This really brings back memories. Wife and I saw Jim Carroll and his band performing at a small club venue (JB Scott's, on Central Ave.) in Albany, NY in 1980, not long after his album Catholic Boy came out. The music was great, the show was great. The place was sold out and it was SRO. We were only a few feet from the stage. We walked up there from our apartment in the Mansion neighborhood, and then walked back after the show. We had a car, but we didn't want to give up our parking spot on the street near our address, so we hoofed it both ways.
1980 Boston. Went to see Jim Carroll at The Paradise, with husband and one of my brothers. There were 2 shows that night. As soon as the first ended, we ran down the street to find an ATM ( those were the days when cash was needed for most everything). We got cash, ran back and went to the second show! Wicked, wiched, wicked gravity, for sure!
I don’t know about the Halloween costume connection, but for some reason the Mondrian dress gives me a very Frank N. Furter vibe. Did he wear one in the movie?
One thing that is often overshadowed by tales of sex, drugs and rock & roll is Jim's mad basketball skills as a teen in NYC. Basketball is a contact sport in the legendary rough and tumble world of street ball in NYC. Jim was one of the best young players in the City, that's pretty impressive. In the book He talks about his teammate they all called "Little Louie'" who was 6'9" as a teen. Little Louie continued on to become one of the GOAT NBA players, Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Choices, life is all about choices made.
" The hell I don't! LISTEN, KID! I've been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I'm out there busting my buns every night! Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes! "
He won the 1954 Wool Institute competition competing against Karl Lagerfeld and Fernando Sanchez. They were all friends.
Many years later, Fernando Sanchez hosted a party in NYC to which he had invited Naomi Campbell, Mike Tyson, and the eminent philosopher A J Ayer. Freddie Ayer talked Tyson out of raping young Naomi.
Oh to be a fly on the wall in a room full of 20-something incel bros
"Why dont those bit***s like my huge c**k. Those smart aleck tw**s think they are too good for a real man? I will t*t slap them in a heart beat. F**kin' wh**es ever one of them. Why can't I find a girl friend?" Etc. Etc. "Woe is me!"
Ta, Robyn. What Jim Carroll and Yves St. Laurent shared was acknowledgement of their brilliance and success at an early age. It's a warm, lovely day here, and after our elitist avocado toast and coffee, we're going on a foray. With all the beautiful, welcome rain we've had, mushrooms should be spectacular. Good day, beloved Wonketteers. We love and appreciate you all and we bless us all with love, health, peace, and grace.
Please, please stay safe. Wear a mask or two, wash your hands, sanitize when you cannot wash and let the sanitizer dry completely, stop touching your face, take Vitamin D, get a booster shot six months after your last and catch up on any other vaccines you need (and if there are children in your life, make sure they're vaccinated also, too), avoid indoor and crowded outdoor gatherings and when you must meet, remove masks only to eat, drink, and take quick photos, and stay the fuck away from us and anyone with whom you do not share a roof. Do this because you love yourself, and because we love you, too. Do this in memory of 27 Club member Treg and heroic Tony, Holly's pilot friend, among nearly eight million dead worldwide. Do this to honor the nurses and other frontline medical personnel (we adore you, all medicos of Wonkette, active and retired), especially ICU Hera Mrs Land Shark, RN. Stay safe. Jump through any voter registration hoops now, and help others to do the same if it's within your power. When we vote, we win!
It is historically accurate that she had much darker skin than the other women of Greece because she was also the Queen of Sparta.
The Spartan women were not cooped up in their homes and being submissive to husbands and sons. They RAN the show while the men were being war fighting warfighters doing the warfighting! While the fathers and sons were out of town the mothers and daughters were running the farms, managing the money and keeping the SLAVES on task. Yep, them Spartans had slaves. Even when the men-folk were home it was expected they live in barracks and keep fit, drill in formation, eat gruel and stay ready to repel invaders and (mainly) keep the slaves in line. Spartans called everything else "women's work".
So the women of Sparta, including the upper classes and the Queen, spent a lot of their time outdoors working and exercising while wearing minimal clothing in Mediterranean sunlight. No need for fancy tanning salons when the long work day and mandatory fitness kept them constantly sunburned.
eBay's CEO shared an article a newsletter writer published about his pay. His comms chief replied "We are going to crush this lady." A month later the CEO texted "Take her down." Then eBay's security team mailed her live cockroaches, a preserved fetal pig, and a book about surviving the death of a spouse. Ina and David Steiner ran EcommerceBytes from their home in Natick, Massachusetts. A small trade publication for online sellers.
What enraged executives was the comment section, where sellers vented about the company. The campaign went far beyond packages. eBay employees sent pornographic magazines in David's name to his neighbors. They listed the couple's home on Craigslist as a nightly destination for swingers. They flew to Boston, tailed the Steiners in rented vehicles, and planned to break into their garage to plant a GPS tracker on their car.
The Steiners began sleeping in separate bedrooms so that if someone broke in at night, one of them could escape and call police. A Natick detective traced one rental van back to an eBay employee. That single trace unraveled the whole operation. Seven employees pled guilty to federal charges. James Baugh, the security director who ran it, got nearly five years in prison. Now read the final ledger. Baugh, who executed the texts, went to federal prison.
Devin Wenig, who sent "take her down," was never charged, denies knowing about the campaign, and left eBay in 2019 with a $57 million exit package. This week he settled for $2 million plus a $1 million donation to a First Amendment charity in Ina Steiner's name. Steve Wymer, the comms chief who texted "I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes," is paying $50,000. The Steiners fought for seven years and got $48.7 million. The CEO's severance was bigger than their settlement.
It doesn't require a billion to be a horrible person. Various "how much are they worth" web sites put Wenig at somewhere between $115M and $170M which is a lot of money but far enough from a billion that he is a poor to them. Actual billionaires would not let him eat at their table in the cafeteria.
me too. she was a passable Trillian in the movie adaptaption of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well. i think that movie would have been a lot better if Douglas Adams hadn't died while actively working on it. Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android was absolutely inspired casting.
I am as liberal or progressive as one can be. I hope there will be a blue tsunami in 2026 and a wise Dem president with a (new) New Deal 2.0 in 2028. Our problem is not capitalism; it is the lawless and corrupted capitalism in which wealth has been concentrating in the hands of a few hundred billionaires who are hellbent on destroying democracy here and in the rest of the industrialized world.
Yet, this time I am worried.
I just watched the excellent Simon Marks from LBC with his American Week video summary. At around the 5:30min mark, there is a short clip of a Fox News interview of some woman called Megan Roma who is the co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. She gave some absolutely insane answers; you will see them amplified during the next few months on all rightwing media. I wouldn't be surprised if she is an Elon Musk plant or something.
So, that woman replied YES or TRUE when she was asked about:
Abolishing the Senate
Replace the Presidency and the Supreme Court as we know them.
Abolish ICE
Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the US illegally
Defund the Pentagon
Abolish prisons (at least in large parts)
Government or public ownership of most large corporations
I don't agree with any of those positions. Reforms, yes. Abolish, no. Even ICE does not need abolishing; we just need to make sure we don't have a bunch of nazi Brown Shirts running amok and killing immigrants, but every nation has a version of ICE. Sure, we need to reform the SC, ICE, Pentagon, Prisons, etc.; we need a new set of clear rules, and we need to tax the billionaires out of existence and remove their power over all aspects of our society.
But JFC. Clips of that interview will be played a million times and will be attached to every Democratic candidate in 2026 and beyond. And don't forget, right-wing propaganda has about a 10:1 advantage in funding and in number of clicks over the left.
Which is why I always cringe when I hear "socialism". Democratic Party could develop a Social Democratic agenda, also known as "Capitalism with Rules", but that is totally different from "socialism". Yet Dems will be mercilessly labeled as Socialists and Communists.
It's the new Radical Islamic Terrorist scare of 2026.
Here is the video:
"'Support for Trump's war in Iran is cratering' | Simon Marks' American Week on LBC
As Trump's approval ratings hit an all time low, Simon Marks is back to analyse the American electorate's growing grievances with the President as the midterms edge ever closer.
Dems went all in on third way neoliberalism starting with Clinton(arguably even with Carter a little bit), which is diet Right-libertarianism, and have still been called socialists and communists my whole life...
it's not just ice, it's the way puppy-killer started using every alphabet soup agency as interchangeable goons under hsi. intelligence agencies needed to coordinate intelligence at high levels after nine/eleven. when they do it in the streets they're just jack-booted thugs without any particular expertise.
ICE must be disbanded and consigned to dark American history too damned many citizens AREN'T learning a damned thing from. The agency is an obscene, aggressive, destructive assembly despised beyond ALL known means of measure.
I HATE ICE and will go out of my way to protect local migrants from them. My Nana told me stories about how frightening it was for her Irish immigrant parents, aunts and uncles upon arriving in America.
My thrice great grandfather was a Welsh stowaway on such a ship. Upon arriving on American shores as an adolescent he was taken in by the Oglala Sioux in the Dakota territory and raised as a member of the tribe. He grew up to serve as one of the leaders of the community.
I have seen an old picture of Grandpa Leigh in his tribal regalia when he was serving among the leadership council of the tribe and pride absolutely overwhelmed me.
Abolish ICE, and cage its members until we can figure out what to do with them. Sure, there might be one or two who aren’t corrupt, vicious amoral monsters, but until we know which one or two aren’t, they need to be off the streets.
Twiggy!
I was slit in jugular vein too, it was last week but I got better
This really brings back memories. Wife and I saw Jim Carroll and his band performing at a small club venue (JB Scott's, on Central Ave.) in Albany, NY in 1980, not long after his album Catholic Boy came out. The music was great, the show was great. The place was sold out and it was SRO. We were only a few feet from the stage. We walked up there from our apartment in the Mansion neighborhood, and then walked back after the show. We had a car, but we didn't want to give up our parking spot on the street near our address, so we hoofed it both ways.
1980 Boston. Went to see Jim Carroll at The Paradise, with husband and one of my brothers. There were 2 shows that night. As soon as the first ended, we ran down the street to find an ATM ( those were the days when cash was needed for most everything). We got cash, ran back and went to the second show! Wicked, wiched, wicked gravity, for sure!
I don’t know about the Halloween costume connection, but for some reason the Mondrian dress gives me a very Frank N. Furter vibe. Did he wear one in the movie?
One thing that is often overshadowed by tales of sex, drugs and rock & roll is Jim's mad basketball skills as a teen in NYC. Basketball is a contact sport in the legendary rough and tumble world of street ball in NYC. Jim was one of the best young players in the City, that's pretty impressive. In the book He talks about his teammate they all called "Little Louie'" who was 6'9" as a teen. Little Louie continued on to become one of the GOAT NBA players, Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Choices, life is all about choices made.
" The hell I don't! LISTEN, KID! I've been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I'm out there busting my buns every night! Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes! "
Fun facts about YSL:
He won the 1954 Wool Institute competition competing against Karl Lagerfeld and Fernando Sanchez. They were all friends.
Many years later, Fernando Sanchez hosted a party in NYC to which he had invited Naomi Campbell, Mike Tyson, and the eminent philosopher A J Ayer. Freddie Ayer talked Tyson out of raping young Naomi.
Gratitude to M Ayer as well as Señor Sanchez for providing the venue for such persuasion
I didn't know there was such a thing as a wool competition
But of course that would be a thing somewhere in fashion
According to DWP, YSL did a collection with cerulean military jackets, iirc.
National Girlfriend day?
Oh to be a fly on the wall in a room full of 20-something incel bros
"Why dont those bit***s like my huge c**k. Those smart aleck tw**s think they are too good for a real man? I will t*t slap them in a heart beat. F**kin' wh**es ever one of them. Why can't I find a girl friend?" Etc. Etc. "Woe is me!"
It’s just so hard to understand why they aren’t all rolling in the bitchez…
Ta, Robyn. What Jim Carroll and Yves St. Laurent shared was acknowledgement of their brilliance and success at an early age. It's a warm, lovely day here, and after our elitist avocado toast and coffee, we're going on a foray. With all the beautiful, welcome rain we've had, mushrooms should be spectacular. Good day, beloved Wonketteers. We love and appreciate you all and we bless us all with love, health, peace, and grace.
Please, please stay safe. Wear a mask or two, wash your hands, sanitize when you cannot wash and let the sanitizer dry completely, stop touching your face, take Vitamin D, get a booster shot six months after your last and catch up on any other vaccines you need (and if there are children in your life, make sure they're vaccinated also, too), avoid indoor and crowded outdoor gatherings and when you must meet, remove masks only to eat, drink, and take quick photos, and stay the fuck away from us and anyone with whom you do not share a roof. Do this because you love yourself, and because we love you, too. Do this in memory of 27 Club member Treg and heroic Tony, Holly's pilot friend, among nearly eight million dead worldwide. Do this to honor the nurses and other frontline medical personnel (we adore you, all medicos of Wonkette, active and retired), especially ICU Hera Mrs Land Shark, RN. Stay safe. Jump through any voter registration hoops now, and help others to do the same if it's within your power. When we vote, we win!
Slava Ukraini. 🌻🇺🇦💙💛
Damn . . . "Jeff Conolly, Boston garage rock legend and Lyres frontman, dies at 69"
The Lyres, a great Boston band. RIP Jeff Conolly
•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•---•
"Lyres - Don't Give It Up Now –LIVE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0dIi--fxfk )
"Lyres - Help you Ann" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqF5P3Fa84 )
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/01/arts/jeff-conolly-garage-rock-legend-lyres-frontman-dies/
When I first read that, my brain said, "Wait, the guy from Taxi was in Boston?!??"
I think I need a couple more hours of sleep.
clearly a fan of Laurent, here is dan patrick of Texas, in a "sort-of motorcycle jacket".
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/religion/article/religious-liberty-commission-dan-patrick-22318862.php
He's no Pat Boone.
All this talk of "Helen was white"!
It is historically accurate that she had much darker skin than the other women of Greece because she was also the Queen of Sparta.
The Spartan women were not cooped up in their homes and being submissive to husbands and sons. They RAN the show while the men were being war fighting warfighters doing the warfighting! While the fathers and sons were out of town the mothers and daughters were running the farms, managing the money and keeping the SLAVES on task. Yep, them Spartans had slaves. Even when the men-folk were home it was expected they live in barracks and keep fit, drill in formation, eat gruel and stay ready to repel invaders and (mainly) keep the slaves in line. Spartans called everything else "women's work".
So the women of Sparta, including the upper classes and the Queen, spent a lot of their time outdoors working and exercising while wearing minimal clothing in Mediterranean sunlight. No need for fancy tanning salons when the long work day and mandatory fitness kept them constantly sunburned.
And they were famously outspoken. Not submissive at all. Tigresses in bed. And they scratched. Read all about Lampito in the play Lysistrata.
adeoyemichaeladeyinka
21h
eBay's CEO shared an article a newsletter writer published about his pay. His comms chief replied "We are going to crush this lady." A month later the CEO texted "Take her down." Then eBay's security team mailed her live cockroaches, a preserved fetal pig, and a book about surviving the death of a spouse. Ina and David Steiner ran EcommerceBytes from their home in Natick, Massachusetts. A small trade publication for online sellers.
What enraged executives was the comment section, where sellers vented about the company. The campaign went far beyond packages. eBay employees sent pornographic magazines in David's name to his neighbors. They listed the couple's home on Craigslist as a nightly destination for swingers. They flew to Boston, tailed the Steiners in rented vehicles, and planned to break into their garage to plant a GPS tracker on their car.
The Steiners began sleeping in separate bedrooms so that if someone broke in at night, one of them could escape and call police. A Natick detective traced one rental van back to an eBay employee. That single trace unraveled the whole operation. Seven employees pled guilty to federal charges. James Baugh, the security director who ran it, got nearly five years in prison. Now read the final ledger. Baugh, who executed the texts, went to federal prison.
Devin Wenig, who sent "take her down," was never charged, denies knowing about the campaign, and left eBay in 2019 with a $57 million exit package. This week he settled for $2 million plus a $1 million donation to a First Amendment charity in Ina Steiner's name. Steve Wymer, the comms chief who texted "I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes," is paying $50,000. The Steiners fought for seven years and got $48.7 million. The CEO's severance was bigger than their settlement.
Shit.
I shop eBay to deny Amazon my essence. And my Ameros.
Ain't noplace safe.
the porno mag prank thing is so nineties. does ebay know about the interwebs?
Billionaires are monsters. Sociopathic horrible entities They need to have their humanity license revoked.
It doesn't require a billion to be a horrible person. Various "how much are they worth" web sites put Wenig at somewhere between $115M and $170M which is a lot of money but far enough from a billion that he is a poor to them. Actual billionaires would not let him eat at their table in the cafeteria.
The French understood.
I didn't know we had a national girlfriend.
Who is she?
AOC?
I'd much rather have a local girlfriend, but that's about as likely as a national one.
National Nancy Mace!
Does she have an older brunette sister?
thought it was Zooey Deschanel for a little while twenty years ago, and yes, she does have an older brunette sister.
Emily!
I loved her in Tin Man, that sci-fi channel wizard of oz mini series/TV movie.
That was so good! I had forgotten about it and need to find it and re-watch.
me too. she was a passable Trillian in the movie adaptaption of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well. i think that movie would have been a lot better if Douglas Adams hadn't died while actively working on it. Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android was absolutely inspired casting.
She always seemed too high maintenance for me.
likely a bit, but very nearly made "adorkable" a word.
I thought she had an older reddish-haired sister (????)
Emily Deschanel is best known for starring in Bones, with that Angel guy.
here both sisters:
https://www.eonline.com/news/1017891/sisters-zooey-and-emily-deschanel-make-the-2019-oscars-a-family-affair
She lives in Canada, you wouldn't know her.
Yeah. What type of movies does she like?
Does she prefer scary movies or sci-fi?
Hopefully not rom-coms.
I don't want to break up with our national girlfriend!
Are bodice rippers ok?
Ooh, I love me some bodice ripping!
(as long as it's consensual)
True
I am as liberal or progressive as one can be. I hope there will be a blue tsunami in 2026 and a wise Dem president with a (new) New Deal 2.0 in 2028. Our problem is not capitalism; it is the lawless and corrupted capitalism in which wealth has been concentrating in the hands of a few hundred billionaires who are hellbent on destroying democracy here and in the rest of the industrialized world.
Yet, this time I am worried.
I just watched the excellent Simon Marks from LBC with his American Week video summary. At around the 5:30min mark, there is a short clip of a Fox News interview of some woman called Megan Roma who is the co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. She gave some absolutely insane answers; you will see them amplified during the next few months on all rightwing media. I wouldn't be surprised if she is an Elon Musk plant or something.
So, that woman replied YES or TRUE when she was asked about:
Abolishing the Senate
Replace the Presidency and the Supreme Court as we know them.
Abolish ICE
Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the US illegally
Defund the Pentagon
Abolish prisons (at least in large parts)
Government or public ownership of most large corporations
I don't agree with any of those positions. Reforms, yes. Abolish, no. Even ICE does not need abolishing; we just need to make sure we don't have a bunch of nazi Brown Shirts running amok and killing immigrants, but every nation has a version of ICE. Sure, we need to reform the SC, ICE, Pentagon, Prisons, etc.; we need a new set of clear rules, and we need to tax the billionaires out of existence and remove their power over all aspects of our society.
But JFC. Clips of that interview will be played a million times and will be attached to every Democratic candidate in 2026 and beyond. And don't forget, right-wing propaganda has about a 10:1 advantage in funding and in number of clicks over the left.
Which is why I always cringe when I hear "socialism". Democratic Party could develop a Social Democratic agenda, also known as "Capitalism with Rules", but that is totally different from "socialism". Yet Dems will be mercilessly labeled as Socialists and Communists.
It's the new Radical Islamic Terrorist scare of 2026.
Here is the video:
"'Support for Trump's war in Iran is cratering' | Simon Marks' American Week on LBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjXiAQB1oM8
As Trump's approval ratings hit an all time low, Simon Marks is back to analyse the American electorate's growing grievances with the President as the midterms edge ever closer.
5:22 | The Democrats’ internal battle
Saw earlier pposts about her remarks. She's not really helping.
ICE cannot be salvaged. After the purge, there's nothing of value left of it. Let it go.
Dems went all in on third way neoliberalism starting with Clinton(arguably even with Carter a little bit), which is diet Right-libertarianism, and have still been called socialists and communists my whole life...
ICE is corrupt to its core.
We don’t need ICE.
We survived most of my life without ICE. It’s not something that existed until after 9/11, and they definitely have a fatally tainted culture.
ICE has killed more Americans than Iran has.
Its immediate predecessor / progenitor is La Migra, a scourge to brown people since 1924. Arguably, the earlier models of that were slave patrols.
But we definitely DO NOT need it, abolish ICE..
it's not just ice, it's the way puppy-killer started using every alphabet soup agency as interchangeable goons under hsi. intelligence agencies needed to coordinate intelligence at high levels after nine/eleven. when they do it in the streets they're just jack-booted thugs without any particular expertise.
Vicious bigots with a badge.
ICE must be disbanded and consigned to dark American history too damned many citizens AREN'T learning a damned thing from. The agency is an obscene, aggressive, destructive assembly despised beyond ALL known means of measure.
I HATE ICE and will go out of my way to protect local migrants from them. My Nana told me stories about how frightening it was for her Irish immigrant parents, aunts and uncles upon arriving in America.
My thrice great grandfather was a Welsh stowaway on such a ship. Upon arriving on American shores as an adolescent he was taken in by the Oglala Sioux in the Dakota territory and raised as a member of the tribe. He grew up to serve as one of the leaders of the community.
I have seen an old picture of Grandpa Leigh in his tribal regalia when he was serving among the leadership council of the tribe and pride absolutely overwhelmed me.
I keep thinking I've never experienced anything like it in my lifetime and never thought I'd see America just wipe away any progress
Yep.
Abolish ICE. They don't need to exist.
Abolish ICE, and cage its members until we can figure out what to do with them. Sure, there might be one or two who aren’t corrupt, vicious amoral monsters, but until we know which one or two aren’t, they need to be off the streets.