'SNL' Returns, Plus: Annie, Stevie and Jane

That would be Lennox, Nicks and Goodall, plus our usual cartoons.

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‘SNL’ opens with Pete Hegseth:

Didn’t know what to expect from the latest Netflix gimmick: Interviews with famous figures very late in their lives to be aired only after they pass away. The subjects are aware of this, and it’s not a totally new idea: Obit writers for The New York Times and others have long spoken to famous folks, getting up there in years, for facts or quotes to be used when they expire. But Netflix is pitching it as a way to give the icon a chance to pass along closing thoughts, wishes and advice to those still mourning.

They’ve already interviewed a few (names are not being released, but apparently not Robert Redford) and they are now airing the first: the great Jane Goodall, just days after she died at 91. It lasts about 55 minutes and she is aided by friendly questions—and several sips from a glass a whiskey, a habit that she enjoyed (this was news to me). There are some very good exchanges, though it gets a bit schmaltzey at the very end when she looks into the camera and, probably with a prepared script, offers her hopes for the world now that she is gone, with an accent on saving Mother Nature and the world from climate change—and from the likes of our current President, who she wishes could be shot into space and not return.

Meanwhile Annie Lennox is in today’s New York Times Book Review, touting her new memoir, apparently made up mainly of photos, with some brief bits of text. She answers the usual question of who she’d like to invite to a little dinner party and comes up with James Baldwin, Charles Dickens, and Eve Ensler. It’s amazing how many writers/entertainers wish to chat with Mr. Dickens. He’d be on my list, as well. (Illustration below by Rebecca Clarke for NY Times).

More from the interview:

Eurythmics scored the soundtrack for a film version of “1984.” Do you remember the first time you read the book?

I imagine it was sometime in the 1970s, when “1984” always seemed so far into the future. The thing that strikes me now is just how Orwell’s dystopian vision has actually come to fruition. The issues of constant surveillance, authoritarian military regimes, censorship, paranoia, harsh penal systems. The removal of human rights, control and dominance of entire populations, thought control, etc.

We think we have freedom and independence, but I’m afraid we don’t realize how we depend on a system that doesn’t really care about the welfare and well-being of the average man or woman.

It’s very warm still in the East but time to enjoy some more autumn music (we started with Eva Cassidy’s “Autumn Leave” the other day). So today let’s invite Ray Davies and The Kinks to detail their delightful “Autumn Almanac,” from about 1967.

And another of my faves from back then, Tony Bennett, offers his own “Autumn Leaves” along with a nod to “Indian Summer,” which is where are at now in NY:

Never a big Stevie Nix fan but she’s back on tour this week and I noted that she was singing Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” in besieged Portland. Also never into Waddy Wachtel’s guitar stylings, but here ya go:

From Tunes to Toons

Barry Blitt:

Ann Telnaes:

Photo Finish

A new feature spotlighting an image from my own camera, a personal Photo of the Day, let me know what you think. Today: One of our final hummingbird visitors this week, on the way south for the winter. Unusual view of the architecture of her wing/shoulder connection.

Books by Greg Mitchell include: Best-seller “The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Film JFK Tried to Kill.” Award-winners “The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics” and “The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” A New York Times Notable Book, “Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas.”

Companion books to his recent PBS films: Memorial Day Massacre, Atomic Cover-up, The Atomic Bowl.

Also, two acclaimed books with the late Robert Jay Lifton, “Hiroshima in America” and “Who Owns Death? Against Capital Punishment.” On the media and Iraq, “So Wrong for So Long,” with a preface by Bruce Springsteen. And in a different vein, “Vonnegut and Me,” “Journeys With Beethoven” and “Joy in Mudville: A Little League Memoir.”