Last night, I watched the TBS premiere of a seven-part limited series, Miracle Workers.  I thought it was absolutely wonderful, and often laugh-out-loud funny.  To be clear, it was full of charm and whimsy, which is something I love, but not necessarily to everyone's taste.  And I also have no idea how the rest of the series will play out -- but based on the premiere it has a great foundation.

The show stars Steve Buscemi as a burned-out God (and he's great), who's come to the annoyed conclusion that He screwed up with creating Earth and has decided to blow it up in two weeks and come up with some other idea.  (One that He's excited by is a restaurant surrounded by a river, though since He'll have blown up Earth it will have to float in outer space or, well, somewhere.)  And the other star is Daniel Radcliffe as a nerdy angel (and he's great) whose hapless job -- but it's one he's grown to love, since it's pretty much all he knows -- is the only one assigned to answer prayers.  Though impossible prayers are way too much, and sent to God (which wearies the Almighty), so angel Craig contents himself with answering the most-manageable prayers, like helping someone find their keys.  Though he can only deal with a few a day.

Entering his lonely, cavernous office is a spunky, enthusiastic angel Eliza, played by Geraldine Viswanathan (and she's great -- are you catching a theme here...), who wants to help, but only makes things more convoluted.

The premise of the series is that Eliza has made a bet with God that she and Craig have to find impossible prayer and if they can answer it in two weeks, then Earth will be saved.

The was created and written by Simon Rich, who wrote for Saturday Night Live, created the series Man Seeking Woman, and co-wrote additional material for the animated Pixar film Inside Out -- and has been signed to write the prequel, Willy Wonka.

Here's the trailer, which gives a good sense of the limited series, though only touches the surface.  Followed by a big bonus.

And here's the big bonus.  If you missed the premiere, and are interested in seeing it, you don't have to search around for its next air date or track it down On Demand.  I've embedded it below --

Way back almost 13 years ago -- in 2006 -- I wrote an article for the Huffington Post about how if we were really, truly concerned about keeping America safe by building a wall on the Mexican border, we should carry out the concept to its full, logical extreme and also build a wall on all our borders, most notably to the north, to keep those pesky Canadians out, too.  After all, that border is even longer than the one with Mexico.

I re-posted it here a while back, and figured that with the budget impasse over "The Wall" with Mexico seemingly near its conclusion, this would be a good time to revisit it.  Especially since the point still holds, and stronger than ever.  And after all, as I wrote before, lest anyone think this racist, xenophobic, white supremacist hatred is all just Trump, no, it's been bubbling among the far-right of the Republican Party for a long time.  It was just left to a Trump to give it serious voice.

May 11, 2006.

A good friend of mine, David Rintels, is an Emmy-winning writer whose work includes the Broadway play, Clarence Darrow, that starred Henry Fonda, and the mini-series, Nuremberg.
 
He also has a most-timely screenplay, Freedom, based on the true story of a man’s astonishing pursuit of liberty for his family – so utterly heroic it has you beyond awe.  But then the man’s actions start to spin out of control by going too far in that same effort.  Noble virtue, carried to the extreme, becomes a horrifying vice.
 
This all came to mind the other week when reading the latest scheme by America’s poster boys for too much spare time, the speciously-named “Minutemen”:  to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican borders on private land in Arizona.
 
No doubt club leaflets explain perverting the Minuteman name, though self-delusion shouldn’t count as a reason.  The real Minutemen sacrificed their lives as the aspiring nation fought a declared war for independence.  Trying to keep out Mexicans just isn’t the same thing. 
 
Make no mistake, that’s all this wall is about, despite protestations of terrorism and “criminal cartels” to the contrary.   On their own website, in their very own press release, their Fearless Leader talks only about building on the U.S.-Mexico border.  [Note: I originally linked to the press release, but now it only leads to an Error page.]
 
The problem is, if this was actually about terrorism and “criminal cartels,” then you’d think they might at least mention that other, monumentally-bigger border – you know, the 3,000-mile one by Canada.  If you really, truly, honestly, scout’s honor want to keep out all “criminal cartels” and terrorists, does it make sense to lock the back door but leave a welcome mat and cheese dip out front?
 
Now, it’s possible the armed wall-builders simply forgot that there’s a 3,000-mile border to the north.  After all, recent polls show a high percentage of U.S. high school students can’t even locate Canada on a map.  Maybe the “Minutemen” are recent grads.  Or sophomores.
 
