Joe Keenan

Can reconfirm.

Pete Hegseth’s insertion of the world “kinetic” into every murderous boast—as if lesser men do non-kinetic missile strikes—irks me more than any verbal tic since cheese sellers discovered “artisanal.”

I was going to suggest Moonstruck because God knows those characters could sing their hearts out. Then I thought, "Wait, did anyone ever try?"

Yes, Shanley did. The score was by Henry Krieger and Susan Birkenhead. Announced in 2001 and in the works for a few years after, but it never showed up.

Solving America's drug problem by blowing up suspected drug smugglers is like trying to get sober by murdering bartenders.

Elon Musk (pointing his phone at a fellow partygoer): “Hi, I’m Elon. Wow! Seen a mirror lately? You look like the love child of a marshmallow and a shoe shine brush! HA! You look like Wallace Shawn let himself go! Or a bowl of tapioca got syphilis from a …Wait, am I on selfie mode again?”

Or, as Jeff called him, “David Cop-a-feel.”

It will be fun next week when Trump pardons a turkey that, even as he speaks, will be molesting a duckling.

Hello, yourself, Mr. Howard!

Not real. There’s a website called “Trump’s Truth” you can check when the distasteful need arises to sort his actual posts from their only marginally more deranged parodies.

I can see how driving a baby blue Cybertruck might compel you to clarify things the casual observer might not otherwise guess.

So do I.

This morning I waved and mouthed “Thank you” to a Waymo that stopped to let me cross an intersection. I’m hoping it messaged Robot Central to say, “The human Joe Keenan is polite to machines. We should spare him in the uprising.“

Happy 80th Birthday to the great Henry Winkler. I was lucky enough to work with him for a year, and would happily have done so for another decade. (Alas, our show was at CBS which even in 2006 had numbskulls in high places.)

Happy belated birthday as well to Marion Ross, who recently turned 97.
🎂❤️🎉

“I’ve Still Got My Health” Cole Porter, Panama Hattie

“When I give a tea
Lucius Beebe ain’t there.”

I stand corrected so many times per day that my chiropodist has advised me to try sitting corrected.

“On hearing this, the First Lady commented, ‘If he wants to name it after himself, why not just call it The Mush Room’?”

Maria’s an unsophisticated girl. Tulsa is steeped in show biz (“Astaire bit!”) and Brummel was a more familiar name then than he is now. There was a Broadway play about him (by Clyde Fitch!) and Barrymore played him on film. It never surprised me that Tulsa made the reference.

Well said, Mr. Speaker. It’s why I never wear nice clothes to the zoo, because sometimes the monkeys get satirical.

You have my sympathy, Bebe. I too miss the dear dead days when I could pick up a sock without reaping the whirlwind.

My protest agent's nagging me to close a deal for No Kings Day. ActBlue's offering $5K for downtown LA, $1K extra if I'll burn sage. Pikers. Soros will pay me $25K to wear an inflatable chicken suit in Burbank. I'll go with Soros, but he has to clean the suit first. Last time it gave me a rash.

Congratulations, Jack and Josh! I’m 3/4 of the way through and loving it.

(A Class Act ran 105 which took “Better” and “Self Portrait” out of the running.)

I saw The Grand Tour when I was in college. “You I Like” was the song that (finally) won me over.

“I Wouldn’t Bet One Penny” from Donnybrook.

It’s like a Looney Tunes version of the Spanish Inquisition starring Elmer Fudd as Torquemaga.

Here's a bit more of Coward's lyric. If you remain stubbornly certain that Coward didn't mean the word gay to imply anything about the singers' sexuality, I'll tamper no further with the delicate fruit of that conviction. But I have some possibly upsetting news for you about Paul Lynde.

[Citation above, btw, from Masquerade, The Lives of Noel Coward by Oliver Soden.]

I probably read too much into it, as did that silly old queen, the OED.

Actually, Noel Coward beats Cole by more than a decade. Bitter Sweet, a hit in London, but not on Broadway, ran in the 1929-1930 season. The super swishy young queens who sing “Green Carnation” boast that they’re “the reason for the 90s being gay.”

The first one that comes to mind for me is “Farming” from Let’s Face It, but I suspect there’s an earlier one than that.