I have written Letterman diaries, probably more than you think.

By 2007 I was a regular participant in The Daily Show / The Colbert Report diary series at Daily Kos.  When those shows were on vacation or Tia Rachel needed a break, I would cover the repeats, fill in the gaps, and handle the new shows.  I looked on my activity as similar to that of a lighthouse keeper or a convenience store clerk, you don’t expect much business but you keep the door open for the poor souls who really need it.  I don’t celebrate holidays much so it was no hardship for me.

Now when David Letterman signed with CBS in 1993 he did two incredibly smart things.

First of all he hired anyone from his old show who wanted to come along.

Second he hired anyone from his old show who wanted to come along.

Let me explain that a little.  He started his own production company, World Wide Pants, who contracted to provide a work product, Late Show to CBS.  CBS could air it or not, they could extend the contract or not, but employees of World Wide Pants worked for David Letterman.

Not CBS.

David signed their pay checks, he decided who was hired or fired, and if any of the ‘suits’ from the network didn’t like how you were doing your job they could take it up with the boss or go pound sand.

So at the end of 2007, after many years of fruitless negotiation, the Writer’s Guild of America went out on strike.  Most longer term productions simply shut down to wait it out.  Networks ran re-runs.  However there is a substantial amount of scripted television, like talk and reality shows that were expected to continue providing fresh content.  Reality TV tried to argue that it was not scripted to which the reply was- yeah, and Professional Wrestling isn’t either, so they had to shut down too.  Also the initial part of the strike took place over holiday season when many talk shows would be on hiatus anyway.

Some talk show hosts, like Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert used this time to feign solidarity with greater or lesser degrees of sincerity, but there came a time when their corporate masters said- hit the set or the street and we don’t care how sucky the show is.  As I recall Jay sucked a lot because he’s the most over rated comic of his generation and is nothing without his writers.

I don’t know how Jon and Stephen fared, I’m not a scab.

The concept of the ‘suits’ was that if you could inflict pain on the writers by demonstrating television would go on and on making money without them forever, they’d give up.  The hosts were ordered back to work under their ‘performers’ contracts to inflict that pain and to be fair to Jon and Stephen they did publicly offer to pay what it took to get their writers back.  That request was refused because it didn’t bring enough pain.

They didn’t have David Letterman contracts.

Before the strike even began Dave inked a separate deal with the WGA (Is that all you want?  Here’s the check.).  His show ran seamlessly and when CBS started talking about bringing the pain he looked at them and said- See this contract?  You can take me off the air or you can go pound sand.

I was on watch at the beginning of the strike and had quickly switched to Late Show as an alternative inspiration.  When it was announced that Jon and Stephen would be crossing the line Tia who’d been sitting it out said- Ok, they’re back.  Thank you for your service.

Um… strike’s not over yet.  Until the Union writers are in their cubicles I am covering the real deal and not scab shop replacements.

She has probably never forgiven me, I wouldn’t have because now it wasn’t enough just to do it, I did it better.

As is the case now in my exile.  Everything I write is crap, but it’s quite practiced and craftsman-like crap and I do it more regularly than almost anyone I can think of.  Once in a while I’m tempted to write more or deeper but that would simply raise everyone’s expectations.  I’ve been doing this for over 10 years now and while I don’t imagine I’ll have a Letterman like 33 year streak I’m not as tired as I used to be and less tempted by bright and shiny objects.

Tonight’s guests-

• Tuesday 5/19: Bill Murray and Bob Dylan

There will be at least one more piece tomorrow.

As Torture Victims Win $5.5M in Reparations, Could Chicago Be a Model for Police Abuses Nationwide?, Democracy Now

As Chicago Pays Victims of Past Torture, Police Face New Allegations of Abuse at Homan Square, Democracy Now

Homan Square detainee: I was sexually abused by police at Chicago ‘black site’

by Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

Thursday 14 May 2015 12.50 EDT

It was 21 October 2012. The day before, Perez had been driving his Rav-4 on his restaurant delivery route when he says police accosted him, wanting him to contact a drug dealer who they believed Perez knew so they could arrange a sting. But Perez was less cooperative than they had hoped.

