Lancelot Links posts

• Via What's on Weibo: Best 30 books to explain Modern China. Does not include “Be a China Expert in One Day” ... which I believe is sitting on Donald Trump's bookshelf. If he had a bookshelf.  
• Last month, Weibo decided to crack down on three things: pornography (sure), “bloody violence” (makes sense) and ... homosexuality? C‘mon, China. It’s 2018. But it led to a trending hashtag, #我是同性恋, or #IAmGay.
• From last year, and intriguing for its timing: How film-loving Weibo users are tired of “Domestic Film Protection Month,” during which no foreign films, particularly Hollywood films, are allowed to open. What's intriguing about the timing? That piece appeared just when “Wolf Warrior II” was beginning to break all Chinese box-office records ... without Hollywood competition. 
• A lot of what the Chinese Communist Youth League thinks of the recent US/China trade war/sabre-rattling is pretty much what we think: It's Trump being Trump (sadly); it will backfire on Americans (see: soybean farmers). But comparing it to the Japanese invasion of China? Really? Someone's not reading their history. Also worrisome: They‘re using the same damned Hitler/Chamberlain metaphor that American hawks use to argue against appeasement. That said, the art print being shared on Weibo, of Trump on a tank with a rifle and an eagle and explosions and a big flag, which apparently sells in the U.S. to Trump supporters, is the new nadir of kitsch.
• A man on a Sichuan bus violently throws down a 7-year old kid (who had been kicking him) and kicks him in the head, and this leads to a discussion of what’s the matter with ... the kid? 

• China Film Insider on the top 10 Chinese movies of 2017. I‘ve seen three of them, and agree that “Youth” was the best of those. But “Wolf Warrior II”? C’mon.
• Rolling Stone has a nice profile of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson that‘ll make you like him more than before. Even if you love him already. 
• Louis Menand on the haunting photos of Paul Fusco as he traveled on the train bearing Robert Kennedy’s corpse travels from New York to Washington, D.C. It's people alongside the tracks. It's a nation mourning. Most of a nation. 
• The bad photo selections of 1960s-era Topps baseball cards. 
• Joey Poz on the guy some call the greatest baseball player to ever come out of California: George Brett. Scratch that: Ken Brett, his older brother. It's charming and sad and then charming again. BTW, how long have I been a baseball fan? When George broke through in the mid-70s, I thought of him as Ken's kid brother. Some part of me still thinks that.  
• For some reason, Truman Capote's great piece on Marlon Brando, “The Duke in His Domain,” was trending on the New Yorker site the other day. If you haven't read it, now's your chance.  
• The CBS era of Yankee ownership (1965-72) are the glory years of Yankee hating. But as Mark Armour points out, CBS was hardly at fault. The acquired an aging franchise from Webb/Topping and handed off a young, resurgent team to George Steinbrenner. Unmentioned by Armour? Race. The Yanks were one of the last teams to sign African-American and Latino ballplayers.
• Molly Ringwald revisits the movies she made with John Hughes and realizes how problematic they were. Also how important to a certain segment of the population. 

