VIPER FLYOVER: The commander of the USAF’s F-16 Viper Demonstration Team performs a dedication pass over Shaw Air Force Base, S.C. Photo taken July 16, 2020.

ORSON WELLES: AMERICAN MAVERICK.

It would be all too easy and lazy to dismiss Orson Welles as a “has-been”—someone who quickly rose to fame and then crashed, disappearing from the public eye. Welles is usually captured in the American imagination as three personalities: a radio broadcaster who delivered the infamous “War of the Worlds” broadcast that scared many people into believing an alien attack was underway in rural New Jersey; a director of the best American film ever made, “Citizen Kane” (1941); and a spokesperson for Paul Masson wine, Japanese whiskey, and frozen peas. Welles’ weight problem, the subject of many jokes (some of which he didn’t mind, as he often made fun of himself), is too often the focus of many critics and people who worked with him. These are all beside the point. They constitute such a small part of who he was that they obscure the big picture.

In many ways, Welles lived thousands of lifetimes in just one life—whether it was in acting or in innovating new cinematic forms. Welles was the founder of what we now call “independent cinema,” even as most so-called “independent filmmakers” are nothing more than the fakers Welles so obviously abhorred. The only other American film director who can authentically claim the mantle of independent filmmaker is John Cassavetes, who, like Welles, hated the phoniness and corruption for which Hollywood was known.

Read the whole thing, but with a few caveats. There’s no doubt that if Welles had been making films in more recent decades, he would have had a far more successful career, thanks to movies being sold to TV, DVD, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, etc. But Welles began filmmaking in a system where the movie had to profitable at the box office, or the director wouldn’t be getting many more shots at bat. Also, the above description of Welles’ many lives jumps from Citizen Kane, to Welles’ last years as a massively dissipated corporate spokesman, it skips past Welles’ period in the 1950s and ‘60s when he completed (most) of his films, and as a result, worked steadily, mostly in Europe.

But by the early 1970s, with the (in retrospect all-too-brief) Easy Riders/Raging Bulls era of “new Hollywood” in full bloom, Welles thought he could return to L.A., and the new studio heads would jump to hire him. It didn’t work out that way, both because the new young Turks running Hollywood were just as leery about hiring Welles as the dinosaurs they replaced, and because Welles, then in his very dissolute mid-50s, was no longer the 24-year old Kane-era whiz kid who declared a film studio was “the best electric train set a boy could own.”

As Kyle Smith accurately wrote of Welles’ “last” movie, The Other Side of the Wind, shot in the early 1970s, but only completed in 2018, and is now available on Netflix, “You’d be better off watching instead the movie about the movie: They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (the title refers to one of Welles’s mordant self-observations) explores the relentless, almost purposeful squandering of talent that is the Welles tragedy.”

REFURBISHING IRAN’S FAKE NIMITZ CARRIER: The story of a target barge used for target practice and propaganda photos.

Iran has repaired its six-year-old replica of an American Nimitz Class aircraft carrier. Originally built in 2013-15, the unpowered mockup of the Nimitz hull and flight deck which also had several replicas of American carrier aircraft on the deck. The target barge was built using the materials technology used to build the many Iranian off-shore oil platforms. In short, there was a shell with a metal lattice underneath. Parts of the outer shell could burn, but basically the target barge was built to survive a lot of hit from missiles and bombs, remain afloat and be towed back to port.

The article’s a chuckle.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Universities implement mandatory anti-racism training for students, faculty.

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THE LONG, SORDID HISTORY OF SCAM SCIENCE: A much-needed refresher, courtesy of Robert Wright and the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).

IT’S ONLY VANDALISM IF IT SENDS THE WRONG MESSAGE: “Black Lives Matter” Sign Painted On Street Outside Trump Tower “Defaced” Again. “A small group of Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter activists poured blue paint on the graffiti and several of them were arrested.”

The woman pouring the blue paint in the photo is black, but that doesn’t seem to get much attention in the news accounts.

NYC’S BLM STREET DEFACED THREE TIMES IN A WEEK: But can you guess where you won’t read much about it, if at all?

DO TELL: State Department Memo: The Wuhan Institute of Virology Wasn’t Operating Safely.

PAUL BEDARD: White House Report Card: 108 days from election, ‘there’s reason to worry.’

Trump’s Mt. Rushmore speech was powerful, but I expected him to follow that up in ways that he hasn’t.

SO IN 2020, ALL MODELS ARE OUT THE WINDOW, and that goes double with a candidate like Kanye. But my takeaway is that he probably makes Biden look tired and old and white, which hurts Biden’s already shaky black support. Kanye West announces 1st presidential campaign event in South Carolina.

HMM: Blood Banks Face A Generation Gap In Giving. Well, we always get good turnout at our campus blood drives, which is where I usually give, but Tennessee is the Volunteer State.

I gave blood last week and the place was pretty busy. Most of the people were middle-aged, but I went to the donation center out in Farragut. I suppose the possible anti-aging effect of blood donation would be a bigger appeal to older donors, but maybe not. Maybe younger people don’t want to get old either.

SO LEAVE THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS CLOSED, LAY OFF THE TEACHERS, AND GO ONLINE: NC Teachers’ Union Demands Universal Health Care, Welfare for Illegal Immigrants to Reopen Schools.

Also, ignore everything they say about “health” since it’s obviously not about health.

OOPS: Joy Reid loses in court as 2nd Circuit revives libel claim against her.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: In defence of Bari Weiss: More people need to take a stand against the Great Awokening.

BILLIONAIRES FOR BIDEN: Six More Billionaires Donate To The Anti-Trump Lincoln Project.

THERE’S A SIMILAR IMBALANCE IN MY COMMUNITY: Nearly half of all Wake County’s coronavirus cases are from Latinx community. But “Latinx” is a bit of linguistic butchery that hardly any actual Latinos endorse.

I WONDER IF SHE STILL HAS MATTHEW YGLESIAS’ BALLS IN A JAR SOMEWHERE: “Where does [Jennifer] Palmieri get the identitarian authority to speak for a group called ‘the rest of us’ against ‘the white man’?

AT AMAZON, Bras for Women.

DECOUPLING: Beijing Enraged Over Proposed U.S. Visa Ban On All Chinese Communist Party Members.

DECOUPLING: Japan Pays Companies to Leave China.

OPEN THREAD: The beat don’t stop until the break of dawn.

BOB AND DOUG RETURN TO EARTH: SpaceX’s historic 1st crewed mission set to end on Aug. 2.