When I lived in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, my best friend Howard often had work that only left him free time in the mornings. We'd meet for breakfast at Ed's Coffee Shop: a small, unassuming mom‑and‑pop operation that served good food and had a loyal clientele. You felt like family there.

Ed and Sybil Blumstein's restaurant was on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood, in a neighborhood awash with interior design businesses. It was an island of unpretentiousness in a sea of flash and palm trees and nice cars.

Howard and I got to know other regulars who came to Ed's for breakfast. I can't remember any of their names but I remember that one patron had a Siberian Husky named Zia who chewed up his car's parking brake handle.

I haven't lived in Los Angeles since 1983 but I've eaten at Ed's from time to time when I've been in the area. After Ed died in 1995, his daughter Ada took the reins and maintained the character of the operation and the quality of the food.

My years in Los Angeles were good years. Nothing brought back memories of that time as much as eating at Ed's did. I say brought because, as I only recently learned, Ed's has closed. I'm not amazed that it's gone but rather that it lasted, intact, as long as it did.

From an interview with Frank Zappa's son Ahmet:

interviewer:	In a project like this [the documentary film ZAPPA released last year], what kind of things do you learn about your father that you hadn't expected?
Ahmet Zappa:	... Maybe the biggest mystery was just how many chicks my dad boned. That was surprising. That wasn't great news, you know what I mean? But I guess it's rock and roll. I was really naïve to think that that maybe wasn't going on, but I learned that.

Frank named Ahmet after Ahmet Ertegün.

I don't trust most Never Trumpers. They ignore their own history and the history of the GOP. A couple days ago, Max Boot wrote,

The problem is that the Republican Party has lost the habit of governance. It's all about performing on TV and Twitter now.

This didn't start in 2016. Leslie Janka—a White House aide during Reagan's first term—quit his job because, as he put it,

The whole thing was PR. This was a PR outfit that became President and took over the country. And to the degree then to which the Constitution forced them to do things like make a budget, run foreign policy and all that, they sort of did. But their first, last, and overarching activity was public relations.

Max Boot also wrote,

Republicans such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, once seen as sensible conservatives, were radicalized by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and sent the United States blundering into "forever wars" that discredited the Republican elite much as the Vietnam War had discredited the "best and brightest" Democrats.

which is remarkable in light of how much of a cheerleader he was for the Iraq war. In 2001, Boot wrote,

Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American‑led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul.

Never Trumpers are darlings on talk shows nowadays, which exemplifies what sucks about television news in the USA.

A recent long-ish (about 6500 words) article in The Guardian about Jeff Bezos starts with a description of the first purchases the author made from Amazon (in 2004), which spurred me to look up what my first purchases were. I became an Amazon customer in 1998, in which year I bought seven books. My first Amazon purchase that wasn't a book or audio or video recording was a saw blade I bought in 2006.

The article's author says he gets a smaller royalty when Amazon sells one of his books than when a neighborhood bookstore does.

In an interview last month, economist Nouriel Roubini described a wild scenario about how the final days of Tr--p's presidency might play out. The interviewer wasn't buying it:

	DER SPIEGEL:	That sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory.
	Roubini:	No, it is being discussed behind closed doors in Washington.

That settles it, then.

Nietzsche said,

Madness is something rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, peoples, ages, it is the rule.

... as seen, not infrequently, in social media.

See also a dream I had a while back.