• This is fun: A video countdown of the 25 best movies of 2017 according to David Ehrlich. We only match up a bit. I move “The Big Sick” way up and stuff like “Dunkirk” way back. I like story.
• The 10 best books of the year, according to The New York Times. 
• Why, in China, did Pixar's “CoCo” underperform on its first day, then begin to kick ass? Apparently the translated title was poorly named.
• “CoCo” is so not underperforming in China now that Forbes has a piece on how well it's done there. And what does all of this say about our global box-office assumptions? That they ain't worth the quai they're based on.
• Speaking of: Can China go sci-fi? And can Sino sci-fi go global? 
• Joe Posnanski has a new dude he's lobbying to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame: the Yankee-killing, bloody-socked, crazy-in-a-bad-way Curt Schilling. Here's Poz's opening argument.
• A day later, he added an entire column about Schilling. It's persuasive.
• Poz ain't exactly lobbying for Steve Garvey for the Hall, but he does tell a great story about him and a female reporter back in the '80s. It's classy, for a change.
• The Aaron Boone/managerial hiring continues to perplex baseball/Yankees fans. My main thought: He may be laid-back and affable now; but if the Yankees start with a losing record in April, I expect Yankee fans will remind him what his surname is.
• The arguments in the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Civil Rights Commission case before the U.S. Supreme Court didn't go well, says Ian Millhiser—if, that is, you think you shouldn't be able to turn away customers based on religious convictions. There are way broader questions here, though, that are fascinating, and haven't been explored enough. Overall, though, this feels like a fight both sides wanted. The Christian baker could've just told the gay couple, “I'm too busy”; and once he stated his case, the gay couple could've just said, “Fuck you, we're never coming back here, and we're telling all of our friends—gay and straight—not to come here, and see this money? It's not yours. And fuck you again.” Instead, this. 
• Although Jennifer Rubin at the Post dismisses that argument and reminds us that once again the right's absurd culture wars are overtaking its business sensibilities: “It's odd that conservatives, of all people, want to politicize commerce. The glory of the marketplace is that anyone with money, regardless of religion or race or ethnicity, gets to partake in commerce.”
• “Art of the Deal” ghostwriter Tony Schwartz reminds us that if Trump lashes out it means he feels cornered. So here's to him lashing out. 
• We may ask ourselves: How did we get here? In that spirit, Swedemason offers us Donald Trump channeling the Talking Heads. 
• I've been saying this for a while: Republicans are interested in power, Democrats in purity, and that's why Republicans win and we have the shitty world we have. Dahlia Lithwick, in a piece about the sexual harassment wars, says it better. 
• Is this my favorite story of the year? A neighborhood cat so likes to patrol around the library at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. (my sister's alma mater), they've barred him. As one tweeter states, the warning on the door reads like half a children's book. 

• An archivist has created a database of 751,785 murders carried out in the U.S. since 1976 with the hope that algorithms can spot serial killers that local police can't. 
• Related: Patricia and I watched all 10 episodes of Netflix's new show “Mindhunter,” starring Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany, in three days. I liked it a lot. Here's a “just the facts, ma'am” New Yorker review.  
• Travis Sawchik at ESPN.com suggests an off-season move for each team, and I kinda like his suggestion for the M's: signing Lorenzo Cain. But I think this is Cain's first-to-home 2015 postseason talking. He's got great d, speed, a good bat, but he's 31. And don't the M's really need healthy starters?
• Did our solar system just get its first interstellar visitor? if so, it's already on its way out. “Nothing to see here.” 
• An illustrated walk with Loudon Wainwright III through Greenwich Village, but really through his career. He also has a new memoir: “Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & A Few of My Other Favorite Things.” “I never thought I'd write a book, until somebody told me that I had one in me,” Loudon says. “It was like a medical diagnosis. I had to get it out!”
• Speaking of Loudon: I missed his song/video “I Had a Dream,” released in June 2016, about what might happen if Donald Fucking Trump actually won the presidency. Maybe I avoided it. That seemed too horrible to laugh about. Anyway, he doesn't play it anymore for the same reason. “It's not funny anymore,” he says. “It's just not.” 
• It isn't. 
• I'll be looking at this every day for a month: It's how Edgar Martinez's votes for the Hall of Fame are faring—among the writers sharing. Today: He's got 7 of 10. That includes three new votes. He needs 75%.
• In case you're on the fence with Edgar (and shame on you if you are), Jay Jaffe makes Edgar's case.  
• A look at the great turn-of-the-last-century baseball photography of Paul Thompson.

I suppose it's good to still be interested in a range of subjects. If the usual range of subjects:

• Adam Gopnik on the legacy of Hugh Hefner, who died this week at the age of 91: “The anxious adolescent coyness that the enterprise never escaped—in part because anxious adolescent coyness was Hefner's true signature emotion, a silk dressing gown and a pipe being exactly an anxious adolescent's idea of sophistication—was essentially anti-sex, replacing the real thing with a synthetic substitute.”
• How horrible has Neil Gorsuch's first half year been on the U.S. Supreme Court? Pretty damn horrible, says Jeffrey Toobin. He's making enemies—including possibly the court itself.
• I never watched “Thomas the Tank Engine” (I was in college when it started) but that's a good thing, if Jia Tolentino's take on its “authoritian, repressive” soul is correct. “The Sad Story of Henry” alone would've given me nightmares. 
• This week, Patricia and I saw the touring production of “Something Rotten!” at the 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle. What fun! What talent! Here's a taste. 
• I don't know Dallas sports reporter Dale Hansen, but his no-holds-barred take on the idiot National Anthem controversy (or how Donald Trump ruined football for everybody) has justifiably gone viral, and is one of the sharpest I've heard: “”I served in the military during the Vietnam War, and my foot hurt, too—but I served anyway. My best friend in high school was killed in Vietnam, and Carol Meyer will be 18 years old forever and he did not die so you can decide who is a patriot and who loves America more.“
• I'll take Bob Costas on the subject, too, particularly his thoughts on the conflation of sports, the flag, and the miltary. 
• Then there's Jelani Cobb and how ”ungrateful“ has become the new ”uppity." 
• The Daily Show's Trevor Noah expands on the gratitude discussion by asking: Black people should be grateful ... to whom?
• Here's a baserunning play you'll probably never see again—or how the Reds' Billy Hamilton went from being caught in a rundown between first and second to scoring. Love the pop-up, too. 
• The good news of the week? Besides Billy Hamilton? The GOP's attempt to trade our OK health-care coverage for REALLY SHITTY health-care coverage failed again. Thanks in part to this guy. But they'll be back. They're assholes. 

