotten about the northern border.  But after a good laugh and a couple of beers, he said they all realized, “We really got nothing against Wisconsin.  Cheese, beer, how can you not like them?  Hate the Green Bay Packers, but the Bears rule, so what?  The only thing about Wisconsiners is that when they come here they drive tractors really slow down the middle of the road.  Forget ‘em.  They’re like us, they’re okay.”
 
It’s a difficult mission, but one that makes Duffy’s wife Helen extremely proud.  “I know the Tribune did a big state poll which said 98% of people in Illinois thought the Minutepeople were idiots, but I don’t believe polls.  I’m sure it’s less than that.  We do get about 75 phone calls every night yelling at us for being un-American, but I don’t believe phone calls either.  I’m sure they’re just wrong numbers.  And every morning our house is covered with eggs, but I don’t believe the egg-throwing.  I’m sure they’re just trying to give us food for our important work.”
 
In the end, T. Herbert Duffy is proud of all that he and his Minutepeople have accomplished in so short a time.  “Some may call us vigilantes,” he says,  appreciating his 12-feet of fence, “and while that is true, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.  After all, it got us on TV.”

I absolutely love Michael Palin.  Love, love, love his work.  Everyhing Python, of course, but also Ripping Yarns, his many travel documentaries (most especially the joyous Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole), and his movies, from A Fish Called Wanda to A Private Function (an odd film, but he's a joy) to Brazil to the recent The Death of Stalin, and folderol in between.  The good news is that he's done so much work that's there still a great deal left to see.

And here's a wonderfully-enjoyable hour-long BBC documentary on the good fellow, A Life on Screen, done just this year.

Back in my dark days of doing movie PR, I was working at Universal Pictures when we released Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.  And one of my assignments was to moderate a Q&A with the Python gang after a screening of that film -- alas, it has ever been a disappointment that he was the one Python who couldn't make it.  (Side note: I was bowled over by how nice his writing partner Terry Jones was.  And surprised by how nice Eric Idle was.)

But I know that Michael Palin would have been even nicer.  I say that because my good friend, the writer-director Rob Hedden made a documentary early in his career about the making of Brazil, and raved about how amazingly nice Palin was.  He's shown me outtakes of the day he went to Palin's home to interview him which has just heartwarming and hilarious.  But then, what's in the movie is aces enough.  Most actors hate doing behind-the-scene interviews during a production, you have to maneuver around their schedules and back them into a corner until they can't back out.  But when Rob and his small crew (which included his wife, Jan) showed up at Palin's home on an off-day (P.S. as much as actors hate doing behind-the-scenes interviews during a production...they ABSOLUTELY HATE doing them on their off-days.  The phrase you hear is -- "No.  It's my OFF-DAY") -- he not only graciously gave them as much time as they needed...but suggested that rather than just a simple sit-down interview, how about if he did a number of sketches as different characters, playing various staff members of Michael Palin protecting him from the film crew.  Oh, and since the filming took a long time, he invited the crew in and made them lunch.

That's why I feel comfortable saying he would have been nicer.

(I wrote about Rob's documentary, What is Brazil? and embedded the 30-minute documentary, which you can see here.  It's one of the best "making of" documentaries I've ever seen.  Yes, he's my friend, but I'm not alone -- it won two awards and even showed at the Smithsonian Institution.  And by the way, when this BBC documentary deals with Palin's appearance in Brazil...they actually use several sequences from Rob's documentary!  If you look in the lower left corner, you can see the credit to What is Brazil? and Rob as director.  But I digress.)

For all the joking they make about his travel documentaries for the BBC, they're absolutely wonderful.  The two I mentioned above are particularly great, but most especially Around the World in 80 Days.  They don't explain what about it makes it so great -- probably because most of the British audience knows -- but it's unique.  It's one of the rare travel documentaries with a plot.  Palin tries to recreate Phileas Fogg's journey in Jules Verne's classic, and so there are deadlines to make connections through the multi-part series, so there's conflict throughout, and it actually builds to an exciting conclusion.  Pole to Pole -- which makes a trip between poles -- does sort of the same thing (trying to make the trip before weather closes travel off), and it's very good, though the first remains the best.

A few notes.  At one point, he refers to getting a letter of praise from "Spike."  That's Spike Milligan, one of the creators of The Goon Show, which Palin earlier references as his comic inspiration.  Also, there are several interview with Connie Booth, who later appeared with Palin in a movie he co-wrote -- but she's also John Cleese's ex-wife, and one of the co-creators and stars (as the maid, 'Polly') of Fawlty Towers.  And finally, at about the 44-minute mark something goes bizarre with the sound for about three minutes.  The picture continues, but it's like we get the opening three minutes of sound instead.  But then it reverts to normal at around 47-minutes.  I have no idea what happened, but clearly that isn't the way it went out over the BBC.

All that said, here's the BBC documentary

When deciding on a "Today's Tweet," this is an absolute no-brainer.  The Chicago Tribune has never been especially known for its whimsy, but they tweeted this today –