InstaPunk Returns

Lights on, nobody home. Strangest thing happened yesterday. I don’t usually get much help from other nosey people in finding material to write about. Usually, I just make it up for myself. But UPS made a surprise delivery here yesterday with a fat envelope containing a bunch of photographs and a small breast pocket notepad containing hand-scrawled sentence fragments keyed to the photos. So I’m sharing what I have, although there’s not much I can confirm in the way you’re supposed to do it. My source seems to be claiming that the New York Times as we have known it is gone, purchased by a third party, repurposed, and moved from its current location to another headquarters building. Still in New York City but no longer in the high-rent district. Until a few weeks ago, the derelict brownstone had been vacant for years. The  new owners have done a high-speed rehab just sufficient to resume publishing. I can hear all the questions now. Who bought them? Why does the NYT give every appeara...

  Can’t you smell that smell? The news imagineers at CNN are trying to peddle the idea that Trump’s victory was not a landslide, not even as monumental as Clinton’s win over the dangerous Bob Dole in 1996. Here’s the gist of their argument, as reprinted by the Stella’s Yahoo newsfeed: FTA: < A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free  here . Donald Trump can claim a lot out of his  2024 election win : ► It’s a comeback for the ages for a president to go from a pariah after trying to overturn one election to president-elect after the next. ► A rightward shift in election results gives him a mandate to start trying to  remake the US government like he promised he would. ► If Republicans win control of the US House of Representatives, he’ll have control of the entire US government to help him enact change. What Trump cannot claim is a landslide victory, although that’s how he will describe it. As of Sa...

Number 1 song of 1951. Click the graphic for the YT link. Why this song? This is the first day of winter, with Christmas fast approaching, and it’s my custom to post end-of-year thoughts about this time every year. With the world on the brink of massive change, I find myself looking back to some of what has been lost of our traditions and shared American experience. Rosemary Clooney is an interesting part of that for me. I was born in the time between the song’s reign on charts, Clooney’s biggest hit, and the movie White Christmas , which was released in 1954 and starred Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen. Watched it every year when we were kids, a movie as innocent as we were and one I haven’t watched since then. The world changed permanently a decade after I was born and we are still grappling with those changes almost 60 years later. Seemed a good time to remember the distance we have traveled since then.  “Come On A My House” struck me as an appropriate i...

  What are we to make of all these stories? That last pic is from a story that contains the following report on Stewart’s jocular approach to the shooting: FTA: <<Jon Stewart’s ‘Daily Show’ audience erupted into boos on Tuesday night when the suspect UnitedHealthcare shooter’s capture was mentioned during the host’s monologue. The Wrap  notes  most of Stewart’s opening monologue revolved around the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the tyrant’s subsequent flight to Russia… He then asked his cameraperson to zoom in on a photo of Syrian rebels celebrating their victory. Photoshopped in the background was the UnitedHealthcare shooter with Stewart quickly saying, “Are you f–king kidding me? No! There’s no way!” Stewart joked. “Is that where he rode that Citi Bike?” The late night host made clear“obviously” the shooter wasn’t in Syria given the main suspect in the shooting was discovered at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Penn. The news of the suspect’s apprehensio...