• I think it should be illegal for anyone to trade good players to the Yankees but particularly at the trading deadline—when you trade the present for the future. You give yourself a better chance in the long run and them a better chance now, and the Yankees should never have a better chance now. But that's what the Oakland A's did yesterday: Sonny Gray for three guys. You know the Yankees and their fans are charged about this one. 
• No link, just a reminder of why we hate the Yankees via a trivia question I asked on Facebook the other day. From 1949-1953 the Yankees won five World Series titles in a row. How many MLB teams have never won more than five titles in their entire history? The answer is most of them: 24 of 30. The five non-Yankees teams that have managed to win 5+ titles are: Dodgers (6), Red Sox and Giants (8 each), Athletics (9), and Cardinals (11). The Yankees, of course, have 27 titles. And counting.
• Another non-link (sorry, Lancelot), just an embarrassing stat of the day. This is the Yankees' record in the six weeks before arriving in Seattle on July 20: 11-22. And since arriving in Seattle: 9-2.
• More from “the rich get richer” files: The seemingly unbeatable Dodgers got Yu Darvish from the Rangers. Don't forget to take your practice swings, Yu.
• ESPN's David Schoenfield assesses the trading deadline winners and losers. Winners? Sonny Gray, who goes from the lowest-rent district in baseball to the highest. Also the Dodgers, who didn't stand pat. Losers? Red Sox, who had no future to trade; Houston, who didn't do enough to shore up their pitching/bullpen; and Texas, based on the last two trade deadlines (they gave up the future, and the future came faster than they thought). Virtually unmentioned either way? Your Seattle Mariners.
• Here's a break: A lovely little piece from The Poz on more reasons to dislike the intentional walk. Good callout to “The Natural.”
• The Chicago Cubs have given 2003 NLCS scapegoat Steve Bartman a 2016 World Series ring, saying, “We hope this provides closure on an unfortunate chapter of the story that has perpetuated throughout our quest to win a long-awaited World Series. While no gesture can fully lift the public burden he has endured for more than a decade, we felt it was important Steve knows he has been and continues to be fully embraced by this organization. After all he has sacrificed, we are proud to recognize Steve Bartman with this gift today.” Classy move. 
• And if you haven't seen Alex Gibney's 2011 doc on scapegoats in general and Bartman in particular, by all means. One of my favorite baseball movies. Yes, I made a list.
• Dan Epstein, author of “Stars & Strikes: Baseball & America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76,” has an interesting point to make RE: Bartman and Gibney's “Catching Hell.” 
• Finally, we're nearing Edgar Martinez jersey-retirement day, and it's about time. Here's a reminder of why he meant so much to us. 
• ADDENDUM: Hot off the presses: The Poz on Bartman. Amen. 

