"The brandy snifter portrait is as American as hip-hop, acid-washed jeans and plastic-covered sofas."

"A photo in that style could conjure the same feelings that oversize shoulder pads or a Jheri curl would: cringe. In 2001, the motif was spoofed by 'Saturday Night Live' in a skit that featured Alec Baldwin and Jimmy Fallon, called 'Put It in a Brandy Snifter.' But in the 1980s and 1990s, the brandy snifter photo was an innovative, attainable luxury, and it became ubiquitous in some communities. Its cultural significance is closely tied to the ambitions of the American working class. Mr. Adams’s tribute to his mother also honored the countless other people who see that image and immediately recognize and identify with it, as I did. I wore my peach Easter dress from earlier that year. My mother tied my hair in a ponytail and curled my bangs to the side. My siblings wore polo shirts. The day before, I had applied a glow-in-the-dark, temporary tattoo I got in a box of Rude Dudes bubble gum to my cheek. My face has never been scrubbed harder than Mom scrubbed it clean that day...."

Writes Sandra E. Garcia in "What New Yorkers See in This Portrait of the Mayor’s Mother/Dorothy Mae Adams-Streeter posed for a portrait at her 75th birthday party. Her image, floating in a brandy snifter, has a powerful resonance" (NYT).

Watch the SNL skit here. It crudely mocks low-class white people who think that superimposing a brandy snifter on a photographed portrait is gorgeous and elegant. But now we're asked to show respect for black people who've been admiring the same photography. Fine.

I am encountering brandy snifter photography for the first time, and I'm completely distracted by the inaptness of the association with drinking alcohol. Why would you want the image of your child or your elderly mother inside a brandy glass?! But I can see that people have been doing this for 40 years, and I'm showing that I don't know any of them well enough to have seen that these are their treasured family portraits. The new mayor of New York City is displaying one of his mother, and I am not going to make fun of that photograph. 

"Hey, Jimmy, how are ya, man?"

I'll just watch this cold and tell you what I think (because what else am I going to do at 5:20 a.m.?):

 

Pausing at 1:44 — Fallon prompts him to tout the infrastructure bill, and he talks about how far "behind the curve" we are. He doesn't use the phrase "Make America Great Again," but that's his pitch. He mentions 2 details of greatness to come: removing lead pipes and providing high speed internet. Just the flow of essential material into our home — water and data. 

Pausing at 3:27 — Fallon prompts him to talk about "Build Back Better" — how will it help Americans with the cost of living? That made me think about inflation, but the answer was about helping people pay for childcare and providing schooling for younger children. Fallon followed up, but not about inflation, just about whether BBB could "pass the Senate before the year." I presume Fallon is working from a script and was supposed to say "before the new year" or "before the end of the year." 

Pausing at 5:29 — Fallon praises Biden for being "classy" and "bringing class back to the office." 

Pausing at 5:57 — Fallon asks what can be done about Covid when not everyone is getting the vaccine. Fallon himself will do anything Biden tells him to do, and "If you want me to wear red pants, I'll wear red pants." When is it not about science but about obeying orders?

Pausing at 9:26 — Prompted about his poll numbers, Biden offers optimism about the economy, then concedes, "We do have inflation." He's trying to reduce the cost of gas by increasing the supply using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Pausing at 10:06 — He's going to "shoot from the shoulder." He's said that before, as noted here. He's mixing up "shoot from the hip" and "straight from the shoulder."

Pausing at 12:01 — "I have enormous confidence. You're going to realize what a naive guy I am, but I really have faith at the end of the day. The American people are going to get it. They understand."

The video ends with Fallon announcing that there will be more with Biden. What have I got myself into? Here's Part 2:

 

Pausing at 1:16 — Biden says that he and Jill grew up middle class, so it's hard to get used to all the people in the White House waiting on them. He made a deal with people who do the food to leave them alone in the morning and let them get their own breakfast. He mentions eggs, and Jimmy expresses amazement. Jimmy: "You cook your own eggs?" Biden: "Well, I don't. Jill does." This gets a huge laugh, but I had the classic feminist reaction: That's not funny. They had chefs serving them breakfast, Biden told them to back off, because he's got a wife for that? 

Pausing at 1:28 — More laughing and Biden breaks in to tell a story of "When Jill was in graduate school, which was her whole life, it seems," which sounds like a criticism of Jill for getting her education. The story is about an interview someone did with "my daughter," who said her "daddy" couldn't do much, only boil water and cook "psghetti." Again, this is bad feminism! The man just can't cook. Ha ha. So the woman must do the cooking. For decades. And by the way, what's with "my daughter"? Why not "our daughter"?!

"You think that you're the man/I think, therefore, I am/I'm not your friend/Or anything, damn."

So sings Billie Eilish in this new video, which I'm reading about in Vanity Fair — "Jimmy Fallon Parodies Billie Eilish's New Video, Angers 30 Rock Staff" — and watched only so I could understand what Jimmy Fallon had done that pissed people off... and because I like Eilish enough to check out the song, especially since she's highlighting Descartes' famous quip:

 

Here are the lyrics — at Genius — where the annotations include the information: "The video is just the way the song feels to me of just kinda like careless and not really trying.... It’s some random, chaotic, don’t care shit." Some of the best videos have been made like that, with the singer randomly walking along someplace mouthing the lyrics and interacting with this and that. (Yeah? Which ones?!)

Here she's in an empty mall at night, but — as in a dream — the food places are lit up and the fresh food items are ready to be taken and eaten. Notably the pretzels. It's a realistic dream for COVID times. Just to go to a mall again and have a stupid pretzel. Wouldn't it be nice?!

Now, I'm up to speed to watch the Jimmy Fallon parody...

 

Ha ha. COVID dream becomes COVID nightmare. I wish I had a "pretzel" tag, but I won't start one because it would be annoying to add retrospectively, given the metaphorical use of the word. I quoted someone in 2012 saying Mitt Romney "twisted himself into a pretzel, speaking vacuously." How boring to sift through such outdated ephemera. Mitt Romney twists himself into a pretzel, therefore he is. 

But there are also tasty crumbs to be found in a search for "pretzel." There's this — "Pretzels and free will" —  from the first half-year of this blog:

You may have heard that Nicolas Cage will take on the role of Joe Exotic ("Tiger King")...

... Jimmy Fallon takes on the even more challenging role of playing Nicolas Cage playing Tiger King:

What do Lou Reed, Bill O'Reilly, and Adam Driver have in common?

Answer: They all walked out on Terry Gross — the magnificent interviewer of NPR's "Fresh Air."

Info gleaned from "Adam Driver skips out on his NPR interview after host Terry Gross tries to make him listen to a clip from his new Netflix film Marriage Story" (Daily Mail). Gross was on notice that Driver was sensitive about listening to himself. In previous interview with her, he refused to listen to a clip, and this dialogue ensued:

'I don’t want to hear the bad acting that probably was happening during that clip,' he joked.

'Does it throw you off to hear yourself?' she inquired.

'Yeah, no, I’ve watched myself or listened to myself before, then always hate it,' he replied. 'And then wish I could change it, but you can’t. And I think I have, like, a tendency to try to make things better or drive myself and the other people around me crazy with the things I wanted to change or I wish I could change.'

Each of us only knows our own inner life. Some of us more than others have a sense of what Driver is attempting to explain there. I do think there's a great range in how minutely people examine and reexamine their failings and imagined failings. I'm going to guess that Driver's acting is great because he's so uncomfortable with himself all the time that it produces a fascinating on-screen spectacle. In an interview, he doesn't have a script, he's supposed to be producing his own words, and the weird uncomfortableness is not part of a movie, but really him. I can believe that experience, inside his head, is intolerable. Those who feel confident, who roll along unconcerned with imperfections, and who love the sound of their own voice probably don't realize how much they are enjoying freedom from the condition Driver describes.

Why did Lou Reed walk out? According to Terry Gross:

For years I had wanted to interview Lou Reed. When people would ask, “who’s the person you most want to interview?” My answer would be “Lou Reed.”

I finally got to interview him (this was a few years ago) and he ended the interview, in about six minutes or so, or less, because everything I was asking him, he didn’t want to talk about. He said, “I’m sorry this isn’t working” and he walked out.

Why did Bill O'Reilly walk out?

The NYT collects late-night TV-talk-show jokes about Trump's unannounced visit to Walter Reed hospital for what was said to be "phase 1" of his annual physical.

Here's the link to the NYT. I'll just put the jokes in the order that I think they're any good (and I'll leave it to you to determine if I've put this best to worst or worst to best):

“Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham later explained that Trump decided to get parts of his physical done early because he had a ‘free weekend in Washington.’ O.K., that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. [Imitating Trump] ‘Hmm, let’s see, I’ve got the day off. I could spend it with my children — not really my thing. Uh, with my wife? No, she hates me. Uh, my friends? All in jail. Uh, tell you what: I’ll just go to the hospital and have them stick me with needles, just to feel something.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT

“Phase 1 was this weekend, Phase 2 is next — was this a physical or a kitchen remodel?” — JIMMY KIMMEL

"How did everyone like the salad? I thought it was OK, but it needed just a little more scalp oil and a pinch of dandruff."