Now, Perez was handcuffed by his right wrist to a metal bar behind a bench in an interrogation room on the second floor of Homan Square. Behind him were two police officers that a lawsuit Perez recently re-filed identifies as Jorge Lopez and Edmund Zablocki. They had been threatening him with a stint at the infamously violent Cook County jail if he didn’t cooperate.

“They’re gonna think you’re a little sexy bitch in jail,” Perez recalled one of them saying. The lawsuit quotes Lopez: “I hear that a big black nigger dick feels like a gun up your ass.”

Perez claims he was bent over in front of the bench and a piece of detritus. He recalled smelling urine and seeing bloodstains in the room. The police officers pulled his shirt up and slowly moved a metallic object down his bare skin. Then they pulled his pants down.

“He’s talking all this sexual stuff, he’s really getting fucking weird about it, too,” Perez remembered. He began shaking, the beginnings of a panic attack.

“They get down to where they’re gonna insert it, this is where I feel that it’s something around my rear end, and he said some stupid comment and then he jammed it in there and I started jerking and going all crazy – I think I kicked him – and I just go into a full-blown panic attack … The damage it caused, it pretty much swole my rear end like a baboon’s butt.”

Whatever the object was, the police suggested it was the barrel of a handgun. After Perez involuntarily jerked from the penetration, Officer Edmund Zablocki is alleged to have told him: “I almost blew your brains out.”

Perez claims all of this occurred to persuade him to purchase $170 worth of heroin from the dealer.

Rahm Emanuel took office as Mayor of Chicago on May 16, 2011.  Chicago has been under Democratic Party control since 1931.

So it’s the last 3 days of David Letterman, and I must admit it’s a develoment I have complicated emotions about.  I’ve been a great fan of his subtle subversion of the talk show format ever since Late Night with David Letterman started appearing after Johnny Carson in 1982.

I felt he was badly served by NBC when it came time to choose Carson’s successor on The Tonight Show in 1992 since he was so clearly Johnny’s favored replacement and had devoted 11 years to preparation.

Moreover I found Jay Leno to be crass and shallow.  If you say that was totally in the Carson tradition of zingers that didn’t zing and lame sketches that went horribly wrong; well, yes, but at least Johnny seemed to have a clue when his material was less than stellar while Jay displayed a profound ignorance of it and a complete disregard for his audience as he blundered through an avalanche of one liners that, in the sentiments of one reviewer, rewarded you only with the predictable unexpected so you could smugly congratulate yourself on how intelligent you were to ‘get it’.

In short Leno was boring and still is.

David on the other hand was novel.  You never knew what to expect and were rarely disappointed.  If you didn’t ‘get it’ it wasn’t like failing a test, it was more like a ‘wow, I had never considered that’.

A skill that Johnny and Dave share and that Jay totally lacks is interviewing.  Jay simply parrots the PR the Publicity Flack has prepared and gushes.  Dave actually listens and has conversations.

When Dave accepted a contract with CBS in 1993 I was was happy for a number of reasons.  First, I thought he would kick Jay Leno’s ass which he did for several seasons.  Also he was moving back to New York.  I understand why Johnny moved to Los Angeles, better climate for him, easier to get the movie stars and Las Vegas entertainers who were his bread and butter guests.

Still, I felt the Tonight Show really lost its edge as an interesting show when it moved out of The Rainbow Room.  I have this private theory that too much sunshine makes you kind of, well, impaired, and not only the monologues declined but so did the IQs of the guests with many of them seeming barely able to work out which bit of the couch they were supposed to be sitting on.  In its Western iteration The Tonight Show has all the charm and wit of one of the more forgettable 80s sit-coms like The Hogan Family.