• It's tough to keep up these days—for obvious reasons. I think of the opening of David Remnick's great piece on Trump's first 100 days: “For most people, the luxury of living in a relatively stable democracy is the luxury of not following politics with a nerve-racked constancy. Trump does not afford this. His Presidency has become the demoralizing daily obsession of anyone concerned with global security, the vitality of the natural world, the national health, constitutionalism, civil rights, criminal justice, a free press, science, public education, and the distinction between fact and its opposite.” I wonder if productivity has gone down in the U.S. under his administration. Wouldn't be surprised. 
• The big story of the week, in a week of big stories, was the New York Times' revelation that Comey has memos from his meetings with Trump; and during the Feb. 14 meeting, Trump supposedly told Comey to back off the investigation into Gen. Flynn. Right now it's he said/he said, but if there are tapes, as Trump has implied, and the tapes bear out Comey's claim, well, then it's obstruction of justice. The whole thing is Watergate on speed. 
• Or maybe we don't need the tapes. According to the Times today, Trump told Russian diplomats in the Oval Office: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job. ... I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off.” This is according to documents summarizing the meeting. That sounds like obstruction of justice to me. So it's all about the validity of the documents. Which are apparently official White House documents. 
• Before these more egregious Trump stories broke, Evan Osnos at The New Yorker was already answering the question, “How Trump could get fired?” The stuff on Reagan and the 25th amendment is particularly interesting. 
• In other news this week, Roger Ailes died. The man who wrote the book on him, Gabriel Sherman, says he's going to miss him.
• Matt Taibbi isn't so kind. 
• Neither is Vice. 
• Nor Media Matters. 
• New Yorker.
• Sherman references Janet Maslin's takedown of his book on Ailes, which you can find here. Makes me never want to read Maslin again. Our insiders need to get outside once in a while. Breathe the air there.

• The L.A. Times editorial board slams Trump in a must-read editorial, “Our Dishonest President.” I agree with it all. First in a series. No joke. They dive deep.
• This may be the best freelancer “hire me” site I've ever seen. It's for a copywriter. If you go there and think, “Yeah, so?,” just, you know, do as Eliza said: Look around, look around. 
• Nathaniel at Film Experience, still list-crazy from 2016 and the Oscars, gives us the best movies so far in 2017. Big winners: Frantz, Get Out, Personal Shopper, Logan. So foreign art-house and smart Hollywood genre. 
• Bill O'Reilly, poor bastard, keeps getting sued for sexual harassment. And Fox News keeps settling the matters for big bucks just to keep things on the down low. There's certainly nothing to the claims—or so he says. And that's certainly not part of the culture at Fox News. Heavens, no. 
• A portrait of the artist as an old man: Robert McGinnis, 91, who drew the movie posters for “Breakfast at Tiffany's,” “Barbarella,” “Cotton Comes to Harlem,” and all the early James Bonds.
• Hell might not be freezing over but it's definitely getting a cool breeze: The New York Yankees not only don't have the highest payroll in baseball, they're third—behind both the Dodgers and (barely) the Tigers.
• Adrian Cárdenas, no relation to Leo that I know of, who got a cup of coffee with the Cubs in 2012 before quitting baseball for good, on the mental stress of the game, and the toll it takes on players. 
• How unfair is baseball? SF Giants' ace Madison Bumgarner pitch 7 innings against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Opening Day, gave up 3 earned runs, no walks, struck out 11, and, at the plate, became the first pitcher in baseball history to hit 2 Opening Day homeruns ... and he got a no decision. Diamondbacks' reliever Fernando Rodney, late of the Mariners, pitched the top of the 9th after the D-Backs had tied the game 4-4, and gave up: triple, sac fly, single, wild pitch, walk, wild pitch, walk, fly out, ground out. But since the D-backs came back in the bottom of the 9th, he gets the victory. Nothing you can do for MadBum, but that “W” should go somewhere else. 
• From my friend Linda, via 538.com, 10 burning questions about MLB. No, none of them are about Rodney getting that “W.”
• But this is: My man Joe Posnanski is going to track pitcher wins this year, and see how many seem legit, and how many are of the Fernando Rodney “are you effin' kiddin' me?” variety. 
• Madison Bumgarner, by the way, is already the active leader in homeruns by a pitcher: He has 16. The all-time record is 37 by Wes Ferrell. Reminder: MadBum is only 27.
• Joey Poz writes about MadBum's power, too. Because he writes about everything.  
• The Times gives us quick shots on 14 new baseball books that just got published. Last week, I read Jason Turbow's “Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic” about the 1970s three-time champion Oakland A's, the “Moustache Gang,” and recommend it. A lot of fun. 

This also happened: The president of the United States got into a parked truck on the White House driveway and made vroom vroom noises. Not embarrassing at all.

