Day: June 1, 2025

I never knew “Cathy’s Clown“, released in April 1960, was solely written by the 23-year-old Don Everly, and that it was recorded live in a single take with Don and Phil Everly sharing a mike.

Born on 2.1.37, Don-the-tenor was roughly two years older than the soprano-ish Phil, who was born on 1.19.39.

“Cathy’s Clown” was certainly the Everly Brothers’ biggest-selling single, as well as the angriest and most emotionally grounded (not to mention the most self-loathing) of all their duets.

The lyrics describe a dude who is enraged and fuming about having been betrayed and humiliated by a duplicitous girlfriend.

The Everlys aside, the musicians included Hank Garland on guitars, Floyd “On the Rebound” Cramer on piano, Floyd Chance on bass and Buddy Harman on drums.

Phil became more and more of an arch-conservative as he aged. A heart ailment took him out on 1.3.14, at age 74. Don, an old-school liberal, passed in August 2021.

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Maher vs. Mamet: The first 18 to 19 minutes of this discussion of Trumpism, bullshit, incredulity and criminality is fairly good stuff.

And yet Mamet still can’t pronounce Kamala Harris‘s first name properly — it’s comma-lah, for Chrissake. And his over-sized beret looks kinda dopey.

Agreed — Mamet-the-playwright was God in the ’80s and ’90s, but that cred is totally shot now. Okay, yes….just about everything Mamet says about the legacy media and drooling Joe Biden is fairly spot-on, but…

The whole discussion lasts just over 90 minutes.

I’ve been drawing water from my Wes Anderson past for over 25 years now. The glorious ’90s plus The Royal Tenenbaums, I mean.

The last time I was truly delighted, Wes-wise, was 11 years ago, which is when I first saw The Grand Budapest Hotel at the Berlin Film Festival. It’s been a rough decade since. For me, at least.

Budapest aside, I am a genuine, whole-hearted fan of only a handful of Wes’s films — Rushmore (which I’ve always adored like a brother), Bottle Rocket, the original black-and-white Bottle Rocket short, most of The Royal Tenenbaums. But I dearly love the Wes signage, specifically the shorts and parodies. The SNL Anderson horror film short is heaven.

I will always be on Team Anderson, and I will never resign. Partly because I’m…well, 85% to 90% certain that one day Wes will reach into his heart and decide to broaden his scope, or perhaps even re-think things somewhat. (Wes is still relatively young.) He has to — artists have no choice. I just hope and pray he’ll make more of an effort to blend his hermetic Wesworld aesthetic with the bigger, gnarlier, more complex world that’s been there all along.

For those who’ve never watched the original 13-minute Bottle Rocket short that played at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, please give it a looksee. It boasts some of that raggedy, roughshod quality that defined Wes’s aesthetic 32 or 33 years ago…a quality that will never return, of course, but it’s a nice contact high all the same.

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