Look out! It's the wit of Amy Klobuchar. She'll never shake that eating-salad-with-a-comb story, so she's going with self-deprecating humor.

You never know. I once thought Donald Trump could never be elected President because his hair was so weird.

Maybe there's something mystical about hair — connecting celebrities to the people. I remember how The Beatles got to us with hair. And in politics, it does seem that the candidate with the best hair wins.

It might jinx you to come out and say it, of course. John Kerry, on his first day of campaigning with his veep choice, the ill-fated John Edwards, proclaimed:

"We've got better vision. We've got better ideas. We've got real plans. We've got a better sense of what's happening to America. And we've got better hair. I'll tell you, that goes a long way."

My blogged reaction at the time, July 2004, was:

That bulbous wig of a hairdo Kerry's been using to offset his lengthy face is good hair? That flappy, fine fringe accentuating Edwards' babyish looks is good hair? Please! For decades, I've been groaning about the outdated Beatle haircuts worn by aging Baby Boomers. Long hair is a young man's style that makes an older man look like an unattractive woman! Beatle styling, with combed down bangs in front, belongs in the 1960s--early 70s at the latest. It's as if 20 years from now, some guy were to run for President and wear his hair like this. I realize practically every man in Congress is making the same mistake of keeping the Beatle do alive, but could someone please tell these people how terribly estranged from any sense of style these men are? The only one of the current candidates with a respectable hairstyle is George Bush....

And George Bush won, so by my lights the candidate with the best hair did win in 2004, as in all the other elections, including the ones with our last bald president, Dwight D. Eisenhower.



The question of Trump's hair was immensely complicated in 2016, when his opponent was a woman whose oft-changing hair had been a matter of public inquiry for a quarter century. But she chose to forefront the hair comparison. She made a whole routine out of it with Jimmy Fallon...

She says (slightly garbling what must have been a prepared line): "Have you ever been able to let him touch — let you touch his hair?" And then: "Have you ever really touched it?" When Jimmy says no, she says: "You wanna touch mine?" Jimmy grabs a hank and gives it a sturdy pull. The gesture says: This is not a wig. And he shouts: "It's real! It's real!" He waves his hands about joyously and — with the band playing celebratory music – adds: "And it's got wave and it's fantastic, you guys, and it smells great!" He's laughing heartily and she's laughing heartily.

... and that led Jimmy Fallon — when Trump later appeared on his show — to grab Trump's hair the same way he'd grabbed Hillary's. And that normalized Trump's ultra-weird hair.

But back to Amy Klobuchar. That comb is the most famous thing about her, and she can't lose it. She's got to find a way to work with it. And the Democrats need a way to defeat the President with the absurd hair. Well, Amy's got the comb. If rock breaks scissors, and scissors cut paper, and paper covers rock, then surely, comb conquers hair.

"Manafort spoke to Julian Assange/Elvis's hair was black but mine's orange."

Jimmy Fallon has some fun with Trump's recent statement, "Other than the blonde hair when I was growing up, they said I looked like Elvis."



I love the discovery of a new rhyme for "orange," but you have to say "orange" like it's French:



And here's "Assange, Manafort Deny Report They Met. The White House Declined To Address It" (NPR)(quoting a Wikileaks tweet, "Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper's reputation. @WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor's head that Manafort never met Assange").

"Bob? Bob? Where's Bob?"

"I don’t give a fuck. I mean, everybody had to choose for themselves, according to their own conscience, who they felt was the lesser of two evils."

"This is America, it’s a free country, and you know, when you weigh it all together, you know, I just felt like we needed a whole new thing. All the way. Bottom to top."

Said Roseanne last night when Jimmy Fallon asked her about supporting Trump. Video:



ADDED: Since we're talking about female comics on TV yesterday, here was Kathy Griffin on "The View" (saying, among other things, that she's sorry she said she was sorry for posing with a fake severed Trump head):

Onion rings have been a long-time focus of this blog, so I must show you this:

Well, she's just incredibly cool and charming, and her attention to onion rings is delightful. I am glad to cede my onion ring crown to her, but for the record, these are my top 8 onion ring posts:

1. "The new Hillary Clinton video is a take on the last scene of 'The Sopranos.'"

