Not really, but that’s what the thermometer read when I got into my car in Hollywood.

Car temperature gauges are notoriously inaccurate. For some reason they’re better in the winter, but once it starts to get warm…

First and foremost they’re too high when you get into the car. But once the automobile warms up, it cools down, and the temperature becomes semi-accurate. But then you get into traffic and it JUMPS!

On my way back from Tinseltown it said 107° on the freeway. I know it’s not that hot, then again, once back home Alexa said it was 103.

Ah, getting accurate weather. Used to be Dark Sky was the definitive statement, so good that Apple then bought it and ruined it. Apple will say it’s going to be clear all day, but then it rains, like Carrot says.

I find Carrot to be the best these days, although if you want any detail you have to pay for it, but since there’s almost no real weather in Los Angeles, I don’t. As for detail, I pay for OpenSnow, which is the definitive ski resort weather outlet/app. Every day you get a personalized analysis for every ski resort, and it’s pretty damn accurate. Although sometimes depressing, like last year, when it didn’t snow and got warmer and warmer…

That’s what I’m concerned about. The L.A. “Times” said it was going to be 76 in Aspen today, and that’s completely unreasonable. That’s what I’m worried about most, not the amount of precipitation, but whether it comes down as snow or RAIN!

Used to be it never ever rained in Vail during the season. Maybe once or twice there were some drops at the absolute base, but as soon as you got on the gondola, it was snow.

Unlike in Steamboat, where the altitude is 1,200 feet lower. In the spring, it has historically rained there.

Could this be the end of winter as we know it?

Certainly was in Europe during the summer. Year-round ski resorts like Zermatt and Saas-Fee had to close, they were rivers, veritable sluices of run-off water.

As for St. Mary’s Glacier in Colorado, where locals went to get summer turns, to keep their streak of skiing in every month intact, it just melted away.

A for what’s coming… All we’re hearing about is El Niño. Live long enough and you no longer trust predictions. As much as we know, there’s still even more that we don’t know.

Meanwhile, a hurricane from Mexico came up the coast and delivered rain on Labor Day weekend, something I’ve never experienced previously. And the story is about how the beach is eroding away.

“Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach”

Even the boys of summer are staying home. Because it’s just too hot!

Angelenos are weenies. If it rains, people stay home, and if it’s hot they stay home too. Such that if you go to the grocery store, or shop elsewhere, it’s empty. Even the freeway back from Hollywood just now, I’m screaming along at the speed limit, normally an impossibility at this time.

So Alexa/Amazon says 103°. Generally speaking, don’t trust it. Because oftentimes the reading is not where you’re located, and that makes a ton of difference when at different altitudes.

Apple says 96°. Carrot and Mercury the same thing, and although the latter two oftentimes agree, it’s rare that all three do.

But really it’s not about the daytime, but the nighttime.

It’s not uncommon to have temperatures in the nineties at this time of the year, it’s as a result of the Santa Ana winds. But it cools down at night, to a veritable seasonal temperature. But not now! It’ll go into the seventies after midnight, but if you want to go out hiking…it’s going to be just as hot, if not hotter, down at the beach, and this never happens.

Now in the old days, if you lived west of the 405, you didn’t need air-conditioning, maybe a week a year. But today? Without it you risk heatstroke.

As for your car…

I got in mine in Hollywood and couldn’t hold on to the steering wheel it was so hot.

Which reminded me of my ’63 Chevy convertible, back in the days when not only the seats were plastic, but the steering wheels too. If the top was down you’d have to put a towel on the seat, as for touching the wheel… You’d grip it and let go, grip it and let go, do this ad infinitum until you cooled it down enough to drive.

As for a/c… In the old days, only American cars provided good units, Cadillacs, other land yachts, were the best. German iron? It’s like they’d never seen temperatures this hot over there, and weren’t prepared for it.

But today…

Yet if your car has been sitting in the heat… You have to drive it for quite a while until it cools off, until you get that soothing blow of frigid air that satiates, that is somewhere down in the sixties, a great contrast to what is outside.

But it’s a dry heat!

Not this summer. We actually had humidity in Los Angeles!

The locals will crack you up. They’ll talk about bugs, mosquitoes… If you grew up on the east coast, they don’t even exist out here. And humidity? On the east coast you never need a jacket at night during the summer. Out here, you always bring a wrap, even in the San Fernando Valley!

So what is happening?

What has happened down here is the wind has changed.

Yes, Randy Newman still loves L.A., but this is weather we haven’t seen before. But at least it’s good to know that climate change is not real. Good they lowered fuel economy standards.

Yeah, right.

Not only does the individual feel powerless, it appears no one is really addressing the issues. Then again, after Iran wipes out L.A. and San Diego, I guess it won’t matter.

It’s like we’re frogs in a tub of boiling water. And the temperature keeps going up.

