Weekend Updates, Plus Brandi and Tweedy

"SNL" imagines the NYC mayoral showdown, the NYT finally takes on Trump fascism, and our usual cartoons.

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, see links at very bottom of today’s newsletter, thanks.

Perhaps a little lazy today, with the time change and all, so two highlights from last night’s “SNL.”

Weekend Update:

Final debate in the hot NYC Mayoral race, that’s one of our faves, guest Ramy Youssef as Mamdani, host Miles Teller as Cuomo and Shane Gillis as Sliwa.

At long last, The New York Times has raised, in a prominent way directly from its editorial board (not scattered and occasional opinion pieces) the chilling threat of “authoritarianism” now arriving in America. Here is the important link to their special online package. Steve Brodner, one of our regulars, has helpfully assembled these graphics in one place:

Aptly, considering the above, “SNL” musical guest Brandi Carlile broke loose with her raucous, highly topical “Church and State.”

A couple of times in past month I have called Jeff Tweedy’s new triple album my pick for best of the year so far, so now it’s time to put up or shut up. Here is the entire lp, nearly two hours of a single shot with Jeffy driving around as it plays, occasionally munching on chips or Good ‘n Plenty (he later revealed), and sometimes singing along (as one does), before arriving home as dusk falls. It’s charming and hypnotic, the songs are all short and snappy and most quite terrific. One commenter suggested that by the end he has probably written two new songs with titles “Sun in My Face” and “Snacks.”

From Tunes to Toons

And the J.D. / Erika Kirk memes have arrived….

Photo Finish

My new daily feature, let me know what you think. Today: “Osprey in Flight Over the Marsh.”

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.”