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From 1976 to 1980. People's income more than quadrupled, with the largest paid audience of any American magazine. By 1991. it was the most profitable magazine in the world. And thus the most valuable. So it has remained ever since, (By the 2010s, a full-page advertisement in People was running about $350,000. as compared to a mere $12,000 for an advertisement in Harpers, or about $160.000 for a full-page advertisement in The New York Times newspaper.)

Tim Wu "Attention Merchants" (2016)

Race Against Time

"He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence." - William Blake

For years, scientists have requested detailed operational blueprints - country by country down to neighborhood by neighborhood - on how best to make it through 12 to 24 months of a pandemic. "If the greatest pandemic in history is indeed on the horizon," wrote the editorial board of Lancet, "that threat must be met by the most comprehensive public-health plan ever devised." Indeed, Senate Majority Leader Frist has called for an unprecedented effort rivaling the Manhattan Project in scope and intensity to prepare the nation's defenses.' "We have only one enemy," CDC director Gerberding has said repeatedly, "and that is complacency."

Unfortunately, no country is prepared. In the policy journals like Foreign Affairs, senior officials admit that planning for what they call "the most catastrophic outbreak in human history" is "abysmally inadequate. Despite repeated warnings over the years that a new pandemic is inevitable and repeated prods by the WHO for countries to draw up preparedness plans, only about 50 of more than 200 countries have done so. Some of these "plans" are as stunted as a single page" and most, as described in the science journal Nature, are "very sketchy." The WHO calls for countries to "put life in these plans" by carrying out practice simulations. "One has to be very vigilant, honest and brave," asserts Margaret Chan, now the WHO's chief of pandemic preparedness. "Sometimes you need to make unpopular, difficult recommendations to political leaders which may have a short-term impact on the economy and on certain sectors." As the Los Angeles County Disaster Preparedness Task Force motto reads, "The only thing more difficult than preparing for a disaster is trying to explain why you didn't."

Fewer than 10% of the countries with plans have taken the necessary further step of translating the plans into national law. The chair of the Infectious Disease Society of America's Pandemic Influenza Task Force is concerned about the state of U.S. preparedness. "Although many levels of government are paying increased attention to the problem," he said, "the United States remains woefully unprepared for an influenza pandemic that could kill millions of Amertcans." Osterholm was, as usual, more direct. "If it happens tonight," Osterholm said at a forum sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, "we're screwed."

Osterholm laid it out on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. "We can predict now 12 to 18 months of stress, of watching loved ones die, of potentially not going to work, of wondering if you're going to have food on the table the next day. Those are all things that are going to mean that we're going to have to plan unlike any other kind of crisis that we've had in literally the last 80-some years in this country."

The U.S. pandemic preparedness plan has been long in the making. The planning process started in 1976, only to become one of the longest-standing incompleted processes in Washington. Various drafts emerged in '78 and '83, but were reshelved and forgotten until the latest effort to update and implement such a plan began in 1993. The Government Accountability Office - the watchdog arm of Congress - scolded the Department of Health and Human Services on six separate occasions for failing to develop a national response plan despite many years of "process."

In October 2005, a draft of the plan was obtained by The New York Times. The "preparedness plan" highlighted how poorly prepared the country is for a pandemic. The headline read "U.S. Not Ready for Deadly Flu, Bush Plan shows." In The Boston Globe, Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy noted that other nations like Canada, Britain, and Japan had completed their plan a year or years before. "They're putting their plans into action right now," Kennedy wrote, "while we're waiting to read ours for the first time. America deserves better." Senator Arlen Specter agreed. "Could we have acted sooner to avoid the situation we are in now, in effect running for cover?" he asked. "We need a better way of finding out what the hell is going on."

One of the factors blamed for the 29-year delay in producing a plan was the difficulty of interdepartmental coordination. A pandemic would impact all agencies of government, but they don't all have the same priorities. Senior policy analysts describe the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, as "not exactly good bedfellows." The USDA's traditional mission to defend the economic interests of the agricultural industry sets up a natural tension with agencies prioritizing broader concerns. Experts predict the economic impact on U.S. agriculture will be nothing compared to the havoc wreaked by the virus more generally.

The official plan was finally released in November 2005. The CDC planners did not mince words: "No other infectious disease threat, whether natural or engineered, poses the same current threat for causing increases in infections, illnesses, and deaths so quickly in the United States and worldwide." In terms of preparedness, though, The New York Times editorialized that it "looks like a prescription for failure should a highly lethal flu virus start rampaging through the population in the next few years." The editorial noted that experts find the plan "disturbingly incomplete," particularly because it "largely passes the buck on practical problems" to state and local authorities, "none of which are provided. with adequate resources to handle the job." Redlener called it "the mother of all unfunded mandates." Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations has long advocated an integrated public health infrastructure. "If such an interlaced system did not exist at a time of grave need it would constitute an egregious betrayal of trust," she wrote in a book bearing the same name, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health.


Michael Greger "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching" (2006)

Kind hearts are more than coronets
(Tennyson, poem)

The most extraordinary coincidence which helps make this program so leaden is that only a few weeks ago I was recited this proverb in Creole in the island of Mauritius.

And in Creole it goes , "Tous la casa la pie nour la cresse du dilly badou."

In fact it was sung. It was sung to me by a small Creole lad aged fourteen who was trying to flog shells on the beach. His name, inexplicably, was Clarence.

And it goes (singing), " Tous la casa la pie nour la cresse du dilly badou."

And that is that quotation. Most extraordinary.

I didn't want any shells because they're sort of rather ugly. Those shells. But he wouldn't be put off. He's going to go far, this Clarence. No worries with him. He'll survive.

He said, "No shells. You like pawpaw? What you like? Pineapple? I shred it for you. You like to see the trees. The ebony trees. I take you to the Pumpernoose Gardens. Where you like to go? I find."

I said, "No no no no. There's really nothing."

Then I had a thought. There WAS some way of using Clarence.

I should explain at this point what my wife were DOING on Mauritius a few weeks ago. We went there because my wife was born there and hadn't been back for thirty-seven years and we decided that was time she went back just to make sure that she turned the gas off.

It was also the anniversary of our silver wedding so we were having a holiday there.

And it's a magnicent marvelous island, Mauritius. It's tremendously beautiful. And the people there are not only extremely beautiful, but the pleasanted people I've ever met anywhere in the world.

The only trouble is, coming back, is the photographic record. I always like to paw over the photographs afterward. And very little of what was sort of real Mauritius seemed to me to be photographed. And I was dying to get a record. And I said to my wife, "What is really indigenous about Mauritius? What do you remember that we should see."

And she said, "I remember that the little old men, aged about a hundred and four, used to sort of hunker down on the street corners and have little bowls of nuts round them. They were peanuts, and some of them were shelled and they're painted bright pink and bright blue. And you grind them up and you put them beside the curry, the dish of curry. It's one of the side dishes of curry. And that'll make a marvelous picture."

I said, "Fine."

"And the other thing I remember in the plantations, the huts nowadays are sort of corrugated iron and concrete in fact. Concrete villas. But the old plantation worker's huts used to be made of bamboo cane strung together with sort of platted roofs. And so if you'll get a photograph of those."

So I turned to Clarence, my little lad, and said, "Right. Find me. Find me a little old man selling these colored peanuts. How much will you charge? I want two of them."

He said, "One rupee sir."

I said, "Fine. Very reasonable. Right. And find me two huts made of bamboo cane. And here's a five rupee note. Bring me the change."

So he came back and he gave me the addresses of these things and I said, "Where's the change?"

He said, "No change."

I said, "Wait a minute. Clarence. Wait a minute. You said one rupee each for finding these men with the nuts."

"Oh yes sir, but we have a saying in our country. In Creole it goes, 'Tous la casa la pie nour la cresse du dilly badou' "

I said, "What does that mean in English?"

And he said, "Cane huts are more than curry nuts."

Frank Muir
741203

When my dad graduated from medical school in 1947, he joined DC's Freedmen's Hospital for a one-year residency. During that year his mother, only thirty-eight years old, died in Freedmen's from hypertension while he was on duty. In a quiet moment of openness, he once shared with me how helpless and guilty he felt that he could not save her. From Freedmen's he was offered a huge opportunity: a residency at Chicago's prestigious St. Luke's Hospital. He was the hospital's first, and only, black resident. After attending only all-black schools, he was thrilled to break the color barrier, but even then the door opened only partway. He wasn't allowed to live with his white colleagues in the residents' quarters adjacent to the hospital. He had to find room and board on the south side of town where blacks were allowed to live, five miles away from the hospital, and travel by bus or streetcar - a very long and tiring commute after a thirty-six-hour shift. He was also instructed to enter the hospital through the back door. This he refused to do. He showed up on his first day and walked through the front door like all the white doctors. Word of his act of defiance spread quickly through the black staff. The next morning many of them were waiting out front when he arrived, and they all walked in together. Nobody objected.

Chicago was like that. It had a patchy attitude toward segregation. Some freedoms were allowed, some weren't. Marshall Field's, the famous department store, was a classic example. Black people could shop at Marshall Field's, but they couldn't work there. It was a checkered landscape that my mother's family had learned to navigate. Through education that led to financial stability, they became one of the most politically connected black families of the time, carving out a measure of status and access unavailable to most black Chicagoans. They, and others in the black middle class, built their own businesses and social network, but they were second-class citizens nonetheless, and their relative degree of freedom existed in a very narrow lane.

Valerie Jarrett "Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward" (2019)

Hunters in the Czech Republic were following a deer when something went wrong. One of their dogs startled it. The deer ran toward them and one of its antlers caught the strap of a hunter's rifle. It ran off. Someone later saw the deer, still with the gun, more than a mile away. Apparently, the gun isn't loaded, but some future hunter may think twice about opening fire when encountering a deer that also appears to be armed.

Protecting American jobs by preventing foreigners from taking them was a major theme throughout the Trump campaign. Soon after Trump won the Republican nomination, questions began to emerge about whether Melania Trump was among those people who had worked illegally in the United States. If she had, and her husband's proposed policies had been in effect, she would have been a high-priority target for arrest and deportation to Slovenia.

How Trump handled this potential crisis proved how clever he is at distorting an argument to avoid an issue. And it would show how what Trump told voters on immigration and jobs was mostly talk, not the promised action to make sure foreigners did not, legally or illegally, take American jobs.

Questions about whether Melania Knauss (sometimes spelled Knavs) worked illegally arose after Trump's favorite tabloid, the New York Post, ran nude photos of her on its cover and inside for two days, using stars to cover strategic spots. The photos included lesbian poses. That Trump or someone acting with his approval supplied the photos became clear when the freshly nominated Republican candidate's campaign was asked about them.

Instead of denouncing the newspaper, a spokesman called the photos art, though the setting - a mattress with a sheet, the bed pressed against a bare wall and harsh lighting - was not up to the standards of either Playboy or the late art photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

As for his wife's immigrant status, Trump spoke up in August 2016 using his universal "they" to cover anyone in journalism.

"They said, 'Melania Trump may have come into our country illegally' and 'how would that be for Donald Trump?' Here's the only problem, she came in totally legally," he said, indicating they had spoken privately about whether to respond. "I said to her 'No no, let it simmer for a little while. Let them go wild, let it simmer, and then let's have a little news conference.' "

Speaking in North Carolina, Trump said his wife entered the United States legally. "Let me tell you one thing. She has got it so documented, so she's going to have a little news conference over the next couple of weeks. That's good. I love it. I love it."

There was never such a news conference. No documents were provided, either.

That allowed Trump to get away with diverting the issue to one not raised. The issue was whether Melania had worked in the United States illegally. But just as with his tax returns, Trump promised but failed to deliver.

Months later, diligent reporters from the Associated Press uncovered business records from Metropolitan International Management, which had Melania's contract. It had later folded. The records showed that Melania Knauss had indeed worked illegally in the United States in 1995. She took at least ten modeling jobs that in all paid more than $20,000. She was an independent contractor, but the modeling agency gave her a pager, putting her at management's beck and call, and loaned her money, the business records showed.

Knauss turned twenty-five that year, making her old to be a fashion or swimsuit model. That may explain why she got so little work at modest pay and did nude photos with another woman.

Fashion shows and magazines prefer teenage girls. Until New York State passed a law in 2014 making models seventeen and younger subject to rules governing child actors the majority of fashion models were legally children, many only fourteen years old, according to the Council of Fashion Designers of America, which urged the legislation.


David Cay Johnston "It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America" 2017

Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind


Now there's efficiency for you!

Let me tell you a story. In the 1920s a professor at Oxford and a professor in Beijing communicated with each other by mail for many years. Eventually the Chinese professor wrote saying that he was coming to visit Oxford. The Oxford professor thought that he would like to show the Chinese professor something quite outside his normal experience, so he took him to an athletics meeting. After one race there was a lot of cheering and excitement and the Chinese professor asked what was about.

"Well", said the Oxford professor, "the man in the red shirt has run the one hundred yards one-tenth of a second faster than it has ever been run before in this country."

"I see," said the Chinese professor "and what does he propose to do with the time he has saved?"

John Cleese, " Professor At Large; The Cornell Years" (2018)

In 1982 the then well-known film reviewer and television personality Roger Ebert was a guest on a local morning television show in Baltimore, hosted by a young and unknown host named Oprah Winfrey. As he later recalled, she seemed talented bur suffered from poor bookings. "The other guests on the show included a vegetarian chef and four dwarfs dressed as chipmunks" who, as he recalled, sang the Chipmunks' Christmas song while Hula-Hooping.