So Dave was coming back to New York!  And we would get Broadway and Theater Actors!  People from Overseas!  Politicians and Business Titans!  Also your regular average New Yorker who was right there on the street outside instead of baking in a traffic jam on a Los Angeles spaghetti highway miles and miles away from the studio in suburban Burbank.

Oh and the regular Hollywood types too, so sorry you had to fly First Class breathing the same air as the Hoi Poloi.

And Dave did it right too.  Renovated the Ed Sullivan Theater, a cavernous space just as big as it seems on TV that he never had any trouble filling.  He set up his own production company, Worldwide Pants, and hired everyone from Late Night who was willing to leave.

He wrote the checks and made the hiring and firing decisions.  CBS had no one to deal with except for him which would prove significant as we’ll see in part 2.

Tonight’s guests-

• Monday 5/18: Tom Hanks and Eddie Vedder

Who is writing the TPP?

By Elizabeth Warren and Rosa DeLauro, The Boston Globe

May 11, 2015

Investor-State Dispute Settlement (are) where big companies get the right to challenge laws they don’t like in front of industry-friendly arbitration panels that sit outside of any court system. Those panels can force taxpayers to write huge checks to big corporations – with no appeals. Workers, environmentalists, and human rights advocates don’t get that special right.

Most Americans don’t think of the minimum wage or antismoking regulations as trade barriers. But a foreign corporation has used ISDS to sue Egypt because Egypt raised its minimum wage. Phillip Morris has gone after Australia and Uruguay to stop them from implementing rules to cut smoking rates. Under the TPP, companies could use ISDS to challenge these kinds of government policy decisions – including food safety rules.

The president dismisses these concerns, but some of the nation’s top experts in law and economics are pushing to drop ISDS provisions from future trade agreements. Economist Joe Stiglitz, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, and others recently noted that “the threat and expense of ISDS proceedings have forced nations to abandon important public policies” and that “laws and regulations enacted by democratically elected officials are put at risk in a process insulated from democratic input.” That was exactly what Germany did in 2011 when it cut back on environmental protections after an ISDS lawsuit.

…

Clinton has called for trade agreements to “avoid some of the provisions sought by business interests, including our own,” such as ISDS. By definition, massive trade deals like the TPP override domestic laws written, debated, and passed by Congress. If fast-track passes, Congress will have given up its power to strip out any backroom arrangements and special favors like ISDS without tanking the whole deal that contains those giveaways.

We will have also given up our right to strip out whatever other special favors industry can bury in new trade agreements – not just in the TPP, but in potential trade deals for the next six years. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has testified before Congress that trade negotiations involve “pressure to lower standards” on financial regulations and other public interest laws, and that President Obama has resisted that pressure. But Obama will soon leave office, and he cannot bind a future president. We hope he is succeeded by a Democrat, but if not, this legislation risks giving a future president a powerful tool to undermine public interest regulations under the guise of promoting commerce.

Powerful corporate interests have spent a lot of time and money trying to bend Washington’s rules to benefit themselves, and now they want Congress to grease the skids for a TPP deal that corporations have helped write but the public can’t see – and for six years of future agreements that haven’t even been written. Congress should refuse to vote for any expedited procedures to approve the TPP before the trade agreement is made public. And Congress certainly shouldn’t vote for expedited procedures to enact trade deals that don’t yet even exist.

Elizabeth Warren at the Roosevelt Institute (TPP and More)

by Bud Meyers, The Economic Populist

May 12, 2015 – 3:51pm

Elizabeth Warren and Rosa DeLauro could have also mentioned Coke in their article. When the government of Australia’s Northern Territory considered creating a 10-cent refund on recycling plastic bottles, Coca-Cola poured millions of dollars into a misleading campaign to oppose the plan. But after the people Down Under had decided, the plan had passed — but then Coke sued the government to stop the program. Coca-Cola runs similar campaigns all over the world. Of course, this is only one of many other examples.

In other words, President Obama and others who are pushing hard for the TPP trade agreement are really advocating to forfeit our national sovereignty to a group of “multi-national” corporations.

