Monday Morning Reading -- Nothing About The Bakken -- February 6, 2017

First of all, another big "thank you" for a reader sending me that link to the Foreign Affairs article on Donald Trump and Jacksonian populist nationalism. That article helps immensely when reading the post-election issues of The New Yorker.  I mention the Foreign Affairs article, again, here. Just reading that article and taking notes on it has made in infinitely easier to get through The New Yorker. Once one is able to actually read TNY one finds, again, that it really, really has some good writing. Their politics and their world myths may be completely wrong, but it is so much easier to read when one realizes the writers have no clue and why they have no clue.

Back to TNY later.

But first some notes on Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers, Leslie Bennetts, c. 2016. I generally have no interest in the biographies of current celebrities but Joan Rivers has always fascinated me. The facts in the introduction in this book are quite extraordinary:

• age 55: after a lifetime of earning millions, she was in debt $37 million
• her husband had squandered her wealth on bad investments
• she had a gun on her lap and was contemplating suicide
• she stopped when she asked herself who would take care of her Yorkie
• no one was hiring her any more; she was washed up
• she decided to press on 

Let's see, from wiki:

• born 1933
• 55 years old: 1988

What happened to Joan in the 1980s and the comeback? From wiki:

• 1983: Carnegie Hall
• 1984: UK's TV show An Audience With Joan Rivers
• 1986: longtime friendship ended with Johnny Carson
• 1987: her nighttime show -- behind-the-scenes disaster
• 1987, May 15: Rivers and husband fired by Fox
• 1987, August 14: Rivers' husband commits suicide
• 1987: Nancy Reagan helps Rivers
• 1988: $37 million in debit 
• 1989: The Joan Rivers Show -- five years; 
• 1990: Daytime Emmy for that show
• 1994: hosts E! Entertainment Television pre-awards show for the Golden Globe Awards
• 1995: hosts the show itself
• 1994: nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Actress in a Play and a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (a play she co-wrote and starred in)
• 1997: hosts own radio show in NYC
• 2003: 3-year, $8 million contract to cover award shows' red carpet events for the TV Guide Channel

A word I would not have known had I not read British history: droit du seigneur, p. 83.  Rivers tells how she broke into the big time.

Chapters eight, nine, and ten, hickory, dickory, dock: the story of the Joan Rivers-Johnny Carson feud.

Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck one ...

From The Book of Numbers, John H. Conway and Richard K. Guy, c. 1996, page 2:

One such system is:

wan, twan, tethera, methera, pimp,
sethera, lethera, overa, dovera, dick,
wanadick, twanadick, tetheradick, metheradick, pimpdick,
setheradick, letheradkic, hoveradick, doveradick, bumfit,
wanabumfit, ...

Such rustic sequences appear in many countries. They are usually highly corrupted versions of the standard number systems of ancient languages.

Hickory, dickory, doc,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one;
The mouse ran down.
Hickory, dickory, dock.

Probably "hickory," "dickory," and "dock" are the words for "eight," "nine," and "ten" in one of these systems (compare "hovera, dovera, dick"), while "eeny, meeny, miny, mo" mean "one, two, three, four" in another.

More can be found at wiki, elsewhere.

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The New Yorker

Updates

February 7, 2017: I've mentioned many, many times that after years of off and on subscriptions to The New Yorker, I finally had to cancel the magazine last year -- it had turned into a mouthpiece for Hillary. I thought things might change after the election, but it seems the editor has doubled down. Now the Trump cartoons are on the front cover. Perhaps I was over-reacting?

A reader sent me a link to this CNN interview. I was not imagining things -- it's being reported even on CNN -- The New Yorker seems to be "hysterical" over the Trump presidency. I rarely visit the Rush Limbaugh site, and and only went there to see the CNN video -- it's a long piece, but the New Yorker reference is very, very early on: 

Original Post

 

I can't find it now, but in one of the articles I read today, the writer suggested (and probably quite accurately) that the moment Donald Trump decided to run for president was while listening to Seth Meyers at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. The writer noted that even President Obama's "words" at that dinner were beneath the dignity of the "dignity president himself." 

January 23, 2017:

• "The Financial Page: Big Ticket Transit" by James Surowiecki, p. 21
• NYC's recently opened Second Avenue subway
• three stations and two miles of track: $1.7 billion
• James sounds like a Trumper in his essay
• "Personal History: My Father's Cellar, A Lifetime of Drinking" by John Seabrook, p. 22
• seven pages
• personal history of a most tragic history
• "The Critics, On Television: Tragedy Plus Time, How jokes won the election, p. 66
• four pages plus a full page graphic
• I always find it amazing how folks who claim to "know" Trump so well don't get the joke (or the jokes) 

January 30, 2017:

• "American Chronicles: Autumn of the Atom, How arguments about nuclear weapons shaped the climate-change debate" by Jill Lepore, p. 22
• 6 pages 
• I am not sure it's worth reading

February 6, 2017:

• "The Financial Page: The Corruption Conundrum" by James Surowiecki, p. 21
• eyes wide shut
• "A Reporter At Large, The Avengers of Mosul, The desperate fight, block by block, to destroy, ISIS" by Luke Mogelson, p. 35
• 26 pages with pictures
• certain to be part of a future book
• really, really good