Another Week: Number 118

Day after day, alone on my couch, I have been listening to the occasional tapping from the other side of the wall as the change of seasons takes two steps forward and one step back. The eyes in my head see the catkins dangling from my birch tree in the wind, the daffodils popping in my side border, and the gulls circling and squawking overhead.

We had a thunderstorm on Friday, followed by 70-degree weather that lasted for a good two or three hours, prompting fireworks and motorcycle wheelies from the local Rust Belt bros.

Bros were in the news a lot this week, as the principals involved in a routine airstrike on Houthi rebels made the stupefying mistake of including Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg in their Signal chat. Even more disturbing than that blunder was the video game mindset apparent in their comments and emojis. People whose emotional and intellectual development got stuck at age 16 are running the world’s most powerful military. God help us.

Meanwhile, Donald the Conquerer stepped up his invasion of Greenland by sending his ridiculous vice-bro JD Vance there to make a fool of himself.

As for me, I worked on a couple of websites, watched women’s March Madness, and read about story design.

I also walked 9.27 miles this week.

Coxey’s Army

On Monday night, I somehow wound up watching a full, two-hour American Experience documentary on YouTube that I had begun long ago: The Gilded Age, from 2018.

It was good — a reminder of how the Second Industrial Revolution made guys like Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan very rich while transforming America from a largely agrarian society into a hierarchy of barons and laborers.

The name that jumped out at me, though, was that of Jacob S. Coxey Sr.

All my life, my mom and grandma would judge quantities of food as being “enough for Coxey’s Army,” but they could never really explain the meaning behind the expression.

An hour and 10 minutes into The Gilded Age, there it was: The Wall Street crash of May 4, 1893, precipitated an economic depression, and the following year, Coxey led the first-ever protest march on Washington, D.C., aimed at petitioning the federal government to employ people in building roads and schools and courthouses.

Coxey had tens of thousands of supporters who contributed wagonloads of food. When he got to the Capitol, his government beat him up, threw him in jail for 20 days, and fined him five dollars.

On Wednesday, I screened that ten-minute portion for my mom, who was amazed to finally see the face of the man she had invoked all her life when planning or critiquing meals.

Erin Maguire on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

I’m usually asleep before the late shows come on, but I often watch Colbert, Kimmel, and Seth Myers the next day.

Tuesday night, Colbert included a stand-up segment by Erin Maguire. It was my first time ever hearing of her. I liked her very much and laughed quite a bit in six minutes.

If you want more, her full Baseline Presentable comedy special from last year is currently available on YouTube.

Lili (1953)

On Saturday, after my mom indulged me by witnessing Paige Bueckers’ 40-point lashing of Oklahoma, she wanted to watch a movie.

I chose Lili from her DVR cloud because neither of us had seen it and it’s only 81 minutes.

It’s an odd little production.

The beautiful, 20-year-old ballerina Leslie Caron stars as a 16-year-old girl from the French countryside named Lili. Recently orphaned, she arrives in a town where everyone speaks English but the signage is mostly in French.

Within minutes, a handsome magician (Jean-Pierre Aumont) rescues her from a shopkeeper’s attempted sexual assault. Finding him attractive, Lili follows Marcus the Magnificent back to his carnival. There, an introverted puppeteer (Mel Ferrer) is attracted to her — but only expresses himself through his puppets.

The movie is regarded as a “musical,” but there’s very little singing and only one song — “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo.” The puppets are creepy, Lili is so disturbingly naive that she seems mentally challenged, and the magician’s assistant is Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Yet somehow, the love dilemma was enough to make this movie very popular with the public, and it was nominated for six Academy Awards — winning only for its score.

My mom liked it. I enjoyed how bizarre it was.