Then there's Metheny's stripey shirts

Did Charlie Chaplin wear a Hitler mustache? Did Moe Howard have a Beatle haircut? No. Things should be named after whoever does it first. But I just read where they're calling these flat caps after Brad Pitt 'cause he wears them. Cripes, I was wearing a gray tweed scally when Brad Pitt was being voted handsomest little handsome guy in the Handsometown Kindergarten. The coolest thing was how uncool it was. Like something your Grandpa would wear. Now if Brad Pitt makes them cool, it'll be uncool to wear one. Nice going, pretty boy. Way to ruin it for everybody.

"And Stu Sutcliffe was the best Beatle"

Some music fans can't stand it when an artist lives a long productive life. Like, they'll adore Billy Holiday but find Ella too cold or technical. They dig Bird but think Dizzy was sort of overrated. I think they're making their case for lack of talent as a survival trait: “Fair's fair – you be creative and suffer, I'll write about you and and get tenure.” Bet they hated Oscar Peterson, that inexhaustible fount of brilliance, grace, and invention. Now I hear he's dead, but like O'Hara said about Gershwin, I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.

And the press descends like vultures

This morning, I sat down to write my rant and discovered I had absolutely nothing on hand as a topic. “Goodness,” I said to myself. “How shall I fill up an entire one hundred words? How, how, how, how, how?” Then I saw that the world's oldest human, Hryhoriy Nestor, had died over the weekend at the age of 116. Obviously, a story like this will suggest all sorts of acute observations and acerbic asides, easily filling the requisite paragraph. So I'll have my damn rant. It's just a shame a good man had to die to make it possible.

Heavy, man.

Hoo boy. I just read that the human population has “exceeded by perhaps as much as 100 times the biomass of any large animal species that ever existed on the land.” I don't know about you, but that's how I like to think of myself: About one 6-billionth of the biggest lump of meat that ever grew on this orbiting spheroid petri dish. Actually, I'm way over the global average weight. I'll bet I'm nearly a whole four-billionth. Now if I just had some of them blue neon lights under my car, I'd feel really good about myself.

Should be hangin' with Il Duce

Donald Rumsfeld was just in town, and the local rag treated him like a respected senior diplomat, a toothless old lion, and not the deluded and incompetent architect of a monstrous national crime. There was a picture of him with his wife at the racetrack, watching the ponies with tickets in their mitts. And here's another item for the social section: Doc Mengele and the missus were spotted in VIP seats at the Sugar Bowl. Rumsfeld oughta be shaved bald and driven howling through the streets, along with the Vichy Democrats who gave him carte blanche to commit mass murder.