Every once and awhile I like to honor the illustrators of vintage pulp paperbacks. This week, we’re featuring two covers by Lou Marchetti whose daughter Louise has assembled a terrific website in honor of her late father.
The tagline for The Mugger has given me an earworm so Genesis gets the last word:
Transitioning out of the Mardi Gras bubble is always difficult. But there’s so much going on right now that I don’t quite know where to begin. I think a potpourri post full of quick one liners and, hopefully, pertinent observations is the best way to shake off the rust. Of course rust never sleeps so who knows if that will work? Only the Shadow or Neil Young know for sure. Hey, hey, my, my.
Stale News In Brief: I watched the Cohen hearing from gavel to gavel but had company that night for the Nyx parade so I couldn’t share any thoughts and/or pithy observations. I’ve been somewhat pithed about this momentary lapse of reason, which is why I’m writing about it a week later. Better late than never.
I had assumed that Cohen was a punk and a brain-dead doofus. I was right about the former but wrong about the latter. He was well-prepared, penitent, and surprisingly sharp in a street wise Lawn Guyland kinda way.
Cohen’s performance is proof positive that exposure to Donald Trump cuts people’s IQ’s in half. It’s one reason why the Kaiser of Chaos needs to go before we become a country of mouth-breathing morons who overuse the word very. Believe me.
Speaking of dumbassery, the performance of Oversight Committee GOPers was appalling. They’re the dumbest collection of congresscritters it has ever been my displeasure to observe. They were poorly prepared and dumber than a proverbial bag of rocks.
It *is* true that Cohen was a lying sack of shit in his days as Trump’s fixer. But that means that some of the shit leaked onto the president* for whom Cohen was lying. Gym Jordan and his gang of morons didn’t see it that way. Jordan makes Trey Gowdy look like Perry Mason as a cross-examiner. Oy, just oy.
The country saw Congressman Clay Higgins and learned what we in the Gret Stet of Louisiana have known all along: he’s a poser and a nitwit. He kept asking the same question over and over even though it had been “asked and answered” as the criminal law objection goes.
Higgins is a demagogue and dumbfuck of epic proportions. Additionally, his district director is an accused pimp. It’s a pity that his name isn’t Willie. Jerod Prunty the Pimp doesn’t have the same ring to it:
Investigation Mania: House Democrats are gearing up to get to the bottom of the plethora of Trump related scandals. The good news is that they can walk and chew gum at the same time as they’re passing a plethora of progressive legislation as well. It will all, of course, die in the Senate but it forces them to take unpopular stands against popular legislation such as gun background checks, which I believe even the ghost of Charlton Heston favors:
An interesting tidbit in the news is Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff hiring former SDNY prosecutor Daniel Goldman to spearhead his Russia investigation. Cable news viewers know him better as a telegenic teevee lawyer on MSNBC. The president* is bound to fear him because he’s been on the tube, which could have been a factor in Schiff making this hire. Goldman is also stone cold brilliant and knows his way around Russian mobsters and oligarchs. Watch out, Trumpy.
The Big Rebuke: There are enough votes in the Senate to shoot down the Insult Comedian’s fake emergency order. As of this writing, it’s not a veto proof majority BUT the fog of scandal continues to envelop the Trump regime. That, in turn, could lead more Senatorial rats to flee the USS Trump as it sinks in a sea of scandal. Holy mixed metaphor, Batman. Is it a fog or a sea of scandal? Actually, it’s both, which is a rare example of both-siderism on my part.
John Dean On Cohen: As a Watergate junkie, I would be remiss in not mentioning John Dean’s NYT op-ed article on the impact of being a star witness on the witness:
Mr. Cohen should understand that if Mr. Trump is removed from office, or defeated in 2020, in part because of his testimony, he will be reminded of it for the rest of his life. He will be blamed by Republicans but appreciated by Democrats. If he achieves anything short of discovering the cure for cancer, he will always live in this pigeonhole. How do I know this? I am still dealing with it.
Just as Mr. Nixon had his admirers and apologists, so it is with Mr. Trump. Some of these people will forever be rewriting history, and they will try to rewrite it at Mr. Cohen’s expense. They will put words in his mouth that he never spoke. They will place him at events at which he wasn’t present and locations where he has never been. Some have tried rewriting my life, and they will rewrite his, too.
Can I get a witness?
The last word goes to the late Marvin Gaye whose image will adorn a stamp to be released on April 2nd:
It’s Ash Wednesday, the day after Carnival’s finale. One is supposed to repent and my legs, in particular, are penitent. Penitent and sore, which is why it’s time to repeat a musical pun I made three years ago and declare this Wishbone Ash Wednesday.
1991’s Strange Affair was the veteran prog rockers 16th album. I’m particularly fond of Ian Harris’ cover as it’s so pulpy that it looks like a refugee from Noir Alley:
Here’s the title track with a modified cover from a 2003 re-release.
I have no idea why that chick is riding a walrus in the poster above. To the best of my knowledge, walruses aren’t indigenous to South Louisiana.
I’ve partied hurt this Carnival season. I twisted my knee on the route while foolishly trying to catch up with these guys.
I have three friends in the group and only saw one so I tried and failed to chase them down during the Muses parade two days before that video was shot. There’s no fool like a semi-old fool.
The conditions have been wet and sloppy, which hasn’t been all bad since it’s kept the crowds down. Of course, we have Chads who are into urban camping so they have tents to duck under when it rains. Heaven forfend that you attempt join them. In Chadland, pitching a tent seems to lead to pitching a fit. It’s the public green, y’all, deal with it.
Today is the day we watch the Krewe of Proteus fall off the bus and eventually stagger onto their floats. We live around the corner from their den and enjoy seeing them arrive after their liquid pre-parade meal at Antoine’s. Our out-of-town guests are excited to have the drunken plutocrat experience.
As you can see, I’m still in the Carnival bubble so I’ve got very little to say about the Insult Comedian hugging the flag or Seb Gorka’s hamburger speech. Gorka seems to believe in life, liberty, and condiments.
In the Odds & Sods spirit, here’s today’s earworm:
Surprise, surprise, it’s a Stones song.
Happy Mardi Gras. On Wednesday we repent our sins or some such shit. I may have to give up Keef and Woody for Lent.
It’s been a crazy Carnival season as always. Mayor Cantrell’s efforts to keep the Chads and their ladders off the parade route neutral grounds have won plaudits. I realize that nobody outside New Orleans understood that sentence but life sucks and then you die.
We have house guests so my writing time has been limited, which means that an all-out Odds & Sods outing isn’t feasible. I’m even a catblogging slacker this week. So it goes.
I do, however, have a theme song. The Rolling Stones have been my soundtrack for Carnival 2019 so it’s only fitting to select All Down The Line from Exile On Main Street as the theme song for this truncated outing.
We have three versions for your listening pleasure: the Exile original, a 1972 live version with Mick Taylor on slide guitar, and a 2006 live version from Marty’s Stones flick, Shine A Light. I love me some Woody but Mick kicks his ass on this particular tune.
You’re probably asking yourself: why are the Stones my Carnival soundtrack? I’m not big on seasonal music. It’s an area about which Dr. A and I disagree. She loves seasonal music. Given a choice I’ll take Carnival music over Christmas music but I’d rather have another choice. What can I tell ya?
That’s it for this week. The last word goes to the Valence Street chickens who have yet to watch a parade with us. Let’s hope it stays that way.
I’ve never deliberately repeated a PFT entry before. This was first posted 2/8/18. Why am I doing this? It’s Muses Thursday and half the city is coming to our house. That’s why:
I know what you’re thinking: when in pulp fiction doubt, post a Perry Mason cover. Guilty as charged. It’s also relevant this Muses Thursday. That all chick krewe throws decorated shoes.
I’ve also posted a cleaned up version of the cover that I stumbled into on the artist’s website. Thanks to John Farr.
If there was ever a convicted felon in deep shit and sinking fast, it’s Paul Manafort. Here’s one of his lawyers’ arguments from his sentencing memo:
“[Manafort has spent] a lifetime promoting American democratic values and assisting emerging democracies to adopt reforms necessary to become a part of Western society.”
Holy spit take provoking quote, Batman.
I’d never confused Manafort with Captain America before. I always thought he was a corrupt piece of shit instead of a democracy promoting hero. Who knew? Nobody.
I have some sympathy for his lawyers. They gotta argue something and their client has made it impossible for them to make any plausible arguments. Hence the “my guy wasn’t charged with collusion” defense.
What’s happened to Manafort should be a cautionary tale for his old pal Roger Stone. But he’s an attention junkie so he’s unlikely to learn anything. You need to listen to learn and Rog never shuts his big fat bazoo.
It’s that time of year so let’s set the Wayback Machine to 1962 with a live album from Al Hirt. The cover, via Discogs, is a bit old and beat up but so am I.
It’s selected tracks time, baby:
Unless your memory is shorter than retired hoops star Muggsy Bogues, you surely recall Gooldloe Sutton who was 2019’s first malaka of the week. It was a popular post thanks to the good people at Crooks & Liars who linked to it in their Mike’s Blog Round Up feature. Jeez, I sound like an Oscar bloviator even though I skipped the annual snoozefest for the second straight year. I did not miss much apparently.
Back to the Klan loving small town newspaperman. He made more news the other day:
Now comes news that the 80 year old Sutton has retired from his management of the paper and will now “drink beer and sex young women.”
And that is not the most curious part of it. Sutton says he has turned the paper over to an African-American woman named Elecia Dexter, who he says has worked at the paper for a number of years.
This is story that justifies my long ago theft from Dave Barry of the phrase “I am not making this up.” I am not.
Well, you know what they say, it’s hard to keep a Goodloe malaka down.
Swing Landscape by Stuart Davis
Carnival is about to kick into high gear and it looks as if it may be a wet season. There are few things worse than parading or watching in the rain. What was the old cliché? Oh yeah, don’t rain on my parade. I’m not a fan of being fenced in either.
This week’s theme song is a longtime favorite of mine. It was written in 1961 by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer for the classic movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Moon River has some of Mercer’s best, and most evocative, lyrics. I’m still waiting round the bend for my huckleberry friend but they haven’t shown up. So it goes.
We have two versions for your listening pleasure: a jazzy interpretation by the great Sarah Vaughan and a swinging version by my homey Dr. John.
Now that we’re huckleberry friends, we won’t wait until the end to jump to the break.
New Orleans is one of the few places in the country where a white person can wear blackface in public and not be called a racist. Why? 20% of the folks who ride in the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club’s Mardi Gras day parade are white.
My latest piece at the Bayou Brief: The Zulu Conundrum is an attempt to bring nuance and context to this contentious local discussion. I believe that, as they did once before, Zulu should abandon “blacking up” for all its members, not just white riders. The reason I use the word conundrum is that this is a tricky question in New Orleans even though it’s a no-brainer elsewhere.
I realize that my non-Louisiana readers will find this discussion baffling but it won’t be the first time I’ve baffled you. And it won’t be the last.
During Carnival we have all sorts of interesting bags about the house. Della Street has made this one her own.
New Orleans has a problem with tons of plastic beads clogging up catch basins on the parade route. That inspired the Krewe of Spank’s Krewe du Vieux float this year:
That was, of course, before the bead monster known in these parts as the Beadgaroux hit the streets. This is our official, but not officious, 2019 logo:
Our most coveted throw was a set of nine trading cards “celebrating” clogged drains and bead monsters.
I wish I could take credit but the amuse-douche joke was the handiwork of my friend David Tower. Btw, he lives up to the name: he’s a tall dude.
Spank hit the big time this year. We’re featured in this video. I’m the guy in the green derby/bowler:
One of Spank’s closest sub-krewe friends is the Krewe of Mishigas. Their float was a work of twisted genius:
The RBG figure started off with a full rack, so I suggested that she needed boob reduction “surgery.” It turned out quite well.
The Mishigas button below was one of the most sought after throws of the evening. The photo is via international man of mystery Peris B.
Frank Zappa and the Mothers get the last word with a little ditty that was inspired by the 1956 sci-fi flick, It Conquered The World:
FYI, our monster was better than the one in the cheesy movie.
Taglines can be misleading. Darkness At Noon is the tale of an old Bolshevik caught up in Stalin’s great purge. It’s a serious and highly-regarded look at the horrors of the Soviet system but Signet had books to sell. As long as Arthur Koestler got his fair share I have no beef with that. It was the way of the pulps.
KKK march on Washington, 1925
Goodloe Sutton is the latest in a long line of people I’ve never heard of who have emerged from obscurity to be “honored” at First Draft. He sounds like a mild-mannered small town newspaper editor but his name is misleading: Goodloe is a bad man who’s nostalgic for simpler, stupider times. And that is why Goodloe Sutton is malaka of the week.
Malaka Goodloe *is* a small town newspaperman but he’s anything but mild-mannered. His paper, the Linden Democrat-Republican, recently published an inflammatory editorial. It’s short, so here’s the whole damn, dim-witted thing:
Photograph via Montgomery Advertiser.
The story was broken by Melissa Brown of the Montgomery Advertiser in conjunction with the editors of the Auburn student paper, The Plainsman. They know malakatude when they see it.
I particularly like Malaka Goodloe’s claim that there were black Klansmen. It’s a feeble attempt to deflect charges of racism. It’s an epic fail.
Sutton’s paper is not online so it’s unclear if he’s written this sort of editorial before or if he’s yet another bigot emboldened by the Racist-in-Chief. He lives in a small town in Alabama near the Mississippi state line so neither possibility would shock me.
This editorial is Lost Causer-ism run amuck. The Klan sets fires, they don’t put them out. Back in the 1920’s, the Klan were kleptocrats, not krusaders against korruption. That whole K thing is, uh, katchy.
Malaka Goodloe should night ride home, watch The Birth of a Nation, then STFU. He won’t heed calls for his resignation: he owns the paper but decent folks in his area should find another news source. 1925 called and wants its editorial back. And that is why Goodloe Sutton is malaka of the week.
The last word (image?) goes to the movie originally known as The Clansman:
New Orleans born and bred woodwind genius Sidney Bechet lived a large portion of his life in exile in Paris. And I’m not talking Paris, Texas, which was as segregated as New Orleans. Bechet left the Other Paris to Wim Wenders and Ry Cooder.
We have two early album covers this week. They’re not vinyl LPs, but 10″ shellac albums. The first one dates from 1948 and features a cover by Jim Flora:
The second ten-incher dates from 1952 and features art by Burt Goldblatt:
Since the albums aren’t online in their entirety, here are two contemporaneous tracks:
Former FBI honcho Andrew McCabe has been ubiquitous of late. His description of his encounters with the Insult Comedian are either bone-chilling or blood-curdling. Pick your metaphor.
Today’s quote comes from McCabe’s new tome, The Threat:
People do not appreciate how far we have fallen from normal standards of presidential accountability. Today we have a president who is willing not only to comment prejudicially on criminal prosecutions but to comment on ones that potentially affect him. He does both of these things almost daily. He is not just sounding a dog whistle. He is lobbying for a result. The president has stepped over bright ethical and moral lines wherever he has encountered them. Every day brings a new low, with the president exposing himself as a deliberate liar who will say whatever he pleases to get whatever he wants. If he were “on the box” at Quantico, he would break the machine.
The desire to distract attention from the McCabe book was clearly a factor in Trump’s manufactured “national emergency.” Oy just oy.
Krewe du Vieux 2019
Krewe du Vieux ate my week and the Krewe of Spank whuppped my ass. Today is the big day, which is why this week’s entry qualifies as a placeholder. If you want to re-read Confessions Of A Krewe du Vieux Member to get into the spirit of the occasion, there’s no time like the present.
This week’s theme song was written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen in 1973. It’s one of my favorite Steely Dan album tracks. It’s the touching tale of a man in love with a French Quarter prostitute named Louise. Ooh la la.
We have two versions for your listening pleasure: the steel guitar driven Steely Dan original followed by a swell 2013 cover by Boz Scaggs:
That’s it for this week. The closing bat meme is a picture taken by Dr. A near the Den of Muses.
The last word goes to the Neville Brothers:
There’s a swell documentary currently showing on HBO, Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists. It’s about the great New York newspaper columnists, Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill. Not only were they fine journalists, they were great writers. I give the documentary 3 1/2 stars and an Adrastos Grade of B+.
On to the quote of the day. Breslin died in 2017 but Hamill is still with us. Neither of them cared for Donald Trump. Here’s what Pete had to say about Trump’s infamous 1989 Central Park Five ad calling for the return of the death penalty in New York:
“Snarling and heartless and fraudulently tough, insisting on the virtue of stupidity, it was the epitome of blind negation.
Hate was just another luxury. And Trump stood naked revealed as the spokesman for that tiny minority of Americans who live well-defended lives. Forget poverty and its causes. Forget the degradation and squalor of millions. Fry them into passivity.”
Pete Hamill wasn’t always right but he never minced words. That’s pretty good writing for a high school dropout. I like his first name too.
It’s not much of a tower and it’s not all that terrifying but that’s what we call it:
