The Daily Donnybrook, and other fine things

Posted on June 8, 2026June 19, 2026 by Mike 2 Comments

Welcome to Ye Aulde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. New posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…

Mike @Substack

New Eyrie posts go up every Monday and Friday, although the time of day may (and most likely will) vary. Mike’s latest Eyrie offering is available for perusal here: “Got it yet, Mr Trump?“ Links to archived Golden Oldies are findable down at the bottom of each post.

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“Peak circus”

Posted on June 20, 2026June 20, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

Every Real American not only should but absolutely MUST remember this stupid shit next time there’s a D卐M☭CRAT president.

Pro-Algae Eco Activists Oppose the Cleanup of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
Controversy over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is drawing national attention again after “Pro-Algae” protesters began a demonstration opposing the Trump administration’s cleanup and restoration of the historic landmark. Independent journalist Emily Miller interviewed the self-described “Team Algae” protesters who reportedly return every day to protest the Reflecting Pool’s cleanup.

“We have reached peak circus here,” Miller said, as National Park Service crews removed the green algae using advanced nanobubble technology.

This video, posted on YouTube, recorded the pro-algae protesters. Miller reported on X that at least one male protester was arrested for jumping into the water and grabbing hoses from female Park Service workers who were clearing the algae.

On June 19, left-wing vandals reportedly slashed the new blue sealant on the pool floor and scrawled “86 47,” widely understood as a threat to assassinate the 47th President, NBC Washington reported. The $15 million cleanup project is designed to repair leaks, improve the pool’s water systems, and give the basin a clean appearance ahead of the July 4 weekend.

Soon after the pool was refilled, algae mysteriously reappeared across portions of the water, creating a visible green tint. President Donald Trump has blamed vandals for the recent damage to the pool sealant and algae growth.

“We’ve had some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool, which sits between The Washington Monument and The Lincoln Memorial,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

To say the very least, yeah. Know how to put an end to it once and for all? Issue an “immediate deadly force” authorization for the National Mall security forces…and see to it that it is enforced against the shitlib degenerates.

“Pro algae activists”? Yeah, gedoouddahere with that horseshit. What they ARE is America-hating Commie brats who have never been called to account, reined in, or disciplined for anything their whole lives, that’s what. If “PAAs” is what they prefer to be called, then as far as I’m concerned that’s all the more reason to call them something else—ANYTHING else.

Did some starry-eyed fool say “free”?

Posted on June 20, 2026June 20, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

A lamented loss.

Northern Barbarian
@xnoesbueno
Why we post about Britain. Because the British can’t.

That, and because Britain is whence we sprang as a nation, and we still love Britain. And having expended considerable blood and treasure in Britain’s defense, we are not without standing.

We hate to see Britain descending into its Labour nightmare. Mass migration. Two tier justice. Racist police who turn a blind eye to rape, let a young man die because the foreigner who stabbed him cried racism. Police who will show up promptly to arrest you if you post something that might “cause anxiety” or “offend” but more particularly challenge authority.

We do that for Canada, too. And Australia.

Why has such a swath of the Anglosphere become so wretchedly authoritarian? The Anglosphere having spread civilization and notions of liberal governance, free enterprise, individual freedom around the world.

By far the biggest part of the Anglosphere, the United States, thankfully remains free.

Yeah. Thankfully.

They revoked their entire season for…smoking cigars? What? The image of a team celebrating with cigars was too “chauvinistic” for people to handle and they chimped out? What the heck is going on here? https://t.co/lgno5wSgFg

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital)

June 19, 2026

A-HENH! In a comments-section response to the above post on conquered Britainistan, NB adds:

It doesn’t get better than this. The third worlders know. Now the Euros are finding out.

Go out in the world, have a look. It doesn’t get better than this.

And engineered to be self-correcting. Perfect? No. But better than anything else humanity has come up with.

— Northern Barbarian (@xnoesbueno)

June 20, 2026

*looks at watch* Yeeaaahhh, that “self-correction” oughta be kicking in ANY TIME NOW *checks watch again*

Actually, I don’t entirely disagree with NB’s assertion that Amerika v2.0 is about as good as it gets with respect to what we’re pleased to refer to as freedom. He’s right; I’ve been to several other countries myself and, with the possible exception of the Netherlands (now completely overrun by Mooselimb immivaders, sadly enough), this really IS about as good as it gets out there in the wider world.

However, seems to me that’s damning with faint praise, just another feeble cope—which is absolutely NOT something any liberty-minded Real American ought to be willing to settle for. Once-Great Britain, Ireland, and Scotland aren’t the only nations badly in need of a revolution, seems to me.

Jefferson tree of liberty.

More:

Scandalously, Thomas Jefferson once wrote to James Madison, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and is as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”

In the same year, 1787, in regard to what is known as Shays’ Rebellion, he wrote another friend, “God forbid that we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.” A lack of rebelliousness among the people would demonstrate “a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. . . And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?”

Truer words were never etc.

All of which goes to show that, as Jefferson clearly understood, there are two (2) standards for assessing the freedom of any nation-state, one correct and proper, one gone grievous astray:

The Absolute Standard, ie, Jefferson’s Way: either there is liberty, or there is not, as I’ve so often put it here
The Relativist Standard: one given country can fairly be said to be freer than some other one—as i said, a feeble cope by which we reassure ourselves that we haven’t entirely betrayed the ideals of our Founding Fathers quite yet

Update! We may have fallen down on the whole “freedom” thing, but at least the food is good.

pic.twitter.com/HtBomjLchq

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf)

June 19, 2026

Suicidal madness

Posted on June 19, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

A/K/A Leftism.

The most self-destructive pillars of lefty lunacy finally begin to fall
The grotesque sexual misconduct involving Democratic politicians — from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to California Rep. Eric Swalwell — has finally put #MeToo to rest.

We were reminded of its demise when it was revealed that Maine senatorial candidate and socialist heartthrob Graham Platner had been discovered to possess a long social media history of crude and pornographic put-downs of women.

The demise of Black Lives Matter offers another example of a recurring left-wing phenomenon: movements that begin as moral crusades and end as self-parodies.

Almost every BLM cause célèbre has proved fraudulent, following a long tradition that stretches from Al Sharpton’s Tawana Brawley myth to the Duke lacrosse scandal.

The aftermath of the death of George Floyd did lasting damage to the country that still reverberates.

What accounts for these bouts of periodic, collective and suicidal madness?

First, the craziness is almost always birthed in the contemporary, affluent and leisured West, which alone has the capital and resources to afford such freakish sideshows.

Second, the frenzies are usually the creation of the left, predictably birthed in universities, the media and the bureaucracies.

They appear with familiar symptoms. The irredeemable, deplorable and “garbage” hoi polloi are supposedly too dense to be properly schooled and thus must be frightened to death in order to adopt agendas that otherwise appear to them as utterly insane.

Junk your natural-gas dryer and grill, or face massive floods on your coasts. Drop the SAT and defund the police or face endless race riots.

Hire thousands of race and gender commissars or be forever tagged as racists, sexists, homophobes and transphobes.

Open the border and let illegal aliens enter by the millions, and thus pay partial penance for “whiteness.”

The left is correct that few Western voters will openly embrace the unpopular elite agenda of racial fixations, globalism, laxity on crime and degrowth environmentalism.

We can’t be rid of the Leftard mind-disease soon enough to suit me.

When a throwaway song…isn’t

Posted on June 19, 2026June 19, 2026 by Mike 3 Comments

GREAT story from a great artist, the late, lamented Tom Petty.

Bugs, a roadie who’s been with us since the day we started, bought me this Yamaha keyboard. I said, Man, why’d you buy that? It’s expensive! He said, If you write one song on it, it’ll pay for itself. So he charged it for me and left it there.

Jeff Lynne was over one night and I started playing with it. I played…

[Petty hums the opening chords of Free Fallin’]

Jeff goes, Wait. What was that? Just play that first part over and over. Okay, I did. And Jeff’s just sitting there smiling and he says, Go on, sing something.

So just to make Jeff smile I sang, [in a nasal voice with an exaggerated Southern accent] She’s a good girl, loves her mama, loves Jesus, and America too… And Jeff said, That’s not funny, Tom, that’s really good. Keep going.

From there I wrote the first and second verses completely spontaneously. We were smart enough to have a cassette on.

Jeff said, Go up on the chorus, take your voice up a whole octave, what’ll that sound like? I said, What do I sing? Jeff said, I’m free falling. So I sang, I’m freeee… He said, Whoa, there’s power in that, that’s good.

I wrote the third verse after he left and brought it in and showed it to him the next day. It all fit together and we were really excited.

[After the song came out,] Axl Rose called and asked me, Where did you get that line about the vampires in the valley? When I’m driving I sometimes see these shadowy-looking people just off the sidewalks, around the post office. I always thought of them as vampires for some reason.

Proving once again the unimpeachable veracity of the old saw that every songwriter’s process is different. Back when I was hauling freight all over Hell and half of Georgia, I used to keep a small notepad and pencil right beside me for those not-rare occasions when inspiration would hit as I was choogling down the highway. Yessir, believe it or leave it, but some of the songs I’m proudest of were written from the driver’s seat of a Freightshaker, K-Whopper, or International Pro Sleeper.

New category: Inside the sausage factory.

The SIQ (Song in Question):

1

Baseballers ain’t having none

Posted on June 19, 2026June 19, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

Tough titty for the team owners, MLB bigwigs, &c.

MLB Continues Shameful Anti-Christian Crusade—Threatens Players Over Bible Verses on ‘Pride Night’ Caps
In yet another display of its ongoing war on Christian faith, Major League Baseball has issued an official warning to three San Francisco Giants pitchers who dared to write Bible verses on their Pride Night caps.

And by ‘warning’ we mean threat, because what follows a warning in sports? Most likely a fine. Or, you know, as per Rule 3.03 of the official MLB Rulebook, a non-conforming player can be barred from participating in the game.

While the league under Commissioner Rob Manfred eagerly green-lights rainbow alterations and perpetually bows to the LGBT alphabet mafia, it is drawing a firm line at players subtly referencing God’s word.

It’s shameful. Utterly shameful.

It is that, at the very, very LEAST. Ahh, but does the story get even better, you ask? Why, yes; yes, it most certainly does.

Courage is indeed contagious. The brave stand of the San Francisco Giants’ players who wrote Genesis 9:12-16 on their caps, and the Texas Rangers’ continued stance to not host Pride Nights in June, has much to do with this latest development in the pushback on the month-long Pride celebrations from more baseball players.

The York Revolution announced it has canceled and forfeited its scheduled Thursday game against the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs after several players refused to wear the team’s planned Pride Night jerseys.

In a statement issued late Wednesday, the club said the decision was made with “great disappointment” and that tickets for the June 18 game will be treated as a rainout and may be redeemed for any future 2026 regular-season home game.

From the York franchise’s statement.

No excerpt from that turgid mess of groveling, pusillanimous rumpswabbery, sorry not sorry. Heap big kudos, however, to the York Rev players, the Texas Rangers, the SF Jints, and the rest for their bold stand in defiance of PC/Wokester fascism, sez I. My favorite bit? Gotta be this:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott praised his Texas Rangers, who continue to lead by example, and chastised Major League Baseball for their punitive attitude towards free speech expressions of faith.

The Texas Rangers are the only team in Major League Baseball that doesn’t host a Pride Night. This week, they’re hosting Faith and Family Night instead.

Meanwhile, MLB just warned Giants pitchers for writing Bible verses on their own caps.

In Texas, we don’t punish people for living out their faith. We protect that right.

Thursday night, the Texas Rangers will host “Faith & Family” Night, where the players are welcomed to share their personal testimonies of faith.

Well said, Gov. How very sad that such plainspoken, common-sensical normality should come across as a tremendously refreshing change, a highly unusual breath of clean, fresh air as compared to the vile, emetic dreck the Toxic Left ladles nonstop over Real American heads each and every day. Or, as Ms O’Connell puts it:

Bravo to the York players, and other players in the MLB who openly live their values and go their own way, instead of bowing the knee to the culture’s demands for LGBTQ+ orthodoxy. The York players get the hat tip this week. They didn’t ask for permission or forgiveness; they just took a stand.

Indeed they did. Pride Month my wrinkled, baggy old ass.

Update! How long can it be before some other ballplayer—most likely no higher than Double A status, possibly Single A or even Legion ball—holds a press conference, flouncing proudly into the room at the appointed hour in women’s clothing, size 17EE pumps, and not nearly enough troweled-on makeup to conceal his coarse, three-day shadow/beard and gaily declare himself a Transpysrsyn who, despite his fully intact courting tackle, has always strongly “identified” as female?

“Who was the most boring rock star?”

Posted on June 18, 2026June 18, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

Via my daily Quora Digest email: question asked, question answered. Well, kinda sorta.

Who was the most boring rock star?
I was the music director of a popular college rock station in the early 1980s, and as such, had the opportunity to interview or sit in on interviews with a lot of touring acts, whose A&R people would dutifully bring them by to help boost interest and airplay.

I can tell you there were a few good ones. David Johansen was boisterous and hilarious. Greg Kihn was cool and folksy. Steve Perry and Neil Schon of Journey probably would’ve been a great interview, but we were all punky and new wavy and our edgy drive time guy insulted them so they stormed off the set. Definitely not boring. And Nick Lowe was charming, clever, and full of stories, including a few about his longtime pal and running mate, Dave Edmunds.

You know who was boring as…well, really boring? Dave Edmunds! I don’t know if he was strung out from the road the day we got him, or bummed out to be stuck with a bunch of snooty kids, or whatever, but man, you could not crowbar a word from him. He just slouched in the chair, issuing monosyllabic grunts and such, until the interview mercifully ended.

The guy could really put on a show, and he was an amazing guitarist, and who even knows what he was like in real life back in the day, but in my sole encounter, for whatever reason, he was the most boring rock star. Hopefully someone has a story to counter this impression, so I can put the blame on me.

Been there done that myself, I’m afraid. One of the most embarrassing occasions of my whole life had to be the time we went to a local college radio station the morning after a gig in NOLA for an interview session. It being N’Awlins and all, naturally we weren’t merely hung over when we got there, we were still drunk as boiled owls. So every question received a mumbled, semi-coherent one or two word response. The poor DJ was totally at sea trying to make us sound lively and interesting, poor bastid.

The most heinous injustice of all time?

Posted on June 18, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

Schlichter mulls it over.

Savages vs. Civilization
Karmelo Anthony—his first name sounds like some off-brand 99 Cent Store nougat confection—is going to prison for 35 years, and he is relatively lucky. He is lucky he does not live in a society that treats monsters appropriately. A civilized society does not tolerate his brand of sociopathy. It executes such criminals—not only as righteous retribution and not only as an example to others, but as an act of societal hygiene. For a millennium, Europe hanged, beheaded, or otherwise dispatched about 1 percent of its male population every year for various crimes, and you know what? After a while, there were not that many more criminals left. European society was remarkably peaceful as far as crime, if not as far as war. But we moderns decided to go another way. We decided this was too harsh. We decided this was too mean. So, we decided to tolerate nonsense, and it is no surprise what has happened. The kindness to criminals has, inevitably, turned into cruelty to the innocent.

There is a culture clash in America going on between models of public behavior. The primarily European model of public consideration for others is one in which you do not try to dominate public spaces and where you are aware of and considerate of other people who are present. And then there is the Third World model, which we are all experiencing more and more, and we are getting pretty damn tired of it. That is one where interactions in public spaces are a test of power. Can you be obnoxious and get away with it?

We are seeing this a lot lately in various forms. How about the idiots who think it is a great idea to turn on their phones’ speakers and have loud conversations in public? We have reached the point on airplanes where we must remind people that they need to use headphones if they are going to be listening to music or videos. Were these people raised by wolves? Some of them are obviously stupid. Some are retaining the habits of their garbage homelands. But for others, it is a way of showing they are the boss and daring others to stop them. That is what the black father in Brooklyn did when some idiot was shouting into his phone. He told the guy to stop, and the guy murdered him.

These two models of behavior are incompatible. You can either have a civilized society, or you can have a Third World society and everything that comes along with it. For a long time, we have been tolerating Third World behavior. But that seems to be ending. People are calling out this problem, including the racial aspects, which was unprecedented until the left normalized it. Now, the civilized are striking back, and they really do not care if you call them racist because they do not want to put up with idiots acting the fool in public.

In the case of Karmelo Anthony, he decided he was going to be a jerk and go into someone else’s area and dare people to stand up to his crap. Well, Austin Metcalf stood up to him, so he took that as a threat to his manhood and murdered Austin Metcalf without a second thought. That kind of Third World idiocy is endemic to much of the world. And, not coincidentally, where it is endemic, there is poverty, chaos, corruption, and general misery. A society where you cannot discipline yourself to not be a jerk and where you must constantly test all of those around you to prove your own manhood is one that does not go to the moon. Instead, it goes down to the polluted river with a plastic bucket that was imported, because your trash country does not make anything, to get cholera-laden water to carry back to your hut.

We are done accepting excuses. We are done accepting bad behavior. There is no racial debt that must be paid back in the blood of innocents. Those of us of a certain age have seen the coming backlash before, after liberals have normalized and tolerated crime for a while. Inevitably, the tough-on-crime politicians get elected and impose tough-on-crime policies. But what is different this time is that the people are calling this out for what it is. As his supporters have made clear, Karmelo Anthony thought he had a special kind of street code that gave him a free pass to butcher anybody who pointed out his obnoxious public behavior. Well, we reject that, and you can call us all the names you want. It does not work anymore. Some amorphous sense of collective guilt is not going to convince us to agree to being murdered. The consensus is developing that we need to stop putting up with this behavior and start putting people in jail for a long, long time. Now, of course, that is the moderate solution. The real solution is to start promptly executing criminals even as we purge our institutions of this bizarre desire to justify Third World social chaos. Don’t underestimate the potential viciousness of the backlash that is on the way. The thuggish likes of Karmelo Anthony are going to force open an Overton window and are then going to be thrown out of it.

Ultimately, the REAL solution to the problem is to start killing “liberals” in job lots, until so many of them have been exterminated that the remainder is terrified to so much as open their front door to check if it’s raining, because any time they do so a half dozen or so high-caliber bullets come smashing into and/or through it from a long ways off.