• Nazis in a beer hall in Portland, Oregon. Thanks, Trump.
• Anthony Kuhn has been a journalist in China for years, but this month he became a viral sensation for asking a question about President Xi Jingping's megaregion plans around Beijing and the relocation of businesses/residents there. Also because his Chinese is so good. I wrote more about it here. 
• In hearings before the Intellgience Oversight Committee this week, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) laid out the Russia/Trump connections. This is just the stuff we know and they stuff the representatives can say. He acted responsibly. 
• Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) did not act responsibly. He condemned the leaks more than what they revealed, then, the next day, went to Trump, whose administration he's investigating, and gave up the goods. Then he staged a press conference on the White House lawn and gave out tidbits of more information—information Schiff didn't even have—and which amounted to smoke for Trump's idiotic charge that Pres. Obama wiretapped him. But it's only smoke. U.S. intelligence “incidentally” picked up communications from Trump's transition team because (unspoken), they were calling foreign officials we‘re investigating. Attempting to unethically clear Trump’s team, he actually provided further evidence of its culpability. More than resign from the comittee, Nunes should be investigated himself.
• More on Trump/Russia from Pasquino. “Remember, Remember/The 8th of November.” Like I could forget. 
• Actually this is better: Mother Jones gives us the long history of connections and deals between Trump and Russia. 
• A more pointed version from earlier in the week, courtesy of David Leonhardt: “All the President's Lies.”
• RIP Jimmy Breslin, who died earlier this week. Any man who runs with Norman is OK by me. Here's Breslin's column from Dec. 9, 1980. The day after the day the music died. 
• A reason you shouldn't be behind Neil Gorsuch for SCOTUS (besides Merick Garland)? The NRA is for him. 
• Q&A with my man Jim Walsh on the beautiful inexplicability of music, and the experience of sitting with Prince who is going over your column on him line by line.
• Bodybuilder Oliver Lee Bateman takes on the nerd-to-he-man mythos of everyone from Charles Atlas to Arnold Schwartzenegger, and discovers the true purpose in “making a man out of Mac”: “to create a suit of armor behind which one might conceal a real self, in the hopes that no one would ever bother inquiring its whereabouts.” Cf., “Moonlight,” Act III.
• Sometimes I think Eyal Press should be the conscience of our nation. We certainly need one.
• I think this new Frank Rich column, “No Sympathy for the Hillbilly: Democrats need to stop trying to feel everyone's pain, and hold on to their own anger,” is a turning point in a good way. Or maybe he's just saying what I've long felt. 

• My nephew, Jordy, 15, has put together his “Top 15 Films of 2016” list. Expecting “Star Wars” or “Dr. Strange”? Try “Cameraperson,” “Loving,” “Paterson,” “Certain Women,” “I Am Not Your Negro.” Torch, passed.
• The Chicago White Sox don't look too good this year, but their tickets do. 
• Joey Poz calls Cubs' 2B Javier Baez the greatest tagger in baseball history, in part because “Nobody even knew that was a thing before he came along.” Check out that no-look tag during the World Baseball Classic. Makes me smile. 
• Good piece by Sam Tanenhaus in The Atlantic: “Who Stopped McCarthy?” (Chase-cutter: Ike.) But this is an egregious line: “The villain was undone, ultimately, by methods like his own.” Really? By Tanenhaus' own description, McCarthy used lies and innuendo in a scattershot method to destroy lives; Ike planned carefully, leaked factual data, and let McCarthy hang himself. Seems the opposite method to me.
• A synagogue in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood—one of the most liberal in the country—was vandalized last week with graffiti reading: “Holocau$t i$ Fake Hi$tory.” Fake news/Fake history. They're learning from their masters. It's beyond sad. I'd like a couple of minutes with these cowards. 
• East-siders: Don't forget that your rep, Dave Reichert, voted the GOP's godawful ACA replacement through committee, risking the health care of millions (24 million to be precise, according to the Congressional Budget Office). Vote this turd out of office in 2018.  
• David Remnick is very smart on why there is no “Deep State,” another Trump admin locution that the press has to report and then disprove. Remnick ends with a flourish: the problem is not a deep state but “a shallow man—an untruthful, vain, vindictive, alarmingly erratic President.”
• Jelani Cobb uses Ben Carson's idiotic comment comparing slaves to immigrants as a jumping off point on how the optimism of American warps our view of our history. 
• Bravo, Netherlands! Their Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, bleach blonde and xenophobic, who was leading in the polls recently, came in second in their election yesterday—although his party still gained six seats and now holds 20 of 150 in Parliament. The ruling party, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (all bases covered there) lost seven seats but holds 33. Two more parties, one right-leaning, another left-leaning, have 19 seats each. 
• It took three New Yorker writers (Remnick, Evan Osnos, Joshua Yaffa) to put together the must-read piece (thus far) of 2017: “Trump, Putin and the New Cold War.” Read it all. I think I may re-read it today. 