By NY Brit Expat

Like everyone else, I got it wrong. I was expecting a Tory minority government propped up by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) if needed to get legislation passed.

It was also clear that the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) had been courting the Tories hoping for another small shot at power; their slogan that “they would give the Tories a heart and Labour a brain” really made me think that they had never understood the Wizard of Oz; if they had, they would have realised that the Wizard was a fraud who only granted what the Tin man (heart) and Straw man (a brain) already had; provision of a testimonial and a diploma do not change reality, only perceptions of reality. I wondered who wrote their script; revealing that you are frauds is never a good idea for a political party.

I was at a friend’s house planning to watch the beginning of the election results there and then I saw the exit polls. I gasped and my stomach screamed! I thought surely this was wrong. I grasped at straws: it didn’t include postal votes, people do not always tell the truth (in the US people deny that they wouldn’t vote for a person of colour as they do not openly want to admit their racism) … I went home to watch a national nightmare unfold (one does not put a fist through your friends’ only telly, it is certainly not good guest behaviour).  

The exit polls (316 Conservatives/Tories, 239 Labour, 58 SNP, 10 Liberal Democrats, 2 UKIP, 2 Greens, 4 Plaid Cymru) actually underestimated the extent of the damage. The Tories were predicted to be heading towards a minority government; I thought that was bad enough, but it was nothing compared to the final result.

While I knew that the Lib Dems were signing their own death warrant by joining the Tories in coalition, I thought that they would lose seats in the Labour heartlands (Northwest and Northeast) squeezed by Labour, lose their seats in University towns that they won from their opposition to the Iraq war (due to their support of increasing university tuition fees which they opposed in their manifesto). I expected student votes to go to the Greens, but not enough to give them the seats which went to Labour), but I thought that they would hold historical bases of support in Devon and Cornwall (where the main opposition is Tory); I had underestimated the obvious fact that why vote Tory-lite when you can have the Tories in all their glory?

I knew Labour would suffer severe losses in Scotland (their unionism during the elections, corruption of Labour councils up there, the uselessness of the carrot offered by Gordon Brown towards the end of the referendum and strong opposition to austerity in Scotland), but wiped out except for 1 seat in Glasgow was more than I expected. In Scotland, I knew that the Lib Dems would hold Orkney (and lose everything else; I stayed up to watch Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander‘s head roll which given everything else was a small bright spot in election results); the Tories have been very weak in Scotland for a while, so their having one seat near the Scottish borders does not surprise me at all. But the Scottish National Party winning 56 seats was beyond my expectations (and their own, I think).

I went to bed at 6:30am stressed out and still hoping for a Tory minority government. I woke up to a political nightmare. The Tories have won a majority, they do not need the DUP, they do not need UKIP (who only won 1 seat anyway; small favours, but they took their first local council in Thanet). They most certainly do not need the Lib Dems; who will be very lonely sitting in Parliament.

There is only one thing to think about today and that is justice for Freddie Gray and the other victims of a militarized and out of control Police’s Racist War on Blacks, Hispanics, and the Poor.

A Baltimore Neighborhood, Wary and Healing, Prepares for Preakness Day

By JULIET MACUR, The New York Times

MAY 10, 2015

“They told me that there’s so many things we can do here that it would be really fun for me and my kids,” said Thomas, a 33-year-old single mother of four who works transporting patients at a hospital. “But I don’t know what to think of it. We’ll see. It’s been a tough couple of weeks.”

A tough couple of weeks for the entire city.

Less than a month ago, Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, was arrested in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, about four miles southeast of Pimlico, which sits on the northwest side of the city. Gray fell into a coma while in police custody and later died. Riots and protests followed, including some outside Camden Yards, where in the jittery days after Gray’s death two Orioles games were postponed and another was played behind closed doors.

Six police officers have been charged in connection with Gray’s death, and some residents here predicted that those indictments might quell any protests, at least until the trial. But for now, the wounds in the city and in this neighborhood, where the 140th Preakness will be run on Saturday, are still raw. As race day approaches, many people here remain on edge.

