4/9/24
Newsletter #581
The Crack of Dawn
After a nine-year hiatus, Jon Stewart has returned to the Daily Show – only now just one night a week (Monday). He is giving us the real, real truth in thirty minutes a week, including a pertinent interview with an expert on that particular subject.
I happen to specifically remember when Jon Stewart went off in 2015. I heard the news while I was in Oakland County Jail at the time for drunk driving. I was a real fan of Jon Stewart (real name, Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz) and watched him every night. However, I wasn’t able to watch him in jail. The TV only got the three local channels and was located outside the bars. Someone had to use a long, tightly rolled magazine they called “the remote control” to change channels. Anyway, hearing about Jon Stewart quitting, I clearly recall thinking, “Oh, great, not only am I in jail, but Jon Stewart – my favorite TV guy – just quit. That’s fuckin’ great! What next?”
But Jon Stewart is now back on Mondays, and it’s certainly good to see him. Like myself (he’s 61, making him four years younger than me), his hair has gone totally white. He’s stayed in a lot better shape than me, and he seems sharp, and mentally agile (given his advanced age); but he now seems almost like a casebook – a veritable panoply, if you will – of kooky comic mannerisms. I’m sure that I just took them all for granted ten years ago, but now he sort of looks like Jerry Lewis – like he’s making faces and trying too hard to be funny.
I don’t mean to be mean, but I am. I like what he’s saying, and he’s as acerbic as ever, but I want to tell him to bring it down a notch. Anyway, I wish Jon Stewart only the best. I’ll figure out how to watch him, once a week.
As the weather has improved, it’s been lovely walking around my woodsy neighborhood. We still have dirt roads, possibly the last in Bloomfield. I see a family of deer all the time, frequently on my lawn. I regularly see swans, geese and ducks in the turtle pond, but I haven’t yet seen any turtles. We’ve both been hibernating.
The only prediction that I’m paying attention to presently regarding the upcoming November presidential election is the avid Trump supporter on the corner with the parrots and the broken flagpole. His Trump 2016 flag flew high, then his Trump 2020 flag snapped in the breeze, alongside his defiant, yellow “Don’t Tread on Me!” flag. Then came Trump 2024, then came the whipping winds of catastrophe. His aluminum flagpole crashed down in a storm, but he saved the Trump flags. However, that that was like two months ago. I walked by yesterday and the pole remains prostrate on the lawn, flagless.
I hope his parrots are all right.
It’s sunny and warm today, thank goodness.