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INTERIOR thunderstorms around the Trinity Horn will threaten to continue for Sunday. Ridging into this coming week will warm temperatures with potential for another trough next week. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): The fog played tag with the coast all day yesterday, looking at the satellite I am thinking today will be mostly sunny finally? A cool 47F with clear skies this Sunday morning on the coast. Expect a good breeze today also. Our forecast is for mostly sunny all week, anyone taking bets of that?
FORT BRAGG PROTEST, AUGUST 2, 2025 (photos by Bob Dominy)
POLICE HUNT SUSPECT AFTER CHAOTIC CHASE ENDS EAST OF UKIAH
by Matt LaFever
A wild police pursuit that began around 9:45 p.m. Saturday in Ukiah has transitioned into a foot chase through vineyards east of town after the suspect abandoned a red Dodge Ram near Sanford Ranch and McClure Subdivision Road.
Scanner traffic indicates officers are actively tracking the suspect on foot, reporting sightings of movement through nearby vineyard rows as they work to lock down a perimeter.
The pursuit began in Ukiah’s commercial district, where officers attempted to stop the red Dodge Ram. The driver, described over the scanner as “all over the road,” sped off at 85 mph up North State Street, briefly pulling into the Redwood Tree gas station before fleeing again at high speed.
The suspect then turned eastbound on Brush Street, reaching 70 mph and weaving into oncoming lanes. The vehicle continued northbound on Orchard Avenue, at one point driving on the sidewalk, before turning toward the freeway and eventually heading south on Old River Road.
A collision was reported near Talmage Road, but the driver kept going. CHP was called in to deploy spike strips, and Sonoma County deputies were asked to intercept at the Old River Road roundabout.
At approximately 10:00 p.m., officers reported the suspect had made a U-turn and was now heading back north toward Ukiah. Around 10:14 p.m., the truck pulled off near Sanford Ranch and McClure, where the driver “footbailed” into nearby vineyards.
The reason for the original attempted traffic stop remains unknown.
(mendofever.com)
AV FFA
Samantha participated in FFA Advanced Swine Showmanship this morning. This is her 2nd time showing pigs at a fair. Last year she placed 2nd in Novice FFA Showmanship. She placed 4th in a very competitive FFA Advanced class. Hard work pays off!
Congratulations Samantha!
ON LINE COMMENTER John Kriege asks: “I looked at the May 6 Minutes and Agenda and can’t find anything close to the directions from the July CEO report. Is she just making stuff up?"
Mark Scaramella replies:
According to their meeting agenda/minutes list for 2025, there are no minutes posted for the May 6 board meeting. However, during the “preliminary budget review” portion of the video for that May 6 meeting, under item 4c, Jen Banks, long-time Mendo rep of the Sonoma County “LEMSA” (Local Emergency Services Management Agency), suggested the assessment of the three Mendo districts at just over two hours into the meeting. A few minutes later Haschak referred to “these audits to see what the real needs are.” Banks told the board that the review would determine “if dollars are still needed by the County.” Haschak said, “The problem for me is we are adding $66,000 more (for each of the three districts) to the General Fund cost. … I don’t want to add more to our general fund problem.” Supervisor Ted Williams called it a “performance audit or a needs assessment,” adding that “we know it will be what it is today or more. … maybe we should just include it as an ongoing expense and find some other way to balance the budget.” CEO Antle laughed her mirthless laugh and said that if the Board wanted to fund the ambulance districts they’d have to tell her where else to cut to cover the $200k. … “Do you want to cut roads?,” asked Antle. “I’m not trying to be difficult here, I’m just out of money.” The entire discussion was a typical half-hour long rambling Board discussion with no clear conclusion other than that the Ambulances are “an ongoing need.” But Antle’s budget was allocating one-time funds to it and the Board did not think that was a long-term solution. Haschak said, “We can agree we need to fund this, but we need to do these audits to move it forward.” Auditor Chamise Cubbison asked the Board not to call it an “audit,” but instead “call it an ALS review.” (The original allocation was supposed to be a substitute for funding “Advanced Life Support, i.e., paramedics on ambulances which would cost a lot more for round the clock paramedics.) The Board members (Supervisor Norvell was not in attendance) seemed to support the ambulance funding, but in the end they agreed with Banks that “We can work with OES and conduct an assessment of EMS enhancement funding for Mendocino County.”
Nobody asked how much Banks’ “assessment” itself would cost. Historically, asking Banks/LEMSA has been expensive.
The point is that while they agreed that providing the $66k (an amount that has not changed for eleven years) to the three ambulance services should be “an ongoing expense,” with Williams saying that while they will discover that the need will be as much or more as the current allotment, they still called for an assessment which ended up being described by CEO Antle in her July report which we quoted yesterday.
They also noted that LAFCo is currently conducting “municipal service reviews” of the three districts which would address essentially the same kinds of things, yet they still ordered the “assessment.”
If you were an ambulance volunteer, knowing that you and your fellow volunteers are providing professional life-saving service around the clock for next to nothing, how would you interpret this assessment other than that the Board is looking to possibly cut costs for a service that is already mostly volunteer?
I would have covered this more at the time, but I thought it might just go away like most of the other Board directives, or at least be folded into the Municipal Service Reviews. Then it appeared in the CEO report.
ED NOTES
YEAH, I think Eyster should be recalled for misusing the large authority he wields as District Attorney. Always liked the guy myself, especially enjoying his more bombastic episodes. I still laugh when I remember him going off during the marijuana trial of Don Lipmanson when Mrs. Lipmanson asked presiding Judge Gustafason if she could sing her testimony? His Honor, a countercultural sympathizer, said Ok. Eyster erupted. “Sure, why not! Get out the kazoos. Let’s have a concert!” I knew if I looked over at Mike Geniella, covering the trial for the Press Democrat, neither of us would be able to contain our hilarity. (Mendocino County’s hippies were always as presumptuous as any royal family.)
THE RECALLERS now have 160 days to gather some 8,200 valid signatures, which wouldn’t be easy even if voters were generally aware that the DA had succumbed to the Caesar tendencies always dormant in his personality to pursue a personal beef. They’ll need a truly committed, informed cadre of signature gatherers to get our rogue DA on the ballot.
USED TO BE that the ruling class, the big money, was hidden away. They went to private schools and married each other right up until 1967 when their daughters started running away with rock bands. Prior, they ripped us off discreetly. They knew that flaunting their privilege was dangerous, especially in an armed, violently turbulent country like ours. To summarize, the old ruling class certainly wouldn’t have thought to invite the media in to watch them marry breast implants.
BEZOS and Trump, to name two of the most prominent current vulgarians, would have been regarded as savages by founding moneybags like Rockefeller and Carnegie, ruthless accumulators themselves but fairly beneficent, leaving great public gifts to the people they’d spent their lives ripping off. The novels of Edith Wharton are pictures of the old rich before, via the miracle of capitalism, magic money billionaires were marrying bimbos in orgiastic media ceremonies.
ONE of the most graceful buildings in Ukiah — no others come to mind — is the old Carnegie Library on South State Street. No longer a library but a living metaphor from a time the rich still felt strong social obligations. The modern titans of free enterprise build something like Mar-a-Lago with gold-plated bathrooms surrounded by armed guards.
CHECK THAT: A pre-War grammar school has been nicely restored as the Ukiah Civic Center purely for the ease and comfort of Ukiah’s metastasizing government. And there’s leafy, graceful Westside Ukiah, and then there’s the rest of town. You can be excused if you wonder what all that government does all day. And shocked that it wants to annex the rest of the Ukiah Valley.
WHAT am I saying here? Not sure, but with all the money in this country, when’s the last time a big fortune erected a building that wasn’t a mammoth eyesore? It matters what things look like. People wouldn’t be going nuts on the scale they do if every town looked like Ferndale.