Sometimes sporting events can play a role in healing a city’s wounds, as the baseball games after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, did in New York City. But the Preakness doesn’t quite fit that role.

A gigantic banner hanging above the racetrack’s main entrance declares the Preakness to be “the people’s race” and “the people’s party.” But those people, for the most part, aren’t from the largely black community around the track, where just gaining admission to the clubhouse and the grandstand will cost you $25 (much more if you want a seat), and where an infield ticket will set you back $70.

“For 50 years, I’ve sat on this porch and have seen people come and go on Preakness day, and most of them are white and rich and look all fancy in their dresses, neckties and shorty-shorts,” said Ruth Spencer, 87, who lives near the corner of Hayward and Winner Avenues, across the street from the track. “But I do love watching the people come by. I feel proud that they’ve come here to my backyard.”

…

But on race weekend, Austin said, the neighborhood was energized by the party atmosphere and the chance to make a bit of quick money. Asked if that fun might be ruined this year by protesters looking to grab the spotlight, Austin laughed.

“Oh, no, no,” he said. “Do you know how many police there are here that weekend? There’s one every few feet. Nothing’s going to happen here. Not a thing.”

Austin said that the greatest tension between the residents and the police in recent years had stemmed from a rule that bars the sale of anything on the racetrack side of the street.

The rule was announced a few years ago when signs appeared that read: “No vending. By order of the Baltimore City Police Department.” Residents trying to make a buck on Preakness weekend are still grumbling about that, noting that the police certainly have bigger problems to worry about than octogenarians selling iced tea for a dollar.

…

But Zora said that Gray’s death had changed the way she viewed the police. When she sees a police car drive by now, she said, she can feel her heart beating faster.

“Now when I see them, I start thinking, What if they want to fight one of us? What if they want to fight me? And that scares me,” she said, while sitting on a swing at the Pimlico Good Neighbor Park, which on Thursday was so strewn with cups, candy wrappers and potato chip bags that it looked as if a trash bag had exploded.

Thomas said that Zora’s distrust of the police made her sad. And even Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, admitted on Wednesday that the police and the community had a “fractured relationship.”

That was why the mayor asked the Justice Department to investigate any unconstitutional abuse or discrimination on the part of the Police Department. That federal investigation is now underway, but in Park Heights and Sandtown-Winchester and many other neighborhoods, a tense truce between the black community and the police will remain the order of the day for a while.

To make the best of the situation, even if it is a short-lived distraction, Thomas said she was considering her neighbor’s suggestions for race day.

“I have a hot dog machine, and a popcorn maker, so I might take them out to see if I can sell some, or maybe make fresh lemonade,” she said with a sigh as her 8-month-old daughter wailed in the background. “Or, I don’t know, maybe not.

“With all that’s happened here in our city, I have really mixed feelings. A lot of people do.”

Yeah, celebrate good times and forget about all the ugliness and oppression, c’mon.  Rights?  You have no rights a Gold or their jackbooted Sturmtruppen, the Blues and the Greens, are bound to respect.  Vive la Ancien Régime.

Even the Derby winner, American Pharoah, has a name that reeks of oligarchic privilege and wears earplugs to dampen the noise of the unwashed masses.

American Pharoah Is a Fan Favorite, but Not Vice Versa

By MELISSA HOPPERT, The New York Times

MAY 15, 2015

During the walkover at the Derby, a tradition that allows contenders’ connections to escort them on the racetrack to the paddock, American Pharoah became so unnerved by the crowd of people around him and the record 170,513 in the stands that it took several grooms to control the dark bay colt.

“The walkover for the Derby has gotten out of control,” said Baffert, who even stuffs fluffy cotton plugs in American Pharoah’s ears before every race to avoid such occurrences. “There’s too many people. It was like walking your horse through Times Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve. And they were yelling and screaming and running next to him and taking pictures, so it got him a little stirred up.”

