CSotD: Nothing But Secular Humor
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If Carillo had dropped this tomorrow instead of last Sunday, you might think he was commenting on the Hegseth/Ezekiel/Pulp Fiction matter, rather than accidentally predicting a week in which everyone was wrong and the smart move was to stay out of it.
In any case, Hegseth wasn’t quoting either Zeke or Jules, but since making the Trump administration look foolish is a worthy pursuit, we should now switch to discussing the sodden bum at the head of the FBI, which appears to be a legitimate scandal but perhaps that will deflate as well.
Better get your kicks in while he’s still down.
And brace yourself for Charlie’s visit to the US, coming this week. Venables is possibly only half-joking about what Dear Leader has planned, because he really has ordered up fast food for visitors in the past and we can hope somebody can persuade him not to do it again.
However, Newsweek’s “Chief Royal Correspondent” (I swear I didn’t make that up) reports that apparently nobody told Trump that Charlie is coming to discuss trade agreements. Or they told him and he wasn’t listening, which is equally possible.
Either way, Dear Leader was apparently just expecting another fun time, and my favorite sentence in that story is this:
King Charles invited Trump to a historic second state visit to Windsor Castle in 2025, during which the president was given a carriage procession around Windsor.
I am aware that England’s monarchy is an ongoing cosplay event, but that really sounds like something you’d do to amuse a toddler.
However, what do I know? I thought Camilla was the Chief Royal Co-Respondent.
A bit of timely humor from Toro, which he dropped to celebrate Tax Day. I note, parenthetically, that the tax prep shop here didn’t put anybody out front in a Statue of Liberty costume this year to promote their services, which either suggests that the dress was getting ratty or that they aren’t doing well enough to employ someone to wear it.
Or, given that every other business in town has a “Now Hiring” sign out front, maybe it means there are some things people won’t do for money.
Another bit of timely humor. I doubt Coverly timed this to coincide, but NYC Mayor Mamdani has announced that the city is getting rat-proof trash bins and he’s pledging to halt by 2031 the practice of putting trashbags out on the sidewalks, at least in front of residences.
I guess that means businesses will still be able to do it, perhaps because what is Gotham without untended garbage?
Which sounds like I’m being a snot, but I’ve been to a lot of major cities on this continent and only one of them smells like rotting garbage. I note in that linked story that they tried this once before and called the trash cans “Empire Bins,” to which, as a former resident of the Empire State, I take exception.
But then we used to go up to the dump to shoot rats and it’s been decades since tiny towns throughout the state quit piling the stuff up and began putting it in metal containers. Down in the Big Apple, they don’t shoot rats. They feed them pizza.
Even Mehitabel never got pizza.
On a somewhat related topic, Rosen salutes the well-named junk drawer, repository of twist ties and other things that might come in handy because you never know. I don’t save twist ties, but back when I was getting four newspapers a day, they came with rubber bands around them and as I brought in each paper, I’d put its rubber band around the doorknob.
There was never a problem finding a rubber band in my house back then, but, boy, try to find one today!
Speaking sort of of which, when I was assembling my tax return, I had to turn the place upside down to find a paper clip. I think this is related to the fact that it was also the first time I’d fired up my printer in about four months, and that, when I told people that, their response was “You’re still mailing in your tax forms?”
One more joke about garbage: The Weingarten crew tossed some serious shade at James Patterson the other day and gave me the biggest laff of the week. For those who don’t know, Patterson is basically a publishing house unto himself, putting out both kids’ books and adult titles like Continental Bakery turns out Wonder Bread, and with about the same amount of substance.
Only Continental sold out several years ago and Patterson keeps on selling out, thanks to an army of ghostwriters who perform to his standards so he can maintain a predictable commercial identity. His kids’ books are, admittedly, popular, but I had to stop offering them to my young critics because it was like running the same review every week. Only the titles were changing; the insides were essentially identical.
Walsh provides an inside look at the Patterson process.
A different kind of prolific production from Noth, who pops up in the New Yorker more often than Eustace Tilly, but with memorable instant classics and, as seen here, some solid digs at a malfunctioning world.
Noth is one of several cartoonists who has been releasing half a dozen or more oldies-but-goodies at a time, and this is part of a collection of cartoons about the legal system currently on his Substack, where he runs contests between his cartoons for readers to pick the winner.
Which excellent blog-tending gives me the opportunity to advise other writers and cartoonists that having a blog or Substack or whathaveyou creates an obligation to keep it up. If you only update when you have nothing else to do, it’s like setting up a store but never being open. After people have dropped by enough times and found the place locked up and dark, they’re gonna stop coming.
Why on earth would anybody have to be told this?
Though I guess this guy would dig it.
And this guy may sing about nothing, but check the credits in your music collection: He’s the epitome of why showing up matters.
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