And the petulant drug-addict shall lead a revolution.
Never predict what will push progress. Already one of history’s greatest villains for cancelling USAid and sentencing a million humans of color to death, Elon Musk now stands positioned to become an emblem of our changing stance on being high. Couple that with the unique havoc he is wreaking upon the Whites House and you have an historical figure unlike any other.
If 4547 has to fight Musk, he’s severely diminished, and dude knows this; no talk has emerged from the POTUS camp since Austin’s evil CEO icon went Epstein on that ass. If he ignores Musk—or even if he makes peace—Trumps aura of invincibility is gone among young, male Republicans. His all-important bill is in jeopardy, and if that bad boy and its tax cuts go down his entire term is damaged,
Trump is one false move from impeachment talk—from the right.
The development is a lesser one, but undeniable: No one’s going to look at being stoned on the job the same after this political episode.
Musk’s passionate fan base isn’t trippin over their hero’s… trippin. And I’m trying to think of a parallel figure in history and can’t get past Charlie Sheen. Just wicked high, and enabled in that way only California pampers its wealthy. A different sort of privilege than what built Trump.
More passive aggressive than in your face, tiger blood be damned.
Call it what you want. A huge chunk of rightists are embracing Musk like he’s that meth-head cousin with a good-ass job.
This teachable moment may allow us to see the consequences of being too high, writ large. The worst most of us are bound to do when we’re on one for too long is miss key appointments and neglect maybe a single family. Musk’s extraordinary 20-pill cocktail has killed over 300,00 people.
But he did change drug culture. Let us keep note of that when The People are stringing up evil CEOs.
About those Black people complaints…
Some things were said in the intro video that can be misconstrued. So, to be clear: I like Marc Lamont Hill. FD Signifier is insightful. A handful of others be floatin my boat. But, yeah… online? Niggas do be gettin on my fuckin nerves.
Here’s Roy Wood making many great points on that show done by Sactown son Hasan Minhaj. Don’t get me wrong.
Now, we count down.
10 The long Marc Maron goodbye begins
You haven’t listened to it in ages, but are sad to learn that the WTF podcast is ending, perhaps because you have no recollection of consuming the medium before the former Live 105 star made his desperate gambit. Fortunately, you’re getting three months of lead minimum—to prepare.
Deadline
The fabled Highland Park garage recording studio was filled with junk when the project begain. “When Brendan and I started this thing, all we knew was that it would be Tuesday and Thursday,” Maron said on Ep. 1648. “There was no way to make money.”
Since launching on September 1, 2009, WTF has been among the most popular podcasts on the planet.
“It’s nice to be able to end things on our terms,” Maron said.
Lil Hit
Gustavo Santaolalla, 73, has a huge body of work, two Oscars, and a 2025 season of television soundtrack music that has uplifted the onscreen action. He is good at his job.
The Ankler
9 Told ya they’re coming for your weed
Deep inside of the new federal budget is a clause that would get rid of a rider that’s kept the Justice Department from messing with states’ medical marijuana laws.
If this doesn’t look like incrementalism to you, then you probably have no idea who Russell Vogt is.
Marijuana Moment
Trump tried to delete the rider every year of his first term while President Biden protected state’s medical weed rights. To be clear, that motherfucker could have gotten federal legalization done if he’d been more alive.
A separate rider that has kept the District of Columbia from using taxpayer funds to legalize and regulate recreational weed sales in DC is being pushed by the Whites House.
Lil Hit
Cornish College of the Arts is now a new school within Seattle University.
Seattle University
The full Herb Caen
Oregon state park camping and parking for the purpose of fishing will be free through Sunday…
Saving the legacy of Altadena through art is an excellent idea…
“Eat my fuck” is the profane expression that I almost never say aloud because it is pretty incomprehensible…
But I say it in my head, like, all of the time…
If you think for a minute, it makes sense that San Mateo County is California’s richest jurisdiction, not SF or LA…
Bury me where all of the “Free Palestine” social media posts go…
8 Meh Mariners have youngsters who are ready to rock
Catcher Cal Raleigh leads the majors with 24 home runs, but the pitching-rich Seattle squad is an unimpressive 32-29, a game-and-a-half back of Houston.
Star prospect Cole Young just got called up to play second base, and fans are starting to wonder when the obviously ready Harry Ford will join the big ball club. The problem is that, like Raleigh, Ford catches.
Tridents Up
Seattle No. 5 prospect, Ford has hit .411, while knocking five homers, six doubles, walking 11 times and striking out just 14 times. He leads Triple-A player over the past month with a 1.119 OPS.
“He has put himself in the discussion that when you need the help, he's the next guy in line,” said Jerry Dipoto, Ms’ president of baseball operations .
Lil Hit
Get ready for Saturday night’s Finals Game 2. From Panama City, former NY Times, Washington Post & ESPN staffer Mike Wise joins me and Lev Anderson for some laugh-aloud hoops anecdotes alongside legitimate game analysis.
Imagine that the Sonics never moved
·
Something that had not crossed my mind is that Seattle Sonics fans dislike the OKC Thunder. ESPN execs seem ignorant to this fact, too, as their network has been programing retrospective footage that links the Washington and Oklahoma teams’s very separate histories.
Inclusivity
I don’t have a line here. It just seems a good message to spread. Do you.
7 PNW immune from corporate Pride pullout trend, for now
San Francisco’s $300,000 celebration shortfall. A shocking, country-wide spike in requests for anonymity from corporate supporters. The UK’s 50 massive drop in sponsorship revenue.
It’s the first Pride month of the new Dark Ages, and corporations are leading with the exact amount of soul and integrity as you expected from them. Unless you’re some Pollyanna dipshit.
For expected reasons, the widespread scarcity has skipped over the PNW.
Insurance Journal
Last month’s NY City Pride announced it was short $750,000. Community fundraising kept the event free.
From Debra Porta, Exec Director of Pride Northwest Inc, told me in an email that her organization is not experiencing a sponsor drain this year. We prioritize long-term relationship building, that begins with the very first conversation that is required prior to approving a new sponsor. Those things combined, I believe, are shielding us a bit. As things move along, that might change, so we don't take it for granted.”
Lil Hit
Veronica Garcia, competing for Spokane’s East Valley School, won the girls 400-meter state title, and Fox News has decide their victory is national news. Guess why?
Outkick
40 in the pocket
E-40’s early recordings didn’t always stick with me, largely because he rhymed all over the track. He was outside the beat’s pocket too often to suit my tastes at the time. In this week’s NPR Tiny Desk joint though? He’s right there. Back in the day maybe Earl should have had even more real musicians and “radical leftists” in his midst.
The gig’s support singers and Forty Watter’s between-song patter deserve props, too.
6 SD soccer brawl leaves 33 fans banned
Just 16 games into their existence, the San Diego FC has banned 33 fans. The participants in a wide-ranging fight—the expansion team’s second against an LA team—were fingered by phones of paying customers who were not with the bullshit.
San Diego Union
Last Saturday at Snapdragon Stadium, a fight broke out during San Diego’s match against the LA Galaxy. The brawling continued in the parking lot, with multiple people sustaining injuries.
The banned persons are prohibited from all MLS contests, home or away.
Lil Hit
On Sunday night, Tony Williams started stabbing people inside of Salem’s Union Gospel Mission, then he went outside and stabbed some more. In total, Williams cut a dozen people.
Oregon Public BroadcastingTim McVeigh just became the second-biggest killer in Oklahoma history
Shout out to Lev Anderson for predicting a Game One road win for the Pacers of Indiana and doing it on the Sojourn podcast!
5 Seriously, WNBA players are crazy underpaid
The sold out arenas and bounding television ratings tell the story of women’s professional baskeball as America’s fastest-rising sports attraction. A look at player salaries, however, show that WNBA players are grotesquely underpaid when compared to less popular men’s sports.
New York Times (Gift article)
The average NBA player’s salary is about $10 million a season. That’s 80 times the average WNBA player salary, about $127,000 last season.
Harvard professor Claudia Goldin, 2023’s Nobel Prize winner in economic science, writes, “much of the gender pay gap no longer reflects outright discrimination. It instead reflects the different occupations and industries that men and women choose to enter, as well as other factors. But gender discrimination remains a major problem, and there is now a prominent example for everyone to see: professional basketball.”
WNBA attracts about 30 percent as many eyeballs per player as the NBA does. By extension, Goldin writes, is what WNBA players should receive in salary. That’s one third, not one eightieth.
Lil Hit
Much of The Goonies cast will be in Astoria through Sunday.
Oregon Live
Yes, we Caen!
It’s wild that the Musk-POTUS fight has elided conversation about the terrible and obvious conflicts of interest inherent to Musk’s government work…
Saw Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966) in 1982, when I was 15. Just did my first rewatch on Tuesday, and it turns out that I had understood very little that seminal film…
Watching Vanessa Redgrave run from David Hemmings though? I fully got how girls’ basic athleticism has improved since the advent and influence of Title IX…
A smart Redditor pointed out that reports of ICE hanging around immigration court hearings and picking off Brown people are not coming out of red states…
Those states have undocumented ag workers too…
So, paradoxically, it maybe makes sense to move to a red state if you have people without paper in your immediate family…
Crime's sufferers are the edge of this Knife
The first couple of true-crime stalwart The Opportunist’s seasons might put you in mind of the new show, but The Knife would be The Opportunist after having its mind blown by a survivors rights course in which it got an “A.”
4 Disneyland and Dems: A perfectly unrealistic pair
“Conventions aren’t the place for new ideas and strategies,” insists Josh Koehn, “they’re an orgiastic celebration of the status quo. But considering Trump’s rapid dismantling of the federal government and attacks on civil liberties, the repetitive chants of ‘When we fight, we win” felt as comforting as being stuck on a boat in ‘It’s a Small World.’”
Last weekend’s California Democratic Convention in Anaheim revealed a party still doing the things that buttfucked them raw last year.
SF Standard
Neither Kamala nor GovGav showed up—Harris probably to avoid Biden health questions and Newsom because he’s the most unpopular podcaster on this coast.
Jersey boy Cory Booker and Minnesota’s Tim Walz most excited the crowd at, again, the California Democratic Party Convention. Yikes.
Lil Hit
This ice cream is gay, and that pasta dish is seems pretty queer, too.
48 Hills
3 Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a criminally misleading name
It’s been a helluva week for the extremely problematic Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. A heavyweight consulting firm broke ties with GHF last Friday, calling the organization a “death trap,” based on its past 10 days of extermination support dolled up as relief.
On Tuesday, the foundation named an evangelical Christian as its top official. Of course, he supports turning Gaza over to the US.
Truthout / Reuters
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to West Coast Sojourn to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
