“My family and I have shared a lifetime of beautiful memories with Dolly, but so have you. She has always been on your television, your record player, your CD and on your phone playlist, becoming an extended part of your family whether you liked it or not. Our family and the team she has entrusted with her legacy will work diligently to ensure her spirit will live with us forever. Dolly was a farmer, just like her daddy; he farmed the soil, she farmed songs and happiness. Dolly called me and said she wants to rest in a beautiful bed of plush cotton because after a life of wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest.”

Seaver ended his statement, saying, “Rest in peace, Aunt Dolly — Aunt, Granny, Gigi. May God bless Dolly Parton, and may God bless you all. She will always love you.”

That last sentence is a reference to a song Parton wrote, the theme from the movie The Bodyguard.

This next song about her family was reportedly one of Parton’s favorites:

RIP.

The post RIP Dolly Parton appeared first on The New Neo.

They certainly are thin; the quintessential ectomorphs, with elastic limbs and extreme grace. Their lean bodies and long legs in proportion to height make them look tall, but I began to wonder whether they really were. After all, I know that ballet dancers often look much taller onstage than they are (see the discussion in this post). Maybe the same is true of rhythmic gymnasts such as this champion:

Well, it turns out that rhythmic gymnasts really are tall, relatively tall. Not as tall as basketball players, but taller than other gymnasts – who tend to be very short. Here’s the explanation:

One of the most important physical quality a rhythmic gymnast must have is a slim and stylish body. According to Spanish ex gymnast Susana Mendizábal, rhythmic gymnastics must be tall with long limbs, narrow trunk and hips and very thin. With an average height of 5 ft 4 in and weight of 94.8 pounds stereotypical canon for rhythmic implies Gymnasts’ thinness is usually genetically determined.

That height combined with that weight makes for a very thin person. And some of them are as tall as 5’9″ – the Wiki entry for the gymnast in the video you just watched claims that she is that tall.

Also:

Taking away all of the figures and using common sense, rhythmic gymnasts that achieve elite also tend to be taller because as a lot of the routines involve throwing and catching it’s easier for them to retrieve the apparatus as their limbs are longer. The longer the reach and the strides, the less effort you have to do to perform a routine.

I find them quite amazing.

[NOTE: In my previous post on short ballet dancers, it’s so old that the YouTube videos have disappeared. One of the short dancers I discuss in the post is Daniel Ulbricht of the New York City Ballet. He seems to be retired from performing and is now teaching. There aren’t a whole lot of videos of him on YouTube, but I thought this one shows off his high jump.

Unfortunately, there’s a dark background and he’s wearing dark tights, which sometimes makes it hard to see the full height of his jumps.]

The post Are rhythmic gymnasts tall? appeared first on The New Neo.

Hazard of the bodyguard trade, it seems. After all, it’s an intimate relationship of sorts, just not ordinarily that sort.

Ammel’s ex-wife is suing Sinema for “alienation of affection.” Boy, does that phrase evoke memories. When I was in law school a long time ago, it was one of a host of terms often involved back then in divorce law, such as “loss of consortium” and “condonation” and “collusion.” In particular, “alienation of affection” always seemed an odd offense to me. After all, it’s the spouse who makes the promise to be faithful, and if he or she strays I think the responsibility is wholly with that person rather than the paramour.

The idea of the nearly irresistible “homewrecker,” however, is apparently still alive and well and living in North Carolina:

Ammel’s now-ex-wife sued Sinema, 50, last year alleging “alienation of affection,” taking advantage of North Carolina’s “homewrecker law,” which permits women to seek damages from their ex-spouse’s lovers.

Heather Ammel is asking for more than $75,000 in compensation.

But Sinema, the first openly bisexual member of congress, claimed in court that she had no romantic feelings [for] Matthew during the final months of her political career in 2024.

“I’m not like that,” Sinema told her attorney, Steven Epstein, when asked under oath about the tone of her conversations with her bodyguard..

“When the opportunity presented itself, and when Mr. Ammel approached me, we had sex,” she added flatly.

Wow, that’s cold.

And the ex-wife is asking only $75K? That seems rather archaic, too.

