“I loved my previous life. I had so many things going.  This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”

-- Donald Trump, in an interview with Reuters


With all due respect to the office -- although given the quote, no such disclaimer is necessary since he pretty much acknowledges it himself --  the man is an idiot.

Who else but a knowing idiot would think that being President of the United States -- commander-in-chief of the U.S. military forces, chief executive of the nation, and most powerful man in the entire world -- is an easier job then being a real estate developer and licensing your name to slap on a meat company??  Who else but a knowing idiot would think that reality would be harder than being a reality TV star -- where they actually feed you the lines, and you get re-takes, and commercial breaks?

He didn't know the job would be this difficult?!  Hey, remember when people thought it was pathetic that Sarah Palin (R-AK-Half-term] didn't know what the Vice-President did??  That seems so quaint now.

Then again, this is the same man who boasted during the election, "I alone can fix it."  And now just a few months later we get, "I thought it would be easier."

The best I can figure is that running a fraudulent university scam is a whole lot harder than most people think, trying to stay one step ahead of the law while paying off lawsuits.

"I thought it would be easier" certainly explains a lot.

Like saying, "No one knew that health care was so complicated."  Because everyone knew. Or not knowing that Korea was never part of China, yet needing to have the Chinese president explain basic Asian history to him during a phone call and then saying, "After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it's not so easy.” Imagine if he had to actually study and understand the several thousand-year history.  Mind you, the scary thing here may be that for the first nine minutes he did think that Chinese-Korean history was easy.  But grade school kids would figure that out after maybe 2-3 minutes.  Or one.

This may also explain Mike Flynn getting named his National Security Adviser, since it's not unlikely that Trump didn't know vetting wasn't easy either.

Sometimes, you figure it would be better if he would stay "unintelligible."

At one point in the interview, Trump was talking about this conversation with the Chinese president, when suddenly he stopped and abruptly and bizarrely started to give reporters in the room copies of a 2016 electoral map, with the states he won marked in red.

“Here, you can take that, that’s the final map of the numbers,” he said.  “It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us.”

Oh, man, who said that God doesn't have a sense of humor and have a wicked sense of irony?  "The red is obviously us."  Yes, obviously.  After all, it's what the FBI and congressional investigations are likely to prove..

"I thought it would be easier."

But then, that's what happens when you live in a world ruled by alternative facts.

I've written several times here about the new musical, Amelie, which I saw in a pre-Broadway tryout at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, and quite enjoyed.  I posted the video of a song from the show the other week, and though it was nice enough, it was intentionally a pop-arrangement that they did for wider distribution and didn't really give a sensibility of the tone of the show.  I came across another video which does a better job at that, though you still don't a sense of the full staging much since it was done fairly barebones on the Today show.

But it's the star Philliipa Soo (who won a Tony Award for Hamilton -- and is terrific in this show) along with the cast doing a medley of two songs.  So, you get the proper wistful arrangement, and at least a sense of the staging with the cast.

By the way, in a Media Alert, she is scheduled to be a guest tonight on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, so my guess is that she'll perform a song there, as well.  Unless, that is, she says, "Since Bob Elisberg had a video of me tonight on his website, I don't have to sing this evening and you can just go there to watch it."  (My guess though is that she'll sing, "Time is Hard for Dreamers," a verse of which she sings here.  Most of the video is taken up by the larger-cast number, "Tour de France.")

Google Maps has introduced a new feature that could be a very nice help for people who have a hard time remembering where they parked their car.

After you've parked, open the app and tap on the blue dot that shows your location.  A window will pop up that gives you the option to "Set as parking location."  That's it.  Easy!

Actually, it gets even easier, because the app uses the Google Street feature to show a photo of where your care is,  when you tap on the icon.

But there are other features.  A bar will show up at the bottom of the Google Maps screen called "Parking Location."  If you tap on it, other options open up to you -- like leaving notes, such as the precise location of your car in a parking garage.  And the ability to Share your location with someone who you might want to meet at your car. 

It's available for both Android and iOS.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the AP story where they did a one-on-one interview with Trump, and he was so incomprehensible that they had to insert the phrase, "Donald Trump is unintelligible" into the transcript 16 times.  SIXTEEN times.  If you were stopped by a police officer while driving and that happened, he'd bring out the breathalyzer.

And that doesn't even tough on the fantasy world he was in when being interviewed.  Saying he was "almost there" on accomplishing all his goals in his first 100 days -- with only a week to go.  And trying to pretend that he never had supported WikiLeaks -- even saying he'd never heard of them -- when he repeated had said (and it's on video tape) that "I love WikiLeaks" throughout the campaign.  And noting that when he would slam NATO during the campaign, he admitted he didn't actually know what they did.  (I don't know what's worse:  that he didn't know what NATO did, or that he relentlessly slammed them without knowing what they did.)  And more -- much more.

It's so bad what he's saying that "Donald Trump is unintelligible" is the good part, the one thing that even comes close to saving him.

The sad thing is, the "unintelligible" part of all this is just par for the course.  A few weeks earlier, the Huffington Post published an article that would have been hilarious if it wasn't pathetic about how professional interpreters  have a hard time translating Trump when he's speaking.  The problem they say they face is that he rambles so much and often makes so little sense that if they translate exactly what he's saying...they themselves look bad -- but people think they're the ones screwing up!  And it's not just because the words are a mess, but because he's saying things that are factually questionable, which they sense even as they hear the words and then have to repeat them in another language.  As one Japanese interpreter says, if they translate Trump word for word, "We end up making ourselves sound stupid," You can read the article here.  It's pretty funny...except for the hole "pathetic" part.

A couple of days ago Bette Midler made her return to Broadway, starring in a new revival of the Tony-winning Best Musical Hello, Dolly!  It got pretty good reviews, and is expected to do quite well -- though that has zero to do with the review:  after the show was announced, it built up pre-Broadway sales of $40 million..  Co-starring as Horace Vandergelder ("the well-known half-a-millionaire") is Tony-winner and former co-star of Frasier, David Hyde Pierce.

I haven't been able to track down any videos of the show yet, but this will have to do.  It's the curtain call on opening night, which has an amusing bit with Ms. Midler at the end.

I'm going to include two versions.  The second is much better quality and a superior angle but short, so it misses most of the lead-in.  That below has all that, so we're going with it first.  (David Hyde Piece, by the way, is the fellow in dark gray with the bushy mustache and overly-thick hair.  Bette Midler is...well, you'll figure it out.)

And here then is the far-better quality and much-better angle.  It looks to be professionally done, so I suspect it's from the production itself --

I was going out to dinner with a friend the other day, trying to figure out where to eat.  And I started to pine for a place I dearly love in the Chicago suburbs nearby where I grew up, called Charlie Beinlich's.  It's not that there isn't a Charlie Beinlich's in Los Angeles, it's that there isn't a place I know of that's even close to it.  And so I must do without -- but always go there when I return to Chicago.  I've wrote about the place earlier in the year when I was last there, but realized that it deserves more than just a description of lunch -- though for Beinlich's that a fine starting point.

Beinlich's (or to put it properly and in full, Beinlich's Food and Tap) is even a bit odd for Chicago, though it's very Midwestern, and so there are places that are at least somewhat similar.  But Beinlich's is idiosyncratic.  It began life as a truck stop probably at least 60 years ago, probably longer.  (That alone, a 60+ year old restaurant is uncommon.)  Indeed, it's the kind of place that reinforces the cliche that if you want to find the best food in a town, follow where the trucks go to.  (I don't know if the cliche is true, but it sure holds at Beinlich's.)  They actually close for two weeks in the height of summer, during August, so that they can go fishing.  Really -- there's a sign they put out front that pretty much says, "Gone fishing."  For that matter, they're also closed on Sunday, the busiest day of the week for more restaurants.  But like their August closing for fishing, they want their Sunday's off.  Monday's too -- they want their two-day weekend.  And they don't take credit cards.  And Beinlich's being Beinlich's, they don't even list their phone number on their website.  Hey, they've been there for over 60 years.  People know them, there's not much of a reason to call.  But if you do and want take-out, they're in the phone book, look them up.  Or you probably wrote their number down decades ago, it hasn't changed.

The place isn't in Chicago proper, but the northern suburbs, in Northbook on Skokie Highway, not from the the oft-mentioned here Chicago Botanic Gardens and Ravinia Music Festival.  Next door to the town where I grew up, in Glencoe.

Beinlich's is basically a pine log cabin, with mounted fish covering the wall, lots of electric beer displays, and a wall-to-wall oak bar, along with maybe 20 tables at most.  There is a sign when you enter that says, "Food is served for the convenience of our alcohol-drinking patrons" -- in other words, if you're going to eat here, please get a beer.  There are no menus, just a small sign in the corner, but that's all they need because there are only about 10 items they make.

​Beinlich's even still has some staff who I remember from when I first went there when I was eight years old, though at this point it may be down to Andy, who began as a waiter, and is either the general manager at this point, or a part-owner now.  But there are about 3-4 "new" guys which at Beinlich's means they've been there for probably 20 years.  There are also now a couple of actually-recent servers.  And the waiters, bartenders, and bus boys have always, for over half a century, always and only been men.  But the last time I was in they had, for a very first time -- a young woman busing tables.

Lunch usually isn't a big problem, though the place is always full.  But if you show up for dinner too late -- like much past 6:30, the tiny waiting area and tiny enclosed porch is going to be jammed.  That's more of a problem than you think -- remember, this is Chicago.  If you get there too late at night in the winter, you're going to be standing outside in sub-freezing weather.  But people will do just that.  But ultimately, it's not a huge problem, because Beinlich's is fast.  They zip you your food, and when you're done -- whoosh, it's gone.  But somehow magically, you never feel rushed.  It helps that everyone who works there, even when they're in a bit of a hurry, has always been Midwest friendly, and will give you time and chat if you need to.  And if you want to linger a bit, that's okay.  But because there's so much movement around, and a long line, people tend to be polite to others and empty their table.

No, there isn't anything like Charlie Beinlich's in Los Angeles. Or most anywhere.