Cartoons Friday!

Plus Colbert, more Steve Cropper, the Wainwrights, Tweedy, Weird Al....

Greg Mitchell has authored more than a dozen books (see most of them here) and directed four recent PBS films. Subscribing to this newsletter is still FREE—so if you want to help fund, maybe purchase one of my books, thanks. Or recommend this Substack to a friend!

The New York Times:

The federal deployments that have swept through major cities as part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown have led to thousands of arrests. But they have been less effective at apprehending immigrants with a criminal record than more routine operations elsewhere, new data shows…

Less than 30 percent of the people arrested in any of these operations had been convicted of a crime, an analysis of the data shows, and a very small share had been convicted of a violent crime. The most common non-violent convictions were for driving under the influence and other traffic offenses.

The big FIFA kickoff is tonight at the Kennedy Center with Trump there and the bogus FIFA “Peace Prize” likely heading his way. Especially in light of this:

Classical singer Andrea Bocelli and a duet between British pop star (and FIFA music ambassador, pictured) Robbie Williams and American singer Nicole Scherzinger will be among the acts. Then throw in a performance of Y.M.C.A from the Village People that FIFA has already labelled “iconic”, and it’s clearly going to be quite the night.

Former Kiss crazy Gene Simmons actually was welcomed on the Op-Ed page of the creaky Washington Post yesterday and he delivered this line: “The same president I’ve known for decades — long before he got into politics — as someone who appreciates not only art, but the artists who make it possible.”

Welcome to the Bari, Bari bad new CBS, riding the Charlie horse:

We did our major Steve Cropper tribute yesterday but my old Crawdaddy writer Billy Altman (later a curator at the Rock Hall of Fame) reminds us that even his more obscure session work was stellar, as this for the late great Jesse Winchester’s “Just Like New”:

The squabbling Wainwright clan—you know, Loudon, Rufus, Martha and Lucy—like to get together musically around Christmas, and so they did last night on Kimmel show, with “If We Make It Through December.”

Speaking of Xmas, just out soundtrack for new seasonal film “Oh. What. Fun.” So here’s my man Jeff Tweedy (others on soundtrack include Sharon Von Etten and Fleet Foxes).

And now for something completely different: Weird Al is back, as he told Colbert last night:

From Tunes to Toons

Luckovich:

Bramhall:

Sheneman:

Brodner:

KAL:

Anderson:

Luckovich:

Zyglis:

Photo Finish

“Train Station, Lyon, France”