His aggressive behavior, noted by horseplayers as a bad omen because it saps strength, continued in the paddock and on the racetrack, until he was loaded into the starting gate.

“He started becoming very hyped, and he was using a lot of energy, and I got very nervous because that’s the first time I’ve seen him do that,” his owner, Ahmed Zayat, said.

From the URL- Favorite’s Problem? He hates crowds but packs them in.  There is truth in that.

Oh, you want to talk about horse races, not class conciousness.  Well, there are only 8 horses in today’s race because if you don’t have a Triple Crown contender, what’s the point?  People care more about dogs than they do about horses, and your ever shrinking audience is 1%er’s, gamblers, and the celebrity obsessed.  Still, no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the people.

American Pharoah will not win despite the hype.  His stablemate Dortmund is much more stable in temperment, was faster through the length of the shorter Pimlico course, and starts from a more favorable pole position.  American Pharoah begins on the rail and will be buried by an avalanche of horses headed for the racing line.

According to The New York Times the field looks like this-

Joe Drape’s picks: Firing Line, Dortmund, American Pharoah

Melissa Hoppert’s picks: Dortmund, American Pharoah, Firing Line

Pimlico.

Preakness Trivia

• Actually 2 years older than the Kentucky Derby.
• Shortest in distance (1/16th shorter than the Derby).
• Only the Derby has a larger attendance.
• No Black Eyed Susan has ever been used, currently it’s painted Chysthanthemums.

There have been 34 winners of both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes including the 11 Triple Crown winners.

Preakness Traditions

Winners don’t get the real Woodlawn Cup to keep, but a half size replica (oh, and the Woodlawn Racing Club is defunct).  Black Eyed Susans don’t bloom until 2 months after the Preakness.  The Old Clubhouse was destroyed in a fire in 1966.  They paint the winner’s racing silks on the weathervane.  No one on the internet knows why it’s called the Alibi Breakfast.

Official Website

I need a drink-

Post time 6:18 pm ET, coverage starts at 4:30 pm on NBC.

I’m extremely happy that I’ve finally dismissed Wagner who was no more than a third rate hack with no talent except for shameless self promotion (hey, it takes one to know one), but he codified The 3 Rules of Opera in a way that led Chuck Jones to create the best cartoon of all time (I’d embed it, but it never stays up for long).

Sung by Elmer J. Fudd, Millionaire, who owns a mansion and a yacht, and Bugs Bunny (from Flatbush Brooklyn by most accounts though some say the Bronx or even shudder Poughkeepsie New Joisey), there are Three Acts and as I recall it goes a little something like this (Elmer in Italics, Bugs in Normal; Singing Centered, Spoken Left Justified)-

Be vewy quiet I’m hunting wabbitsWabbit tracks!!!Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbitKill the rabbit?Yo ho to oh! Yo ho to oh! Yo ho…O mighty warrior of great fighting stockMight I inquire to ask, eh, what’s up doc??I’m going to kill the wabbit!!Oh mighty hunter t’will be quite a taskHow will you do it, might I inquire to ask??I will do it with my spear and magic helmet!Your spear and magic helmet?Spear & magic helmet!Magic helmet?Magic helmet!(Dismissively) Magic helmetYes, magic helmet, and I’ll give you a sample

Stage direction: General Devastation

Bye

That was the wabbit!!!

Stage direction: Bugs Cross Dressed

Oh Brunhilda, you’re so wuvelyYes I know it I can’t help itOh Brunhilda be my wuveReturn my wuve a longing burns deep inside meReturn my love I want you always beside meWuve like ours must beMade for you and for me(Harmony) Return won’t you return my love for my love is yours

Stage direction: You tip your hat to this Teuton son and all them ears come out from underneath

I’ll kill the wabbit!Arise stormsNorth winds blow, south winds blowTyphoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, SMOG!Flash lightning strike the wabbitWhat have I done?? I’ve killed the wabbit…Poor little bunny, poor little wabbit…

Well what did you expect in an opera, a happy ending???

That HTML is more complicated than it looks.

Now you might suspect this is the introduction to some Wagnerian Opus and I’ve already said it will be a cold day in Muspelheim.  He represents everything bad and overblown about Romantic Art Music.  No, it’s simply to remind you of The 3 Rules of Opera which are-

1. It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
2. The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
3. Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.

Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.

Today’s subject is Lucia di Lammermoor, also Romantic but from a time when Wagner was a struggling nobody and Gaetano Donizetti was the last remaining “genius” of the Italian School after the death of Vincenzo Bellini and the retirement of Gioachino Rossini.

While the plot bears some similarity to a mashup of Romeo and Juliet and MacBeth it is in fact lifted from Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor.

Lucy Ashton’s (Lucia) family is feuding with the Ravenswoods.  She’s in love with Edgar Ravenswood (Edgardo) who is observed sneaking into the Castle by Norman (Normanno) who duly reports this to her brother Henry (Enrico) who is consumed with a deep and abiding hated of all things Ravenswood.

Lucy waits for Edgar by a fountain with her maid Lisa (Alisa) and tells her (or rather sings her because this is an Opera after all) that she has seen the ghost of a girl killed on the very same spot who was killed by a (now also dead) Ravenswood out of jealousy.  Lisa replies that this is an omen and Lucy really ought to ditch Edgar.  Edgar arrives and tells Lucy he must leave for France and that he hopes to convince Henry of his sincerity and marry before he goes.  Lucy says- ‘Are you nuts?’ and instead they exchange rings and pledge eternal love.

While Edgar is away, Henry arranges to marry Lucy off to Arthur (Arturo).  Worried she is still in love with Edgar (which is true), he shows her a forgery that ‘proves’ Edgar has forgotten her and is shacking up with someone else.  He leaves it to her old pastor Raymond (Raimondo) to make the argument that she should go through with this for the good of the family.

Arthur arrives to pick up his bride Lucy but she’s behaving, umm…, erraticly.  Edgar assures Arthur she’s just upset over the death of her Mom.  Arthur signs on the dotted line and Lucy follows reluctantly.  At that point Edgar shows up and Raymond steps in and shows Lucy’s signature on the contract.  He yells at her (well, sings, you know) and demands she return his ring and takes hers and tramples it on the floor.  At this point the bouncers show him the street.

Henry is still pissed and challenges Edgar to a duel.  He tells Edgar she is already doing it with Arthur and likes it very much thank you.  Edgar replies- ‘I’m going to kick your ass’.

Well, Lucy is not enjoying it and has killed Arthur.  Raymond comes in and tells everyone what she has done and proclaims her ‘Mad’.  Then Lucy shows up and cops an insanity defense, singing passionately of an imagined happy life with Edgar.  Henry enters and is at first enraged and then softens as he becomes convinced his sister truly is insane.  She collapses and Raymond blames Norman for the whole tragedy.

And now, dear reader, I’ll ask you to pause.

Is Lucy dead?

Mental Illness is a bad thing and very real, leading you to suicidal and homocidal impulses and self destructive behaviors, but it doesn’t generally strike you down like a brain aneurysm unless that’s what caused it.  There’s no reason to think Lucy’s actions anything but rational (if a bit psychotic) in today’s culture.  Sure juries find people like that guilty and pack them off to the pen or execute them all the time, but they’re not stricken down by the lightning bolts of Zeus or the Hand of God.  Keep that in mind as I tell you what happens next.

Edgar has resolved to die in order to kill Henry.  He hears of Lucy’s sudden breakdown and then instead of Henry, Raymond appears and tells him Lucy is dead.  Edgar stabs himself fatally so he can be reunited with Lucy in Heaven.

Hmm…, ironic and gruesome enough for you?

“Don’t stop, belie“.

Embedding disabled by request.  Told you things don’t stay up.

My personal theory is that Henry, still hating Edgar and the Ravenswoods as much as ever and unwilling to risk a duel with a kamikaze, sends Raymond out just to provoke the reaction he got.  Does he marry Lucy off to someone else?  Does he send her to a nunnery?  Does she commit suicide herself?  Henry is evil through and through and is not above doing anything to get what he wants.

At this point I don’t care either.  It’s been two and a half hours and my butt is sore and I gotta pee.

Sure Il dolce suono is considered one of the greatest arias ever and is a staple of every famous soprano you’ve ever heard of except for Tony, but it’s Scene 2 of the Third Act!

I suppose you can linger over dessert and get that second cup of coffee without guilt.  You won’t miss anything important.  Oh, and don’t bother sticking around for the last credit to roll in Age of Ultron either.  Once Thanos says he’ll do it himself it’s Third Grips and Craft Services until they close the curtains.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Are they under here?  No.  Are they over there?  No.

Hah!  I was hiding them behind my back all along.  Heh.  Never get tired of that one.

GOP’s alarming Iraq amnesia: Jeb Bush, WMDs & the lies neocons want us to forget

by Joan Walsh, Salon

Friday, May 15, 2015 10:46 AM EST

(Jeb) Bush had a hard time saying that the invasion was a mistake, even with what we know now – Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, and toppling the dictator would smash the country into warring pieces – because he, and his core national security advisors, may well not think it was.

We seem to be suffering from collective amnesia when we act like the lack of WMD was a big “surprise” that Bush and the 2016 field must now reckon with, one that means the invasion was a tragic mistake. In fact, the Bush intelligence team cooked the books to either create or exaggerate the evidence at the time, to sell us a cruel war of choice.

…

The former president has admitted to mistakes in the war’s execution, the occupation and its aftermath. He has lamented the terrible intelligence his administration shared in the lead up to the invasion. But he himself has never said: If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have done it.

Quite the opposite. In his memoir, he admitted to tactical mistakes, but stated forthrightly: “The region is more hopeful with a young democracy setting an example for others to follow. And the Iraqi people are better off with a government that answers to them instead of torturing and murdering them.”

He added: “There are things we got wrong in Iraq, but the cause is eternally right.”

Dick Cheney certainly agrees. Paul Wolfowitz, one of Jeb’s advisors, blasts the aftermath of Saddam’s fall, and the wholly incompetent occupation – the reign of Paul Bremer and Dan Senor and fresh-faced 20-something ideologues from the Lincoln Group trying to govern Iraq – but not the decision to wage war itself. There were lots of things the Bush team might like to do over, but the invasion isn’t one of them.

The Cheney-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld faction saw an Iraq invasion as a brilliant stage on which to enact all of their geopolitical goals: It was a chance to replace a Middle East adversary with an ally; to ease our reliance on Saudi Arabia for defense and for oil, and to develop a strategic counterweight to Iran. It was also an opportunity to declare the U.S. would wage pre-emptive war, to showcase our military might in the aftermath of 9/11, and to shore up Cheney’s doctrine of vast, presidential power. The WMD argument was either just one of many concerns, or an outright fabrication.

So let’s be fair to Jeb Bush for a moment: he can’t get this answer “right” politically – as in, now that we know there weren’t WMDs, and the aftermath was a shit-show, the Iraq invasion was a “mistake” – because it probably isn’t what he believes. Let’s remember, he was one of 25 signatories to the founding document of the pro-invasion Project for a New American Century in 1998 – alongside Cheney, Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Elliott Abrams, Norman Podhoretz, Frank Gaffney and other neocons. Wolfowitz is one of his foreign policy advisors. He has told us that when it comes to Israel, his brother is his top advisor.

The truth is, Bush didn’t exactly flub his first answer to Megyn Kelly; in saying he’d do it all over again, he told us some of what he really thought. Ironically, if he knew then what he knows now – that his answer was hugely unpopular – he wouldn’t have given that answer. So he said it was a mistake. Then he said it wasn’t. Then he said it was. He’s going to be writhing like this for a long time, because he can’t satisfy all the factions that are trying to unite behind him by telling the truth. Whatever it is.

You stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.

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