Ebert, rather smitten, asked Winfrey on a date after she moved back to her hometown to host a program named AM Chicago. Airing weekdays at 9 a.m., the show faced tough competition in The Phil Donahue Show, airing at the same time. Phil Donahue was serious - for a talk show host at least - and popular. But Winfrey would rely on the ageold tactic of stealing attention by being more outrageous. She booked a group of nudists (who, naturally, did the show in the nude) and the Ku Klux Klan (who appeared in full regalia). On one episode exploring the question "Does sexual size matter?" Oprah memorably pronounced, "If you had your choice, you'd like to have a big one if you could. Bring a big one home to Mama!" Scandalous it may have been, but hers was soon the leading talk show in Chicago.

On their date Ebert took Winfrey to a place called Hamburger Hamlet and gave her some unsolicited advice. Having begun to do so himself, he suggested she leave the networks and take charge of her media destiny. Winfrey wouldn't continue to date Ebert bur she did take his advice, achieving a degree of independence that defied nearly all the existing strictures of the attention industries. She decided to take ownership of her show and sell it directly to television stations, becoming, in effect, a competitor to NBC, CBS, and other networks. She was the beneficiary of a federal rule enacted in 1971 - part of a progressive backlash against broadcasters that President Richard Nixon found agreeable - designed to weaken their control over television. The bet was that her proven capacity to arrract arrention was sufficient to sell advertisers on her, and in turn, to sell her show to others.

The bet would pay off. Debuting in 1986, her show relied on an emotional, confessional style that was now what viewers wanted, combined with the lure of her own irresistible persona. She tacked toward respectability, shrewdly toning down the most lurid and shocking elements of AM Chicago, and thereby gained an even larger audience, rather as CBS made radio respectable in the 1930S, and as People had gentrified gossip journalism. Spectacle was now couched in principle, too. As one critic observed, she "cast her professional choices, persona, and style as moral ones" and "practiced a form of public 'moral accountability' with her audience." Like People, too, she recognized that everyone loved to unburden herself, given the right conditions. Yet her winning wager was obvious only to her. As Time wrote in 1988, "Few would have bet on Oprah Winfrey's swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk .... What she lacks in journalistic toughness, however, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all, empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye .... They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session."

Even now the scale of Winfrey's ambitions was clear. She told Spy magazine, "I knew I'd be a millionaire by the time I turned 32."


Tim Wu "Attention Merchants" (2016)

Our Health in Our Hands

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

One authority was quoted as saying, "Short of obtaining [antiviral] drugs, there's not really much we can do to prepare." That's hardly true. While only the "happy few" might have access to Tamiflu or an emerging vaccine, the unhappy many can still practice defensive strategies such as social distancing, respiratory etiquette, and other hygiene measures like hand sanitization. Even if Tamiflu reduced the risk of dying by 80%, given the present lethality of H5Nl, these would seem prudent practices for everyone. No one just comes down with the flu. You catch the virus from someone else or, more precisely, someone else's virus catches you.

In 1918, half of the world's population became infected by the virus. Although not all who were infected fell ill, half of the world's inhabitants were exposed. The half-empty interpretation is of an unthinkably transmissible contagion - half the world infected! The half-full view, though, recognizes that fully half of the global populace was able to hide from the virus. The question then becomes, how does this other half live? How can you better the odds that you'll fall into the lucky half?

Social distancing has been described as avoiding any "unnecessary contact of people." Influenza is a communicable disease spread from one person to the next; the fewer people you come in contact with, the fewer chances you have of catching it. On a personal level, this means staying in one's home, not going to work, and avoiding crowds like the plague, especially in enclosed spaces. On a community basis, this may mean closing schools, churches, and other public gatherings. "Most Americans take for granted their freedom," reads one legal review of the hygiene laws that were imposed in 1918, "to associate with others in a variety of social settlngs."

At the recommendation of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service in 1918, entire states reportedly shut down public gatherings of any kind, including funerals. The American Public Health Association agreed that "[n]onessential gatherings should be prohibited." "There should be laws," wrote the APHA, for example, in its official report, "against the use of common cups." Laws "regulating coughing and sneezing" were also deemed desirable.

Huge signs in New York streets warned: "It is unlawful to cough and sneeze." Violators faced up to a year in jail." Within days, more than 500 New Yorkers were hauled into court. Chicago's Health Commissioner told the police department, "Arrest thousands, if necessary, to stop sneezing in public.?" Signs read, "Spit Spreads Death."

Across America, there were cities of masked faces. People were afraid to talk to one another, eat with one another, kiss one another. The country held its breath. Some cities made it a crime to shake hands. Hundreds were rounded up for not wearing masks and thrown in jail for up to 30 days. Civil libertarians and Christian Scientists, with support from some business sectors, formed the Anti-Mask League in protest. Tobacconists complained that sales were down because people couldn't smoke with their masks on. Shop owners worried that compulsory asks would discourage people from Christmas shopping. Due to business pressure, some cities closed down all schools, churches, and theaters, but kept the department stores open, giving a whole new meaning, perhaps, to the phrase "shop 'til you drop."

The closing of schools and other public institutions was not universally accepted. A 1918 editorial in the British Medical Journal read, "[E]very town-dweller who is susceptible must sooner or later contract influenza whatever the public health authorities may do; and that the more schools and public meetings are banned and the general life of the community dislocated the greater will be the unemployment and depression." The closing of schools, however, may have been especially useful in stemming the spread.

According to the World Health Organization, children are the primary vectors for the spread of pandemic Influenza. Evidence from a variety of sources mark kids as the major transmitters of influenza in general in a given community. A real-time surveillance system set up at Boston's Children's Hospital found that school-aged children may actually drive each winter's flu epidemic. Preschoolers in particular are considered "hotbeds of Infection." Not only might they be more likely to pick their noses and not cover their sneezes, but children are able to shed flu virus for up to six days prior to showing any symptoms. That means that for almost a week before anyone suspects they are infected, they can be spreading the virus to others.

In this way, children play a central role in disseminating influenza. Studies suggest that they pick up the virus mixing with other kids at school and then become the major entry point for the virus to gain access to the household. Japan experimented with its flu vaccine strategy in the 1970s and 1980s and showed that by targeting children for flu shots, hospitalization and death in the elderly could be reduced. Each flu season, children kill their grandparents.

It's easier for some to stay away from crowds and kids than others, but avoiding influenza is a difficult task for al1. Exhaled into the air and surviving for hours on solid surfaces like metal or plastic, influenza is notoriously transmlssible. After the 1968 pandemic, one scholar wrote, "Those who have spent their lives in attempts to further the conquest of infectious disease are humiliated by the contrast between the success of the astronauts and the failure to control acute respiratory disease." Another expert noted at a conference on pandemic influenza, "I know how to avoid getting AIDS, but I do not know how to avoid getting influenza."

To avoid the disease completely would mean a divorce from society. A realistically stark description of the coming pandemic at a Council on Foreign Relations forum convinced one audience member "to get in my car and move to Montana or something." He was told, "It won't help."

Robert Webster told the New Yorker. "We have to prepare as if we're going to war and the public needs to understand that clearly ...if this does happen, and I fully expect it will, there will be no place for any of us to hide. Not in the United States or in Europe or in a bunker somewhere. The virus is a very promiscuous and efficient killer."

In 1918, it took only one stranger to bring death to an entire community, even in the farthest-flung parts of the world. In China's remote Shanxi province, the spread of the pandemic was traced to a single woodcutter, tramping from village to village. In Canada, the virus wore the uniform of a stubborn Canadian Pacific Railways official who flouted quarantine, dropping off infected repatriate soldiers from Quebec all the way west to Vancouver. An entire port city in Nigeria was infected by fewer than ten persons.

Social distancing, taken to its logical extreme, would mean total isolation from the outside world. True, becoming a hermit living in a cave would presumably preclude one from dying during the pandemic, but this is easier said than done. No man is an island ... but what if he lived on one?

Pandemic influenza first reached the Pacific Islands in 1830 on the Messenger of Hope, a ship carrying the first load of Christian missionaries. Fast forward to November 7, 1918. The SS Taline pulls into Apia Harbor in the New Zealand colonial island of Western Samoa from Auckland at 9:35 a.m. Despite many Spanish influenza-infested passengers aboard, the captain tells the island medical officer that no one is sick. With a clean bill of health, the yellow flag of quarantine is lowered, and the ship is docked.

Just miles away lay American Samoa, an island governed by the U.S. Navy. Word spread of the outbreak on Western Samoa. The American Commander offered to send volunteer medical personnel to help. Western Samoa's administrator stubbornly refused, disconnecting the telegraph and later explaining that he "didn't like Americans." A week later, the New Zealand army lieutenant colonel in charge of Western Samoa ordered all communications between the islands cut, furious over American Samoa's refusal to let any ships come near its island."

The U.S. Naval Administration shut off American Samoa from the outside world for 18 months, extending into 1920, refusing even mail delivery. Because of its precautions, American Samoa remained the only country in the world in which not a single person died during the pandemic of 1918. In neighboring Western Samoa, just a few miles away, more than one-fifth of the entire population died. probably the highest percentage of any country in the world.

Simple quarantine does not work, because healthy-appearing people can spread the disease. But the U.S. Navy showed that isolation, in which one excludes both sick and healthy people, can. While Western Samoans died by the thousands, American Samoan records continued to reveal the normalcy of Samoan life, logging rare deaths from "eating shark's liver" or from "a falling coconut."

Two other islands also escaped unscathed - St. Helena in the South Atlantic, famed as Napoleon's place of exile, and Verba Buena Island right in the San Francisco Bay. As the pandemic raged along the California coast, the U.S. Naval training base stationed on Verba Buena clamped down with a policy of total seclusion of its 4,000 inhabitants and practiced such preventive measures as literally blow-torching drinking fountains sterile every hour.

Total exclusion is more difficult on mainlands than on islands, but portions of northern and eastern Iceland and one town in Alaska also successfully hid throughout the pandemic. Coromandel, a resort town in New Zealand, cut itself off from the rest of the world using a rotating roster of shotgun-wielding vigilantes. It worked.

The only town in the continental United States to even come close was the remote mining settlement of Gunnison, Colorado. While surrounding mining towns were being devastated and the situation in Denver was described as "full of funerals all day and ambulances all night." the residents of Gunnison blockaded off the two mountain pass approaches with armed men and escaped with one of the lowest reported infection rates in the country. Similarly, U.S. Army commands tried to isolate entire military units. They "failed when and where [these measures] were carelessly applied," but "did some good ... when and where they were rigidly carried out."

Island nations like New Zealand are considering similar measures today, examining the feasibility of the immediate blockading of all people and imports - even food and medicine - when the pandemic hits. "To do that," a New Zealand microbiologist realized, "all those people overseas on holiday would not be allowed in either. It sounds a good idea, but I would find it interesting to see whether it could ever be done."

Mike Davis, author of the recent "Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu", was asked in an interview what he and his family plan to do when the pandemic hits. "There is the run-for-the-hills strategy, quite frankly," he said, though he acknowledged this may not do much good. "Living in an unpopulated area may work for a handful of people. Maybe some survivalists can do this. But odds are that at least a quarter of Americans will be infected [and fall ill] in a pandemic flu." America's purple mountain majesties cannot fit 296 million people.


Michael Greger "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching" (2006)

A policeman's lot is not an happy one
(Gilbert & Sullivan, Pirates of Penzance)

When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done, a policeman's lot is not an happy one, happy . . .

Anyway, I was going to tell you the story about when I was in my open-toes sandals and I got my foot stuck in the escalator. But when Denis's story about when he had to give advice on the phone-in program reminded me of the time when I gave advice, which was about five weeks ago.

I was in a newspaper. I took up a newspaper column. And as I don't think my piece is in the paper I'm very glad this opportunity tonight to give immense reassurance to Ron Snathe over his problem.

He lived at Chertsea and he had this girlfriend Flo, who sort of changed. He got engaged to her. And then she started off slim and then she put on weight enormously. And her voice was the most frightful thing. She was an absolute harpy. He said, "Harpiness is just a think called Flo." She used to shout at him and humiliate him and he wanted to give her up.

And he'd fallen in love with the policeman's daughter in the village. And he said would I investigate the policeman's daughter whose name was Lotty and make sure that she wasn't a dreadful harpy like Flo was.

The opportunity occurred only about two weeks ago. I was on the way back from a fancy-dress ball in Norfolk, which was a Saturday night. And I'd gone as Cardinal Richelieu in scarlet robes and the head thrust up through a doily and a beard. And I was on the way back, driving myself back in the early hours of Saturday morning and the car broke down.

So I got a lift in a vehicle at this cafe I'd stopped at, this motorway cafe. And it was a vehicle which was working on the M-25 in our village. And it was one of those things that has a platform and on a lorry and it has two girders on an elbow. And the chap in the cab pulls a lever and the thing sort of straightens out and pushes the platform up and they put new lights and lamp posts and things.

So, in the Cardinal's robes, I sat in this cage, because the driver was there with his mate and a dog and a baby.
And he said I could sit in the cage thing. And I drove home in that.

And we were going through the village and I suddenly thought. I saw a light on in the policeman's house. And I thought maybe this is a chance to have a glimpse of Lotty because it was early Sunday morning. And I could see what sort of girl she was.

So we had a code that I gave a thump thump, two thumps and they'd stop the car. Stop this vehicle. So I gave thump thump. And they said "Yes?"

I said, "Could you jack me up a bit to that window. I want to look in."

So he jacked me up. and she was in bed. And it was Lotty. Oh, she was beautiful. Absolutely lovely. And she was reading. She was one of those girls that woke up early and read.

So I tapped on the window. She looked a bit startled actually. As it was the first floor and there was this Cardinal tapping on the window.