AS AMERICA UNRAVELS, the nightly news often features spectacular crimes, sure symptoms of terminal social collapse. There are now mass shootings every day somewhere in the land of no gun control and mass mental illness.
LATELY, we’re gotten nightly updates on the murders of four young people in Idaho by a psychopath named Kohberger. There are painful, and painfully exploitative segments of the victim’s parents addressing Kohberger as if a nut like him can be moved by the grief of the people whose lives he’s ruined. But Kohberger is media gold to the ghouls of the David Muir subspecies, and tell me that Muir, in his way, isn’t nearly as psychopathic as Kohberger? How can you fake emotion every day for years and years without being a major psycho yourself?
THE NCO MENDO LAKE FOOD HUB NOW HAS ITS OWN FACEBOOK PAGE!
NCO Mendo Lake Food Hub to stay up to date on local farm-fresh offerings, weekly Bounty Boxes, seasonal produce, recipes, and all the ways you can support local, sustainable food right here in Mendocino and Lake Counties.
Whether you’re a loyal customer or just learning about the Hub, this new page is your spot for everything fresh, local, and community-powered.
VICKI WILLIAMS:
I will find out what was decomposing in those two pillowcases on Highway 128 at mile marker 1.87 if it’s the last thing I do. If you are someone who’s into police scanners and love to find Police reports and you can find anything from CHP from July 30 around noon I will do your hair and your family’s hair for free for the rest of your life. They promised me when I followed protocol and called CHP up and did not look inside the pillowcases that they would tell me what was inside and they lied through their teeth. I thought it would be easier if I didn’t have the visual and they just told me what was in there even though they said they would they didn’t! You really don’t want to file reports and complaints against police officers because when you do, your number comes up as someone who’s gone against them, and you won’t get the help you need, especially if you’ve ever been stalked by a cop you will know that the last thing you wanna do is mess with them. I have been stalked by an officer in Fort Bragg, California that is no longer there. This was during a time that I was also being stalked by Rex Hastings. 2017-2018
I decided to become a volunteer for Caltrans and none of my supervisors are emailing me back. I can guarantee you I will be on the phone Monday morning and I will tell them that I do not feel supported and that I have been treated like a criminal. Instead of telling me what was in the pillowcases or trying to connect me back to that officer who lied to me CHP just told me it sounds like I can’t handle being out there because I don’t feel safe. I learned situational awareness like you would not believe when I did the training at project sanctuary. For me to ignore what I learned during a two-year course would be me being stupid and assuming that I’m always safe, I’m not safe. You’re not safe without situational awareness and without knowing what was in those pillowcases, I have no situational awareness because I’m lacking the information I need ! I would’ve looked myself and just dealt with the visual if I would’ve known that it was gonna take me a bunch of l$&)@” to get to the truth. It is a common practice for people that are local to leave their animals out on the side of the road on 128 in plastic bags because they don’t know what to do with an animal when it dies.
Believe me I had about 15 different officers that I spoke with over this situation tell me it’s probably “just an animal” I happen to see a bunch of sheriffs on their motorbikes in Elk and I asked them if I had the legal right to know what was in those pillowcases and they said it should be public record …(I hope somebody can find a record of that police officer going out there because if he didn’t write a report ….$&@)(/-!!!!!!!) Something that has a soul that bleeds got put in a pillowcase by a human being. The person who put that soul in the pillowcase has more rights in California than I ever will as someone who reported it…. Be safe out there and know one thing I will never rest until I get to the bottom of this. I solved my own assault case and it took me five years to figure out that Rex Hastings assaulted me, the cops in Fort Bragg told me that a car ran over me.
I have been through a lot in my life. I am not afraid of death. In fact, I really look forward to death. It’s all I can do to stay here.
I’m gonna though, because without me, you’d never know the truth! If you’d like to keep your head in the sand, I would push the Unfollow button and go ahead and block me immediately! If you’re just here because you want me to fail, it’s not gonna happen. My name means VICTORY!
PS. Please learn to bury your pets when they die. It’s part of the process. I really wish I didn’t have to share stuff like this, but it’s better that you know.
UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK
Sunny is a happy-go-lucky adult dog loaded with cheerful energy! This good looking guy enjoys long walks and longer belly rubs. Sunny’s a bit of a joker and loves to play. He’s also very curious — always on the lookout for new people, places and experiences to sniff and explore. Sunny’s a quick learner, and with a guardian who will give him lots of TLC, attention and training, he will be a loyal and adventurous canine buddy. Though he can be a bit of a social butterfly with human friends, Sunny will need to meet any potential canine housemates before being adopted. Sunny looks like a German Shepherd Dog/Husky mix. He’s 2 years old and 59 svelte and fit pounds.
For information about all of our adoptable dogs and cats and our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com.
Join us the first Saturday of every month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event.
For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!
ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE NEWSLETTER, August 2025 [excerpts]
The July Gathering: Dr. Betty Lacey’s presentation was riveting and informative. It was one of the most well-attended events that the AV Village has had!
Check out and sign up for her newsletter at: http://www.brainbodyhealth.org/
Continuing our Village Writers’ Series, this is a story by Sophie Otis:
https://mailchi.mp/331424f4540b/anderson-valley-village-newsletter-august-5854289
VFW BREAKFAST FUNDRAISERS
by Carole Hester
Ukiah area Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1900 (VFW) has been sponsoring a breakfast fundraiser for decades. The next one is Saturday, August 9, 2025, from 8 – noon at Veterans Memorial Hall, 293 Seminary Ave., Ukiah.
The Post cannot do it alone. Redwood Empire Lions Club volunteers have been catering the breakfast: Eggs, hash browns, biscuits, gravy, sausage, and a drink - not a bad deal at $10!
Ukiah Elks Lodge #1728 has stepped up and gifted the local VFW Post 1900 a check for $550 per breakfast for three quarters.
Though growing older and a bit infirm these intrepid volunteers have persevered even post-COVID, opening for the VFW Breakfasts quarterly: May, August, November and February - always the second Saturday.
Joel Greenfield is the Commander of VFW Post 1900.
The proceeds go towards Veterans’ assistance. Funds raised also go to the many worthwhile projects the VFW supports, flowing back into the community a variety of ways, including student scholarships.
One huge responsibility of the VFW is maintaining the flags in Ukiah Cemetery. At last count, the Post cares for 468 regulation “casket flags.” Flags currently span WWI through Vietnam. Last year the local Post needed to add 20 additional poles to accommodate the need.
The VFW is on Facebook. For questions, call (707) 234-7392.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), formally the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, is an organization of US war veterans, who, as military service members fought in wars, campaigns, and expeditions on foreign land, waters, or airspace. The organization was established twice separately, once by James C. Putnam on September 29, 1899, in Columbus, Ohio. The VFW is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. The organization was congressionally chartered in 1936 under the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
REMEMBERING JANIS
by Karen Rifkin
The fall of ‘66 and I was attending Douglass, the women’s college of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, wearing Bass Wejuuns penny loafers, preppy v-neck tennis sweaters and ironing my hair in preparation for my regular dates with Rick—getting drunk at the never-ending parties at his fraternity house.
Well into the semester, my older brother, who was living in a second floor flat on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, returned home for a visit and turned me on to pot; soon after, he suggested I come join him in San Francisco. (Not sure that my parents ever forgave him for that…)
I asked my parents if I could go and, of course, they said, No. So I took a leave of absence from school, withdrew the money I had saved from waitressing at Grossingers the previous summer and made plans to leave. (To their credit, when I got cold feet prior to my departure, they encouraged me to go.)
I rented a room in a flat on Oak Street across from Golden Gate panhandle and, one day, while my new boyfriend John and I were sitting by the curb at Safeway on Haight and Stanyan, Janis Joplin walked by with her dog. I didn’t know who she was but John recognized her and asked if she was Janis. She said, Yes, and we had a very short unmemorable conversation.
Some time later I was up at Mt. Tam partying and there she was, the center of attention, with a gallon jug of Red Mountain slung over her arm slugging it down; I was awestruck.
From then on, that was the only way I drank my Red Mountain, folded on my outstretched arm, straight out of a bottle.
However, seeing her crack a whip on stage at the Fillmore West released something in me. I figured if she could do that, I could do anything because I could never be that outrageous.
It was just like Chet Helms said, “…her greatest value is as a role model for women. She said to women, ‘You can wear pants, it’s okay. You can talk any way you like, it’s okay. You can sing loud if you want. You don’t have to sing sweet. You can sing rough if you like. You can talk dirty if you like. You can throw away your bra if you like. I think every woman presently living owes Janis a lot. It’s just a whole lot freer for women because Janis did the things she did’.”
I survived the Summer of Love and returned to school in the fall wearing John Lennon glasses, smelling of patchouli oil and with 7 lids of grass in my suitcase that my mother found and promptly sent down the incinerator from the 33rd floor in their apartment building in lower Manhattan.
In the summer of ‘68, I lived in a large flat in the West Village with five other classmates and saw Janis perform at the Fillmore East.
One evening, while out walking, I saw her on the street, furs around her neck cascading down her back, surrounded by a coterie of friends, cackling her well-known laugh.
I ran home, breathless, and gasped, “Oh my god. Janis is out there on the street!”
Then she died—from an overdose—27 years old—a sensitive soul, who attempted to hide her pain with drugs and adulation; in hindsight, her early demise was inevitable.
Although I didn’t really know her, her death affected me deeply, and from time to time, it still does.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, August 2, 2025
MICHELLE BEACH, 52, Fort Bragg. Domestic violence court order violation, failure to appear.
ROBERT BELL, 42, Laytonville. Trespassing, contempt of court.
HECTOR CABRERA-PINOT, 43, San Francisco/Fort Bragg. DUI, vandalism, resisting.
TONY HANOVER, 19, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-under influence, controlled substance, resisting, probation violation.
ERIC JOYCE, 39, Eugene, Oregon/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance, paraphernalia.
MONICA MCDONALD, 57, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.
JEROME MCMURPHY, 54, Ukiah. Parole violation.
ANTHONY NEVAREZ, 19, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
MIGUEL RODRIGUEZ, 19, Ukiah. DUI.
LEE RUPERT, 49, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
VINCENT TYRELL, 19, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
JAMES YOUNG, 31, Ukiah. Battery on peace officer, false ID.
AVA: SINCE YOU APPRECIATE A GOOD BOOK COVER…
Here is my favorite, from 1886, “In the Heart of the Sierras” by James M. Hutchings. Interestingly, this was the cheaper version of the book; the expensive version was leather bound. (Marshall Newman)
OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD
by Steve Derwinski
Well you’re not an alcoholic
You just like to have a drink
And it really doesn’t matter
What the hell I think
But sometimes that tequila
Has a mind all of it’s own
Then you and Señor Mezcal
Want to leave me all alone
So forgive me if I avoid you
When you’ve had a few…
It’s an occupational hazard
Try’n to live my life with you
It’s not my business baby
If you smoke two packs a day
But you don’t pick up those cigaret butts
And I’m breathing toxic haze
Our smoke alarm keeps going off
In the middle of the night
Then you wake me up if I’m still asleep
To ask me for a light
You almost burned the house down
But hey--what else is new?
It’s an occupational hazard
Just tryin to live with you
When I commented on your hairdo
You seemed to take offense
The next thing I knew
You took a class in self defense
I tried to make it up to you
With a beautiful bouquet
But you’d gone out shopping
For a can of pepper spray
You’re practicing karate kicks
I’m turning black and blue
It’s an occupational hazard
Just trying to be in love with you
But now you’ve made self-improvement
A full time endeavor
Seems like we hardly spend
Any time together
The house is full of yoga props
And self-help magazines
Our bedroom’s an obstacle course
Of exercise machines
I’d like to help you find your way
But I haven’t got a clue
It’s an occupational hazard
Trying to be in love with you
RURAL RESIDENTS NEED LANDLINE PHONES
Editor:
There is a particularly pernicious bill making its way through the state Senate that would have serious implications for Sonoma County during emergencies. It is AB 470, which would leave rural and low-income communities without reliable home phone systems and location-specific 911 services. This bill was written for AT&T.
Many Sonoma County residents rely on copper wire phone services, the most reliable during disasters such as wildfires or floods. They also allow first responders to know the exact address of a call to 911. AB 470 would allow AT&T and other conglomerates to abandon copper wire lines. They’ve already started in some of the areas of Southern California devastated by recent fires.
The good news is that our state senator, Mike McGuire, is well situated to help prevent this bill from passing. If you are concerned about emergency notifications in the event of a natural disaster, if you have someone in your household who may need to rely on emergency personnel responding to a 911 call, if you are concerned about the county’s ability to organize a safe and effective emergency evacuation, please email McGuire’s office and ask him to oppose passage of AB 470, [email protected].
Phil Grosse
Petaluma
IOC SHOULD PULL OLYMPIC GAMES
Editor:
The International Olympic Committee should pull the Games and give them to another city, region, country, especially if the MAGA/Trumpian policy of keeping all sorts of people out of our country is still in force.
Reassigning the games won’t happen, of course — the IOC is not high-minded enough to do it — but Trumpian exclusions and expulsions on the basis of skin color, accent, national origin are exactly counter to what the Olympics should be about, the youth of the world meeting in friendly competition.
Bruce Colman
San Francisco
FELONIOUS POLITICIANS
Editor,
While Trump supporters like to sling accusations at the undocumented, we should note that they do not qualify for government assistance. None. (Documentation is required.) On the other hand, the IRS and the Department of Labor record information on their activities. IRS and Department of Labor records indicate that they seek work, and when their employer writes a check, they deduct Social Security and income taxes, which the laborer cannot collect. A paycheck is evidence that the poor pay taxes, which is what wealthy citizens, like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, do not; let’s not ignore that the poor’s taxes fund programs like NASA, a program that Musk collects money from. Wealth gives many Americans a good reputation, most of which they do not deserve. While the conservatives demonize the defenseless, they rob them of due process. And yes, if voters are searching for role models, they should look no further than the victims of conservatives’ lies.
Joe McCarthy died many years ago, his republican tactics live on.
Tom Fantulin
Fort Bragg
MEMO OF THE AIR: I cast a spell of pervert’s ruin.
/”In my defense, you have to understand that at the time I did not know she was not a real dame.”/
Marco here. Here’s the recording of last night’s (9pm PDT, 2025-08-01) 8-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and also, for the first three hours, on 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino, ready for you to re-enjoy in whole or in part. This particular show I’m whispering in your ear the entire time. I’m fine, it’s not my health, it’s the fricking neighbor. I’ll be back in Albion for next week’s show and sound normal again. Oh, also Alex Bosworth called again and talked about homelessness from personal experience after getting out of jail. https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0655
Coming shows can feature your own story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I’ll take it from there and read it on the air.
Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you’ll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:
Home Free - Crazy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD17NnmqHuQ
Jamie Dupuis on harp-guitar - Comfortably Numb. https://laughingsquid.com/comfortably-numb-harp-guitar/
Adele’s /Someone Like You/ but in progressively weirder scales. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPiy9UbQT2U
Radioactive wasps. Relax, the nearby nuclear plant is sure that nothing has leaked recently. It must’ve leaked somewhere a long time ago, so it’s fine. In the real world, nearly everything is naturally radioactive to some extent, and plants and animals can concentrate it. Bananas, for example, and Brazil nuts. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that wasps do it, nor that they get some of their calories in winter and/or pissy attitude from fizzing nuclear decay. They’re wasps. https://www.wcvb.com/article/radioactive-wasps-found-south-carolina-nuclear-facility/65552354
And “Mary had schizophrenia, then suddenly she didn’t.” (via Neatorama) https://archive.is/SQ7fb#selection-319.9-319.22
Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
GIANTS FACE TYLER ROGERS FOR FIRST TIME, get clobbered by Mets 12-6
by Susan Slusser
NEW YORK — After ending their six-game losing streak in extra innings the night before, the San Francisco Giants couldn’t keep the jets going Saturday, reverting to erratic offense and mistakes afield.