Two things: lies, and whining

Posted on June 18, 2026June 18, 2026 by Mike 1 Comment

If it wasn’t for those, they’d have nothing to say at all.

Trump’s UFC fight a lot like 19th century lynching, Boston College historian says
Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta agrees

A Boston College historian recently complained that a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House is related to the “impulse” that led to lynching black people in the 19th century.

Heather Richardson joined Jim Acosta’s YouTube show to discuss the mixed martial arts event held on Sunday, June 14, dubbed UFC Freedom 250.

Richardson, a frequent Trump critic, cited her self-proclaimed expertise on Abraham Lincoln.

She said during the Gilded Age there was no “open display of denigration of American symbols and American values” like there supposedly is now.

She then praised people like JD Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie for saying they were “offering a way forward for the United States.”

Richardson then said Trump “is deliberately tear(ing) that apart and he is doing so on the same cultural argument of course that people used to back the first Gilded age that is these cultural wars that turn white Americans against marginalized people of color.”

“Right,” Acosta agreed.

The historian then concluded:

I mean it’s not really a stretch to say that the same impulse that created the UFC fight on the White House lawn is the impulse that really pushed lynching in the late 19th century against black Americans overwhelmingly but also against Italian-Americans in Louisiana for example or Mexican-Americans in the American West or indigenous Americans in the American that idea somehow a really fake idea by the way that America is a white nation and anybody who challenges that needs to be purged from the body politic.

However, many people did think it was a “stretch” to compare a fighting match to the racist lynching of people.

Only because it, y’know, IS. Then again, though: Boston College, typically butt-ugly shitlib bint, self-proclaimed “historian”—what didja expect, anyway? As for that pseudo-historian bushwa, Mark Hemingway has ya covered.

Heather Cox Richardson is not an historian—she’s an IQ test, and anyone that takes her seriously is telling on themselves. https://t.co/Bv9nDylY6d

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator)

June 17, 2026

Oof.

MOAR good squishy!

Posted on June 18, 2026June 18, 2026 by Mike 1 Comment

This time coming to us from our ‘steemed colleague, Ace.

Obama Officially Opens the Ozymandias Presidential Center As Subcontractors Complain That He Didn’t Pay Them and Left Them With Millions in Worthless IOUs
—Disinformation Expert Ace

The “Ozymandias Presidential Center”? Oh my God, I can’t stop laughing—I LOVE it! I assure you you’ll be seeing that one again here, folks—assuming, of course, that I ever do see fit to even mention Bathhouse Barry’s ego-ziggurat again. Which, y’know, I might very well not.

For any who might not be aware whence this all comes:

The banker and political writer Horace Smith spent the Christmas season of 1817–1818 with Percy and Mary Shelley. At this time, members of their literary circle would sometimes challenge each other to write competing sonnets on a common subject: Shelley, John Keats, and Leigh Hunt wrote competing sonnets about the Nile around the same time. Shelley and Smith both chose a passage from the writings of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in Bibliotheca historica, which described a massive Egyptian statue and quoted its inscription: “King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.” In Shelley’s poem, Diodorus has been replaced by “a traveller from an antique land” whom Shelley metaphorically “met”.

Shelley wrote the poem around Christmas 1817—either in December that year or early January 1818. The poem was published on 11 January 1818 under the pen name “Glirastes” in The Examiner, a weekly paper published by Leigh’s brother John Hunt in London. Hunt admired Shelley’s poetry, and published many of his other works, such as The Revolt of Islam, in The Examiner. Shelley’s pen name meant “lover of dormice”, “Dormouse” being his pet name for his spouse, author Mary Shelley.

That would of course be Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley of Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus fame, one of the very first sci-fi works. The sonnet in question, which I’ve dug ever since I first read it in Mrs Becky Thompson’s Advanced English class back in high screwl:

I met a traveller from an antique land
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”, 1819 edition

Good stuff, no?

Ugh, ick, blecchh, YIKES!

Posted on June 18, 2026June 18, 2026 by Mike 2 Comments

I mentioned yesterday not really caring much for Neil Young. The Doors, on the other hand, I positively loathe, to the deepest depths of whatever remains of my very soul. Mark Steyn begs to differ.

Ray Manzarek of the Doors died last week, and, having lived out his three score and ten, will be denied the posthumous celebrity of his prematurely departed bandmate Jim Morrison. But Manzarek played a critical role in the group’s most enduring song. This essay is adapted from Mark’s book A Song For The Season:

It was over 40 years ago today-ish that Sgt Pepper was going on about how it was 20 years ago today. That’s to say, the “Summer of Love” is 46 years old: It’s longer ago today than the summer of flappers and charlestons and bootleg gin was back in 1967. But, boomers being the most self-absorbed generation in history, we’re going to be living with boomer pop culture until the very last one keels over at the age of 130 singing “Give Peace A Chance”. So we might as well get used to it. And, to be honest, there’s one aspect of the Summer of Love I’m quite partial to. What was America’s Number One song in that bright new hazy psychedelic dawn? Oh, come on, baby…

Come on, baby, Light My Fire
Come on, baby, Light My Fire
Try to set the night on fire…

It set the summer on fire four decades back. The single was edited down to under three minutes, but the disk jockeys played the original seven-minute album track anyway, from the Doors’ eponymous album The Doors. And within a few years it was established as one of those iconic long-form works – “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Stairway To Heaven”, “A Day In The Life”, “Like A Rolling Stone”, etc – that are regarded as the acme of rock. The crude formula seems to be: Length + psychedelic lyric = art. “Light My Fire” comes in at big hit sound 35 on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Songs of all time, and places similarly on other lists of all-time blockbusters. But “Light My Fire” can’t be confined to the long-form psychedelia category. For one thing, unlike “Bohemian Rhapsody”, it’s one of the most “covered” songs of the last 50 years. Once upon a time, that was the natural expectation of a hit tune: it would have seemed extraordinarily reductive to say, okay, some guy’s already sung “It Had To Be You” or “The Way You Look Tonight”, we better find something else to do. Yet, in an age of singer-songwriters, the idea of a song being particular to one artist became an iron law and deviations therefrom were regarded as “covers”, the very term indicating something less than an authentic experience. “Light My Fire” must rank as one of the most covered covers of the rock era, and oddly enough it was taken up by the same kind of singers who, a decade earlier, would have been singing standards: the easy listening crowd, the MOR set, the Europop VIP loungers. Who does “Light My Fire”? Everybody. Jose Feliciano. Astrud Gilberto. Jack Jones. Les Brown and his Band of Renown. Trini Lopez, Nancy Sinatra, Al Green, Minnie Riperton, Helmut Zacharias, Etta James, Woody Herman, Mae West, Johnny Mathis, Charo, Horst Jankowski, Edmundo Ros and his Orchestra, Ted Heath and his Orchestra, the Enoch Light Singers, the Burbank Philharmonic… As Mitteleuropean groovers like to say, “Gekommen auf Baby, mein Feuer beleuchten!”

My favorite “cool” version is by Julie London, who’s so blase about the whole business you get the feeling you could be rubbing sticks together all night and never get anywhere near to lighting her fire, notwithstanding the orchestral nudges she’s getting from the flutes and bongos. And my favorite live version is not the Doors in Boston but Shirley Bassey at the Royal Albert Hall in London a few years ago. Dame Shirl first sang it on her album Something back in 1970, and, while I’m not saying that inside every iconic psychedelic rock track is a faintly camp easy-listening classic trying to break out, for a select few of them that’s certainly the case. (By the same token, the all-time greatest version of Queen’s “We Are The Champions” was Liza Minnelli’s at the Freddie Mercury memorial concert at Wembley: unlike all the scruffy rockers, Liza was the only performer who had the size of the song, and of the performer. Likewise, if you’d stuck Freddie in black tights and a fedora, I’m sure he’d have done a passable “Cabaret”.)

Disagree again, sorry Mark: the all-time best version of “We Are The Champions” (another song I don’t much care for, by a band I have no use for whatsoever) has to be the one sung by the incomparable Paul Rodgers (of Bad Co fame, quite probably the best rock ‘n’ roll singer EVER), sitting in for the late Freddy-lad with the rest of the boys and absolutely fucking owning the bloated, overblown piece o’ shite song. To wit:

No bad dogs

Posted on June 18, 2026June 18, 2026 by Mike 1 Comment

Your feel-good story of the week.

MEMPHIS, TN — A Memphis man learned the hard way this week that not every backyard appliance is part of the city’s unofficial “take what you can carry” rewards program.

Police say 41-year-old Leonard “Lil Riblet” Barksdale allegedly hopped a privacy fence in Southeast Memphis around 2:13 AM after spotting what he reportedly described as:

“a lightly supervised gas grill.”

According to neighbors, Lil Riblet moved through the backyard “with the confidence of a man who’s never once considered consequences.”

That confidence lasted approximately four seconds.

Because waiting in the yard was Memphiszilla…

a pit bull described by witnesses as:

“Built like a refrigerator with childhood trauma.”

Authorities say the dog immediately activated what experts are now calling:

“The Find Out Phase.”

Neighbors reported hearing screaming so intense one woman thought somebody was auditioning for a gospel solo three streets over.

One resident said:

“That man hit notes that could remove wallpaper.”

Police say Lil Riblet attempted multiple escape strategies, including:

Climbing a trampoline

Throwing a lawn chair as a peace offering

Yelling “BAD DOG” in a voice cracking like a middle school clarinet

And at one point allegedly trying to negotiate: “Bro please… I don’t even need the grill anymore.”

But Memphiszilla was reportedly unmoved.

Investigators say the suspect eventually climbed onto a patio table and called 911 HIMSELF while the dog circled below like a furry tax collector.

Dispatchers reportedly struggled to understand him because he was simultaneously crying, wheezing, and screaming:

“HE GOT MY SLIDES!”

When officers arrived, they found Lil Riblet apologizing directly to Jesus.

I won’t even speculate on what that jibber-jabber about his “slides” might be all about. In any event, TH’s closer is priceless:

In Memphis, you might steal somebody’s grill…

…but sometimes the grill comes with teeth.

Heh. Effing BRILLIANT, start to finish. Yes, there’s a pic of the shredded spook included, which is sure to make your day no matter how rotten a mood you’re in.

1

Memezapoppin’!

Posted on June 17, 2026June 17, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

Welcome to this week’s installment of our Wednesday meme feature, folks. Links to the “found via” sources will be attached to the specific MiQ’s (Memes in Question) whenever I can remember them, which likely won’t be very often. Only the first two memes will appear above the fold to save on bandwidth usage, since I assume not everybody who shows up at this here websty will want to see all of them. This intro will appear at the top of each week’s Memezapoppin’! post. Enjoy, funny-pitcher lovers.

Continue reading “Memezapoppin’!“ →

Is the LGBTQ+++ Insurrection finally over?

Posted on June 17, 2026June 17, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

We should only be that lucky.

We knew corporations would abandon Pride. It still hurts. | Opinion

Follows, much anguished, overwrought wringing of hands, natch. To wit:

At the start of June, I stopped by Target while running errands in the SoHo neighborhood of New York. The store had just set out its summer merchandise, displaying an array of clothes, accessories and sunscreens nestled within a series of red arches.

As I hurried past tank tops and patterned shorts toward the pet section, I stopped to look at the Pride collection.

There wasn’t much – a single display of generic rainbow-colored shirts and home goods rested toward the back of the store, with no signs declaring June to be LGBTQ+ Pride Month.

I realized at that moment that in spite of the fact that I live in New York City, and in spite of the fact that I am part of the LGBTQ+ community, I hadn’t seen many corporate advertisements related to this year’s celebration. I think I know why.

It seems that the era of rainbow capitalism that has endured since Obergefell v. Hodges made same-sex marriage the law of the land in 2015 is no longer a guaranteed moneymaker for brands, leading them to downsize their efforts or abandon them altogether.

Awww, poor widdle wambikins: a miniscule, stastically-insignificant fraction of the population is upset because they don’t have racks upon racks upon racks of merchandise celebrating their weirdo sexual kinks within easy reach. Hard not to be shocked by that, it’s SO damned unfair. Gee, wonder who this bubbleheaded bull-dagger bimbelina thinks is to blame for all this trouble and woe? Three guesses, first two don’t etc.

It’s the continuation of a troubling trend that began in 2024, with the reelection of President Donald Trump.

Yeppers, thought so. Ace posits a much more likely explanation of what’s behind the LGBTQ+++ Mafia’s sudden fall from (scape)grace.

You kept making more and more extravagant demands, testing people’s inclination to be “nice” to avoid confrontation, until those demands became so oppressive they stopped being “nice.”

This is entirely on you. Or, it’s entirely on the gay grifter activist class, who can only justify their phony-baloney jobs by making greater and greater claims on the public’s sympathies and attention so they can show they’re “getting results” for their $300,000 per year jobs.

Until the public gets sick of the endless extortion campaign and starts saying “No.”

We thought we could appease you but you demonstrated again and again that you were unappeasable and each fresh concession we granted you just encouraged further aggression. You know, like a communist dictator or Islamic conqueror.

The Gay Lobby assured us, over and over, that “gay marriage will have no effect on your life at all.” When objectors said “gay marriage will lead to demands for ‘trans acceptance’ next, you called those people liars and said that will never, ever happen.

Well, you fucking lied. You lied and lied and lied until you got what you wanted, then you began making the exact kind of demands that people said you’d make when you got what you said you wanted.

And you’re surprised people are fed up with your bullshit?

But…but…but…but…teh homophobic BIGOTRY, you guys!!!

GOOOOOD squishy!

Posted on June 15, 2026June 16, 2026 by Mike 3 Comments

And now for something completely different.

