Firehose #191: Ballers
Also: See you at Third Sunday, 8 p.m. ET!
First things third: As advertised, our traditional Second Sunday Zoom call with paying customers, having been displaced last week due to acute Live-show-itis, is back with a vengeance tonight at 8 p.m. ET. No such thing as FOMO when you don’t MO….
* Well, we did it. Finally got Sarah Isgur on, that is, after years of righteous listener lobbying. Sarah’s book is a legit banger, cheerfully demystifying an important institution while also offering some deep interpretative analysis that will make you a smarter consumer of judicially related news. She made the rounds this week, on NPR, The View, The New York Times, the Deseret News; and in The Free Press, Rolling Stone, and ScotusBlog.
As the house-ad above underscores, there are advantages to being a paying subscriber to The Fifth Column, such as having access to entire Members Only episodes. But, because we know you like sweet taste, here’s a clip for all freebooters to enjoy, about how Isgur actually likes all nine of those robe-wearin’ weirdos:
* Another popular recent Members Only episode was #289 with Andy Mills, in which he talked about the terrific Longview miniseries on Artificial Intelligence, The Last Invention. Well, lookie here:
Back in January, I had a conversation with someone named Daniel Moreno-Gama. He was a 19-year-old Texan with a part-time job, taking classes at a community college. He was worried about AI, and what he saw to be the impending extinction of humanity.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because this week he was charged with attempting to kill OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Here’s the interview:
* In Episode #531, liberal-of-Fox-News Jessica Tarlov confessed that she sometimes has a hard time with criticism over the sound of her voice. So in a magnanimous gesture Thursday, President Donald Trump … oh, ha ha, no, what are we even doing here….
I am watching one of the Least Attractive and Talented People on all of Television, Jessica Tarlov. Her voice is so grating and terrible, I had to “turn her off!” Her Democrat soundbites are FAKE. She makes up “Poll Numbers,” and nobody challenges her, because she is so boring. I have among the best Poll Numbers I have ever had, and why shouldn’t I, ALL THE COUNTRY DOES IS WIN. CNN had me at 100%, saying they never saw that before. GET HER OFF THE AIR, SHE IS BAD FOR OUR COUNTRY!
That crash-out came 10 days after the president had Truth-Socialed, “For Fox executives only, take Jessica Tarlov off the air. She is, from her voice, to her lies, and everything else about her, one of the worst ‘personalities’ on television, a real loser! People cannot stand watching her.” Ten days before that, the Commander in Chief had called into The Five when Tarlov wasn’t there, telling co-host Jesse Watters, “I watch Jessica, and I’m not a fan.”
Tarlov tweeted back on Thursday: “Guess I’ll take this opportunity to mention that my numbers are far from fake - Trump really is that unpopular. And you can pre order my book I Disagree as of today!! https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803493/i-disagree-by-jessica-tarlov/.”
* The proximate cause for the Trump-on-Tarlov violence has been the persistent unpopularity and sporadic bafflingness of the Iran War and its aftermath. Some of which was the subject of this week’s Tangling, w/ Kmele & co.:
* Iran was the lead topic on this week’s Reason Roundtable. Secondary was a topic I’m already at this point sick of, but: what the wipeout electoral loss of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán means for the AmeriCons who invested so much in (and/or received investment from) Orbánism. I ranted about this cadre on Monday, before they had further slathered themselves in inglory:
* Furthering that theme this week was Jonah Goldberg, which is the traditional cue for … AD SWAP!!! (ad swap ad swap….)
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Cleansing Peter Meijer content, via one of the better Chat threads:
* Speaking of baseball and bad life choices, what a glorious time we had at Yankee Stadium Thursday afternoon, when beloved listeners Jaye, MAGA Mary, Nancy Rommelmann and I played hooky in the boozy sunshine to watch the Angels body-slam the Bombers. It struck me then as now that as a general proposition, all “businessman’s specials,” as weekday day-games used to be called, should be de facto Fifdom meetup situations all over this great land. I’m sure you people have a baseball WhatsApp group or whatever; figure it out. And invite me.
* One of two people who couldn’t get it together to join us at the stadium was Craig Mahoney, though in C.M.’s partial defense, he was putting the finishing touches on his self-published/painted children’s book about a dog, The Mickiest Mickey, available at a Substack near you. I am a proud owner of Craig’s art, and so can you!
* Moar sportsball: Don’t make the mistake of skipping over M.O. #315 w/ hunky former UCLA quarterback and son-of-a-Heisman-winner Mark Harmon, who has also had some acting successes. Here’s a freeloader clip in which he (or actually, Moynihan) talks about that whole Sexiest-Man-Alive thing, as well as the insanity of his showbiz family. Can you believe we didn’t even mention that his other sister was married to John DeLorean?
* Time for Producer Jason’s Video Vault!
Having completely missed his nearly two-decade run on NCIS, when Mark Harmon entered the studio earlier this week, all I could think was, “Mr. Shoop!” As the lead in Carl Reiner’s Summer School, Harmon was the teacher you dreamed of having: a misfit who didn’t want to be there either, but who wound up educating you the most. Does the premise of a high school gym teacher being blackmailed to teach summer school because he is up for tenure make any sense? It does not. Were you expecting a campy comedy to call for makeup effects by monster maker Rick Baker? Unlikely! Is it weird he lets a 16-year-old student (played by Courtney Thorne-Smith) move in with him? It was a different time. Buy the Blu-Ray; watch for free (with ads) on YouTube; here’s the trailer:
* Comment of the Week comes from Archibald.:
I hereby issue a Massive and total apology for posting that I would skip this episode. Absolutely fascinating. I can listen to this twice.
Sendoff. Imagine moving to Nashville at age 20 with $80 in your pocket, then sell your first tune, at age 23, to Kenny Rogers, and it’s “The Gambler”…. The wonderfully named Don Schlitz used to tell audiences that they may not know who he is, but they damn sure knew his songs: 25 #1 country hits, 50 in the Top 10, “Forever and Ever, Amen,” “When You Say Nothing at All,” and suchlike. He also wrote the songs for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer musical, which I now kinda wanna see…. Anyway, here’s Schlitz’s catch-in-your-throat recording of a ditty made famous by Garth Brooks: