Again.

If you haven't seen your normal workplace lately, here's that cake you left behind in March.

 

It misses you.

 

Midwesterners are not nice

--1963 Minneapolis paper

 

They suck your breath.

And leave you for dead.

 

Give me some tongue

"Dunf," you cry, "who has time to watch comic zefrank1 explore reptile tongues?"

Yeah, like you'd ignore sticky, sexual tongue puns and jokes. Interested, ladies?

Here are Conversation Stoppers for your next cocktail party, if we ever have those again.

And it's Friday,  for Pete's sake.

Forget Trump and Covid.

Remember laughs?

I usually ignore Randy Rainbow's parodies, but  how hard is it to concoct all new lyrics to a Stephen Sondheim patter song like Not Getting Married?

Very hard.

Don't try this at home

What sane parent would shoot this?

Maybe one with a bucket of spare eyes?

 

 

--via J.M.

 

Data: CDC, Moderna and Pfizer. Chart: Sara Wise/Axios

 

"Don't spit on me, Santa...." 

 

List:

Xanax for Mom

Ring light for Dad's podcast

Keurig Valium K-cups

Vibrator for Aunt Sue

CBD capsules for cat

Video doorbell for non-bubble people

Memo to self: no more Trump books

Ten foot pole

 

Today's Castle News

"The Mafia did it."

 

Tweetie

 

 

"According to a recent IATA report, there is a 1 in 27 million chance of catching Corona-virus during a flight. You're more likely to be struck by lightning.
This will go some way to reassuring everyone that it's safe to fly when restrictions and lock downs ease again. #letsfly"

      --Aviation trade group Twitter claim

 Question: Does lightning sit in the seat next to me?

It's only TV

 

 

The Crown Admits Making up Scenes Royals See as Trolling

The Crown may glow with credibility from the halo of history, but key parts of it are simply made up, as its chief writer admits in a new podcast.

--Daily Beast

---------------------------------

What? 

Lord Mountbatten never wrote a letter to Prince Chuck? And Mickey is not a real mouse?

--via 1236.com

 

Screen grab of the day

 

--Fantasyland network

Mum? Diana's puking in the privy. Again.

--Netflix

 

Two questions immediately come to mind as I watch the first three hours of Netflix's new season of The Crown.

 

1. That imposing entrance hall in the first scene, where Charles arrives for a date: how much would Hydro One charge to heat this endless expanse? More than I pay on November 16??

2. What does The Queen make of this ersatz historical drama that concocts dialogue she probably never delivered?

 

Imagine if Peter Morgan was doing a 40 part series on Your Life, never having talked to you.

Dramatizing how you acted, spoke, thought in a carefully arranged plot line designed for maximum eyeballs.

 

How much do you think would be true?

 

I guess creator-writer-producer Morgan gets about 80% of the historical timeline right.

But at most, is 15% of the onscreen dialogue more than imagined/concocted?

Based on hearsay from non-Royal biographies?

 

The best piece I've seen on what part of The Crown is real in Radio Times at 

 

LINK: How much of The Crown is real? 

--Not amused

 

Still, Princess Diana (Emma Corrin) has been perfectly cast in the new episodes and it's entertaining as hell to see the Royals be  more beastly to her then you ever imagined.

No wonder a title card warns of eating disorders.

Here is a puking Cinderella for the ages.

 

--Cinderella and Chuck the adulterer

 

I believe Gillian Anderson eats ice cubes before each of her scenes as Margaret Thatcher.

 

 

Hydro One aside, the new 10 episodes of The Crown glow.

 

 

 

If you sat in the dark at Cinesphere, gulping as North of Superior first flew you along the cliffs and the whole IMAX theater tilted left, you remember an Ontario Place far different from the sullen, crumbling mess successive political poobahs have made of it.

BlogTO revists OP's early days at ...

Ontario Place back then 

Whatever happened to imagination? 

Mama's little helper

Cat listening to classical music

Classical sadsacks

I've only been asked once for my favorite piece of classical music.

Toronto's Classical 96 invited me over to play my fave.

When they heard it, they judged it "too contemporary" for their listeners.

Wallingford Riegger's New Dance was written in 1935.

"Choose something else," they begged.

They are wimps. Spinners of catalogue sludge.

New Dance is whispers, thunder, energy and propulsion. 

Every time I listen, New Dance excites me. 

It features a saxophone, marimba and chords that might be soundtrack to a car crash. 

.

BACKSTORY:

In university, I was evening announcer for a classical radio station.

Sunday nights, something called Contemporary Concert unspooled. Each week, a graduate student named Bob would leave his voice track tape and a pile of Lps. 

Most were Mercury Presence recordings out of Rochester. Many more were Louisville Philharmonic subscription discs of new music.

I'd paste Bob's bits together, and at 9.55 hit a back-timed theme tape on the Ampex to meet the 10 p.m. hour beep.

In the final minute, I'd read Bob's production credits, aiming for the two key musical posts that mark New Dance's end crescendo.

If I could ride that final rising tide and thunder, it was off to bed happy at midnight. Any radio surfer geek knows that feeling. Nailed it.

P.S. To hear a wide variety of classical music, check  

https://www.yourclassical.org/

The "radio stream" voices there, hit every post, top of every hour. 

Cold rain gonna fall

If you've ever camped in the rain, or have a dog, you'll ache for the newest Matthew Posa video, put up overnight....

News from Fantasyland

--WhiteHouse, Trump bedroom 

 

Up early on Twitter, today ...

“RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN. … He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”

 

It's been 12 days. 

  

INTO THE WOODS

If your camping supply list includes Lucky Charms cereal, pup ponchos and pointy birthday hats for dogpals Monty and Rueger, you will soon be addicted as I am, to Matthew Posa's YouTube channel. It's the perfect antidote to a pandemic.

 There are many bushcraft and fisher-folk in cyberspace, but not one brings Posa's sunny, silly optimism and happy good humour.

He's your goofy bud with the gung-ho spirit.

Posa celebrates three years of adventures in a great clip show just up. Many are shot in the Ontario woods and border waters, but Posa's homebase is Minnesota. It's a sweet sampler of How Everything is Fun in The Woods.

LINK: POSA'S THREE YEARS HIGHLIGHT SHOW 

 

 

 If you're hooked by the crazy clips, you are not alone.

Many of his dozens of hours have 3-4 million views.

You can see the index to all his videos at

LINK: Matthew Posa's YouTube page

 

More White House news ....

 

--Trump Castle

 

A CNN reporter describes the White House as "the Twilight Zone."

Evidence? 

When asked if Trump will attend Joe Biden's inaugural in January, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters: "I think President Trump will attend his own inauguration.  He would have to be there, in fact."

Cloud cuckoo land.

 

Much speculation this week that Trump has to resign and get out of town well before January, so Mike Pence can pardon him.

 

 

 

Lame Duck Trump--famous for never reading his Presidential Daily Briefing document--now forbids his Munchkins from letting the president-elect see it as well.
The US now has TWO "leaders" who don't see the urgent daily updates prepared for them?
Does Covid care?
Does anybody?
 

Hat trolls

Joe Biden's new hat:"We did it ... 46"

 

 

Donald Trump's old hat:

Final Clearance Sale

 

LINK: Hat tricks story
 

Shoot low, boys! They're riding Shetland ponies...

Back in Page Six's dark past, we had a contest about a midnight cult film, described by the Hollywood Reporter at the time as "a western musical with an all-midget cast."

So wrong. But an e-mail arrived this week...

"Hi, dunf!
"I don't know if you'll remember me but I won one of your Page Six contests in which you had to come up with a plot for a film called The Terror of Tiny Town.

" The prize was a limo trip to Buffalo to see the flick Pretty Baby... I don't know if winning the contest had any play in this, but I've had a pretty successful freelance writing career and I'm still at it.

"Additionally, my date for Pretty Baby is now my wife of close to 40 years, so I can't help but feel that Page Six had some underlying thing to do with all of this."

Me blushing, RM. Look away.

Back then, there was zero chance anyone in Canada would ever see The Terror of Tiny Town. Tiny little cowboys on tiny Shetland ponies, a white-hatted tiny sheriff, a tiny villain with a cartoon voice, who chases a tiny stagecoach.

But a smiling god gave us the internet. 

And gadzooks, now the strange novelty western is online, just one click away. If you make it through more than 20 tiny  minutes of this oddity, you rock. 

Tiny Town was made the same year as The Wizard of Oz.

I blame Munchkins for this.  Some of them are in it.

P.S. There is more gunfire in the tiny holdup scene above than in Dunkirk. Apparently Little People carry guns that fire forever.

Or, if you have an hour and mind you want to lose forever, there's  

LINK: The Terror of Tiny Town, complete 

Oh oh: Back in the red

--via dailyhive.com

 

Water is wet, people are telling him

Dancin' Man adrift,

call the Coast Guard

Meanwhile, on the alternate planet...

Think Britain's Spitting Image puppets have gone away? No way! New shows run on the Britbox streaming service.

Here's their take on the US election....

 

Maybe we'll just have pizza....

 

LINK: Dick in a box

BLITT'S MENAGERIE

Barry Blitt's political sketches are the pride of the New Yorker.

 

He's won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.

 

Blitt's latest inspired "kvetchbook" in the current issue offers Hugs for Thugs, or "let the healing begin."

 

And below, The Trumpster, swimming upstream.

 

 

 Who can resist such gotta-see teases in the mag's daily humor newsletter?

Not me.

newyorker.com

 Blitt, (Riverhead Books) sports 25 years of his cartoons for Rolling Stone, Time, Vanity Fair, the New York Times. 

 

Give me a smile!

One of my favorite web musicboxes tosses this into the playlist a couple of times a day. WTF?

Obviously, it's not James Taylor, who wrote it.

It only took three hours to track it down...

 

The Biden dogs can type

 

Thank heaven we live in a time when dogs have their own social media accounts.

 

Already, the tweets of First Dogs Major and Champ make more sense than Twitter's most famous twit.

 

The mutts spell better too.

Alas, DOGS CAN NOT FIND CAPS LOCK

 

All together now:  

LINK: Harry Nilsson's Puppy Song 

EARWORM: Canto Casual

I fell into a YouTube rabbit hole the other day, searching for a tune in constant rotation on connectbrazil.com's 24/7 music stream.

But first, I found THIS ... 

At about the three minute mark, when the infectious tune is locked in your brainpan, it goes all vocalese--finds a pocket--and lifts off the launch pad.

And you thought Grumpy Cat was dead?

 

Exit scowling

 

What budgies?

SCTV Tex & Edna Boil's Organ Emporium

So no plows for Toronto sidewalks this winter.

And no electricity for huge hunks of Metro on a Monday when it's 20C, sunny, with no wind.

Toronto's Covid count climbs and Doug Ford's phone is off the hook.

World class?

 

Alex Trebek

 

GENE LEES: "Gayly, gladly, madly into love"

            --Frank Sinatra & Tom Jobim (1969)

Gene Lees, who wrote the English lyrics, said, "The melody is one of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s early ones, and the song is, again, very difficult to sing." Music writer Doug Ramsey praised Lees' work on the song: "'This Happy Madness' is one of the finest sets of lyrics to grace a Jobim song in any language.

Yes. And happy Sunday. 

Swan song

"There are good people on both sides..."

"on eagles' wings...."

New morning...

And this just in ... no, not Pennsylvania...

 

 

boredpanda.com has 50 of the internet's sweetest  election tweets at

LINK: election reactions 

 

A fave: Rick Aaron says "Waiting for these election results has been like watching a gif download for two days in 1998"

 

 

 

The Winner

Spider on a Plane

 

Lucky spidey is on the outside ... or is he?

Friday find

Gotta love Bossacucanova ...

Could be Covid?

Kinda sneezy...

                               --New York Times graphic
 

"We are not owls!" 

"Me neither!"

 

 We shoot our feces at enemies

We're lousy nest-builders

We mate for life.

We cry like a baby.

Got a guess?

 

LINK: Meet the Frogmouth 

 

 

Do it yourself

But who still has one?

Fat Lady, waiting in the wings....

 

New day dawns

Red sky at night, sailor's delight

Red sky at dawning, sailors take warning

 

It's Election Day in the U.S. 

The clip above runs four minutes.

Aaron Sorkin wrote it.

Jeff Daniels won an Emmy for it.

It's the only item here today.

Enough said.

 

Final hours

 

======

 

Ghost of Elections Past

 

"Remember me?"

Seriously

Anti-Trump Republicans at the Lincoln Project may have lost their party, but not their sense of humor.

Did they save this for the final weekend?

Darkness at noon

Did you change the clocks? 

To MST--Moonlight Savings Time?