And she opened the window and said (whispering), "What do you want?"

And I said, (whispering) "Could I have a word? it's behalf of Ron Snathe. Look, you'd better get in the cage thing with me so we can talk."

So she got out through the window and I helped her into this cage thing and it was a bit awkward. And she fell over the edge with a thump. Whereupon the whole vehicle started off.

There she was in this baby doll nighty and I was in my cardinal's robe. And it was about seven o'clock on Sunday morning.

So I thumped twice on the floor and got the vehicle to stop.

"YES?"

I said, "Get us back, lads, get us back."

So he said, "Right. We'll back up."

So he backed up. And there was this lighted window. So I tapped on the window.

I said, "Here you are."

And she said, "IT'S NOT MY HOUSE."

And it wasn't.

It was Mrs. Leatherbarrow, the village gossip.

I thought to myself this is it. this is the end of my career.

I could see the headlines, "Fake cardinal sex scandal shock."

She opened the window and said, "What's this?"

And this girl, the policeman's daughter, Lotty, who I didn't know, she just turned calmly to this woman and said, "Is there no privacy in this village? Can't a girl go to confession on a Sunday morning?"

So Ron Snathe, if you're listening tonight, I want to give you this immense reassurance about your girl. Whatever she is, our policeman's Lotty is not a harpy, Ron

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Frank Muir 589b

In 1965, Lenny and I were married in front of a justice of the peace at City Hall in New York. I wore a pretty, simple little dress. After the ceremony, we went out for Chinese food with his best man, Al Moldovan, and my best friend, Leah Schaefer, who introduced me to Lenny and has remained a friend forever. She made a very funny crack while we were eating that I've never forgotten: "The problem with going out for a Chinese meal after you get married is that you want to get married again."

I knew that I'd made a wise choice marrying dependable, sweet, thoughtful, wildly intelligent Dr. Leonard Gordon, who I knew would never betray me. He would protect me even if it meant throwing himself in front of a car for me. Ohl How did I ever get so lucky!

When I first told my mother that I was going to marry a Jewish man: she had a little trouble adjusting, despite being impressed that he was a doctor. The very first time she opened the door to him, she said, "Are joo a Yew?" .

Poor Lenny said, "What?"

"A Yew, are joo a Yew?" she said.

And the poor man was so confused, he said, "Jes, I am!"

Rita Moreno " Rita Moreno" (2012)

Leanne Chapman of Brisbane, Australia, came home recently and noticed something on her balcony. Her Christmas tree was surrounded by birds who were - her words - going crazy. She went to see what the deal was and found a 10-foot python wrapped around the tree. She and her partner took pictures, and they are every bit as terrifying as you'd expect. That said, the snake in the tree did look kind of festive when the twinkle lights came on.

Akio Kashiwagi was a crafty soul. He wheeled and dealed for rebates and credit on a scale available only to those willing to risk millions of dollars on each trek to the tables. He also seemed to have all sorts of side deals going with casino hosts, like cashing in chips obtained on credit, which turned the paper risk of a marker into real exposure for the casino because the gambler had obtained hard dollars. And he tried to buy chips with instruments that some casinos found were not readily convertible into cash, ones that could only be cashed at a particular bank and only if Kashiwagi was standing there. Still, every casino executive worth his comping privileges wanted Kashiwagi, wanted to bag his wallet and have as their own trophy a story of how they had faced, and bested, the world's most fearless gambler. They wanted to tell stories like Dennis Gomes's favorite tale.

Gomes was a straight-laced regulator with an extraordinary reputation among others in law enforcement and among reporters, to whom he leaked some of the best crime stories to come out of Las Vegas. He came to New Jersey before it started casino gambling to show how regulation could be done. But his precise, unannounced raid on Resorts' Bahamas operation, which turned up file drawers full of evidence tying Resorts to Meyer Lansky's gang, and his insistence on following the letter of the law were rewarded by orders chaining him to his desk. Gomes quit and returned to Nevada, where he eventually ran the Dunes, which he leased from its Japanese owner. Gomes had most of his money, a million dollars, sunk in the Dunes, a broken-down excuse for a casino located on the incredibly valuable fourth corner where Caesars Palace, the Barbary Coast and Bally's Grand meet on the Strip. One week he lured Akio Kashiwagi to his table. For hours Gomes watched the play from his television monitor in his office, sweating as Kashiwagi's bankroll grew and grew by one hundred thousand dollars per bet.

When Kashiwagi was $5 million ahead he got up, stretched, and announced it was time to return to Kashiwagi Palace, his $80 million home near the foot of Mount Fuji, the home Japanese tourists kept mistaking for a temple because it was built with huge Japanese cypress logs common to Shinto shrines.

If Kashiwagi left the Dunes would close, because the cash he would demand would wipe the place out. Even if Gomes had the slot machines emptied of their winnings, the Dunes might not be able to cover all its outstanding bills. No matter what, Gomes told his Asian marketing guy, don't let that guy get away.

When the limo brought Kashiwagi and his host to the private jet at McCarran Airport, the pilot came back to say that he felt unlucky and did not want to fly.

"You're just trying to get me to come back so I'll lose," Kashiwagi replied to his host in Japanese.

"Well, you can fly, but I'm not going to die," the host said, heading for the door.

That did it. Kashiwagi said he would fly commercial. Inside the terminal he was taken to the Delta gate and told that the only remaining flight to Los Angeles would arrive too late for him to connect to the plane for Japan. That was sort of true. It was the last Delta flight that night. Kashiwagi, who did not read English, did not ask about other airlines.

The host recommended that Kashiwagi return to the Dunes and fly out the next morning.

"No, you're just trying to get me back to gamble," Kashiwagi said. "Go to Los Angeles and it's going to cost you two thousand dollars


for rooms and food for you and your companions," the host told Kashiwagi, knowing he was a tightwad when it came to expenses. That did it. Kashiwagi agreed to stay the night at the Dunes for free.

On the short limousine ride back the host suggested they have dinner together and then go see one of Norbert Alemain's naked girl revues. They shared a bottle of wine at dinner, but it was empty long before the late show would start so the host suggested that Kashiwagi gamble to fill the time.

"No," Kashiwagi said, "you just want me to lose my money." "Not at all," the host said. "Just bet ten thousand dollars." Kashiwagi sat down, put out ten thousand dollars and won. Gomes knew he had him. "He was thinking that he had shorted himself ninety thousand dollars because if he had bet his usual hundred thousand dollars that's how much more he would have won."

On the next hand Kashiwagi bet $100,000 and he stayed for hours chasing that $90,000. By dawn he had lost the $5 million cash and had signed markers for $5 million more. Gomes not only escaped ruin, he was a multimillionaire, even after giving Kashiwagi a 30 percent discount on his marker.

Stories like this abounded about Kashiwagi, stories about how he had broken or made careers, how he had negotiated for credit and discounts, how he wanted the best suites and then ate bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. How he made deals governing how long he would play in return for credit and broke them. How he would quit when he was ahead. Stories about where he got all that money.

Kashiwagi appeared to have limitless wealth and yet he was not among the top thirty taxpayers in his prefecture. His Tokyo office was modest, with an apartment upstairs, though luxury cars filled the parking spaces out front. A business research firm showed that Kashiwagi's company had just five employees and sales of $15 million, yet Kashiwagi told casino executives he was a billionaire with an income of $100 million a year. Gomes and other casino executives figured he was a sarakin, a Japanese loan shark, with connections to the yakuza, the Japanese mob. That Kashiwagi was said to be part Korean, a serious detriment to business success in Japan, added to these suspicions.

David Johnston "Temples of Chance" 1994

It has to do with physiology because, in a half-hour format, you can start fairly straight and for twenty-two minutes it can simply get funnier and funnier. But you try to do that in a movie and you just run out of steam.

WILLIAM GOLDMAN: people get exhausted.

CLEESE: When We made the first Monty python film, we only shot sketches; It was called And Now for Something Completely Different. It's patch but h what we found was this: At the first test screening, the audience thought it was terrific and they fell about until they got to forty-five minutes in, and then . . . they stopped laughing. And then, in the last fifteen to twenty minutes, they came back again. So we said, "Okay that material isn't so strong from about forty-five minutes to about sixty five." So we took that material and - since it was a sketch show the order didn't matter much - we put it at the front and the audience fell about it and we thought, "Great, we sold it." And they got to forty-five minutes and they stopped laughing again. And then we did it a third time; it was like a scientist who couldn't believe his own experiment, and again they laughed for forty-five minutes and they stopped laughing. And there's samething strange about this. You HAVE to have a STORY - a narrative to carry you past forty-five minutes.

John Cleese "Professor At Large; The Cornell Years" (2018)

One evening in 1928, at a friend's home in Chicago, at 7 p.m. to be exact, Templin heard something quite different on the radio, something along the lines of:

"Dell me 'dis one ding - is you a democrat, or is you a ree-publican?"

"Well, I was a democrat ... "

"mm hmmm"

"Bu' I believ' I done switched ovah to da republicans now."

"Who is da man who's runnin' in dese heah elect'n times, explain dat to me."

"Herbert Hoover. Versuvius Al Smith."

"Wha' is da difference?"

"Da one of dem is a mule. And da otha' is an elephant."

Two white actors, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, speaking in "Negro" voices, were telling a story that never ended - a "serial" - in fifteen-minute installments. It was carried by a local station, one of the countless independents that existed in the early days of the medium.' Little did Templin or anyone else realize that his discovery of Amos 'n' Andy - the ancestor of the sitcoms and other broadcast entertainment that captivated so many for so long - was to revolutionize the business of capturing and selling attention.

The characters, Amos and Andy, were two Southern blacks who'd moved from Georgia to Chicago, only to be perpetually confused and confounded by modern urban life. Andy, voiced by Correll, was the older, brash and overconfident, "absolutely convinced that he had the answers to everything."! Amos, meanwhile, was earnest and simple - as later promotional materials read: "It's 'Ain't dat sumpin'?' when he's happy or surprised."? Originally from Richmond, Virginia, Gosden, who played

(The show debuted in January 1926 as a two-man comedy series, Sam 'n' Henry, on Chicago's WGN. In March 1928, the show moved to the Chicago Daily News's radio station, WMAQ, where it was reinvented as Amos 'n' Andy.)

Amos, was the son of a Confederate soldier. The show, he said, was based on his experiences of being raised by a black nanny alongside a black boy named Snowball.

When Amos 'n'Andy had come on, Templin noticed something peculiar at this friend's house: the entire family stopped what it was doing to gather around the radio and listen intently for the show's entire duration. Radio, he rightly concluded, could not only capture attention, it could do so inside the customer's home. It could cause a whole family to ignore one another and listen in rapt silence.

We have spoken of the mind's impressive ability to shut the door to the outside world; but while Amos 'n' Andy was on, people were apparently glad to fling it wide open. The rapt attention was different from what the musical acts had. Templin recognized that this was an astonishing power, if it could only be harnessed.

His idea was to take the Amos 'n' Andy show to the NBC radio network, with Pepsodent as sponsor. Kenneth Smith, now head of Pepsodent, and the other executives seemed to like the idea, perhaps because it seemed connected to the old tradition of advertising toothpaste in print using stylized black men with shiny white teeth. (In fact, it was around this time that an English company launched the Darkie brand, with a smiling black man as its logo.)

But outside Pepsodent, the idea met immediate resistance. As Broadcasting magazine later recounted, "Other advertisers laughed at [Pepsodent's] foolhardy ignorance of radio." The conventional wisdom, wrote the magazine, was that "people won't listen to talk on the radio. They'd rather talk themselves," When Templin went to NBC, its managers offered him a choice: the Vincent Lopez orchestra, or Jesse Crawford, the organist. When Templin insisted on Amos 'n' Andy, and in "six quarters" (fifteen minutes, six days a week), the network was unresponsive.

A subsequent attempt to sell Amos 'n' Andy to the new CBS network was no more successful. Informed that the show was a "daily blackface act," then President H. C. Cox said, "Do you mean to tell me that you believe an act can go on a network at the same time every day in the week, five days in succession?" The answer was yes. "I think you should go back to Chicago," said Cox. "It's very plain to see that you know nothing about radio."

Even within Pepsodent some had their doubts, arguing that Amos 'n' Andy's dialogue format was too simple. They proposed a longer, more elaborate blackface program, with a chorus and an orchestra - a sort of minstrel competitor to the Eskimos or Troubadours. Ultimately, however, after nine months of wrangling, NBC agreed to take the order, for an enormous sum, over $1 million, and introduce its first sponsored serial program - indeed probably the first network "show" that wasn't musical or educational. It agreed to sell thirteen weeks at 7 p.m. on its farm team Blue network, which, given Pepsodenr's dire financial straits, was effectively a bet on Pepsodent itself. "Never in the history of radio," said one commentator, "had there been such an order as that."

Amos 'n'Andy would be the same show it was before, with two changes. First, the characters would move from Chicago to Harlem. And second, as a concession to the tradition of musical acts, NBC introduced a theme song. Adding what seems now a further coat of racism, the music director chose "The Perfect Song," the theme from The Birth of a Nation, D. W Griffith's 1915 hit film glorifying the Ku Klux Klan.

And of course the sponsor's message had to be right. Pepsodent and Lord & Thomas hired, on an exclusive basis, an announcer with an exceptionally mellow voice named Bill Hay, who pronounced at the end of every Amos 'n' Andy segment this message: "Use Pepsodent Toothpaste Twice a Day - See Your Dentist at Least Twice a Year."

In August of 1928 as the series launched on NBC, Amos 'n' Andy were making their move to Harlem:

AMOS: Heah we is goin' to New York - we don't know whur we goin' do.

