122 Comments
Sep 23·edited Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

-Hyperattenuated zeptocoulombs of quasi-tonal blight,"

Of course! It's obvious when you put it like that.

I wish there was an industry that bluntly attacked the press. I'd buy stock.

Expand full comment

Had to look that one up.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

I did too, but it didn’t help. I had better luck with the Carolina Herrera jacket, which I cannot imagine being flattering on anyone but a 110 lb 6 ft tall scowling teenager.

Expand full comment

I'd scowl too, under those conditions...

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

That's a lotta Coulombs.

Expand full comment

And still his hair won't lie down

Expand full comment

Like he carries around a pocket-sized Van de Graaff generator.

Expand full comment

Cor blimey, a bloke would need a van for that!

Expand full comment

10^-21 is not a lot of Coulombs

Expand full comment

Glad somebody noticed. The collective noun for Coulomb is buncha.

Expand full comment

SCIENCE, I say

Expand full comment

Hey now, not so loud. You'll disturb the Coulombs.

Expand full comment

She blinded me!

Expand full comment

Close to the bone. My late lamented brother was contemporary with Dolby and was doing a lot of the stuff Dolby did with old computers and the like, turning them into music machines. I learned this only after he died, finding the piles of old Trash 80's and Commodore 64's, along with Dolby's autobiography...I'd like to meet Dolby someday just to tell him...

Expand full comment

Too many Coulomb-iyahs...

Expand full comment

Whoa, got me on the math, I knew it would be Bill.

Expand full comment

Well, I too have a PhD in an Engineering field and have taught material that used zepto

Expand full comment

Crypto is so 2023, all the cool kids are now into Zeptocurrency! You can be a sextillioniaire, because each one is only like one sextillionth of a dollar.

Expand full comment

What do you think you are some kind of professor?

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

In the greater scheme of things, what does Nuzzi matter? Were she "cancelled" (as the kool kids say) right out the mainstream media, literally what would the harm be other than to her wallet?

Anyway.

"...that was my left hand, Bolt — I was taking strict dictation with my right."

You know, the idea that Trump coverage as a rule has been even competent approximately ever (now going back to the 1970s, you young punks), is so funny that making a funny post out the idea that mainstream coverage has actually been competent and stuff would seem hard AF.

But I gotta say, the Maestro nailed it.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

To be fair, I have no doubt that Trump truly believes he was on Oprah last week. His brain is now a curdled mass that is incapable of discerning reality from fantasy, and he no doubt had some fantasy conversation with Oprah in which she told him she's ashamed to be a Democrat and only wishes she could MAGA with him.

Expand full comment

It doesn’t help that his factota keep showing him AI-generated images & videos of himself. He probably really believes he’s a Spartan hoplite bearing a BitCoin shield…

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

"One of my Cowboy Astronaut friends came up to me, big, strong Cowboy Astronaut, tears in his space helmet..."

Expand full comment

"You'd think those big strong, manly, cowboy astronaut tears would float around inside his cowboy astronaut space helmet, but he wasn't that kind of a cowboy space astronaut ..."

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a46FDCGluv0

Expand full comment

You have made my day, fren

Expand full comment

I was just relieved it wasn't Steve Miller.

Expand full comment

That is fantastic.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

That's why the Times couldn't say "lie", the possibility that he sincerely believes he was on Oprah.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

He *also* sincerely believes he won in 2020. An entire political party and national news media going along with that delusion is why we're in the mess we're in.

Expand full comment

I have a sneaky feeling there’s more reasons than that, but then I’m cynical that way.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

First of all, big shout out to Nuzzi for making it harder for women journalists to do their jobs. Second, what woman thinks "oh, he's a Kennedy man, I can definitely rely on him to behave honorably towards women." I'm not slut shaming, I'm judgment shaming.

Expand full comment

Brrr! Not saying I haven't found myself at a post-coital moment with some toads, but I couldn't imagine looking up and seeing RFK Jr above me and having him say in that horrible sepulchral leather bottle voice, "Was it as good for you?"

It's every girl's dream, let me tell you. :D

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Yeah when it comes to sex most women can say “mistakes were made,” lol. But this is like seeing a bear trap lying open on the path in front of you and voluntarily stepping into it.

Expand full comment

Choose the bear, not the bear trap

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

You a polar, or more a grizzly?

Asking for a…uhmm…friend…

Expand full comment

Or a bear dead by the side of the ride, deciding to pick it up and use it in a Central Park bike accident mise en scene.

Expand full comment

I can‘t bear this any longer! (Someone had to say it)

Expand full comment

I bet you’re Bearless in Gaza too.

Expand full comment

Among many other things!

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

What the hell would she see in this serial user of women?

She can't say she didn't know his execrable history surely..

From here in East Jesus, Redneckistan, it seems like an insider sort of story: I barely knew the name, and looking at her work product, I'm good with that.

I don't think we'd have heard as much about her if she weren't conventionally attractive.

And seeing her tweet about "People shouldn't think women journalists got their job by sleeping with people"(words to that effect), is a cosmic self own.

Expand full comment
author

"seems like an insider sort of story" yeah that's how I intend to get the big papers to pay attention to me -- talking about stuff they really care about.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

How do you think Ezra Klein got his start?

Expand full comment

He was buddies with Matt Yglesias and Megan McArdle

Expand full comment

How did she achieve the "star" label? I just don't get it.

Expand full comment
author

"supulchral leather bottle voice" lol and the rest of us were fooling with garbage disposal gags

Expand full comment

Hehe - I think that’s accidentally a Waste Land/Aeneid reference… I wasn’t even conscious of the connection…

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

I just wanna know how the toads liked it.

Expand full comment

<Stares at u in Elvira> Well I've never had any complaints

Expand full comment

Can I get a YOICKS!?

Expand full comment

Torgo himself. "The master...the master will not be pleased!"

Expand full comment

Do you think RFK Jr actually cares whether his sexual partner enjoyed the sex?

Expand full comment

Look Doc, I only deal in the ridiculous here…

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Hey at least she didn't end up drowned by a bridge

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

or OD'ed in bed, or...

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

or lobotomized

Expand full comment

Hearted, but OOF.

Expand full comment

Sex with a Kennedy didn't turn out so good for Marylin Monroe, either.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Excellent use of Chekhov’s fly, Roy!

Expand full comment

Respect for craft right there.

Expand full comment
author

Respect for the Chekhov Fly Rule.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

+1 Cherry Orchard

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Ha!

Expand full comment

Can you use that in the infield?

Expand full comment

"Hyperattenuated zeptocoulombs of quasi-tonal blight."

When a guy needs a break so badly he's willing to resurrect Harlan Ellison from the dead...

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Coincidentally, in a hideous misunderstanding of the human enterprise, Hyperattenuated zeptocoulombs of quasi-tonal blight opened the first home game last season for the White Sox. Their entrails were later displayed prominently hanging from the right field fence.

Expand full comment
author

No Mets fan, even on the inactive list, can fail to appreciate the White Sox's catastrophic season.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

(Me, a Cubs fan: Ha-ha.gif)

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Former Cubs fan here, you deserve whatever enjoyment you can eke out of our bitter existence.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

I grew up on the South Side, where Cubs fans are rare. So the White Sox burning through whatever good will they had is to me delicious.

When Einhorn and Reinsdorf bought the Sox they immediately erased every vestige of Bill Veeck, and then demanded the city and state build them a new ballpark (which they're still paying for) or they were moving to St. Petersburg. (In hindsight they should have gone to the one in Russia.)

They rehired Tony La Russa to "discipline" their young ballplayers, and "disciplined" them right out of playoff contention. They've demanded *another* ballpark (to which Governor Pritzker said "Ha ha, no") and to move to Nashville (surrendering the nation's third largest media market for the 27th).

At this point, the only hope is that Reinsdorf surrenders control before he dies. Not looking likely.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

The good people of Green Bay, Wisconsin never have to put up with this shit.

Expand full comment

Oh yeah? How would you like it if your stadium was completely closed by the asshole owner? White Sox at least have a stadium to come home to next summer, whereas the A's...

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

If ever there should be a hostile takeover of a franchise, it should be the Oakland A's. (The A's have been in Oakland longer than they were in Philadelphia.)

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

The A's gots Sacto, so the fun factor could be thru the...well, maybe not the roof...

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

"...the White Sox's catastrophic season."

And this time they don't even have the excuse that they're being paid to lose!

Expand full comment

Oh wow, I have his rookie card. Think it’s worth something?

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Only if it has bloodstains. Tough market.

Expand full comment

You had me with the hedline. Almost lost me with “zeptocoulombs” but Bolt reeled me back in.

Expand full comment

The crashing drone camera was the satirical “happy ending” we didn’t even know we longed for.

A friend & I were joking that a shady massage parlor should offer a “sad ending” service, where you end up crying insistently & the masseuse touches your back softly & murmurs “There there. It will be OK.”

Expand full comment
author

"Hey, I can get that at home" [rimshot]

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Not cold beer, Akron, Ohio and "Poor, poor thing"?

Expand full comment
author

Deep cut, Elwood!

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

I'm not deep, just old.

Expand full comment
Sep 23·edited Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Wasn't the high-class hooker in one of the Hitchhikers Guide books like that?

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Eccentrica Gallumbits is well known as The Best Bang Since the Big One, but I am not hip to her particular powers, having never strayed within her erogenous zone...

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Not her. I checked and in So long and Thanks for All The Fish, Ford meets a "working girl" with a Master's Degree in Social Economics. We never learn her name but her time ends with her saying "It's OK, honey, it's really OK, you got to learn to feel good about it. Look at the way the whole economy is structured...".

