Here’s a list of great flops in recent times. Feel free to add your own in the comments section.
Here we go.
Trump impeachment. Battlefield Earth movie. The XFL. (Yes, a revival is planned.) Jussie Smollett’s hate crime. Joe Walsh’s Republican primary challenge against Trump, as well as those of William Weld and Mark Sanford. New Coke. Cop Rock TV show. Watermelon-flavored Oreos. Heaven’s Gate movie. Bernie Madoff. Jar Jar Binks. The Cleveland Browns firing Bill Belichick. ESPN becoming woke. Theresa May’s call for a snap parliamentary election in 2017. Cheetos lip balm. Paris Hilton. The Big Ten conference inviting Rutgers to join. Anything related to Anna Nicole Smith. Mars Needs Moms movie. Manimal TV show. Jeremy Corbin’s term as head of the Labour Party. Pontiac Aztek. The San Diego Chargers move to Los Angeles. Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign, “I was born to be in it.” Google Glass. CNN’s decision to become the impeachment network. Rosie O’Donnell on The View. Michael Avenatti’s presidential run. Enron. Motorola Rokr phone. (I was given one of these by my employer at the time. It was truly a dreadful device.) Heinz purple ketchup.
Now some of these debacles can also double as hoaxes, such as the “racist assault on Smollett. And of course the impeachment of Trump, which of course is stumbling along despite the lack of evidence that a crime was committed.
Witch-hunter in chief in the House, Adam Schiff, dabbles in screenplay writing. Perhaps a Schiff-scripted movie might make it on a future list.
If you thought Greta was insufferable before can you imagine how she’ll be now?
This is likely the 1st time in Time’s history that a person who has actually had no impact on the world, nor is likely to, has been chosen as Person of the year.
Presuming she doesn’t know it now, the day she realizes this is all a con will be her 1st chance to actually be worthy of being named person of the year.
Alas I will likely not be alive to interview Greta in thirty years to ask her why we are all still here.
Finally nothing Confirms Impeachment as a bigger Dud than Greta Thunburg being picked by Time as Person of the Year.
UPDATE Bonus Thought:
This is the 2nd time in my life (the 1st being when Obama won the Nobel Prize) that I woke up, saw a news report and thought I was still asleep.
Forty years ago Sunday I saw my first rock concert–and a great way to start out–it was my 18th birthday and it was the Who at the International Amphitheater in Chicago.
Sunday morning I was headed to another midwestern city on another birthday of course, this time headed for Milwaukee to run in the Santa Hustle 5K. And from my iPod I pressed “Play” to listen to the latest, and probably last, album by the Who, entitled, simply, Who.
The Who always had an attitude–and they still do. Lead singer Roger Daltrey, 75, now a baritone, barks out Pete Townshend’s lyrics on the opening track, “All This Music Must Fade.”
I don’t care.
I know you’re gonna hate this song.
And that’s it.
We never really got along.
It’s not new, not diverse.
It won’t light up your parade.
It’s just simple verse.
Townshend, 74, who wrote all but one of the songs for Who, the exception is “Break The News” by his brother Simon, looks back at the past, as is expected by any old man. Townshend once wrote on his iconic 1965 classic, “My Generation” this boast, “I hope I die before I get old.”
Chronologically only drummer Keith Moon,died young at 32, but years of drug and alcohol abuse aged him quickly–he was a physical wreck when he died in his sleep of a drug overdose. Drugs killed bassist John Entwistle at 58, also in his sleep, on the eve of a Who tour.