But it’s the term “homewrecker” that brings up really ancient memories for me. When I was a kid, I loved the movie “Damn Yankees.” Saw it many times. I hadn’t thought of it in ages, but since I’m one of those odd people who remembers song lyrics to just about every Broadway musical from the 1940s through the 1960s, I recall that Ray Walston as the Devil says to Gwen Verdon as his sexy assistant Lola in the intro to one of the songs, “There isn’t a homewrecker on my staff better than you, Lola. But this fellow is stubborn.”

Verdon wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but she was exceptionally charming and a fabulous dancer. She played the role of Lola (“Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets”) with a tongue-in-cheek humor and lightness. Anyway, here’s the “homewrecker” scene. When I was a child, I loved the lavender decor, too:

The post Sinema the homewrecker appeared first on The New Neo.

I absolutely loved Villella, and it was partly because of the way he looked, as well as the fact that he exuded a sex appeal that was different from the Apollonian quality of Baryshnikov and the exotic aura of Nureyev. I also happened to once take a class from Villella when he was in his 40s, and I can safely say that his magnetism was even more marked close up and personal.

Is he forgotten these days? Perhaps, at least somewhat, and certainly with young people. There aren’t even that many videos of him in his prime. The other day I was looking for some and found, among other things, a video of him doing “Tarantella,” a short and frenetic dance choreographed for him by Balanchine although not one of my favorites. In the video, it first shows Villella doing the two short solo variations, then Baryshnikov doing them, and then a series of other later dancers doing the same thing.

Fascinating, including the comments, only a few of which liked Villella and many of which criticized his loosy-goosy manner and casualness, especially his relaxed upper body. But what they didn’t get is that the piece was originally made for him and the carefree happy-go-lucky style was intentional in this piece and it’s something that has been lost with modern dancers. It’s very playful. Even Baryshnikov, who may have been the greatest ballet dancer of all time, doesn’t quite pull it off for this particular ballet. Let’s just say that Baryshnikov gives us the intense Russian version, very perfect but not the original artistic vision.

Here’s the clip. Unfortunately, the quality of the video for Villella and Baryshnikov is poor. Villella is shown until 1:54, and then Barishnikov, and then the rest of them. But I think despite the poor quality of the first two, it still shows what I’m talking about. Note also that as the years go by, the tempi get slower and slower, although never slow:

Here’s a short Villella documentary. The still thumbnail at the beginning gives you some idea of why so many women (me included) were drawn to him. It also has a few very short excerpts from Tarantella that are in color and of much better quality than the previous ones. He narrates some of this documentary; I think he was in his early 80s at the time, but he’s 89 now:

The post A tarantella for Edward Villella appeared first on The New Neo.

A while back I read that Cagney’s stiff-legged dancing in that film was an imitation of Cohan’s idiosyncratic dance style, and I started to wonder whether there was any film of Cohan dancing or singing. He died in 1942, so there should be something of the sort.

Not much, as it turns out. But a bit.

First, here’s Cohan singing “Over There” in 1936, when he was 58 years old:

And here’s Cagney singing the same song in the movie. He only sings a small part of the song, but gives it the same high energy. The movie was released in June, 1942 (Cohan died in November of that year, but apparently saw the movie). That was well -into WWII, although “Over There” was a song from WWI. But you can see why it meant so much at the time.

The following is the only footage I could find of Cohan dancing (it’s Cagney singing in the background, though). It’s about a minute long:

This is Cagney doing much the same number in the film “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” They’re both playing FDR, by the way, wearing a top hat:

I think you can see how well Cagney captured Cohan’s style. There were quite a few similarities between them: both had backgrounds in vaudeville, both were of Irish ethnicity (Cagney mostly, anyway), and both were relatively short (5’6″ for Cohan and 5’4″ for Cagney).

You can feel the playfulness and energy practically blast off the screen in both versions. Those were different times, weren’t they?

The post Cohan and Cagney appeared first on The New Neo.

I probably will write more about the film in another post, although I don’t think I’ll be seeing it. Despite my curiosity about what it looks like on the large screen, the reason I don’t think I’ll go is that almost every single reviewer mentions something that’s a deal-breaker for me: painfully loud music above dialogue that’s hard to hear. I find such a combination awful, even though I’m interested in the large-screen spectacle of a classic story. I might not like it, but I’m intrigued enough to want to make up my own mind. But not at the cost of painful ears and losing at least half the dialogue.

