Firehose #153: Welcome to Europe! Now Go Home!

Also: The short happy life of Paloma Media

‘Tis the season for the Moynihans of the world to put on their little salmon-colored shorts and attempt a shot-for-shot personal remake of The Talented Mr. Ripley, albeit at decreasingly favorable exchange rates. We will continue to content-produce our way through the vacay, and yes, we are fixing up those audio issues; it’s abundantly clear that the tech gods are trying to tell us something: Just record in person, you dillweeds.

* Kmele and I on Thursday did 84 minutes of The Megyn Kelly Show, followed by a bonus 15-or-so-minute after-party that I cannot currently locate. Topics included a speculative preview of that Wall Street Journal Trump/Epstein story, Trump’s new #MAGA problem, that annoying maybe-you-shouldn’t-ostracize-your-politically-ungood-relatives-after-all NYT piece, the Coldplay Dumbotron, a golf champion’s real-keeping, and more. Whole show:

* Fear not, Moynihan was not silenced on L’Affaire Epstein. As teased on Episode #515, he yakked on his Report Tuesday about the “thousands of victims” game of numerical telephone with independent journalist Ken Klippenstein:

* And the subject also came up during his Thursday convo with Semafor Semafounder Ben Smith (veteran of #125, #227, #404, and #480):

* I had mentioned that the smart lawyer guy Ted Frank is a go-to for applying Occam’s Razor tests against the large amounts of available (and unavailable) evidence concerning all things Epstein; including just this morning on why the Wall Street Journal didn’t produce an image of Trump’s alleged birthday greeting. Here’s Ted’s long and zig-zaggery Twitter thread beginning Jan. 28 and continuing through this day. Useful even/especially for those who don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions.

* Let’s take a break from all that chundersnatch, and sidetrack a bit into sports. On #515, at least as well as we can make out between microphone malfunctions, we went off on a weird tangent about the great American Kurt Russell. Pal and listener Bill Schulz (#79) texted in response the amazing factlet that, “Walt Disney’s final words were ‘Kurt Russell.’” While not precisely true, that story is interesting and worth reading about. Also, don’t take my word for it on the awesomeness of The Battered Bastards of Baseball; here’s reader Paul: “I could give two squirts about baseball and this is still one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. 10/10 would recommend.” Trailer:

* Unsurprisingly, Craig Mahoney had some further elaborations about the Disney/Russell connection; let’s go ahead and give him Comment of the Week (with some light copy-editing):

Yeah, it's kind of crazy that one of cinema's all-time great tough guys got his start as a Disney kid in the '60s. Walt loved him, to the point that one of the last notes Walt scrawled as he lay dying in a hospital bed in December 1966 was just "Kurt Russell." If you get a chance, go look up the television special about the opening of the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland, where a young Kurt guides you through the attraction. As big a Disney guy as I may be, though, Kurt's best work was definitely with John Carpenter (from the 1979 Elvis TV movie to Escape From New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China is an insane run). However, my all-time favorite Kurt Russell movie is the 2009 Yankees World Series Championship video, where he's shown repeatedly in the stands at Yankee Stadium, sitting next to stepdaughter Kate Hudson, who was banging A-Rod at the time.

Anyway, my favorite story involving Kurt Russell, Walt Disney, and baseball, copied and pasted from Disney historian Phil Gramlich on Facebook:

Kurt Russell was just a 13-year-old kid, acting in his first Disney film, “Follow Me Boys,” in the spring of 1964. He was also a star baseball player, even at that age, and he and his family already had aspirations of him playing in the big leagues some day. In those days, the movie was being filmed at Disney’s Golden Oak Ranch, which was nowhere near the fields where Kurt’s baseball games were held. His parents didn’t want him missing any games, so they signed a deal with Walt Disney that would allow him to leave the set, by helicopter, every day at 3:00 p.m.

One Friday afternoon, filming was running late. Director Norman Tokar wanted to get a few more shots before losing Kurt for the day. ‘Just three more shots,’ he commanded. Kurt reminded him that he had to leave … it was actually the day of the championship game for his 13-year-old All Star tournament and he absolutely could not be late. The director kept pushing it. 2:45 p.m. came and went, and Kurt kept anxiously looking at his mom on set, trying to figure out what the heck to do. At 2:59 p.m., he heard the blades of the helicopter spring to life: “See ya Monday!” Kurt shook the director’s hand and he and his mom ran off to their waiting ride to the field. Kurt got the game-winning hit that night to win the title.

All weekend, Kurt was sweating it. He had a contract with Walt that said he could leave the set at 3 o’clock sharp, but he was nervous that Walt would hear that he had disobeyed the director’s wishes, and he’d be fired. Baseball was his true love, but he loved acting too, and his dad was spending a lot of money on those helicopter rides.

Kurt got to set that Monday morning, went to makeup and wardrobe, and was on his way to class in the little schoolhouse on set when he noticed Walt about 100 feet away and walking straight at him. He figured he’d better go take his tongue-lashing or firing like a man, so he walked straight to him and did not try to avoid him. When he got closer, he noticed that Walt had a huge smile on his face. He laughed as he playfully hit Kurt on the shoulder, ‘I hear you got the game-winning hit the other night! Way to go!’

* Here’s that Russell/Haunted Mansion (and Osmonds!) clip:

* Didja watch the ESPYs monologue by Shane Gillis? Definitely some hits and misses (appropriately), but my heart belongs to the Tush Push trailer:

* OK, back to bidness. On Tuesday night, I saw a buncha youse out at The Village Underground/Comedy Cellar for a living taping (and streaming!) of The Reason Roundtable, at which there was some unspeakable monologues from Nick Gillespie (Special Dispatch #72, #379, Members Only #251) about … wart removal:

* Speaking of Nick, he’ll be moderating a debate at Philadelphia’s National Liberty Museum July 23 on “Cancel Culture, Free Speech, and the Future of Public Debate.” Combatants include Ernest Owens, author of The Case for Cancel Culture; Rikki Schlott (#427), co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind, plus actor/comedian Dov Davidoff. Other upcoming events of note include something that is happening in NYC July 29 concerning all three of us that for some reason isn’t being publicly advertised/announced anywhere yet! UPDATE: Here’s the link! Oh, and that July 23 Mets-Angels meetup, to the extent that it is happening, is happening without my participation (sad!), due to various me issues.

* How many of you remember Paloma Media? (Crickets.) Whaddya mean??? Anyhoo, the artist formerly known as Endeavor/Thrust (don’t ask) was a website published by Nancy Rommelmann, Scott Ross, and I for one year; an idea for nearly three years before that, and an incubator whose baby chicklets live on to this day in the form of Ask a Jew and Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em. As one can well imagine, even a doomed if plucky little attempted media-creation during the insane journalistic circular firing squad of 2019-2022 would intersect, overlap, and fall in and out of collaboration with a startlingly large number of larger-than-life personalities, potential investors, and creators of other new media properties that you people value.

Nancy R. has written a long and fun tick-tock of the rise & demise of our little experiment over at (why not?) The Freeman. Here’s how it begins:

January 2019: Journalists pack the Olive Tree, upstairs from New York’s Comedy Cellar, for the occasional “thought criminals” nights put on by Bari Weiss, then at the New York Times. It’s casual, cocktails and hummus and jet-engine levels of talking. At one point Bari calls attention to their being three people in attendance currently in the barrel, how it’s a weird time in media, in the culture. The people she refers to sit at one end of the communal table: Jesse Singal, John McWhorter, and me. Our crimes, respectively, are raising questions about transgender youth medicine; language policing; and the excesses of #MeToo. Everyone goes back to talking, including, later, Bari, Reason’s Matt Welch, and myself at the bar, where the conversation goes something like: Seems like the walls are really closing in, heh? But maybe we’re imagining it? What do you think?

* Alert listener Bored Nihilist informs us that American hero Dave Barry (S.D. #72) has erroneously been A.I.’d to death. Reports the funnyman:

I found out about my death the way everybody finds out everything: from Google.

What happened was, I Googled my name ("Dave Barry") and what popped up was something called “Google AI Overview.” […]

What can we learn from my experience? We can learn that although Artificial Intelligence is an awesomely powerful tool that according to experts is going to completely transform human existence, it is not very bright. So for now we probably should use it only for tasks where facts are not important, such as writing letters of recommendation and formulating government policy. We should NOT let AI handle jobs requiring a high degree of accuracy, such as airplane navigation. ("Ladies and gentlemen, we're beginning our descent into Honolulu, and we should soon... No, wait, sorry, this appears to be Paris.")

Seasonally (and fitness-goalsy!) appropriate walkoff from less-litigious times: