Lake America is “official.” Why not Lake Trump?

Scoop, ... 55 comments.

The President declared it Lake America today with an executive order

More things that need renaming from their association with the Evil Canadian Empire, first pass:

Canada Goose – Freedom Fowl

Canada Dry – 51st State Soda

Canadian bacon – Hoser Ham

Canadian Club – Annexation Whiskey

Canadian Rockies – Red White and Blue Mountains

Canadian football – Minor League Football

Maple Syrup – Liberty Sap

Canada jay – Patriot Pigeon

Canada thistle – Border Weed

Maple Leaves – Treason Blooms

Royal Canadian Mounties – the Scarlet Stasi

Hockey – ice soccer

The Gordie Howe Bridge – The 51st State Causeway, carrying Steve Bannon Boulevard, leading to The Department of Peaceful Annexation Welcome Pavilion on the American side.

The Rainbow Bridge – The Make Niagara Straight Again Bridge.

And Canada has totally fucked up the Thousand Islands, because there are actually far more.

They call it the Thousand Islands. Very inaccurate. Very sad. I looked at it and I said, ‘There are more islands.’ Nobody knew this. The experts said, ‘Sir, how could there be more?’ But I found 864 additional islands. Beautiful islands. Some of the finest islands anywhere. Canada had ignored them for years. Maybe they were hiding them from us. We don’t know.

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So today we are naming it the Trump Archipelago. People are already saying it’s one of the great discoveries in history. Columbus found the Americas. Magellan went around the world. But neither of them found 864 islands. I did.

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As for Oceans:

Our top map guy came up to me. Big guy. Strong guy. Tears in his eyes because I lost the Nobel Peace Prize. He said, “Sir, do you know the word Pacific comes from peace? It should be called the Trump Peace Prize Ocean.”

I said, “That’s very interesting.” Nobody knew this. Nobody knew Pacific meant peace until I told them. And now people are saying, “Why should an ocean get the Peace Prize when Trump ended eight wars?” Very unfair.

So we’re looking at it. The Trump Peace Prize Ocean. Beautiful name. Much better than Pacific. Magellan named it Pacific, and frankly, Magellan didn’t even make it home. I did.

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Trump’s de-Ontario declaration purports to change a name that dates back to a time long before America and Canada were nations. It was first called Ontario by Europeans in the mid 17th century, but some Native Americans had previously called it that, possibly for centuries. Wikipedia says it was originally a Wendat (Huron) word.

Personally, I can now say I grew up on the shore of Lake America.

I won’t, but I can.

I know the answer to my question in the headline. He’s obviously saving his own name for Lake Superior. Ontario is small potatoes. Since I grew up in sight of Ontario, I am disappointed that he didn’t name it Lake Scoopy to honor his old Fordham schoolmate. After all, Superior is not grand enough for the Prez, but I’ll be perfectly happy with one of the smaller lakes.

Not Erie, though.

Although it makes sense for Erie to be called Lake Other Crap.

If I were Trump, I would be selling the renaming rights for the lakes, as they do with baseball stadiums. It’s a perfectly Trumpian scam. How did he not think of it? Companies would vie for the right. Of course we wouldn’t allow a great lake to become Lake Tim Hortons or Lake Canadian Tire, but there are plenty of American companies that would bid. I think Lake Kum & Go has a nice ring to it. How about Lake Master Bait and Tackle?

In the case of Kum & Go, Trump could sell the naming rights to a brand that is disappearing and then claim he personally saved Kum & Go. “They were going out of business. Terrible situation until I gave them a lake. Nobody had ever thought of giving a gas station a Great Lake.”

The complete naming-rights program could be:

Lake Superior – Lake Trump, but he’d make Bezos pay for it.

Lake Michigan – Lake Buc-ee’s. Enormous, American, and increasingly difficult to avoid.

Lake Huron – Lake Master Bait & Tackle. The aquatic connection makes this practically responsible governance.

Lake Erie – Lake Kum & Go. “Erie” was depressing anyway.

Lake Ontario – Lake America, presented by MyPillow. The government keeps the patriotic naming rights but monetizes the title sponsorship.

And that’s merely the lakes. Once the Treasury discovers this revenue source, every geographic feature becomes inventory. Niagara Falls, brought to you by Liquid-Plumr. The ExxonMobil River, formerly the Mississippi. Old Faithful, powered by Taco Bell.

The real Trumpian masterstroke would be an auction televised from Mar-a-Lago. Companies bid for ten-year naming rights, but Trump retains unilateral authority to reject the winning bidder for insufficient patriotism — or to accept a lower bid from someone who happens to be staying or golfing at one of his resorts.

We made $8 billion naming lakes. Biden made nothing naming lakes. Zero. Not one dollar. Nobody even knew lakes could make money until Trump came along.

Susan Sarandon topless in The Apprentice (1971)

Scoop, ... 1 comment.

French-Canadian dramedy made in Quebec. IMDb calls it Blue Flower, a direct translation of the French title. Wikipedia says that The Apprentice is actually a better translation of “Fleur bleue,” which is an idiomatic expression.

It is one of the very few Canadian films that is functionally bilingual, shot in both English and French, with the appropriate dialogue dubbed for the appropriate audience. Fleur bleue is also one of the very few films to deal with the strain between Anglophone and Francophone relationships in the city of Montreal in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the time the film was made, Montreal was largely segregated into French speaking areas in the east, and English speaking areas in the west, with the two groups rarely interacting with each other. Jean-Pierre and Elizabeth both are from Montreal, but neither has a working command of the other’s language – Jean-Pierre’s English is non-fluent, and Elizabeth’s French is non-existent.

Summary:

Jean-Pierre (Fiset) is a working class young Francophone with big dreams. He comes under the tutelage of his older best friend, a con-man and bank robber named Dock (Jean-Pierre Cartier), who starts teaching him the secrets of his trades, and making him an accomplice in his crimes. He is dating Dock’s virginal sister, who is also active in the Quebec separatist movement.

To make ends meet, Jean-Pierre works a series of menial jobs. While doing clean-up on a commercial shoot, he meets Elizabeth (Sarandon), a beautiful Anglophone model. After he is fired from the shoot for explaining the English meaning of the French name of the product she is supposed to be selling, she starts going out with him out of a sense of guilt, and they soon become lovers. However, she is a sexual libertine with no intention of being monogamous, and this soon strains their relationship.

Eventually, the strain of keeping up with his two girlfriends wears on him and he decides to break up with Elizabeth. However, his clumsy attempts to break up in English (of which he does not have a fluent command) merely results in their spending the night together.

Susan Sarandon was about 24 when this obscure film was lensed. It was her second nude scene, following “Joe” (see the bottom of the page). This is the first time I have seen the film in such good quality.


Susan Sarandon The Apprentice 1971 fullscreen 1

Video

It’s in a bed rather than a bathtub, but it’s rather similar to her scene in Joe.


Susan Sarandon Joe 1970

Apparently she would only sleep with guys who had bad haircuts. We baby boomers saw a lot of the Three Stooges on TV when we were kids. She probably had a childhood crush on Moe Howard.

Joshua Báez update

Scoop, ... 14 comments.

Original headline: Joshua Báez becomes the FIRST PLAYER EVER to hit THREE HOME RUNS in his MLB debut!

They’ve been playing major league baseball more than 150 years, and nobody had ever done this before. The kid hit a 449-foot homer to center on his first MLB pitch – and he was just getting started. He didn’t merely hit three homers in the game; he did it in his first three plate appearances!

UPDATE: Baez is now 6-for-41 (.146). He has only had three hits since that first game, so he has batted .081 (3-for-37) in that stretch, with one additional homer. Several of you guys suggested that his first game was the ultimate flash-in-a-pan, a case of a guy who just happened to get hot at exactly the right moment. It seems that you guys were correct. Will that game be his entire highlight reel, ala Keith McDonald (see below). I guess we have to stay tuned to find out.



Two previous players had homered in their first two at-bats. One was a solid ballplayer, but the other was a career minor leaguer whose first two major league at-bats were little short of miraculous.

* Bob Nieman stayed in the majors 12 years after he accomplished the feat in 1951. He was a good hitter (.295 lifetime with an OPS+ of 132), but he never made the all-star team, and never reached as many as 75 RBI in a season.

* An obscure catcher, Keith McDonald, did it in 2000. His entire major league career consisted of only 9 at-bats, although he did add one more homer before he headed back down to Memphis. Three homers in nine at-bats gave him a lifetime slugging average well over 1.000! That performance was a total fluke. He kicked around the minor leagues for 13 years and averaged only six homers per year! In fact, he hit more homers in his 9 major league at-bats than he did in an entire season in the Florida State League in 1996, when he had 410 at-bats!