It’s been an unseasonably warm October even for New Orleans. A cool front materialized yesterday so temps are declining at long last. Will it endure? All I can do is hope.

It’s No Kings Day and I’m on the disabled list with a recurring malady. I’ll be there in spirit. A reminder that there are only 17 days until the election. Tick tock, motherfuckers.

I wrote the next passage before Katie Zacharia was fired. I like it and decided to keep it intact:

Team Trump has hired some deeply stupid people. Katie Zacharia takes the cake. The whole is she or isn’t she a lawyer thing is a dumb spectacle even for MAGA. “When I moved to China” as an explanation for where she took the bar exam plumbs new depths of dipshittery. Press secretaries should be able to think on their feet. Is Katie capable of that? Not from what we’ve seen so far. I guess Team MAGA needed a new Q Lady now that Marge Greene has turned on them. Is it time for a Pizzagate revival? Let’s hope not.

Steely Dan/movie still month continues with Nigel Hawthorne in The Madness Of King George as the featured image. The theme song feels ripped from today’s headlines. Were Becker and Fagen psychic? Beats the hell outta me.

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen wrote The Royal Scam for Steely Dan’s 1976 album of the same title.

See the glory of The Royal Scam:

Here’s some royal icing on the cake:

I don’t dig any songs with royal in the title so I went the cake route instead. Mmm, cake.

Our second act consists of a brief review of Kazan’s television adaptation of East Of Eden. That’s Zoe Kazan, not her papou Elia.

East Of Eden: There’s a special place in my heart for John Steinbeck’s books. In high school, I took an English literature class in which we took a deep dive into Steinbeck’s 3 best loved books: The Grapes Of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and East Of Eden. It was a California high school and Steinbeck was a California writer.

One thing I liked about the class was telling everyone that I’d met Steinbeck. I wrote about it in a 2019 edition of this feature:

I was lucky enough to meet John Steinbeck when I was a kid. He was an old friend of my father’s second cousin. I met him at a barbecue at said cousin’s house in Salinas. I wish I had been old enough to have read anything other than The Red Pony, but even precocious 10-year-olds don’t read Of Mice and Men or The Grapes of Wrath so I didn’t get to say, “Tell me about the rabbits, George.” Mercifully, he was spared my imitation of James Dean in East Of Eden. I can brood with the best of them, y’all.”

Zoe Kazan’s adaptation of East Of Eden for Netflix is 7 episodes long and it covers the entirety of Steinbeck’s intimate epic. Elia’s version only covered the final act and omitted my favorite character in the book, Mr. Lee, the Chinese intellectual who stumbles into becoming the Trask family’s nanny. Zoe restores Lee to his proper place in the story.

There’s been considerable online chatter about Zoe Kazan’s softening of the book’s super villain, Cathy aka Kate. I disagree. Zoe explains why Cathy was evil but doesn’t minimize her villainy. Florence Pugh’s performance is also subtle, not strident. Some people like their villains OTT. Pugh doesn’t go there.

Here’s the trailer:

Elia Kazan’s 1956 adaptation of the Steinbeck classic landed at number 5 on my Elia Kazan Dozen. I suspect he would have been proud of Zoe’s work but he would have given her notes. It was Elia’s way.

Grading Time: I give East Of Eden 4 stars and an Adrastos grade of A-. The Kazans and Steinbeck go together like peas and carrots.

The last word of our second act goes to Peter Gabriel and Sinead O’Connor:

We begin our third act with our favorite stolen feature.

Separated At Birth: Katie Zacharia and Natalie Harp are sycophantic peas in a pod.

Before her firing, Zacharia tried to make a distinction between lawyers and attorneys, which doesn’t exist but this song does:

Your Basic Basie: Let’s get regal with a Count Basie doubleheader.

The second version features lyrics by Jon Hendricks and the vocal stylings of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

Classic Movie Trailer: I typically eschew the obvious but in this case, it’s inevitable.

Grading Time: I give Elia Kazan’s East Of Eden 4 stars and an Adrastos grade of A. It’s a stone cold classic.

Saturday GIF Horse: With the midterms looming, I have Harold Lloyd on my mind.

This movie theme song is dedicated to fake War Secretary Pete Hegseth and his thwarted public execution fever dreams:

Toon Time: Katie Zacharia week continues. It’s her 15 minutes of fame, after all.

Let’s close down this virtual honky tonk with some more music.

Saturday Closer: I’m going obvious again with The Police live.

That’s all for this week. The last word goes to our favorite hanger-on with a message for the masses: