Yesterday was the first day of hurricane season. It’s a sign that summer is here to stay until mid-October if we’re lucky. Late May and early June are my period of adjustment. I should be used to the Louisiana heat after living here for decades but it’s a process. A slow process that slows me down, down, down.

One of the few good things about the pandemic and lockdown was that I felt free to write more conversational posts. That’s the plan today. Last week’s gun violence posts, The Vast Indifference Of Heaven and One Door Ted, wore me out so I’m ready to rumble or ramble whichever comes first. Rumble, it is:

A comment on Shapiro’s last post made me realize that we haven’t talked much about COVID since we moved from the pandemic main event to the endemic after show.

I don’t mean to minimize the latest wave. Cases are rising but they’re not as serious among the double jabbed and double boosted. That’s a good thing but the American death toll is not. It stands at 1,002,422 as of this writing. That’s 1/6th of the global death count.

That’s disgraceful for an advanced nation but we’re an advanced nation without a national health service.

Death panels, man. Freedom, man.

Nervous tension gets me down too, Ray.

Let’s stir the potpourri on some other subjects.

I haven’t been following the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial. I assumed it was a loser because Depp lost his defamation case in the UK where plaintiffs have a better chance to prevail. Of course, a judge decided that case instead of the Johnny Depp fan club DBA the jury.

A friend who watched the trial informed me that Depp won because he’s more likeable than his ex. He’s an actor and a damn good one: he knows how to work a room or a jury. He probably went all Benny & Joon on them:

That plate juggling thing is as charming as hell.

As a legal matter, Depp should have been too famous to win but the defense forfeited that argument by countersuing. Their partial victory was a pyrrhic one. Ya heard, Amber?

We rumbled earlier, let’s ramble before we ramble on:

In other non-news, we’ve been watching Showtime’s The First Lady. Viola Davis is a fine actress but is miscast as Michelle Obama. The best parts of the series have been about Betty and Jerry Ford. Michelle Pfeiffer and Aaron Eckhart are excellent as the Fords.

I have a quibble about the Ford segments. It’s fun to pick on cartoon villain Donald Rumsfeld but nobody called him Rummy in 1974-76. Bush the Younger coined that nickname during his misadministration.

The show also confuses the timeline. They show Rumsfeld as deeply involved in the 1976 campaign. Wrong. He was out of politics and serving as defense secretary at the time. Jerry Ford was literally an eagle scout so young Rummy stayed out of that campaign. Young Rummy would be a good title for a bad movie.

In New Orleans news, celebrity garbage man the Trashanova DBA Sidney Torres has been awarded a trash contract for half the city. He’s an asshole but his company has performed well in that role elsewhere. Speaking of movie taglines:

The good news is that Sidney’s no longer rocking the manbun he wore in his real estate flipping reality show The Deed. I hate manbuns. Manbuns are the 21st Century equivalent of mullets.

In Adrastos World HQ news, Claire Trevor is doing better than expected with new cat Perry Mason. She treats him with icy disdain but deigns to let him share her litter box. That’s big, y’all. That’s the scoop about my cats: you’ll have to wait a week for more since Cassandra has catblogging duty this week.

I hope our readers are grooving on our new writers: Shapiro, Cassandra, and Jamie O. I certainly am. I’d like to plug a post that was overlooked because it was published on a holiday. Check out Jamie O’s post about his dad, The Flag Of My Father. It’s the real deal.

I shouldn’t overlook the estimable Tommy T who has been with First Draft longer than I have. He’s been reading about the Freepers for 14 years, so we don’t have to. Thanks, man.

This went on longer than expected; much like a New Orleans summer.

The last word goes to Asia, the band, not the continent: