Feeling Petty, But It's Berry Good

Latest hot news and politics, John Oliver on cartoon hero with giant penis, plus music from Rod Stewart & The Faces, Tom Petty and Chuck Berry.

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News & Politics

Tokyo Story: The Olympic Village’s cardboard bed frames have led some to suggest they are aimed at avoiding intimacy among athletes. Seth Meyers: “By the way, it turns out the beds were not made of cardboard to discourage sex, but to encourage people to recycle, which is another way to discourage sex.” Stephen Colbert: “I can’t wait for six months from now to read toilet paper labels that read, Made from 100 percent recycled Olympic sex bed.”

The Onion: “Republicans Worried Blind Worship Of Trump Overriding Traditional Values Like Blind Worship Of Reagan.”

Headline of the Day from the NY Times: “2 Americans Get Prison Over Nissan Executive’s Escape From Japan in a Box.”

Greene thumbed: Twitter announced Monday that it's suspending the account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—for 12 hours—for violations of the Twitter Rules, “specifically the COVID-19 misleading information policy.”

Of the 5 appointed by Kevin McCarthy, House G.O.P. leader, to the committee investigating the Capitol attack, three of them voted to challenge the 2020 election results. And as the first rioter convicted of felony gets just 8 months in prison from a judge, Ann Telnaes:

Fox in the Vax House: Both Steve Doocy and Sean Hannity of Fox News—obviously ordered by their bosses who are on the hot seat—offered ringing endorsements of getting Covid shots on Monday, though Tucker Carlson continues raising absurd points in opposition. Plus: It has emerged that Fox has quietly implemented its own version of a vaccine passport.

Chips Ahoy: In the latest Economist/YouGov poll, more than a quarter of Republicans (29%) say they will not get vaccinated.  Just 4% of Democrats say this.  Only 16% of those who say they will reject a shot accept that most of the new cases of COVID-19 are occurring among the unvaccinated—most think the virus is spreading equally among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. And get this: A solid 51% of those who reject the covid shot claim the vax “is being used by the government to microchip the population.” That’s one in five of the total U.S. adults.

The turning of Atlanta: “In Georgia, hospitalizations from the infection have gone up 30% in a week, and a 5-year-old boy recently died after contracting the disease,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports today.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson defended the decision to reopen his country as scheduled—from his country residence, where he has been quarantining after his health secretary suffered mild Covid-19 symptoms. “We have to ask ourselves the question, ‘If not now, when?’” he said.

John Oliver was off this week but in this 6-minute Web exclusive explains why a Danish children's cartoon starring a man with an enormous, flexible penis, resonates with him so much.

MLB's Game of the Week tonight on YouTube will be called by an all-women crew, a first for the league…. These pitchers’ spin rates fell most after a crackdown on sticky substances…..Nashville Predators prospect Luke Prokop became the first active NHL player to come out as gay.

Nick Kristof "decided to take a leave from The Times to consider the possibility of a political campaign," the NYT's Lisa Lerer reported Monday. He is reportedly eyeing a run for governor of Oregon.

In my daily “Countdown to Hiroshima”: On this date in 1945, Gen. Eisenhower argued against dropping atomic bombs over Japanese cities. Few Americans even today know this.

Ben & Jerry’s will stop selling its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied territories.

Women feel a draft? Senate Democrats are proposing a sweeping rewrite of the military draft laws to require women to register for the Selective Service System. Politico: “The bill would reignite a contentious debate over whether women should be required to register for the draft, a move the House and Senate have each considered in recent years, though the change has never become law.”

Music

Surviving members of the Faces, Rod Stewart, Ron Wood and Kenny Jones have re-formed to record new songs, according to an interview. There hasn’t been a new Faces album since 1973’s Ooh La La. So here’s Rodney with the boys in 1972 with “You Wear It Well.”

A “re-imagined” version of an earlier mish-mash of a Tom Petty album has arrived, called Angel Dream (Songs From the Motion Picture ‘She’s the One’). It removes the Wildflowers outtakes and replaces them with unreleased Petty originals “105 Degrees” and “One of Life’s Little Mysteries” along with a cover of J.J. Cale’s “Thirteen Days.” Here’s a new video for “Angel Dream (No. 2).”

Song Pick of the Day

In that new Hulu doc on Paul McCartney he talks to Rick Rubin about numerous songs, Beatles and post-Beatles, including “Come Together”—which he admits John based closely on an old Chuck Berry song, even including the “old flat top” lyric. Paul felt it was a little too close so made some changes that provided more distance. Here’s Chuck original for “You Can’t Catch Me.”

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His new film, Atomic Cover-up, just had its world premiere and is drawing extraordinary acclaim. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.