Although I never was what anybody would call a huge fan of Neil Young—when I was a teenager we used to laugh him off as “Neil DUNG”—I do have tremendous respect for his songwriting skills, which are damned near miraculous; the above is probably the best example of that I know of offhand. “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” has been covered by everybody and his sister’s cat’s grandmother by now, and I do mean EVERYBODY: Annie Lennox, the Cowboy Junkies, Chris Cornell, Guns & Roses (!!!), and Paul McCartney, just to name a few. That constitutes a pretty dang powerful endorsement all on its own, actually.

It’s an achingly lovely, haunting tune, both melodically and lyrics-wise, about which Young himself once sardonicized:

On (CSN&Y’s 1971 live album) 4 Way Street, Young says, “Here is a new song, it’s guaranteed to bring you right down, it’s called ‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down’. It sorta starts off real slow and then fizzles out altogether.” The crowd then roars with laughter.

As well they might’ve. In Korb’s jazz-trio version above, what Salieri said in Amadeus of Mozart’s work is even more apropos: Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall.

Update! Having recently discussed the vital importance of phrasing to any vocal performance, irrespective of musical genre, I would be remiss not to call Ms Korb’s impeccable style to y’all’s attention. Keep a close ear on that piano break, also.

Sage advice

Posted on June 15, 2026June 15, 2026 by Mike 4 Comments

Words of wisdom from great North Carolinian Mark Robinson.

Want to raise kids who are decent human beings? Here’s what you can teach them. pic.twitter.com/98wxOcRq9M

— Mark Robinson (@markrobinsonNC)

June 15, 2026

Just as he always has, the man makes a hell of a lot of sense. Such a shame that CNN was allowed to hound him out of the governor’s race in ’24 with a bunch of made-up crap.

NC GOP Candidate Accuses CNN of ‘High-Tech Lynching’
Mark Robinson, the fiery GOP candidate for governor in North Carolina, denied CNN’s “salacious” accusation against him and labeled it a new “high-tech lynching.”

CNN, the network that calls leftist riots “fiery but mostly peaceful protests,” is claiming to have uncovered disturbing racist and sexual comments from Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson on a porn site. Robinson has denied the allegations, claiming the “tabloid trash” is meant to distract voters from real issues. He even accused his Democrat opponent of being involved in releasing the story.

Robinson, who is currently North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, posted a video addressing the CNN allegations. “Well, guys, the news media is at it again. My opponent is at it again,” he began. “You all have seen the half truths and outright lies of [Democrat] Josh Stein on these ads over and over again, and now a story … leaked by him to CNN, is appearing.”

Watch the above-embedded video, listen carefully to Robinson’s words, and then ask yourself: knowing how reprehensible and patently dishonest CNN has always been, does the man speaking in the vid sound like the kind of guy who would do the things his dirty-Demonrat opponent used the ever-helpful (for D卐M☭CRATs, natch) CNN to accuse him of?

Update! Transcript, for the X-challenged.

Robinson knows exactly what to tell them. “Okay, ma’am, I’ve got you on this one. How about you tell them to behave in school and pay attention? Tell them to get all the knowledge they can and make great grades. Tell them to be respectful to adults. and come tell you and their dad if they think an adult has been disrespectful or unfair towards them, and let you make the call on that.”

He continued to challenge the woman to prioritize good manners and common decency instead of an obsession with skin color. “How about you tell them to keep their pants up on their waist, not down on their backsides,” Robinson suggested. “And tell them if you get her pregnant, get a job. Then get her a ring. Then get a house, and then make it a home. Tell them to respect the law and those who uphold it. And if you are accosted by law enforcement, obey their orders and call you at the first chance they have, if need be. And if it’s just a traffic ticket, take it and say, ‘Thank you, officer’, and drive away in peace. Because fighting the traffic stop is for court, not the side of the road.”

Robinson also emphasized the importance of religion. “Tell them that Jesus Christ is the way and the truth, and if they will follow him, all will be well.” He ended, “Now, I believe if you tell them all these things, there will be no need to tell them not to take a knife to a track meet and stab a fellow high school runner to death. So, yeah, tell them those things. You’ll be amazed at how well things turn out.”

Alas, if the woman Robinson is responding to is anything like the murdering thug’s own close relatives, she won’t be listening.

Anthony’s parents have defended him every step of the way, claiming, in defiance of all evidence to the contrary, that Metcalf attacked their son instead of the other way around. His mother even claimed that every single witness was lying in an insane denial of reality. Anthony’s grandmother screamed, “racist, biased,” as she left the courthouse after his conviction. Karmelo Anthony was not a victim of racial violence. He committed deadly violence because his family raised a monster.

Sick, that’s what. But that’s what we’re all up against now, that’s the kind of warped (non-)thinking that must be overcome.

Mike @Substack

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