ANDY: Dat IS right too. Yo' know, I been thinkin' 'bout dis heah thing. We was crazy to come heah.

Templin had gotten his way, but after the first run, Amos 'n' Andy looked to Pepsodent like a mistake. Despite high hopes, listenership was low and there was little noticeable effect on sales. Realizing he had nothing to lose, however, Templin doubled his bet, spending one of Pepsodent's last millions on the program.

For whatever reason, me second time was the charm. By the end of 1929, Amos 'n' Andy had become a craze, and the first bona fide hit serial in broadcast history - and the first show people refused to miss, arranging their time around it. No less a cultural arbiter than The New Yorker was now remarking both the show's quality and the phenomenon: "Amos 'n' Andy have gone beyond all control. The radio has never had a more amusing feature, nor one that has created so much havoc."

The audiences, astounding at the time, are still impressive by today's standards. While measurements were crude in those days, by 1931, Amos 'n' Andy is believed to have attracted some 40 million listeners each and every evening - with some episodes reaching 50 million - this out of a population mat was men 122 million. It was a result unprecedented for any entertainment product, the equivalent of having today's Super Bowl audiences each and every evening - and with just one advertiser.

Having seized their audience, the sponsor's messages soon grew longer, and soon were indistinguishable from the old hard-sell advertising copy, albeit written to be heard, not read:

"As we have told you repeatedly, Pepsodent Tooth Paste today contains a new and different cleansing and polishing material. We want to emphasize the fact that this cleansing and polishing material used in Pepsodent Tooth Paste is contained in no other tooth paste. That is very important. It is important to us, because Pepsodent laboratories spent eleven years in developing this remarkable material. It is important to the public, because no other cleansing and polishing material removes film from teeth as effectively as does this new discovery. What's more, this new material is twice as soft as that commonly used in tooth pastes. Therefore it gives great safety, greater protection to lovely teeth. Use Pepsodent Tooth Paste twice a day - See your dentist at least twice a year.

In our fragmented age, it is only a few times a year when even a quarter of the entire nation listens to or watches anything at once. But during the height of the Amos 'n' Andy craze, that happened every day, and consequently the 7 p.m. time slot, according to contemporary reports, began to influence the schedule of everything. Hotels, restaurants, and movie theaters would broadcast the show for their patrons. Fearing displacement, movie theaters advertised the installation of radios to broadcast Amos 'n' Andy at 7 p.m., before the newsreels and features.

We have yet to ask an obvious question: Just what, exactly, was so enrapturing about Amos 'n' Andy? It was not necessarily the patter and gags. Despite The New Yorker's enthusiasm, another early critic panned the show's national debut in the New York Sun: "Their lines are not good and there is no pretense of whatever to carry out the illusion of comedy. It is a straight dialogue between two common-place darkies and is without even the saving asset of a well thought-out situation ... on first acquaintance they hardly attract a second glance." Indeed, there were other regional radio minstrel shows in the 1920s, not much funnier, and none reached an audience anything close to that of Amos 'n' Andy. It seems that what gripped so much attention, what kept millions coming back, were the show's elaborate and suspenseful plot lines. The New Yorker again: "For Amos 'n' Andy ... have finally mastered the trick of creating suspense. With half a dozen plots running through their sketches, they hold the dramatic tension in a way to arouse the admiration of Professor Baker." In particular, much of the show turned on the romance between the earnest Amos and Ruby Taylor, whom he'd met in Chicago. Later, the focus was on the engagement of know-it-all Andy and the bossy divorcee Madam Queen. Nowadays we might say that Amos 'n' Andy resembled a soap opera - but as we shall see, it was really soap operas that copied Amos 'n' Andy.

Subsequent commentators would remark the obvious appeal of reinforcing stereotypes that justified the second-class social status of blacks. (The NAACP did register complaints, but these had no effect on NBC at the time.) As one historian, Erik Barnouw, wrote in 1966, "In retrospect it is easy ... to see the stories and Amos 'n' Andy as part of the ghetto system. All of it was more readily accepted and maintained if one could hold onto this: 'they' were lovely people, essentially happy people, ignorant and somewhat shiftless and lazy in a lovable, quaint way, not fitting in with higher levels of enterprise, better off where they were."

But there was also great empathy stirred in some hearts, rather like that provoked by Uncle Tom's Cabin in antebellum America. As one listener wrote in fan mail, "We have been inspired by the high aims and rigid honesty of Amos, and we have all been close to tears at times when real trials and tribulations beset either of our beloved friends."

Tim Wu "Attention Merchants" (2016)

This base human tendency, born of fear and distrust, can fester into a Lord of the Flies social pathology of hate. The bubonic plague led to violent attacks upon minorities such as Jews, especially after one Jew famously "confessed" (under torture) to poisoning wells across Europe. This led to further spread of the disease as persecuted peoples fled affected areas en masse. Dominant social groups seized the situation to further socially conservative agendas, under the flag of "God's punishment for sin."

Scapegoating is endemic throughout medical history. Since the early 16th century, for example, syphilis has been called morbus gallicus (the "French pox") in Italy, le mal de Naples (the "disease of Naples") in France, the "Polish disease" in Russia, the "Russian disease" in Siberia, the "Portuguese disease" in India, the "Castilian disease" in Portugal, and the "British disease" in Tahiti.

In 1918, the rich blamed the poor and the poor blamed the rich for me emergence of the "Spanish Lady" - itself a xenophobic, misogynistic label for the flu. Swedish socialists staged a general strike proclaiming, "Flu Avenges the Workers." The poor areas of the world did suffer disproportionately, but in some cities such as London, the death rate was "as high in prosperous Chelsea and Westminster as in the slums of Bermondsey and Bethnal Green" for the first time in the history of public health records. As one expert noted, "[I]nfluenza's very democratic."

Michael Greger "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching" (2006)

Ironically, Elvis worshiped Marlon Brando. Marlon was one of his favorite actors. In fact, Elvis had patterned his black leather and swaggering attitude on Marlon's "iconic" antisocial biker Johnny Strabler, gang leader of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club, a group of bikers that terrorizes a small town in his iconic film The Wild One. In the vortex of this crisscross admiration, I was therefore a desirable date.

Elvis was, too. My pulse definitely quickened as I stepped onto the set of King Creole. How could it not? Elvis was so good-looking, so famous. And there was something disingenuous about him in person, a gangly charm. He was tall - over six feet - and sincerely bashful.

Elvis had beautiful blue eyes, and his hair shone a gleaming black, His hair color has long been in dispute, with many saying that it was naturally blond and dyed black. But I never saw dyed hair shine like his. Elvis's hair was mirror-bright and probably reflected his partial Cherokee ancestry.

I was standing at my assigned place on the set when Elvis strode out, guitar firmly in hand, pompadour suitably puffed. He crooned on command of the director, none other than Michael Curtiz, famous for directing Casablanca. I had lucked into this date with Elvis in the middle of shooting his finest film, the last of his black-and-white movies and a classic film noir.

In those first moments, my heart pounded like a teenager's as Elvis sang "As Long as I Have You." The song was a ballad, and he was young, slender, and tender-looking. He was playing a boy auditioning at a nightclub and did very well in the scene. I could see the exact second that the boy, Danny, gained confidence. It was a touching moment and I was impressed. He was not the hyped-up gyrating Elvis I had expected, and I was intrigued.

The director was impressed as well. Curtiz praised Elvis for the sensitivity he brought to the moment, and used a word seldom associated with Elvis before or since: "elegant."

In person, Elvis had a face that was pretty rather than handsome. His features echoed those of his mother, Gladys, to whom he was famously attached. Gladys was obsessed with Elvis from the time he was a baby, since he was a twin but she lost the other baby at birth. Consequently, she overwhelmed her only surviving son, Elvis, with love, food, and possibly her own genetic predisposition to addiction and depression.

In 1958, a year after I dated Elvis, Gladys died from hepatitis after decades of drinking hard. She was still a young woman, and Elvis threw himself into her grave at the funeral. This intense mother-son bond was explored in a book, Elvis and Gladys, by a writer, Elaine Dundy, whose path would cross mine several years later - when she and I tangled over another lover.

Elvis asked me out several times, and things always went the same way between us. He was his "real self," a shy, bumbling kid from Tupelo whose favorite book was the Bible. He was also what some of his detractors accused: a mama's boy. Our "sex" activity fell far short of my expectations and needs, typically ending up in my Sunset Boulevard apartment with the roar of traffic as our accompaniment. The red glare of the traffic lights lent a carnal glow to our activities.

More specifically, my dates with the King nearly always concluded in a tender tussle on my living room floor, with Elvis's pelvis in that famous gyration straining against his taut trousers. I could feel him thrust against my clothed body, and expecting the next move, I knew I would have to confront my own conflicted motives when the time came, but it never did.

"We can just do this," he'd whisper in my ear as we moved around on the floor. "We can just do this, okay?"

"This" was called "grinding," and it was all he really wanted to do. Maybe Elvis was inhibited by inbred religious prohibitions or an oedipal complex, or maybe he simply preferred the thrill of denied release. Whatever put the brakes on the famous pelvis, it ground to a halt at a certain point and that was it.

Later, I discovered that my experience with Elvis was typical.

Natalie Wood stormed out on him when he refused to "do it," and many others claimed that all he liked to do was cuddle with teenage girls or watch them cavort girl-upon-girl. He was a fine match for his teen fans, arrested, apparently, at their level of development. I was already a fully grown woman with adult desires - and I had been with Marlon.

In a way, Elvis's ambivalence suited my own. I was still so deeply in love with Marlon Brando that I truly didn't want anyone else. Elvis and I were in perfect sync. We rolled around several times, and I don't believe either of us ever found release, only that hunk-a hunk-a-humin' love, which, when I heard the song afterward, did sound more like a hymn to sexual frustration than satisfaction.

Eventually, though, I realized that I couldn't fake it anymore.

There were only so many times that I could be in a clutch with a kid whose pouty lips could hardly express an idea or recount an experience. After Marlon's intellectual curiosity, sexual appetite, and chameleon-like changes, the truth is that Elvis bored me. He was more like a baby brother who couldn't make interesting conversation.

One night, as I watched Elvis wolf down a bacon, mashed banana, and peanut butter sandwich that had been home-fried in bacon fat, I realized that he probably desired that sandwich more than he desired me. I liked Elvis well enough, but there was just nothing left to say or do.

When Marlon, in a fury of passion and jealousy, reeled me in again, I sprang back into that man's boat, hooked once more. I kissed Elvis's Cupid's-bow lips good-bye and never turned back.

Still, my heart ached when, twenty years later, I heard the news with everyone else that the King had been found dead in his bathroom of a prescription drug overdose. He was sad and bloated during those last years, and I was told he had to be buckled into a girdle before he could don a costume. Elvis staggered toward his tragic end at forty-two, and I could not help thinking, "Poor boy."

Rita Moreno " Rita Moreno" (2012)

Anyone can get on the ballot in the U.K. if they pay 500 pounds. So while Boris Johnson led his party to a massive election victory in the U.K. against Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, he had other competition.


PRIME MINISTER BORIS JOHNSON: I thank my fellow candidates in all their glory - Lord Buckethead, Elmo and others.

MARTIN: Yep. One candidate dressed as "Sesame Street's" Elmo. Also mentioned - Lord Buckethead, who ran for the Monster Raving Loony Party. I mean, hey - these are serious Brexit times. And, clearly, voters are desperate for some comic relief.

Gorgeous! It was the very first time I'd ever seen a woman wearing white opera gloves. In other words, a lady.

As this couple slowly walked in, sauntering as though to catch everyone's attention, the gentleman in question caught my eye with an expression on his handsome face that was unmistakable. His hairline moved back an inch, as when a predatory animal spots his prey and paralyzes it with "that look." It was obviously lust at first sight, and I remember thinking Whooo, this guy don't waste no time!

All of this happened in the wink of an eye while his white-gloved companion in the beautiful dress was busy trading hellos with friends. To me, though, their procession was taking place in slow motion as they reached their destination at the opposite end of the room. They were gorgeous.

For the rest of the evening, I played a private little game that I called "eyesies." Every time I looked this man's way, I would catch him sending me smoldering signals. They were so obvious and so shameless that I actually started to laugh. Whenever I caught him staring at me, I would point my finger at him as if to say, Caught ya! He didn't even blink.

I'm surprised that no one else noticed our game, but they were too busy looking at this beautiful couple. I was also stunned that a man with such a perfect woman at his side could be even remotely interested in the likes of me.

At one point, I asked Ann to take a look to see if she could identify him. "Oh, honey, who the hell knows?" she said. "They all look the same to me: rich!"

I want to add that, had I sent the most subtle I'm interested! What next? visual message, I have no doubt that this man would have sent someone over to my table to escort me upstairs. No doubt whatsoever!

Imagine my shock, then, weeks later, when the redheaded man who had flirted so boldly with me reappeared on the cover of Life magazine and I discovered who he was; the young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy.

Rita Moreno " Rita Moreno" (2012)

Let me tell you a story. In the 1920s a professor at Oxford and a professor in Beijing communicated with each other by mail for many years. Eventually the Chinese professor wrote saying that he was coming to visit Oxford. The Oxford professor thought that he would like to show the Chinese professor something quite outside his normal experience, so he took him to an athletics meeting. After one race there was a lot of cheering and excitement and the Chinese professor asked what it was about.

"Well", said the Oxford professor, "the man in the red shift has just run the one hundred yards one-tenth of a second faster than it has ever been run before in this country."

"I see," said the Chinese professor "and what does he propose to do with the time he has saved?"

John Cleese "Professor At Large; The Cornell Years" (2018)