To add to their hurt, longtime Giants reliever Tyler Rogers made his first appearance for the Mets in their 12-6 victory at Citifield, allowing a single to leadoff man Heliot Ramos before retiring the next three hitters. It was Rogers’ first outing ever for a club other than San Francisco.
“The adrenaline was there,” Rogers said, “and then just to look up and see the Giants across in the batter’s box was another level, too. I was just with those guys couple days ago, It was cool. I just told myself to enjoy it. Baseball is funny in that way.”
On the San Francisco side, it was a relatively new Giants reliever, Matt Gage, who allowed the Mets’ game-tying and go-ahead hits when he came in with two on and one out in the fourth. Brandon Nimmo’s single made it 4-4, and Francisco Lindor’s bunt toward first sent in the second run of the inning. Dom Smith, a strong defensive player, charged the ball, and looked to second and then first rather than going home and wound up stuck in no-man’s land with the ball. (Gage then got Juan Soto to ground out sharply into an inning-ending double play.)
“It was bunted pretty hard at me, so I was trying to get a double play there, but I had a opportunity to get him at the plate. I chose the opposite route and we didn’t get an out there,” Smith said. “It was a great pickup by Gage to get a double play right there. Then we had opportunities down the stretch to capitalize and win the game. … We’ve just got to play perfect baseball.”
San Francisco’s bullpen allowed seven more after that, Grant McCray made a throwing error in the eighth, and the Giants, who scored runs in the second, third and fourth innings, couldn’t add on against the Mets relief corps until Willy Adames homered with two outs and one on in the ninth.
Kai-Wei Teng, called up Friday, went four innings and was charged with five runs; he had an 0.52 ERA at Triple-A Sacramento and was making his first big-league start after four relief appearances last year. He said he was a little nervous in the first, when he allowed a three-run home to Pete Alonso but was more comfortable thereafter. He’s expected to get at least one more start as Landen Roupp rehabs from elbow inflammation.
“I was a bit upset and frustrated because I didn’t actually set the tone,” Teng said, with Andy Ling interpreting. “I gave up a few runs in the first inning, so it kind of led up to the loss today.”
The series brings a lot of old-home vibes; reliever José Buttó made his first appearance for the Giants on Friday after coming over in that Rogers deal, Smith, a former Mets player, knocked in the game-winner for San Francisco in the 10th Friday and crunched a two-run homer off Senga on Saturday, and Wilmer Flores, who remains a fan favorite in New York, had two hits and a walk Friday before leaving with hamstring tightness.
Flores said Saturday that he doesn’t believe he’ll need an IL stint for the minor hamstring tightness he incurred beating out an infield single the night before, and manager Bob Melvin said he believed Flores might even be available to pinch hit this weekend.
Flores continues to get big cheers in Mets-land long after leaving as a free agent in 2019. He became something of a folk hero in 2015 when he cried on the field after hearing he’d been traded; that deal with the Brewers wound up not going through, but Flores’ reaction endeared him to New Yorkers. “When you ask people about me here, they only remember me crying,” he said with a smile.
Buttó was spotted looking upset in the bullpen after learning he’d been sent away Wednesday, shades of Flores 10 years later. “The first time you’re traded is hard,” Flores said, “but it’s a fantasy to think you’re going to play for one team your entire career.”
Flores was, along with Justin Verlander, one of the pending free agents not to be traded at the deadline; he has “10 and five” rights, in the league 10-plus years and with his current team five years, so he could turn down any deal, but he said he had not been approached to do so. “I’m glad I’m still here,” he said. “They’ve treated me right.”
It’s likely the Giants fielded calls on Flores and didn’t have interest in moving him, given his value as a clutch pinch hitter and a respected team leader, especially for the Latin players.
Melvin said he hadn’t been alerted to interest in Flores but said, “I’m sure there were teams inquiring about him.”
Outfielder-first baseman Jerar Encarnacion’s rehab assignment at Triple-A Sacramento ended Saturday, but he was in the River Cats' lineup Saturday night, making it unlikely he’d join the Giants in New York tomorrow. He’s a right-handed hitter, meaning that unless Flores goes on the IL, Luis Matos is the most likely player to be sent out should the Giants reinstate Encarnacion.
Encarnacion was hitting .348 in his most recent rehab assignment as he returns from an oblique strain, and he was riding a six-game hitting streak going into Saturday, but if the Giants want to stick with their younger players, it’s possible the team could designate Encarnacion for assignment.
(sfchronicle.com)
I HATE REBOOTS BUT DAMNIT ‘THE NAKED GUN’ RULES
by Drew Magary
Like everyone else my age, I am irrationally protective of the pop culture touchstones I grew up with. Just last week, I saw a trailer for a “Running Man” remake — starring Glen Powell in the role originally played by Arnold Schwarzenegger — and had to sit down for a moment to process my anger. I bemoan all reboots and remakes because I want the movies of my youth to be MINE, and I hate the idea of some broccoli cut Zoomer thinking that they could improve on things I already consider to be perfect, even if they weren’t. If anyone dares to even THINK of remaking “Spies Like Us,” I’ll throw them off of a mountaintop.
So you understand why I was so lukewarm on the idea of Paramount rebooting the “Naked Gun” spoof franchise. The original star of that film, Leslie Nielsen, died in 2010. The masterminds behind it — Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker — no longer make movies together anymore, with Abrahams dying last year. Furthermore, Hollywood stopped investing in big screen comedies years ago because they didn’t make enough overseas box office profit. That left comedy in the hands of dips—t streamers, Netflix-backed Sandler family cookouts, and a parade of Friedberg/Seltzer gag movies (remember “Meet The Spartans”? I’ll kick you in the face if you do) that took the “Airplane”-”Naked Gun” spoof formula and replicated it in the absolute laziest manner possible. Would you trust people like this with your movie babies? You would not.
That’s why I didn’t trust Paramount to revive “The Naked Gun” using any sort of wit, intelligence or originality. The fact that sentient “I Love the 80s” episode Seth MacFarlane was an executive producer on this new one only made me recoil further. But SFGATE employs me as a film critic from time to time, which means that I’ve had to volunteer myself as tribute to some of the worst dogs—t ever put onto celluloid. I’m also sick of fighting against the remake industrial complex. It’s a lost cause, and this new “Gun” was only an hour and a half long. I figured that I could deal. Can you? Well now, it’s time to subject the movie to my patented Dad Movie Test, to see if you should get ready to laugh, or to storm the Paramount lot with pitchforks at the ready. Let’s begin.
What is “The Naked Gun”?
Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker made the original movie in 1988, adapting it from their own spoof TV series, “Police Squad.” Nielsen played bumbling Detective Frank Drebin, a down-on-his-luck cop who stumbles onto a plot to kill the Queen of England at a California Angels game.
Wait, there was a California Angels once?
Yes, but they were still the Angels back then, so you don’t have to care. All you need to know is that ZAZ used the original movie’s plotline as a chance to throw every single cheap joke they could up onto the screen: puns, pratfalls, dad jokes, sex jokes, cartoon violence and more. No joke was deemed too lowbrow for ZAZ, a guiding philosophy that made the filmmakers a roaring success back in 1980 with “Airplane!” You could argue that, with “The Naked Gun,” they finally perfected the spoof as an art form. Even critics at the time got it.
What made it so good?
The fact that it was conceived and executed by smart people. ZAZ’s first scripted movie, 1977’s “The Kentucky Fried Movie,” was nothing more than a series of sketches tied together with a ton of gratuitous nudity (not that I complained). By the time they made “Airplane!” the three men had learned that they could make a funnier movie if they made it an actual movie, with fully realized characters, a compelling plot with real stakes and jokes that worked within those storytelling foundations. The original “Naked Gun” worked on that same level. It’s a higher bar to clear than you first might suppose.
So who did Paramount pick to clear it this time?
Writer/director Akiva Schaffer, who made his name as a founding member of the Lonely Island comedy trio and went on to direct cult-ish comedies “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” and “Hot Rod” with “SNL” alum Andy Samberg. For the lead role, they tapped Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. And, for a touch of glamour, they cast Pamela Anderson as the femme fatale, a role that ZAZ originally stunt cast with Priscilla Presley.
Does it work?
Yes.
GTFO.
I mean it. Schaffer put real thought and care into this story, along with so many one-liners and visual gags that you can’t keep up with them. With a scant number of exceptions, all of them hit. I saw this movie in a packed theater, and the audience laughed from wire to wire. As a control specimen, I even brought my 13-year-old kid along to see if this form of comedy worked on him. This is a kid who bailed on watching the original “Naked Gun” after just half an hour, so his approval was far from guaranteed. Like me, he was laughing his ass off the whole time.
So what’s the plot?
After Drebin kills a bunch of people while attempting to foil a bank heist, his chief (played by CCH Pounder, who could carry a comedy like this by herself) busts him down to traffic duty. Once on the beat, our hero immediately stumbles on a hinky car crash that is not only tied to that first bank job, but may also involve the CEO of the biggest tech company in the world (an umpteenth Elon Musk stand-in, played deftly by Danny Huston). It’s up to Drebin, and to Pam Anderson, to get to the bottom of this case. And maybe to bone somewhere along the way (and in real life!).
What were your favorite jokes?
Well first off all, there’s a dummy gag in it. I love a good dummy gag. Every comedy should feature a dummy getting its ass kicked. It never fails.
What else?
I don’t want to spoil too much of the movie, and I can only remember so many jokes. Here’s a partial list:
— Neeson foiling a bad guy by eating the bad guy’s gun.
— Every cop on screen drinking coffee and then grabbing a new coffee everywhere they go.
— A background gag where the police department’s cold cases are all stored in a walk-in freezer labeled COLD CASES.
— A flawlessly executed “Fruit cart!“ car chase involving bees.
— Bad guy Danny Huston presenting Neeson with a cigar and saying “Cigar?” to which Neeson replies that it certainly appears to be one, yes.
— Anderson telling Neeson she writes true crime novels based on stories she made up herself.
— Neeson ordering a sparkling water and receiving a glass of water with a lit sparkler in it.
— A scat singing sequence from Anderson that mines the idea of “Pam Anderson scat sings” for all it’s worth. Anderson is coming off of good notices for her work in “The Last Showgirl,” so it’s a lot of fun to see her really going for it up there.
I could list more, but none of them will land in print the way they do onscreen. Schaffer throws a lot of dumb jokes at the screen, but nearly all of them are original. He’s not directly lifting from other movies, and he’s not rehashing jokes from the first “Naked Gun,” save for a welcome “Weird Al” Yankovic cameo. There’s a difference between inspiration and imitation, and Schaffer is a wise enough filmmaker to know the difference. So while I was watching a remake of an old film — which itself was adapted from a TV show — I was still watching a movie that stood on its own. That matters. That means that there’s real craftsmanship up on the screen.
So then it’s an official dad movie?
Most def. The dad jokes I list up above are hardly the only ones. But that wasn’t even the best part of seeing this “Naked Gun” in the theater.
What was?
The fact that, in 2025, I gathered in a room with a bunch of strangers and all of us laughed together. You know how good that felt? When’s the last time you laughed with other people, and not while staring at your asshole phone? I’m not sure I’ve had that kind of theater experience since maybe “Borat.” That’s the level Schaffer is operating at here, so he gets all of my respect and then some. This is great comedy, and my fondest wish is that it’ll show other would-be writers and directors how it’s done.
Does this mean you’re ready for a remake of “Top Secret!”?
No. You go to hell.
ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
I’m a boomer at 75 yo. I’ve never subscribed to a newspaper. I have not seen an alphabet newscast or local newscast since my 1984 divorce. Clinton was president for months before I even knew what he looked like. Saw a pic of him and pants suit on the front of a mag at the grocery checkout line. I’m a rural dweller that has never voted for a Dem, but found globalists like the Bush family a far cry from conservative. Obama’s eight years brought the country to its knees. I think that the bad wrap the Boomers get certainly does not apply to me and other people I know - hard working, raising families of more hard working people who respect laws, pay bills and stay out of debt.
THERE IS NO REVENGE OF THE NERDS
“Is no revenge on the nerds, you know what, last year when everything collapsed, all it meant was the nerds lost out once again and the jocks won. Same as always … Some of the quants are smart, but quants come, quants go, they’re just nerds for hire with a different fashion sense. The jocks may not know a stochastic crossover if it bites them on the ass, but they have that drive to thrive, they’re synced into them deep market rhythms, and that’ll always beat out nerditude no matter how smart it gets.”
– Thomas Pynchon, ’Bleeding Edge’
WILLA CATHER
One hundred years ago, Willa Cather pre-read my mind (and not for the first time!): "When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week."
The Professor’s House, where this appears, is a nearly flawless book, and so is A Lost Lady, a novel that was hugely influential on Scott Fitzgerald and is, in many ways, the equal of Gatsby as a critique of early 20th Century American capitalism. (A Lost Lady was also the first place I encountered the term “axiomatic,” for better or worse, because I’m sure I’ve overused and abused the word across the ensuing decades. Cather didn’t. In fact, I don’t know if she ever used it again, but A Lost Lady turns on the paragraph it’s deployed in. She wrote with that kind of precision, where an entire novel could spin on one sentence or a single word.) Her later novel My Mortal Enemy is vastly underrated. She was truly one of the finest American writers – American in the best sense of the word possible.
— Jeffrey St. Clair
ATTENTION, MEN: BOOKS ARE SEXY!
by Maureen Dowd
It was one of the most erotic things I ever heard. A man I know said he was reading all the novels of Jane Austen in one summer.
At first, I figured he was pretending to like things that women like to seem simpatico, a feminist hustle. But no, this guy really wanted to read “Northanger Abbey.”
Men are reading less. Women make up 80 percent of fiction sales. “Young men have regressed educationally, emotionally and culturally,” David J. Morris wrote in a Times essay titled “The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone.”
The fiction gap makes me sad. A man staring into a phone is not sexy. But a man with a book has become so rare, such an object of fantasy, that there’s a popular Instagram account called “Hot Dudes Reading.”
Some of the most charming encounters I’ve had with men were about books.
Mike Nichols once turned to me at a dinner in L.A. and told me his favorite novel was Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth.” I was startled because I have read that book over and over, finding it a great portrait of a phenomenon that is common in politics. Someone makes a wrong move and is unable to recover, slipping into a shame spiral. (This does not apply to Donald Trump.)
I went to interview Tom Stoppard in Dorset a few years ago. The playwright has no computer and is not on social media. He writes with a Caran d’Ache fountain pen with a six-sided barrel.
Stoppard had a romantic-looking bookcase full of first editions of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. He complained that his book collection was regularly raided by “American burglars.”
It was ensorcelling. I felt the same when I interviewed Ralph Fiennes, and it turned out that he loves Shakespeare and reciting Beckett at 3 a.m. under the stars.
He recalled that his mother, a novelist named Jennifer Lash, read him bedtime stories from Shakespeare, including “Henry V” and “Hamlet.”
“My mother said, ‘I’ll tell you a story. There was this young man and his father’s died, and he’s a young prince.’ And she told it to me in her own words.”
President Trump projects a crude, bombastic image of masculinity. I can always escape by rereading Dickens’s “Our Mutual Friend,” and falling back in love with Eugene Wrayburn, an indolent, upper-crust barrister who turns out to have every quality a man should have.
I asked my friend Richard Babcock, a former magazine editor and novelist who taught writing at Northwestern, about the male aversion to reading. His new novel is “A Small Disturbance on the Far Horizon,” set in the Nevada desert in 1954 under the shadow of nuclear bomb testing. It follows three people whose lives are entwined. “The book is about guilt, adultery, murder, a chase through the mountains — you know, the usual day-to-day stuff,” Babcock said wryly.
“Not to blame the current cultural landscape on Ronald Reagan,” he said, “but I think the obsession with money and wealth that arrived in the 1980s may have encouraged the false idea in men that there was little to learn from a novel. If you want tips on how to crush your rival, better to read nonfiction.
“Similarly, with the education focus turning to math and science, gateways to good-paying jobs, the value of the humanities has been degraded. And we don’t hear enough about how novels, sweeping over landscapes, personalities, ideas, events can open perspectives and discipline the mind.”
Susan Sontag once said novels can “enlarge your sympathies,” preventing you from “shriveling and becoming narrower.” That’s more essential as everyone is hunching over fiendish little personal devices.
She called fiction an ax that “kind of splits you open,” shakes you out of your crusty habits and preferences “and gives you a model for caring about things that you might otherwise not care about.”
As Babcock points out, the decline of literary fiction with everyone has left romance and historical fiction, traditionally favored by women, the dominant genres. Still, he said, he is “a bit distrustful of the men-don’t-read-novels lament,” noting that “my friends eagerly read novels, even returning to the classics, such as ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘Middlemarch.’ Some wonderful male writers are turning out thoughtful, dramatic books, such as Daniel Mason’s ‘North Woods’ and Ben Shattuck’s ‘The History of Sound.’”
A couple years ago, I wrote about how getting my master’s in English literature from Columbia underscored for me that we need the humanities even more when technology is stripping us of our humanity.
Works like “Frankenstein” and “Paradise Lost” shed light on the narcissism of the powerful, male tech geniuses birthing a world-shattering new species, A.I.
After that, a New Yorker named Paul Bergman emailed me an invitation to his book club — all men, lawyers and a judge who had gotten to know one another from the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office.
“For the last 45 years,” Bergman wrote me, “we’ve been sharing our thoughts on books we’ve read.” Would I join a few sessions on “Middlemarch”?
Dear reader, I did.
(NY Times)
AS A FORMER CONTRIBUTOR to the late, lamented Lies of Our Times (LOOT), not much shocks me about the New York Times anymore. But describing the daily massacres of starving Palestinians at food stations as a “crude form of crowd control” made me gasp in astonishment…
— Jeffrey St Clair
LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT
Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook
Until Trump Fired Her, She Was an Economist With Bipartisan Support
A Fight Over a West Point Job Reveals Two Visions of America Under Trump
Experts Raise Concerns Over Trump’s White House Ballroom Renovation Plans
Food Stamp Cuts Could Deal a Blow to Small Grocers
Senate Confirms Jeanine Pirro as U.S. Attorney for D.C.
Trump’s Tariffs Are Making Money. That May Make Them Hard to Quit.
109-Year-Old Pact Looms Over European Moves to Recognize Palestinian State
HERE are the Democratic senators who voted to continue sending weapons to Israel for use in a genocide:
Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Maria Cantwell, Chris Coons, Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman, Kirsten Gillibrand, Maggie Hassan, John Hickenlooper, Alex Padilla (California), Gary Peters, Jacky Rosen, Adam Schiff (California), Chuck Schumer, Mark Warner and Ron Wyden.
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR (CounterPunch,org): Mark Brauner, an emergency room physician from Eugene, Oregon, who just returned from volunteering in Gaza: “A lot of children have passed the point of no return…The gut lining has started to auto-digest and will no longer [absorb] water or nutrition. Death is imminent for 1000s.”
- Trump is mad because starving families in Gaza haven’t said thank-you for the pittance of food he’s sent to Gaza…
REPORTER: Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza?
TRUMP: Say it, again?
REPORTER: Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza?
TRUMP: What is she saying?
SOMEONE ELSE: Should Israel be doing more to allow food in Gaza?
TRUMP: We gave $60 million two weeks ago and no one even acknowledged it for food. And it’s terrible, you really at least want to have somebody say thank you. We gave $60 million two weeks ago for food for Gaza. And nobody acknowledged it. Nobody talks about it. It makes you feel bad when you do that and you have other countries not giving anything. None of the European countries, by the way, gave…nobody gave but us. And nobody said, Gee, thank you very much. It would be nice to have at least a thank you. And I took a lot of heat. You know, when I do that, a lot of people aren’t happy about that because they say, Well, why are we doing it and nobody else. But I think we had a, uh, humanitarian reason for doing it. What’s going to happen, I don’t know. I can tell you that Hamas, as I said, would happen at the end. You know we’ve gotten back a lot of hostages, a tremendous number of hostages. Most of them. Now we have dead hostages and the mothers want them back.”
Nick Maynard, a surgeon who volunteered at a hospital in southern Gaza, wrote in The Guardian:
“I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our pediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn. The phrase ‘skin and bones’ doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged. She is literally wasting away before our eyes and, despite our best efforts, we are powerless to save her.”
DISEMBODY & SOUL: FROM ‘FEELS SO GOOD’ TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
by David Yearsley
In Christian art across the centuries, angels have been depicted playing musical instruments: harps, trumpets, and organs. But how is it possible for immaterial beings to hold objects of wood, metal, string and wire? Theologians and music theorists debated at great length the nature of angelic instruments, many arguing that heavenly musical tools must, like their players, be transfigured, ethereal, weightless, playable only by the eternal and audible only to the resurrected.
Earthly music was a partial, passing remedy for humanity’s deafness to the harmony of the spheres and a prelude to the symphony of heaven. The best that could be hoped for by the living was to produce a faint pre-echo of the resounding bliss of the hereafter.
The paradox of angelic music can help to explain the otherworldly success of “Feels So Good” by trumpeter Chuck Mangione, who died last week at the age of 84. On the album cover, Mangione is seen wearing his trademark porkpie hat and hugging his beloved flugelhorn to his chest as if to prove that it is a real, graspable, playable instrument. Yet the sound heard on the record is that of a superlunary spirit blowing not through a coiled brass tube but an instrument miraculously also made of pure air.
Chopped down to three minutes and some from the original studio version that was more than twice as long, the title track of Mangione’s album climbed to near the summit of the charts in the summer of 1978 and enjoyed a long afterlife now extending into the posthumous renaissance of popularity in recent days.
The album as a whole would have ascended to number one if not for the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever, which kept the flugelhornist’s pleasure paean from attaining the top Billboard spot. That movie medley with tracks from the Bee Gees, Kool and the Gang, the Trammps and others was not about the next life, but this one—about “Stayin’ Alive” and the burning desire of “Disco Inferno.” This was music that propelled bodies into motion—strutting, swirling, sweating. “Feels So Good,” by contrast, was permeated by the angelic paradox. Here was an aural lesson—a moralist, might say sermon—in how to feel good without a body.
In the long-running Fox animated series King of the Hill, Mangione played himself, equably (and, one assumes, lucratively) signing up for that show’s running gag that had him transform any tune that he started into “Feels So Good.” Called to play at a funeral in one episode, Mangione dutifully starts into a reverent version of “Taps,” but after a few solemn notes breaks into his exuberant signature tune, as if to confirm the claims of those scholastic authors of yore who believed that heavenly music would be composed of a single endless melody. Part of the joke is that, in the bleak Texan town of King of the Hill, “Feels So Good” becomes the sound of toxic ambrosia. Mangione himself claimed not really to have composed any of his music, but merely acted as a conduit, “the cord between the plug in the wall and the tape recorder,” as he put it, as if he were hearing something directly from above and beyond.
The opening of Mangione’s most famous track in the extended version suggested an awakening—an angel ruffling its ultra-gossamer feathers and stretching its wings, filling its flugelhorn with ecstatic breath to the whisper of a guitar, plucked harp-like. Perfectly packaged in the studio, this music seemed to require no exertion whatsoever to achieve this surfeit of good feeling, even as Mangione’s melody leapt up to those high notes and held them assuredly before fluttering effortlessly down. No surprise then that before its ascent up the pop charts, “Feels So Good” had been number one in the Easy Listening category. The archetypal Smooth Jazz hit embraced the very contradiction of that ominous term.
The three-and-a-half-minute single starts differently, in a euphoric rush of guitar caresses and lite Latin percussion, with a wafting, flute-like melody from a synth, also played by Mangione. Onto this cumulus cloud flew the flugelhornist, its entrance preceded by a tinkling chorus of angelic bells.
Somewhat more vigorous bass lines, snatches of counterpoint, and slightly more buoyant grooves infused the ensuing conclave with puffs of light vigor, but none of this gritless funk was demanding to the listener.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FExBwfQHX1E
In the extended studio version, Mangione allotted space for high-energy improvised solos from his sidemen, saxophonist Chris Vadala and guitarist Grant Geissman. Mangione displayed snatches of his impressive skills as an improviser only in the closing vamp, his mellowed bebop bursts not long enough to complicate the easy delights. The sonic smiles and gentle shouts of joy among the ensemble slowly faded out, receding into a happy haze. This music could never be brought to an end. Beamed down from a studio in heaven, it would go on forever.
Many famous composers have planned their own funeral playlist. Mangione’s “Feels So Good” resounds in the terrestrial realm in the aftermath of his death, as he certainly knew it would. I have not been able to escape that dirgeless three-minute instrumental motet in the past few days. Its strains lifted my thoughts not up to heaven but back to the terrors of my 1978 middle school mixer.
As an antidote to this relentless upbeatenness, I searched out Mangione on the road a dozen years before his biggest hit, not in the studio but live at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach in 1966 as one of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Mangione had been recommended to the famed drummer and bandleader by Dizzy Gillespie, who had met the teenage prodigy a decade earlier in Rochester, New York, where Mangione was born and died. So impressed with the youngster, Gillespie gifted the youngster a horn like his, one with an upward-angled bell. Gillespie would remain Mangione’s lifelong mentor and musical inspiration.
Immortalized on the record Buttercorn Lady, the Jazz Messenger line-up that night in California made for a formidable, fabulous constellation. Blakey was urgently irrepressible as ever, whether with sticks or brushes, or in a soft-mallet solo of inexorable crescendo towards the volcanic sublime. At the piano Keith Jarrett ranged across myriad moods and approaches—carving out endless lines with classic bebop incisiveness; praying in gospel tones; strumming chords inside the instrument (a first for a Messenger keyboardist?); working against Blakey’s beat in squarely robotic figures as if his metronome his were awry but then suddenly setting it right in epiphanies of swing. Saxophonist Frank Mitchell, tragically murdered a few years later at the age of 27, was fleet and fantastic. Later expatriated to Europe, bassist Reggie Johnson proved himself ever propulsive at the brisk tempos, moody and resonant at the slower ones.
Let’s skip over heaps of diverse riches on this remarkable, if underappreciated LP, flip it to the B side and drop the YouTube needle at the Rodgers and Hart standard, “My Romance.” Mangione fits to his trumpet a Harmon mute, and starts off alone with the same three-note figure that would later be heard millions of times at the beginning of “Feels So Good.” A consummate song stylist, Mangione demonstrates a suave sense of elaboration and space, an affection for the fragile beauty of the long tones held over Mitchell’s countermelody and interlaced by Jarrett’s keyboard garlands. The trumpeter’s ornaments whisper, smile and sigh.
The ballad bolts into a swinging affair to the snap of Blakey’s snare and a flurry of get-along triplets. Buoyed by Johnson’s walking line, Mangione contours in and around the bounce of Jarrett’s backing, mixing breathy, minimalist Miles Davis with kaleidoscopic Dizzy. Yet Mangione sounds just like himself in the sum of these parts.
The Lighthouse audience—the tiniest fraction of the double platinum numbers of 1978 and beyond, never mind the radio play—enthuses over this music made in real space and time. There is nothing angelic in this art of immediacy and emotion, technique and truth. The then of 1966 comes alive in the here-and-now, easy to listen to but artfully challenging the listener, even into the forever.
(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)
Best of the Day–ED NOTES
Rile us up–Stir us up! Yes, Mr. Bruce:
“USED TO BE that the ruling class, the big money, was hidden away. They went to private schools and married each other right up until 1967 when their daughters started running away with rock bands. Prior, they ripped us off discreetly. They knew that flaunting their privilege was dangerous, especially in an armed, violently turbulent country like ours. To summarize, the old ruling class certainly wouldn’t have thought to invite the media in to watch them marry breast implants.
BEZOS and Trump, to name two of the most prominent current vulgarians, would have been regarded as savages by founding moneybags like Rockefeller and Carnegie, ruthless accumulators themselves but fairly beneficent, leaving great public gifts to the people they’d spent their lives ripping off. The novels of Edith Wharton are pictures of the old rich before, via the miracle of capitalism, magic money billionaires were marrying bimbos in orgiastic media ceremonies.”
In America the big money has always been “used to be” because who the big money people are in America is always changing. That is a good thing.
Please explain how it is “a good thing”.
It means there are no, or few, lasting family dynasties. New entrepreneurs emerge leaving the old in the dust. That suggest that there is always opportunity for those with the spirit to do great things that benefit everyone. A free market ensures people advance based on merit, not class. Steve Jobs is a good example of that, along with millions of others less known.
The descendants of the robber barons who have died may not all be dynasties, but their descendants still live high on the hog. Note the listings of donors for PBS programs, including, perhaps especially, the “foundations”. Opportunity is always there, for the greedy opportunists.
There is no “free market” except in the minds of the ignorant, who believe the propaganda spewed by the ruling class. A “free market”, which we have never had except in the dreams of economists, is simply a means of facilitating greed. Opportunity, not to mention a decent income and benefits for most workers, is a wet dream, especially in an increasingly laissez-faire society like we have, and have had. Workers fought for for what little they gained.
Your “explanation” is lacking.
So much for your “good” thing, except in your wet dreams. Face reality and accept, or better, work to make things better.
Let the market and individuals change who the “rich” are. It happens all by itself if we stay out of the way.
In a free society the “rich” are spreading it around by themselves, you don’t need a large income or estate tax to do it.
In a free society you don’t need to be privileged to go from “rags to riches”.
With a free society wealth isn’t generational; it is usually from bringing great innovation and we are better for it.
You do need to be focused on serving your fellow man. You do need to be pulling the wagon rather than sitting in it (to become rich or get some of the rich money).
When govt. takes all the wealth and doles it out, it is very hard to protest what I do not like.
In a free society if a Bezos or Trump become vulgarians, I can thumb my nose at them and choose not to support their wealth.
When ever I really ponder the virtues, it seems like we would be better off with more liberty and less govt. control. More control creates barriers making it harder to start a business, hire folks, innovate and often seems to protect those who are using their wealth as protection money, via campaign contributions, to limit competition and carve out loopholes, et al.
I would rather see less taxation and more charity. Giving directly to a cause is usually more efficient and less susceptible to corruption. $23 Billion in the last five years on homelessness and getting…almost twice as much homelessness is a recent example, as is all the money we have dumped into causes as wide ranging as education and the Middle East.
I know the rich can look shallow and obnoxious, but every time I think about it I think we would be better off with more freedom going after them than a bunch more taxes and regulation. This is why the changing rich “is a good thing” and “Tax the Rich” is a Fool’s Errand.
Aw, the pleasures and wonders and pastimes of the Free Market! I see that several here who are enamored of it, who see very little and comprehend not much of its very real depredations and faults. Let’s celebrate then, and keep our heads in the sand! I could refer you to numerous sources who do more fully see the clear downsides of the market for much of society, but you can find them if you care to…
By the way, we once taxed the rich at a much higher rate, back in a time when we had better sense. And, you know what, they were fine. And the larger part of society was in better shape than it is now.
Except for the fact that spreading it around goes to the warmakers and themselves, not the “public.”
Let’s change part of the equation and “Tax the Rich” They are sloppy hogs at the trough, taking way, way more than their share.
Or how about, tax those who make it happen.
Y’all have more power than you think. If money is your vote, speak with your wallet. You are not so tied to these things in life you think you need due to the fact that we are literally inundated with advertising throughout our day.
Without sounding like a totally out of touch hippy, just do a little research about where your money goes. Who it’s benefiting, etc.
For example, a simple and no cost switch would be to buy your coffee at a local coffee shop instead of Starbucks. It’s simple to see that while Starbucks employs locals, a portion of their profits are sent back to the headquarters, instead of being reinvested back into the community. If we all made some of these choices every day, we could do a lot to change things.
protest all you like, he’s here for 3 1/2 more years
Maybe so, but due to his notable physical and mental decline, plus so many screwups he’s now has the worst polling ever, there’s a good chance it’s President Vance by then, which was likely the plan all along. And will be even worse.
+1
These protests are part of the reason that Mendocino, California is quaint and endearing. The unyielding certainty in their narrative, and the unwavering conviction often expressed in this echochamber is admirable. I am just one of 70 million on the wrong think train. But I am trying to learn from the local ‘all knowings’, so I can correct the error of my ways.
There are true and enlightened believers on all sides, with their own echochambers. Enjoy
The weather forecasts for the last few days have included thunderstorms around the Trinity Horn. Anyone know what that is?
The population of the Gaza Strip is about a hundredth of the US.
Israel’s genocidal human destruction there would be the equivalent of at least 10,000 Americans a day.
I once contacted the NWS office in Eureka, and was told the Trinity Horn is the high area of the Trinity Alps.
RE: ED NOTES
YEAH, I think Eyster should be recalled for misusing the large authority he wields as District Attorney.
—> Sheriff Kendall appears to continue to allow false science disinformation from expired DEA documents on Fentanyl into press release, recently published online AVA on Thursday 6/26/2025.
In the AVA blog of days gone by, he name calls his detractor on this issue on creditably, keyboard warrior. There is no scientific basis for inhalation or skin contact of Fentanyl in its pure form., and has been upheld by scientists in law enforcement partipation national conferences.
This appears to be a thinly veiled attempt of the Sheriff’s political agenda to cowtow, or is reckless oversight of Sheriff department press office,.
This may be a continued campaign to discredit or blur safe protocol for responsible substance abuse, when there are more dangerous additive black market drugs, whose symptoms are not reversible and are trending for more dangerous outcomes.
At last look, Mendocino County was number third county in California for per capita Fentanyl deaths, so let’s restore credibility in truth about drugs.
To Wit:
NARCAN SAVES THREE
On Tuesday, June 24, 2025 at approximately 01:12 A.M., Sheriff’s Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office…
The spray units can also be used by Public Safety Professionals who are unknowingly or accidentally exposed to potentially fatal amounts of fentanyl from skin absorption or inhalation.
The issuance of the Narcan nasal units, thus far, have been to employees assigned to the Field Services Division, Corrections Division and the Mendocino County Jail medical staff. Employees are required to attend user training prior to being issued the medication.
https://theava.com/archives/268821#3
“ he name calls his detractor” No, that’s not what happened. What I said was basically if you’re going to be speaking poorly of me at least spell things correctly.
He speaks far more poorly of you than you do of him, yet you take no offense whereas he howls over your mild allusion to “keyboard warriors” like he’d been injured—but welcome back, Sheriff, and show us some pictures of the fish you caught! Mr Sunsweet has been a one-man oversight committee for the improvement (please don’t say it’s his euphemism for defunding) our local law enforcement since long before I came on the scene. Your predecessor I still consider a first-rate lawman and a decent human being. I feel the same way about you and David Eyster. The mob gunning for Eyster’s lynching do not perhaps recall the previous district attorney…?
Thank you Bruce, we had a great trip and caught some really nice cut throats and browns in Wyoming.
Thunder storms every day and a lot of hiking through the passes trying to get to the streams too far for the timid. I slept well every night and our tents and clothing dried quickly after each storm. A makeshift clothesline was our salvation, the warm breezes following the storms left our items clean and fresh.
Take good care
Good Lord, I can almost smell the woodsmoke and hear the coyotes. Your brown trout, he’s a fine handsome fellow, but I’m partial to the cutthroats, named after Capt. Clark who, having tasted the firm red meat hot off the cottonwood coals, agreed with me when he classified it as a salmonoid, Salmo clarkee.
You know, I would offer that fella a penny for his thoughts, but the price seemed a little steep to me.
—>. July 24, 2025. The Atlantic
China certainly has levers to regulate fentanyl that it’s refusing to pull. Eliminating the trade would be extremely difficult: China’s chemical-manufacturing sector is massive, and smugglers need only tiny amounts of precursors.…
But the grisly truth is that, in this case, China’s power derives from mass death. Chinese leaders continue to use American lives to forward their political aims, rather than taking the small steps necessary to save them.
https://apple.news/A8NsFmuHNSiOqPHYXBMZfSg
WE suffer from a lack of true Aristocracy, at almost every level, in the U.S. of A.
‘ Not an aristocracy of power, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations through the ages. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness, but power to endure, and they can take a joke.’
E.M. Forster
And that ain’t all.
Susan Sontag is paraphrasing Franz Kafka from a letter he wrote to his friend Oskar Pollak. See Wikipedia:
Franz Kafka believed books [he doesn’t specify fiction or other] should be transformative, like an axe for the frozen sea inside us. He felt the books should wound and stab readers, waking them up with a blow on the head rather than making them happy, and affect them deeply like a disaster or the death of a loved one. Kafka believed books should challenge and provoke readers, breaking through emotional and conceptual barriers.
Which books have so wounded you all recently?
perks routinely devoured by political officeholders, your DA’s $2,500 steakhouse tab is (almost) nothing. Maybe this was a factor when he over-reacted to Cubbison billing his office for that “educational” dinner. Didn’t she know that he was (relatively) a very, very straight arrow? Terence Hallinan, America’s most progressive DA, loved being provided by the ’49ers with season tickets on the 40-yard line. Nobody ever questioned the propriety of his accepting that gift… When I was paying attention, state legislators used to get all-expenses paid weeks in Hawaii courtesy of the “Independent Voter Project” (a corporate front). Our Attorney General Rob Bonta was a grateful beneficiary… Narcs testifying in marijuana cases used to describe the extended training they got on week-long “retreats…” I think the technical term for what happened when Eyster got that bill is “it blew his mind.”
Wanda ya think old Halliman would say to a cop who showed his dick to a harlot in a seedy motel room? Throw the book at him, go for a long prison term a cop would never survive? Or slap his wrist and have him turn in his badge and gun? What would Halliman do?
Photo Net
Net’s head looks disproportionately larger than his body, and his ears look disproportionately larger than his head.
Net’s head, ears and body look disproportionate to the size of the podium.
The man at the podium looks out of place.