If you were honestly concerned about keeping illegal aliens out of the United States, you’d want to keep them all out.  Right?   All, not just Mexicans.  Oh, sure, some people may say, “There are no ‘criminal cartels’ of Canadians trying to sneak in illegally.”  Then how do you explain William Shatner?  And Howie Mandel? 
 
Okay, obviously there aren’t 11 million Canadians willing to risk their lives to pick vegetables, but make no mistake there are illegal Canadians here.  Moreover, Canada has hundreds of thousands of its own illegal immigrants [Note: again, the original link to an article is no longer active] – all with a beautiful, un-walled 3,000-mile border warmly beckoning them to sneak across. 
 
But far more to the point, if you were truly, honestly, swear-to-God concerned about “Protecting The Borders” from terrorists getting in, you’d insist on protecting all the borders.  Right?  Right????  After all, you don’t really think terrorists are too stupid to think the United States bizarrely only has one border?  You don’t think terrorists would see a big wall looming along the U.S.-Mexican border and not figure out that maybe a wall-less 3,000-miles border with Canada is another way in?  Do you?
 
Assuming the answer is, “no, of course not, do you take me for a total idiot?” – then why focus on only building a wall between the United States and Mexico?  It makes zero sense.  Unless the only reason behind your playacting “faux-Minuteman” activity was simply to keep Mexicans out – and had nothing to with protecting America from all “illegal aliens,” all “criminal cartels” and all “terrorists.”
 
But the reality is, there’s something even more insidious going on here.  And it goes back to that “Freedom” story, based on actual events – that a virtue carried to extremes is a danger.  Remember, we celebrated tearing down the Berlin Wall.  And we celebrated it for a reason.  Freedom is worth fiercely protecting.  But you don’t protect something by prohibiting it.
 
Building walls is not what America is about.  It’s not why basically all of our own ancestors came to the United States.  (And many surely got in illegally.)  They came because of the lack of walls.  They came because America has a beacon that asks the world to “Give us your tired, your poor.”
 
Illegal immigration is a serious problem.  That’s why it calls for serious thought, serious discussion and serious solutions.  Not fake-patriots playing dress-up Revolutionary War games. 
 
If you want to build a wall, hire Bob Villa.  Or get Ty Pennington.  He can line up buses to block the view and maybe make Mexicans think there’s nothing on the other side.
 
Building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border not only doesn’t solve the illegal immigration problem, it doesn’t even address it.  Toting rifles and shovels against Mexicans doesn’t make you a Minuteman, it makes you a vigilante.  In the quest for 15 minutes of fame, their minute is up.

I like the musical Hello, Dolly! very much.  I saw it on stage in Chicago with Carol Channing, and I've written here about a range of different productions.  I'm not crazy about the movie version, though it has some very good things in it -- most notably the classic score by Jerry Herman.  And the book by Michael Stewart (who among other things also wrote Bye Bye Birdie) is very enjoyable, based on Thornton Wilder's play The Matchmaker. 

Actually, the show's history goes back even further than that.  In fact, Wilder's play is based on his own play, The Merchant of Yonkers, which he'd written 15 years earlier in 1938, but wasn't successful.  And that,,in turn, was based on an Austrian play,  Einen Jux will er sich machen written by Johann Nestroy in 1842.  But we're not done yet -- because this Austrian play was based on a one-act play written in 1835, A Day Well Spent by John Oxenford.

The show is now playing in Los Angeles with Broadway legend Betty Buckley in the lead.  Oddly, much as I like the show, I haven't gotten tickets for it.  Betty Buckley is a terrific performer -- starring in the original Broadway cast of Cats, introducing the standard Memory to the U.S., and starring in Broadway and London productions of Sunset Boulevard.  Among a great deal more.  But my feeling is that she's brings out a great deal in these darker, edgier shows, rather than the light-hearted whimsy of Hello, Dolly! -- even though she was one of the leads in the old sitcom, Eight is Enough.  While a comic role, she was mostly the ballast in the series.  I could be totally wrong about this -- I'm sure she does a very good job.  It's just not a production I feel driven to see.

That said, I came across a video of her singing Before the Parade Passes By in the production, and she's excellent.  That said, the lead-in to the song is one of the more serious sequences in the show, as she talks to her late husband about wanting to join the human race.  (Extremely good as she is in the scene, I also think it points to my concerns.  Serious as the moment is, Dolly hasn't really avoided life -- she's effervescent from her very first appearance in the first scene, a do-everything busybody imposing herself in everyone's lives.  What she wants is to bring romance back in her life.  This performance seems more about someone saying she has cut herself off from the world.  And, to me, that's not the character or the show.  Nor does it have the explosive, fun vibrance that I think a scene with a marching band and parade in this show calls for.  But -- as a standalone scene, it's really well-done.)

​Here 'tis --

This is a great story that I heard about briefly yesterday on ESPN'S Pardon the Interruption.  It's about Laurent Duvernay-Tardif who plays offensive guard for the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL -- and this past year became the first player in league history to not only graduate medical school, but be a practicing physician.

The Canadian-born Duvernay-Tardif (who speaks fluent French -- or perhaps it should be better put, also speaks fluent English) graduated from McGill University, which gave him an extended program allowing him to complete his training.  What oddly leaped out to me in the short report is perhaps the one idiotically-gnawing part of the whole, great story.  After he graduated, Duvernay-Tardif petitioned the NFL to allow him to put "M.D." after his name on his jersey.  For reasons inexplicable to Man, the petty, small-minded league said "No."

That pathetic foolishness aside, here's a very good video on him --

The other day, I posted a video of a man rescuing cats after the California wildfire.  To keep a good thing going, here's another endearing rescue video from the wonderful folks at The Dodo.

Many people on the far right don't believe in science, considering it more of a "faith-based system,", so it's only appropriate that "Fox News" host Pete Hegseth became their poster boy this morning when explaining on air that he hasn't washed his hands in 10 years, “Germs are not a real thing. I can’t see them. Therefore, they’re not real.”

Keep in mind, this is someone who viewers there trust to deliver information about the world to them. Which explains a lot about "Fox News" in a nutshell.

Note to self: don't shake hands with Pete Hegseth.

It's also worth noting that Trump was recently quoted as saying "Nancy Pelosi will never see my tax returns."  Apparently he believes in the Pete Hegseth Theory of Life, where if you don't see something it doesn't exist.

Anyway, I'm sure that at some point in the coming days Pete Hegseth will say he was "just joking," although at the same time he will continue to not wash his hands.  In the meantime, here are some other things Hegseth apparently must believe aren't real --

Gravity
Oxygen
Sunlight
Temperature
Sound
Electrons
Intelligence
Reality
When a waiter spits in his soup

No, not the Jack Nicholson movie, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt.

For the past couple of years, Schmidt has built up a very good reputation as an objective analyst on television, particularly for his scathing, almost Shakespearean criticisms of Trump, leading him to leave the "morally corrupt" Republican Party.  Even before his outrage bubbled over at the GOP, I'd found his commentary strong and often impressive.  This came as a notable achievement, reclaiming his good name after his part in Sarah Palin's temporary but troubling rise to prominence as John McCain's ill-advised vice presidential running mate.  However it one swift move he's come close to throwing that all away, when he signed on to be an adviser to former Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz who has bandied about a possible independent run for president.

The criticism of Schmidt has been harsh, and MSNBC also cut ties with him as a regular contributor now that he was officially advising Schultz as a potential candidate.  But the reaction was most notable when he was politely but harshly interviewed by Nicolle Wallance on her MSNBC show, given how she and Schmidt are especially-close political friends -- among other things, working on the McCain-Palin campaign together.  In fact, at the end of her show when handing the broadcast over to the next host, Chuck Todd, Ms. Wallace quipped -- "If you want to attack Steve, I will turn the floor over to you,”

That interview begins at the 1:30 mark --

And here's that hand-off clip --

And now comes the story that Schmidt stormed off his own podcast that he co-hosts with Elise Jordan and Adam Levine and threatened legal action if the segment got posted.  It got posted.

According to a Daily Beast article, Schmidt is known for having a short fuse, and showed it off when he got upset at having his own podcast "hijacked" as he put it, by Jordan and the show's executive producer Adam Levine..  

"Schmidt railed at having to defend himself on his podcast with a stream of curses a source present in the studio said consumed six minutes," the article noted.. Told that listeners were castigating him for joining an effort that could help re-elect President Trump and that he owed them answers, Schmidt finally settled down enough to take about 30 minutes to questions from Jordan, normally his co-host, and Levine, the executive producer."

You can get the article, along with the embedded podcast by clicking here.

James Corden sent his parents down to Atlanta to cover the Super Bowl there and its surrounding activities before the game.  Similar to when David Letterman sent him mom to events, I thought the segments with Dorothy Letterman were funnier because she was more endearing (and I suspect the writers had better set-ups), but the Cordens are more game to taking part, especially his dad.