This post is not about that movie, though. This is about a short video I encountered along the way. It’s AI-generated, and despite that I think it’s very fine. It tells the story of the Odyssey in about five minutes, using classic artwork as its basis. From the description at YouTube:

The whole epic in one breath: the apple, the wrath, the horse, the wandering, the homecoming, the film revealed at last as a Bosch triptych swinging shut on a world in a glass sphere.

Ten years of war and wandering, told in one breath. This is the whole Odyssey compressed into a single unbroken descent — the apple rolling down a god’s banquet table, a thousand ships dissolving into Claude Lorrain’s gold, Achilles playing one note while the war burns without him, and the Cyclops rising out of Goya’s black. From the sack of Troy to the bag of winds, from Circe’s melting sailors to the shades spiraling out of Hades, every trial arrives as a living painting, then gives way to the next.

Five images carry the current all the way through: the eye, the orb, the fire, the sea, the thread. Watch for where they return — the apple that becomes a star, the wound that becomes an empty beach. It ends where all of it has been pointing: a beggar at his own gate, an old dog’s last recognition, a bed rooted in a living olive tree, and a triptych swinging shut on a world held inside a glass sphere.

The longest voyage in literature. One take. No landfall until the final frame.

And here it is:

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The post For your enjoyment appeared first on The New Neo.

Summer isn’t the problem; it’s winter that creates the issue. Do you want you or your children to get up in the dark to go to work or school – something you may be doing already anyway if your start time is early? Or do you want the depressing experience of night falling long before the afternoon is finished? Your answer matters not only on whether you favor Night or Morning, plus how early work or school starts, but on your latitude and your east-west location in your time zone. The more north you live and the more to the east in your zone, the more extreme your winter/summer sunrise and sunset times.

I live in the north, and I live in the east of a time zone, and let’s just say I’ve never been a Morning Person. Even as a little child – and I mean aged 2 or 3 – I would balk at going to bed for the evening in what I considered the daytime. Luckily, though, because I lived in NYC, school began at 9 AM and I never had to get up for school in the dark until I started junior high.

I’d like to see school begin at 9 AM for everyone. There’s evidence that children, especially teenagers, have trouble with the early start times because they need a lot of sleep. My junior high and high school were overcrowded and we had split sessions at times, and I still remember what it felt like when school began at 7:30 AM. And no one cared that we were going to school in the dark, either.

I’m not at all sure this bill will pass the Senate, so it could all be moot.

I will now quote Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem which I loved as a child, for obvious reasons:

BED IN SUMMER

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

And now I’ve updated it for the present dilemma. I only took about ten minutes to do it, so it’s not one of my better efforts. But I couldn’t resist:

Would you prefer the winter dark
In morning to delay the lark?
Or have it be in afternoon
That you can spy the rising moon?

Because there’s no way to evade
The shortened days that winter made.
You have to choose your times, and then
In summer find long days again.

The Morning People rise with joy
In all seasons, but they annoy
We Night Folk, who would like to sleep
While birds are silent, not a peep.

But summer is the season all
Are happy with the late nightfall.
The further north that you reside
The more the daylight does abide.

The post Permanent Daylight Savings Time? appeared first on The New Neo.

Enjoy:

RIP Bonnie Tyler.

Speaking of kinky male heroes, it reminds me of the dilemma facing the Democrat Party, one that Graham Platner’s candidacy spotlighted. Some people wonder why Platner was chosen in the first place to run for office, and pushed by certain factions who thought he’d be a good candidate. I think the answer isn’t obscure: he was their designated working-class hero. At least, he could be presented that way. Because it’s all about casting. And sometimes an actor has to be replaced while the play is still in production.

Democrats have lost many members of a demographic that used to be a goodly portion of their base: white, male, working class. They don’t need those votes in deep blue states or cities, and are free to run rich Communists with a foreign background such as Mamdani. But in purple ones and in nationwide elections it’s a riskier proposition, although it can still happen (see Michigan and El-Sayed; but Michigan has a particularly large Muslim voting bloc). But Democratss would very much like to have those white working-class men voting for them everywhere.

Thus, you had the nomination of the abominable Tim Walz as Harris’s VP. It was an effort that failed because Walz was a leftist’s idea of a masculine guy, but he fell very short of that and just came across as weird (a descriptor he used for J. D. Vance but that fit Walz far better).

Vance, by the way, really did start out as a white working-class guy – or even more poor than that – but rose higher by dint of brains and hard work.