Bill says "No onion rings?" and Hillary responds "I'm looking out for ya." Now, the script says onion rings, because that's what the Sopranos were eating in that final scene, but I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion that, coming from Bill Clinton, the "O" of an onion ring is a vagina symbol. Hillary says no to that, driving the symbolism home. She's "looking out" all right, vigilant over her husband, denying him the sustenance he craves. What does she have for him? Carrot sticks! The one closest to the camera has a rather disgusting greasy sheen to it. Here, Bill, in retaliation for all of your excessive "O" consumption, you may have a large bowl of phallic symbols! When we hear him say "No onion rings?," the camera is on her, and Bill is off-screen, but at the bottom of the screen we see the carrot/phallus he's holding toward her. Oh, yes, I know that Hillary supplying carrots is supposed to remind that Hillary will provide us with health care, that she's "looking out for" us, but come on, they're carrots! Everyone knows carrots are phallic symbols. But they're cut up into little carrot sticks, you say? Just listen to yourself! I'm not going to point out everything.

2. "Let's take a closer look at Bill's carrot and Hillary's onion ring." ("Let's talk about the onion-ring shaped vortex I started yesterday. All I did was a little casual Freudian interpretation of a Hillary Clinton campaign video....")

3. "What is Althouse doing lunching in this sleazy dive?" (This enigmatic post marks the beginning of the Althouse + Meade love affair.)



4. "I've mostly stopped reading Ann Althouse, really."

5. "Meat is no longer murder.... meat is strategy. To attract men -- it's all about attracting men!..."

6. "We drove out into the Driftless Area of Wisconsin...."



7. The one with this picture:



8. The one with this picture:

Touch his hair and lose your power.

It happened to Jimmy Fallon.

Did you watch the Golden Globes last night and hear what the entertainment industry people had to say about Trump?

"The most memorable part may have been at the beginning, when Mr. Fallon’s Teleprompter went out. He vamped for a bit, and after the commercial break he returned with a joke — likening his mishap to Mariah Carey’s singing disaster on New Year’s Eve — that it seemed half of Twitter had already made at that point."

From a NYT review of the Golden Globes show last night, "Trump Was the Elephant in the Ballroom at the Golden Globes."

Jimmy's a nice man. I like him. But I find celebrity talk about presidential politics so compulsively avoidable these days. The celebrities all backed Hillary Clinton. They — in their reeking privilege — seemed to have had their hearts set on 8 more years of glamming it up in the White House.

How many of them were at Obama's Last Party — the one that raved on until 4 a.m. and ended with waffles?

8 years ago, Obama demanded the freedom to "just eat my waffle," and last Saturday, the most elite and celebrated people celebrated the last of The Presidency called Obama with waffles in the White House.

And then they jetted back to L.A. to dress in even prettier clothes to celebrate themselves with awards — golden globular awards — and to take shots from their La La Land* at the new celebrity President, the one whose opponent they all backed, and somehow they think we could care what nastiness they lobbed at Trump.

Did it hit? I don't know. I don't care. We were in the heartland — the frozen heartland — watching another channel and hailing Mary.

____________________________

* "With a 'La La Land' sweep, Hollywood once more falls in love — with itself."

"Metallica joins Jimmy and The Roots in the Tonight Show Music Room to perform 'Enter Sandman' with classroom instruments."

James Hetfield - Vocals, Toy clarinet
Jimmy Fallon - Vocals, Bass Drum, Casio Keyboard, Kazoo
Lars Ulrich - Fisher Price Drum, Toy Cymbals
Kirk Hammett - Melodica
Robert Trujillo - Baby Electric Axe
Questlove - Hand Clappers, Kazoo
Kamal Gray - Xylophone
James Poyser - Melodica
Captain Kirk - Ukulele
Tuba Gooding Jr. - Kazoo, Banana Shaker, Apple Shaker
Mark Kelley - Kazoo
Frank Knuckles - Bongos
Black Thought - Tambourine, Brown Hat

For reference, here's the original "Enter Sandman" video.

It was Hillary Clinton who — a year ago — challenged Jimmy Fallon to touch Donald Trump's hair.

I've been seeing criticism of Jimmy Fallon for being too nice to Donald Trump when he was on the show last week. A lot of people assume that all the interviewers — even the sweet comic entertainer Jimmy Fallon — should do whatever they can to obstruct Donald Trump's path to the presidency. But Fallon played his usual host role and treated Trump like a normal guest, involving him in a number of comic bits, culminating with a request to touch Trump's hair. Trump agreed, Fallon got his hands in there and messed it up, and Trump had to figure out how to behave with his absurd hair in a more absurd new position.

I blogged it here (with video): "He leaned in. It was a risk to let Jimmy have control of how much to mess it up, and then a risk to stand exposed with messed up hair and to look prissy by trying to fix it up afterwards."

Trump handled it so well, and it was so natural and funny, that Trump haters ganged up on nice little Jimmy.

Here's Gothamist, with the headline is: "Nice Moves Normalizing A Racist, Sociopathic Scumbag, Jimmy Fallon!" Text:

Jimmy, what the fuck is wrong with you?... Fallon is complicit in our destruction, as is NBC at large, a network that profits off of Trump's television shows and Miss Universe competition and has repaid him by giving him a hosting spot on Saturday Night Live, and allowing both Matt Lauer and, now, Fallon, to give him metaphorical handjobs on national television. NBC executives are gambling the lives of 7 billion people on ratings and fat paychecks. Hope it's worth it! Go to hell Jimmy Fallon....

And in The Guardian, there's a column — "No, Jimmy Fallon, Donald Trump isn't a laughing matter/Messing up the candidate’s hair might seem like friendly fun. But it humanizes a man whose hateful rhetoric has dehumanized millions of Americans" — that begins:

On Thursday, Jimmy Fallon had Donald Trump on the Tonight Show and ended the segment by saying, “Donald I want to ask you, because the next time I see you you could be the President of the United States. I just want to know if there is something we could do that’s just not really presidential, really – can I mess your hair up?” Trump let him and the NBC audience roared with laughter. But, for many of us, this is very far from being a joke.

Giving comic cover to Trump just isn’t funny when he’s unleashed forces of anti-blackness and anti-immigrant sentiment. He’s labelled Mexicans rapists, raised the prospect of a ban on Muslims, patronized and insulted African Americans while pretending to be a potential new hope. As a result, Fallon managed to come over as one powerful white man protecting another....

But look at this — Hillary Clinton on "The Tonight Show" on September 17, 2015 — about a year ago — laughing and laughing at Donald Trump and goading Jimmy Fallon to do exactly what he ultimately did to Trump's hair.



She says (slightly garbling what must have been a prepared line): "Have you ever been able to let him touch — let you touch his hair?" And then: "Have you ever really touched it?" When Jimmy says no, she says: "You wanna touch mine?" Jimmy grabs a hank and gives it a sturdy pull. The gesture says: This is not a wig. And he shouts: "It's real! It's real!" He waves his hands about joyously and — with the band playing celebratory music – adds: "And it's got wave and it's fantastic, you guys, and it smells great!" He's laughing heartily and she's laughing heartily.

So to those who think Fallon's mussing Trump's hair was too nice: It was Hillary Clinton who went out on "The Tonight Show" and set up Part 1 of a comic bit: My hair can be touched but his cannot. My hair is real and I bet his is not. Fallon followed through with the challenge a year later.

Watch the old video. You may be startled at how vibrant and energetic she was back then — back when there was so much time for the presumed irredeemable ridiculousness of Donald Trump to lead to his inevitable self-destruction. Of course, that's still the plan. He will destroy himself. Meanwhile, it's been Hillary Clinton collapsing from the inside.

Poetic justice.

Miley sings Dylan...

... and says something about Trump...

"There is nowhere I would rather be than in New York City playing this song with the Roots, and being on Jimmy Fallon with our host, who is always so much fun, except when you're Donald Trump. And then don't even think about messing with my hair, I'm serious."

... without taking a position on Trump.

Well played.

Does Jimmy Fallon get to mess up Hillary Clinton's hair?

She's going to be on "The Tonight Show" Monday, and Trump was on the show last night. Jimmy Fallon ended the interview by asking to mess up Trump's hair. Trump agreed!



That took some nerve. And yet if Trump had said no, it would have seemed stiff and prissy. Trump took a risk. He leaned in. It was a risk to let Jimmy have control of how much to mess it up, and then a risk to stand exposed with messed up hair and to look prissy by trying to fix it up afterwards.

Unlike with the Commander-in-Chief Forum, Trump went first. He put in a great performance, but Hillary has the advantage of seeing what Trump did before she goes on. I await her entry into the Hair-Messing Challenge.

The whole interview is excellent — relaxed and entertaining. Other clips are: "Donald Trump Talks Media Coverage, Polls and His Vocal Transformation," "Donald Trump Clarifies His Relationship with Vladimir Putin," "Donald Trump Returns for Another Mock Job Interview for President," and "Donald Trump on Board Games, His Health and Fast Food Habit."  

UPDATE: Later, I realize that Jimmy Fallon did already get his hands into Hillary Clinton's hair, and that it was she who challenged Fallon to do this bit.

Jimmy as Bob as Drake.

Here's the Drake version, for reference...



.... but you shouldn't need it, because even if you don't follow current pop music, you must have gotten up to speed to appreciate the SNL parody that had Donald Trump (the real Donald Trump) dancing in it:

About that Angela Merkel person-of-the-year Time Magazine cover....

"Donald Trump & Ben Carson Watch Democratic Debate."