Expand full comment

Say, is it hot in here or is it just Milton Friedman burning a wee bit hotter in hell this evening...?

Expand full comment

Can peak anti-music description be achieved? Today’s verbal rendering of the cacophony that RO’s intro “music” is baroque (not, like, Bach baroque) but it is almost onomatopoetic. If a thesaurus wasn’t used, my respect is triple.

Expand full comment

Then there’s the simple metaphor of hell’s gate’s rusty hinges. I would read a telephone book full of these. Maybe arrange them as haiku.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Between the courts and the press, we have been given the horrifying possibility of a second Trump administration. Whatever their beliefs - originalism, both-siderism - they are as blind to the reality they are threatening us with as the German putzes who thought Hitler couldn’t be

as bad as some said. There is a higher standard to be held than their beliefs, the Do No Harm to the American People standard, under which they are all rightly condemned as disgusting failures.

Anyway, I’m glad it wasn’t Olivia Roderigo, that would’ve broken my heart.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Here's how it should be done: NBC reports on his loopy claims about Harris, but also makes the effort to report that he'd said exactly the same loopy things about Joe Biden (would crash the stock market and the economy, destroy America and END CHRISTMAS). Just think of the extra effort involved! No, we can't expect very much of this sort of thing.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/apocalypse-delayed-trump-promising-doom-never-comes-rcna170151

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Repubs believe Biden did all those things

Expand full comment

Yes, America is DESTROYED, just look out your window, also no Christmas, just ask your kids.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Limerick, Shirley:

When Roy catches the muse and goes on his binges

And we watch for the spot where Bolt Upright cringes

Then we laugh with delight

At Peoni’s plight

When hearing hell’s gate’s rusty hinges

Expand full comment
Sep 23·edited Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Re: dating Kennedy, a comedian (whose name escapes me) has a great routine about a woman dating Hulk Hogan. A friend asks her questions about her new beau and gets comedic answers. Pardon me for paraphrasing from memory:

A) "Well, he's bright orange and horseshoe bald with a mullet."

A) "No, he's about eighty, but ripped."

A) "All yellow spandex."

Point being, it would be easy to rework the routine around RFK Jr. (I wouldn't limit myself to his appearance, though.)

Expand full comment

"...unless things have really changed at the Times since I took my buyout..." That there is my fave.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

"Hyperattenuated zeptocoulombs of quasi-tonal blight." Beat poetry, man.

Expand full comment
Sep 23·edited Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

New NBC poll says only 34% of Americans think Trump is mentally and physically capable of being President, 45% will vote for him. I'll leave the pondering of the difference between those two numbers to you.

Expand full comment

Would not be surprised if a 33% of that 34% are also in the 45% who would vote for TFG. The math is possibly mathing, but I didn't become an English professor to do that kind of scitte...

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Those 11 points are pretty well described here, I think: https://billytownsend.substack.com/p/the-maga-fluid-cant-avoid-choosing

Expand full comment
Sep 23·edited Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

These fucking people shouldn't fascinate me as much as they do, especially because I suspect it's merely a case that they truly don't give a shit.

Expand full comment

scitte

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Name checks out.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

There are those who only vote to end abortion and save baaabbbbieeees, the "mah guns" guys, racists, misogynists, and the "fuck everybody" types. Quite a coalition.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Yes, that's a big part of it, but as the post points out, the loons couldn't get anywhere without millions of seemingly-normal people just voting R out of habit. For those people, I don't think it's a case of "Party loyalty outweighs any other consideration", I think it's that there are no other considerations. Government is a hundred million miles away from me, whether it's managed competently or burned to the ground is of no importance to me, living my comfortable life here in this Florida retirement community.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Yeah them too.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

It's a shit sandwich, who cares about the condiments?

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Yeah I think that’s mostly it too, with the caveat that they will suddenly care if it impacts them, the classic example being the anti-gay pol who starts waving a pride flag when their kid comes out.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Just think about the stuff your average Republican car dealer has to think about every day: Should I take the boat out this weekend? Is it time to close up the cottage on the lake, and the old guy we pay to do that, is he still alive? So many thoughts racing around in his brain, who's got time to rethink the voting habits of a lifetime?

Expand full comment

Community influence explained a lot of it. Do as your neighbors do.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

A bunch of the 66% won't vote

Expand full comment

Those numbers have different denominators. 45% of the ~60% who vote is about 27%, so less than 34%

Expand full comment

Good point, usually with polls they're reporting "likely voters", I don't know if that true for all the questions.

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

"I don’t see how they think they are a solution by undermining faith in what we do..."

I don't see how people who [criticize a particular institution] think they are a solution by undermining faith [in said institution.]

Plug in "Catholic Church" or "The largest banks", lots of choices, it's a fun game to play at home!

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

I wonder: Did Nuzzi think that, if she trashed Biden enough, Junior would end up as the Democratic nominee?

Expand full comment
Sep 23Liked by Roy Edroso

Whoa…

Expand full comment