The Who have taken us from “The Music Must Change” on Who Are You, the last album with Moon, to “All This Music Must Fade.” Moon, who died a month after that album’s release, was unable to play drums on “The Music Must Change” because it was in the 6/8 time measure. He was once considered the worlds greatest rock drummer
The surviving Who members, aided on some tracks by unofficial bandmates Zak Starkey on drums and Pino Palladino on bass, don’t embarrass themselves. But they don’t exceed expectations. So if you’re looking for a septuagenarian anthem to match with “I Can See For Miles,” or “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” you will be disappointed. With few exceptions, the aforementioned “Break The News” is one, Who is formulaic, it’s got just enough synthesizers to recall Who Are You and the other Townshend/Daltrey Who album, Endless Wire, and the Townshend backup vocals seem scientifically placed. And that’s a problem as Townshend and Daltrey never appeared in the studio together for Who.
Other elements of the past on Who include the album artwork, designed by Peter Blake, who also created the Face Dances album cover, and the song “Detours.” Who scholars know that the earliest incarnation of the band was named the Detours.
“Ball and Chain” was the first song released from Who. It’s about the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Townshend opposes it, and that’s all you can extract from the pedestrian lyrics, that is, to reference “All This Music Must Fade,” only “just simple verse.”
As one ages death often becomes a common thought, and Townshend explores mortality in several songs here. If you are looking for intriguing albums about death, I recommend instead Magic and Loss by Lou Reed and the later albums of the American series by Johnny Cash. If you are prefer something less morbid from an older person looking back, the two Americana albums by Ray Davies, the Kinks mastermind, will provide a much better experience than Who for you.
Let me obscure. The most moving song about getting old and having regrets is “Ghosts” by Randy Newman, from his largely forgotten Born Again collection.
Back to the Who.
But does any of this discussion even matter to Daltrey and Townshend? I downloaded the deluxe version from Apple Music, which contains “Got Nothing To Prove.” An unexpected throwback to the mid-1960s, when the Who was a great singles band, it would have been one of the best tracks on the album, had it not been ruined by James Bond-theme styled orchestration.
Doris “Dorie” Miller has always been my favorite Pearl Harbor hero. Is it because he was black? Partially.
Simply, it’s impossible to separate his race from his heroism, considering that the US. Military was segregated back then, that black servicemen and women were mostly assigned to segregated units, and that most were tasked with servant and “menial” jobs. Miller, himself, was a cook — Messman Third Class and Ship’s Cook Third class — aboard the USS West Virginia. Way back when I was in kindergarten, he was the first war hero to enter into my consciousness.
Miller was the recipient of the Navy Cross – at that time, the third highest award behind the Medal of Honor and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal — for the following:
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Miller was doing laundry below decks on the USS West Virginia. When the alarm called the ship’s crew to battle stations, Miller headed a gun magazine amidships [sic]. A torpedo had damaged the magazine, so the physically strong Miller began carrying the wounded to safety. Among those he attended to was the ship’s commander, Capt. Mervyn Bennion, who was mortally wounded. Miller then manned a .50-calibre antiaircraft gun, for which he had no training, and continued firing on the enemy until he ran out of ammunition and received the order to abandon ship.
Admiral Chester Nimitz himself pinned the Navy Cross to the young man’s chest. Miller died in 1943 when his subsequent ship, the USS Liscome Bay, was sunk by the Japanese. He was 24.
There was a Navy destroyer escort/frigate named in Miller’s honor – the USS Miller, service date 1973 to 1991.
What I love about Doris Miller’s existence is that the man was here for only a short time and was merely playing the cards that life dealt him when he performed the action that will long outlive him. When the challenge came, he stepped to it and met it — something intrinsic in heroes and heroism.
And this may seem like a change of topic, but it isn’t. Back when Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV; ironically) passed away in 2010, I remembered writing — prior to his passing — about his actions during WWII:
Byrd refused to serve in World War Two due to blacks being a part of the force, even in their lowly status before the desegregation of the US Armed Forces in 1948. I cited that here using Wiki, but the reference has been cleaned up.
If, by some chance Byrd got to go to Heaven, I hope he gets to be Dorie Miller’s butler.
Whoever Miller’s Heavenly Cook and Messman is, I’m sure he’s just happy to be there serving a great man and is doing so with a smile.
