History. History. (Notice how it repeats itself?)

"What's particularly striking in the new book, though, is the cluelessness of the stalwart Republican grandees of the Ford presidential campaign, who were both blindsided and baffled by Reagan's guerrilla victories in their own midst. A panicked internal Ford camp memo struggles to parse the 'unexpected Reagan success in certain caucus states,' where the voters who turned out in shockingly large numbers were 'unknown and have not been involved in the Republican political system before' and were 'alienated from both parties.' As if describing an Indian ambush in the Old West, the memo goes on to exclaim that 'we are in real danger of being out-organized by a small number of highly motivated right-wing nuts.' Among those shocked was the canny Texas political operator James Baker, the George H. W. Bush paladin, who couldn't get over how 'absolutely ruthless' these uppity Reagan shock troops were. 'Our people just aren't used to this uncompromising hardball stuff,' he told Time."

—from Frank Rich's review of The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein, The New York Times Book Review, August 3, 2014

Steve Miller: Certified Punk Anarchist

Steve Miller was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Friday. Perhaps the big ol' jet airliner that flew him to the ceremony ran into some turbulence, because the space cowboy certainly wasn't happy after he touched down in Cleveland. According to The New York Times:

"When they told me I was inducted they said, 'You have two tickets—one for your wife and one for yourself. Want another one? It's $10,000. Sorry, that's the way it goes,'" he said, adding, "What about my band? What about their wives?"

When a publicist for the Rock Hall tried to interrupt him, Mr. Miller persisted. "No, we're not going to wrap this up—I'm going to wrap you up," he said. "You go sit down over there and learn something."

Time keeps on tickin', tickin', tickin'. So do time bombs until they go kablooey. Miller felt he was being punked by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so he decided to out-punk everyone else in the Class of 2016 with a Johnny Rotten attitude. That's because he had something to prove—that he's nobody's fool, or at least nobody's CPA, even if he is the one who brought up the $10,000 "all members of the Steve Miller Band except Steve Miller" admission fee. (Think you can't afford it, Steve? Think again—to paraphrase another one of your hit songs, take the tax deduction and run.) See, according to Charles M. Young in his article "The Eagles: Hell Is for Heroes," published in the November 29, 1979, issue of Rolling Stone:

Steve Miller, 1979

Steve Miller, the opening act, takes the stage to a big ovation from the Milwaukee teenagers. [Eagles manager Irving] Azoff, behind a stack of speakers, gives them the finger. "Look at that guy," he spits, indicating Miller's short hair and conservative dress. "He even looks like an accountant. Undoubtedly the cheapest man in rock & roll. You know he gets all his equipment into one truck?"

"If he's so horrible," I ask, "how come you hired him to open for you?"

"He's the least of the worst," says Azoff, still angry because Miller cut his set short the previous night. "Some other act, we'd get a hundred bikers in the front row."

I bet Steve Miller could've fit a hundred bikers in his equipment truck in '79, and no "abracadabra" magic trick would've been necessary. All he would've had to say was "You'll save a ton on gas money this way."

priorities

Probably not as important as seeing a woman naked, if you were to ask a 15-year-old boy. Which is probably why 15-year-old boys aren't allowed to vote.

giving credit where credit was due 20 years ago

In today's New York Times Jon Caramanica writes about André "André 3000" Benjamin's reunion with Antwan "Big Boi" Patton to celebrate Outkast's 20th anniversary as recording artists, plus Benjamin's role as Jimi Hendrix in the new film biography Jimi: All Is by My Side, written and directed by John Ridley, who won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay earlier this year, for 12 Years a Slave. A couple of points stand out in Caramanica's article:

For the better part of his career, André 3000 has been a pioneer, sometimes to his detriment. Outkast was a titan of Southern hip-hop when it was still being maligned by coastal rap purists. On the 2003 double album "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below," which has been certified 11 times platinum, he effectively abandoned rapping altogether in favor of tender singing, long before melody had become hip-hop's coin of the realm.

I would argue that P.M. Dawn were far more ahead of their time than André 3000 in that department. By their third album, Jesus Wept (1995), frontman Prince Be had abandoned rapping altogether in favor of singing, but even on their 1991 debut, Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience, Be sang for the duration of the tracks "On a Clear Day" and "In the Presence of Mirrors":

(In a possible nod to the duo's influence, rapper Childish Gambino, a.k.a. actor-comedian Donald Glover, covered their 1992 hit "I'd Die Without You" earlier this year on BBC Radio 1Xtra.)

Here's another point of Caramanica's I disagree with:

His forays into fashion (Benjamin Bixby) and animated television (“Class of 3000”) would have made far more sense — and had a far bigger impact — a couple years down the line. In many ways, André 3000 anticipated the sound and shape of modern hip-hop ambition.

I don't care to argue his point about fashion, though I'm pretty sure Sean "Puff Daddy"/"P. Diddy" Combs's Sean John line of clothing came before André 3000's, but does Caramanica not remember Kid 'n Play's Saturday-morning cartoon on NBC in the fall of 1990?

Or MC Hammer's on ABC the following year?

Hey, nobody said pioneering had to lead anywhere good. Just ask the Donner Party.

George Clooney as George Washington via Abe Vigoda

I can't be the only one who sees Fish in this photo from the December 11, 2011, issue of The New York Times Magazine, right?

My consciousness is gone with the wind.

"We still feel that color is hard on the eyes for so long a picture."

That's what Frank S. Nugent had to say about Gone With the Wind, the most successful film of all time (when its gross is adjusted for inflation), in the December 28, 1939, edition of the New York Times.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I feel the same way about black-and-white movies. They make me sleepy. Is there a psychological diagnosis for this "condition," or am I just too accustomed to the faster pace of modern movies (specifically, everything from Jaws onward)? Then again, as my girlfriend says, "You think the pacing of the dialogue in His Girl Friday [1940] was slow?"