Initially Platner must have seemed like a good solution to the problem. Male, “oyster farmer,” young, tattooed, veteran, Maine native, possessed of a rugged quality. A leftist who didn’t look like a leftist. For a while he polled quite well against Susan Collins, who is old and female and has been in office for a gazillion years. But Platner had a past, and the past wasn’t all that long ago.

Who chose Platner? Like most of these working-class heroes and foreign academic Communists, he was chosen by people whose specialty it is to find them and back them:

Welp… pic.twitter.com/e3TgHWaf9T

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 10, 2026

It’s about one of these “finders,” Daniel Moraff. The Times article said, “He looks for a particular type: military veterans with blue-collar jobs and no electoral experience but an interest in politics and (typically) labor unions.”

Next in line in Maine for the role seems to be Troy Jackson. The difference is that he really is from a working-class background and really was a logger, although he lacks a history of military service. He also has been a Maine politician for about twenty-five years and was the president of the Maine Senate. However, he’s got the usual political baggage, in his case that he was originally an abortion-opposing and same-sex-marriage-opposing Republican and switched both his party and his positions. There’s also this:

Jackson initially maintained a close political alliance with Platner, with the two frequently appearing at campaign rallies together and running in a ranked-choice voting alliance during the 2026 primary cycle. However, after multiple scandals involving Platner, including allegations that he raped a former girlfriend, Jackson has distanced himself from Platner.

On Israel, Jackson adheres to the requisite Democrat Party line:

“Anybody with eyes and a heart knows the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza. It has to end, and we as Americans have the power to end it.” Jackson added that he will “never vote in favor of US taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel” as a senator.

The article says that’s the first time he’s spoken much publicly about Israel, and it happened yesterday. Funny thing, that – he’s hopping on the bandwagon in an attempt to replace Platner. Jackson is also backed by Hasan Piker and Bernie Sanders. The same article helpfully lists the other contenders for the nomination as well, and mentions their attitudes on the Israel question. They exhibit different degrees of anti-Israel sentiment. But only one candidate seems to be supportive of the country, and that’s Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state of Maine.

One more thing about Troy Jackson – this allegation has emerged:

A progressive advocacy group on Tuesday accused former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson of striking a female colleague with a bottle he threw during a state Senate caucus dispute years ago, complicating his emergence as the leading Democrat contender to replace Graham Platner on the November ballot against Republican Sen. Susan Collins. …

In a post on X, the group said Jackson, “in a heated disagreement, struck a female colleague with a bottle he threw at her” during a caucus meeting when he served as Senate president, and it described the episode as “a widespread open secret” in Maine politics that was “not an isolated incident.”

The group conceded that people close to Jackson were denying the account.

The Democrats have until July 27 to make a decision. It will be the Party regulars of Maine who will choose Platner’s successor. They have an interesting task ahead – how to thread the needle.

[NOTE: If anyone’s interested in how it is that Platner can be on total disability from the service, here’s an article about that.]

The post The Democrats are holding out for a hero in Maine appeared first on The New Neo.

I’m thinking that the country feels like it’s under internal siege. But you know, I’ve felt that way before. I write about the dangers often, and so I’m not going to write about them today. It’s a holiday, a big one.

Today I’m just going to note that I really do believe this is the greatest country on earth. Although threatened at times, our commitment to liberty is unmatched by that of any other country. The World Cup visitors from afar are surprised at our friendliness, our energy, our huge portions, our generosity.

I remember hearing from my son, when he lived in South America for quite a while, that although in some ways he could pass for a native, people always knew he was an American even before he opened up his mouth and demonstrated that he had an accent. Why? It was because of the way he walked. And I’ve heard other people say that Americans stride in a different way, a more open and free gait that identifies them.

America may just be the most beautiful country in the world in the sense of natural wonders, too. It’s certainly one of them, anyway. That’s partly because it’s so large and the terrain and climate and flora and fauna so varied. I recall learning in art history class that many of the early paintings of the American West – such as, for example, by Bierstadt – were designed to show Easterners and denizens of the Old World the wonders of the New. They could scarcely believe what they saw. And granted, it was a somewhat idealized version – but not that far off from reality:

I remember the 1976 Bicentennial vividly. But that was a long time ago. I was young, and now – well, let’s just say I’m not young anymore. But that star-spangled banner still waves o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Have a wonderful celebration!

The post Reflections on the 250th Fourth appeared first on The New Neo.