South Park--and 'The Office'--Return

Plus Patti Smith, and yours truly, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, music from Terry Reid, and a few cartoons.

My award-winning film “The Atomic Bowl” started streaming on PBS.org and PBS apps last week week (you can easily watch it via links here), plus it is airing over many PBS stations, and there is a companion e-book.

So South Park has returned with a second episode after its controversial mockery of Sir Donald last week, and one observer reviews it this way:

South Park didn’t just go scorched earth, they napalmed the narrative. This week’s episode has Dora the Explorer getting ICE-raided at her own show, then trafficked straight to Mar-a-Lago to give old men massages. That’s right. A kids’ cartoon character ends up massaging a geezer in Trump’s palace of denial. Kristi Noem shoots a puppy in the opening scene. ICE raids Heaven. Trump, Vance, and Satan rub elbows on Fantasy Island…...

Also returning, a new version or “The Office” by some of its original creators, but this time set at a small, struggling (natch) newspaper in Toledo, OH. Coming to NBC in September. Oscar returns from the original cast. Trailer:

My latest piece related to my new book and PBS film (streaming everywhere and on stations), “The Atomic Bowl,” is published today at that fine books site, Literary Hub. It focuses on the “hero” of the film, a lit prof and frequent contributor of poetry to the revered New Yorker magazine, William W. Watt—who witnessed and then exposed the U.S. all-star football game played in Nagasaki just months after our atomic bomb killed over 75,000 there.

Read it here, and photo of him below.

Speaking of the atomic bombings, Patti Smith posted a video at her substack last night, reflecting on her recent visit to Hiroshima and the connection of so many civilians killed there and at Nagasaki to what’s happened in Gaza. Best link I can find is here:

Thoughts

The New York Times this morning:

Israeli Security Cabinet Approves Full Military Takeover of Gaza

I posted my interview on Democracy Now! yesterday but here is a brief exchange:

Amy Goodman --Greg, you can't help but think, when you watch the trailer to the film. when you just show the moonscape in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the comparison to what we're seeing in Gaza right now.

Greg Mitchell -- Yeah, I've called Gaza "Nagasaki in slow motion". And the photos do look remarkably similar.

Last night’s Colbert monologue:

A kind of cult rock star, Terry Reid, has died. I remember his first couple of albums in the late 1960s, he was a great vocalist but the albums (a mix of originals and covers, and genres) did not break through, as the songs were inconsistent, and then he faded, but kept going. Known as much today for being asked by Page to join Led Zep as lead vocalist, which he declined due to his current touring, but he recommended a guy named Plant. Terrific early tune here:

Perhaps his most famous song, here live, “Without Expression.”

CSN &Y recorded it, with a different title, for their classic album but later booted it for a Stills song. Here it is:

From Tunes to Toons (but a lot of our regulars are on vacation)