From the archives. This week's contestant is Ray Lancaster from Columbia Hill, South Carolina.  I got the hidden song pretty quickly, and then it becomes very clear.  Guessing the composer style came down to being between two composers...and I guessed the wrong one. Actually, it turned out to be someone else entirely, so I was completely wrong, though it was from the same country as my guess -- if that counts for anything, which it really doesn't.

On his The 11th Hour show on MSNBC, Brian Williams has been making subtle snarky digs at Trump for at least the past six months, and they’ve been really wonderful.  However, but this might be his masterpiece.  Nothing subtle about it this time, however, although he still handled it with grace.

​On this week’s Al Franken podcast, his guest is Rick Wilson, one of the founders of The Lincoln Project, who coined a phrase (and wrote a book with it as the title), “Everything Trump Touches Dies.”  As Al notes, this interview was not only done before the insurrection, but also days before the Georgia election, though they do discuss the latter.  And Al’s 13 minutes of introductory commentary were recorded after it all took place.
 

Today V-E Day (Vaccination Elisberg Day…).  O huzzah!

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I was able to get an appointment at Ralphs Pharmacy -- part of a grocery store chain, which is owned by Kroger's -- when they screwed up and jumped the gun, posting an online sign-up schedule early, before the Los Angeles County Board of Health had approved the plan.  But though they shut the appointments and initially cancelled them, they later said they would honor what they had.  (I'm not sure if that's totally true, since Ralphs is now saying that they're cancelling later appointments -- though that might change when they get more vaccine in.)

But I did get to keep mine -- a process made all the nicer since it's my own main pharmacy, and I could even walk over to the place.

It was a very simple process – in fact, I almost wondered if I went to the wrong Ralphs.  There was no line for the shot, just one person ahead of me picking up his prescription.  And when the woman at the pharmacy seemed almost surprised to see me, I was even more wary that I might have screwed up and so showed her the confirming email I’d printed out.  My guess is that I might have been the first shot of the day, and since I was eight minutes early, they weren’t ready yet.

There was about 20 minutes to wait for the pharmacy to prepare the shot, which was the Moderna vaccine, then the 15-Minute Obligatory Wait and the walk back home.  What's nonetheless odd is how few people were there for shots.  I suspect that's because this was part of that Ralphs' screw-up, so not too many people signed up before the list was closed.  But still, I expected more people.

Anyway, now, all that’s left is to see when the side effects kick in and hopefully it will be minimal.

And then assume and hope that the pipeline will be working smoothly in 28 days.

On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the socially-distanced NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is Olympic legend Lindsey Vonn.  Her interview with guest host Maz Jobrani is enthusiastic, open, very interesting and a lot of fun.  Fun, too, is her clear laughing-appreciation of the theme of the quiz.  I also always like to hear when music they choose to end the segment – generally it’s fine, but occasionally a hoot, and this time to do a really good job and land close to the hoot category.

On this week’s episode of 3rd and Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America, the guests are the screenwriters of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines (who together wrote Borat: Cultural Learnings of America, Bruno, Who is America?, and Da Ali G Show, among others).  They talk about devising their stealth satire, early days in clown school, writing a full script based on what they think maybe the real people involved might possibly say, and also fascinating stories about dealing with the massive hurdle of making the film during the pandemic.