• I think I like Joe Posnanski's defense of “Field of Dreams” more than I like “Field of Dreams.” 
• Nathaniel Rogers is bringing the Oscar trivia. Example: Can you name the 12 actors who have won both a lead and supporting Oscar? Six men, six women. I used to be really good at that. 
• A woman at the Sante D'Or Adoption Center in L.A. gave the cats likes/dislikes to help them get adopted. Sylvia's dislike is classic. 
• David Denby examines Steven Spielberg at 70. I was hoping for more insight, actually. Feels leaden. Maybe Molly Haskel's book is better? 
• There's a great description of Michael Keaton's acting at the beginning of Anthony Lane's review of “The Founder.”
• The Yankees didn't make the playoffs last season but they still won 84 games, and they got a big boost from Gary Sanchez and his amazing two-month-callup. So a sunnier outlook this year? Thankfully, no, at least according to Fan Graphs, who project mediocrity for the Bronxers. 
• John Oliver breaks down the horror of the Putin/Trump connection. Love the “La La Land”/“Human Centipede” analogy. Also the grizzly bear analogy. Also the dance number in the end. But the key line is this: “Trump is basically the propagandist of Putin's dreams.” So how do we stop him? 
• Chris Vance, former Washington state GOP chair, on what the GOP can do to stop Trump. 
• Michael Moore, filmmaker, on what you and I can do to stop Trump. 

• Trump aide (& abet) Kellyanne Conway told Fox & Friends viewers to buy Ivanka Trump's clothing line, apparently breaking federal law. (“An employee shall not use his public office for his own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise,”) Why nothing, most likely, will happen to her. 
• Unless it's California's AG Xavier Becerra. Fingers crossed. What isn't in doubt, according to the Post, is that “the president and his aides are inviting corruption.”
• Jason Chaffetz went to a town hall of his constituents, and all he got was some major flak. Which he totally deserved. Because he's a major douche who's helping bring down the country. 
• Bye-bye National Security Adviser Mike Flynn after only 24 days. A new record.
• Dueling protests at a Planned Parenthood in St. Paul, Minn., drew an estimated 6,000 people total: 500 pro-lifers and 5,500 pink-clad pro-choicers. 
• How does SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch seem to you? Scott Turow, the best-selling novelist as well as a highly regarded practicing attorney in Illinois, suggests he's to the right of Antonin Scalia. Also, how the Dems can block his nomination. 
• For those nostalic for a POTUS with class, Obama's official photog, Pete Souza is posting great shots on Instagram. 
• Speaking of: The Atlantic lays out the winners of the 2017 World Press Photo Contest. Not to get all click-baity, but I particularly liked No. 7 from Jonathan Bachman: the upright calm of the woman in the dress offering herself up for arrest; the seeming panic of the armor-clad officers confronting her. It's otherworldly but it's our world. 
• Great piece by Lili Anolik of Vanity Fair on Pauline Kael in LaLa Land.
• Nathaniel Rogers on the BAFTA winners. 
• Joe Posnanski is knocking down judgmental baseball stats, starting with the pitcher's win.
• Via my cousin Kristin, 101 websites that pay writers. 
• From CJR, how The Washington Post is turning newspapers around. 
• What the fuck just happened? Day 26.

Too perfect. 

• Love this comic strip (Friendly Atheist?), which someone posted to Facebook recently: the hypocrisy of a religious conservative in nine panels. 
• The New York Times reports on the turmoil inside the Trump White House. The shocker: Trump didn't know he was signing an order that put Steve Bannon on the National Security Council.
• A New York Times sportswriter ran into Steven Bannon at the airport after the election in November, and guess what he was reading? I doubt he learned the right lessons from it. Maybe he thought it meant Trump needed to hire the worst and the dimmest?
• Longtime WA state Republican Chris Vance on why he's marching against Trump. He also has a good rundown of the anti-immigration executive order, its dog whistles, and its longterm potential consequences. 
• Trump displays autocratic tendencies (dismissing voters and protesters), while his media mouthpiece, KAC, insists he deserves better coverage no matter how much he (or she) lies. Jonathan Chait is on it.
• Adam Gopnik on Trump's anti-Americanism, and how Trump's incompetence is a feature not a bug. Gopnik also tosses in some necessary words from James Madison: Federalist No. 51 rather than “We are engaged in a battle for our nation's very soul/ Can you get us out of the mess we're in?” Although that works, too.
• An oral history of Lena Dunham's “Girls.” 
• My former editor for book reviews at The Seattle Times, Mary Ann Gwinn, bids farewell to the newsroom. 
• Great exchange between my man Ricky Gervais and my man Stephen Colbert about religion. Stephen's Catholic, Ricky's atheist/agnoistic. I'm with Ricky. It's always posited as not believing in God but that's not the issue; it's people I don't believe. 
• Another year, another Patriots victory in the Super Bowl. Blech. Thankfully, The Onion is on our side. 
• It's no longer Democrats vs. Republicans but people in the reality-based community vs. propagandists and liars. For the former group, here's Randy Rainbow singing “Fact-checker, Fact-checker” to KAC but for us.
• My name is Erik and I work from home. 

• Your most imporant read of the year: “How The Press Never Stopped Blaming Obama For Radical GOP Obstruction” by Media Matters. This is part of what made the last eight years so infuriating. History will not be kind to the modern media. If, that is, we continue to have a history.
• At least some of the press is getting sick of just reporting lies as if they were news.
• The New York Times on a “fake news masterpiece.” Goebbels smiles. 
• How many Americans will die when/if the GOP repeals Obamacare? Jonathan Chait crunches the numbers. 
• Pictures from the Women's Marches of Jan. 21, 2017. WE are the world. Don't forget. 
• The 663 campaign promises of Donald J. Trump. So far, I've just skimmed. But I'm interested in how he's going to make Apple make computers and phones in the U.S.
• A man with no political experience and a deep admiration for a foreign dictator, not to mention a touch of xenophobia, is elected president of the United States on an “American First” platform. No, not Trump. Charles Lindbergh in Philip Roth's “The Plot Against America” from 2004. I may have to re-read since I gave it a negative review back then. Interestingly, Roth sees a different book, Melville's “The Confidence-Man,” as more appropos for Trump.
• How Trump and Obama greet a wheelchair-bound Bob Dole. Not exactly shocking.
• Half an onion in a plastic bag is trying to get more Twitter followers than Donald Trump. 
• 12 overlooked indies via IndieWire. I approach such lists warily, expecting to see films I hate. I only saw one I loved (“The Innocents”), one I liked (“My Golden Days”) and many I haven't heard of.
• Via Nathaniel at Film Experience: The César nominees. If you just watched French films instead of American ones, I think you'd be a better person. 
• How vaccines work. In graphic novel form. In case you have any Jenny McCarthys in your family.
• In case anyone needs a laugh: The very best of Jiminy Glick.

• Has anyone else read the faux “Seinfeld” 9/11 script? Wow. Just ...Wow. 
• Why Richard Nixon said “I am not a crook” and how it relates to Donald J. Trump. 
• The Donald Trump Comedy Hour by Tom Tomorrow. It's not funny cuz it's too fucking true.
• Speaking of: The New York Times records the unfiltered voices of a Trump rally.
• More Trump. His version of “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
• John Oliver kills it with this piece on the death of journalism. It's hardly news to most journalists but better than a kiss from Sam Zell. (Stick around for the “Spotlight” parody at the end starring Bobby Canavale.)
• Ichiro gets his 3,000th hit—a triple! He's the 30th man in the 3,000 club and the second to do it with a triple, after Paul Molitor. 
• Joe Posnanski quickly recounts the legacy of Alex Rodriguez, who is suddenly retiring. To Poz, he's Citizen A-Rod. 
• More Poz that refreshes: How the excellence of theOlympics makes armchair critics of us all.
• President Obama's summer reading list. I need to read “The Sixth Extinction.”
• Joe Henry's new song for Muhammad Ali. 
• Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo makes a nice grab here. Good dismount, too. 
• The long ties, financial and otherwise, between Donald Trump's campaign chairman and the Russian-backed ruling party in Ukraine. Sad!
• For the folks still thinking of voting for Trump, read about how his words are used to further anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Michele Bachmann's and Louie Gohmert's, too. 
• A 2015 Bloomberg piece on the man now running Donald Trump's campaign: Steve Bannon on the Breitbart site. Extra credit from 2014: Why Breitbart's Big Hollywood is wrong about everything, by yours truly.