Will it reach 7800° Fahrenheit?

Hopefully Bon Jovi will let us know.

No one has heard it, despite the song being number one for 23 weeks, how can this be?

Well, “Rolling Stone” posited that it’s hatred of country music:

“WHAT SOME FOLKS REALLY MEAN WHEN THEY CLAIM TO HAVE NEVER HEARD ‘CHOOSIN’ TEXAS’ Proclaiming you’re unfamiliar with Ella Langley’s record-setting song has a lot in common with saying ‘I listen to anything but country'”

https://apple.news/Anai0_RnRTYWO_VKMj7A8CA

“The Atlantic” dives deep into the data, claiming it’s an innocuous tune that fits many formats and therefore it was on many playlists, driving up streaming counts:

“ELLA LANGLEY CAN’T BELIEVE HER SUCCESS. MANY LISTENERS CAN’T EITHER. The criteria—and meaning—of a No. 1 hit are always changing.”

https://apple.news/AIullxF4IQeeL8D858O85sg

Never have so many spewed so many words overanalyzing a quite simple concept:

NOTHING IS UNIVERSAL!

This is anathema to conventional news outlets, who believe they’re aggregators for the masses. They find the universal and feed it back to the public.

Only most people don’t get their news from conventional outlets anymore. Forget newspapers, which have died on the vine, but TV news too. It’s laughable that Hollywood was up in arms that the Ellisons might control CNN along with CBS. Have you checked the ratings recently? They’re in the dumper and descending. Very few are watching. Appointment TV? That went out with the DVR, and is completely history today. Assuming you’re interested in SNL or other network tripe…you know if anything good happens, it’s instantly findable online thereafter, usually on YouTube, furthermore it appears in your TikTok feed! That’s where I find “Weekend Update,” usually the only worthwhile segment of SNL.

And maybe SNL is the point. Major outlets have stories about what happened the night before, like this is Ed Sullivan and we’re all watching. Just because SNL was a phenomenon in the seventies that does not mean it possesses the same place in the public consciousness today.

But this is heresy to oldsters! If SNL is not all-encompassing and important, WHAT IS?

I had lunch with Daniel Glass yesterday. He signed an act who built his career online. He’s excited about the prospects. But everywhere he goes people tell him they’re glad that analog is coming back. This is when Mr. Glass becomes increasingly intense. Decries these ignorant lunatics. It all happens on the handset today, and usage on TikTok is even going up!

But this is akin to the endless anti-technology stories in “The New York Times.”

“My Dumbphone Made My Life Better. It Made Everyone Else’s Worse”:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/opinion/dumbphone-smartphone-friendship.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GlE.vLZR.XP8QARO7oM6-&smid=url-share

This is oldster clickbait. And elder abuse. All you’ve got to do is scan the article and you’ll find out…

The writer couldn’t call an Uber, couldn’t use digital maps to find her destination. But she self-satisfiedly says she’s happier. What next, churning your own butter?

Kind of like the endless Waymos are dangerous stories. The future must be stopped, NOW! And while we’re at it, kill all those AI data centers. Okay, okay, but don’t expect to get an easy answer on Google, never mind talk to ChatGPT or Anthropic. This is like those who say manufacturing needs to come back to America. Sure, but are you ready to pay $4000 for a television set?

And the queen of popular music is Taylor Swift. She’s been anointed. She even dropped in on SNL during Dakota Johnson’s monologue Saturday night. Did you know that? Probably not. And it might have come across your news transom, but did you click and see it? Highly doubtful.

There is a very hard core addicted to certain verticals and the PR machine is amped up and news outlets take the bait and tell us things are universal when they are not.

Forget whether Swift’s music is good or bad, but I’d bet many more people have heard “Choosin’ Texas” than anything off her recent album. There’s just too much in the channel. And young women love Taylor, but other slices of the population want nothing to do with her.

Never mind acts without the footprint of Swift.

Let’s look at last week’s Senate hearing. Eric Schmitt called Jack Smith a “dirtbag” for lying about not being at a basketball game in Atlanta. Amy Klobuchar had him dead to rights, Smith was at an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland, not an Atlanta Hawks game in Atlanta.

This was all over MS NOW and other left wing sites. The right wing? It’s like it didn’t even happen. Schmitt still hasn’t uttered a mea culpa.

In the old, pre-internet days, Schmitt would be tarred forever, he might have had to resign. But not today, everything is grist for the mill, the river of stories is endless, what happens in the morning is not atop the homepage in the evening.

And you’re surprised people have not heard “Choosin’ Texas”?

It’s kind of like equating today’s Hot 100 with that of the 60’s. Come on, is there anyone who grew up in that era who did not hear “Yesterday”? Today records constantly go top ten and only a student of the chart has heard all of them.

But if you admit all this…

Then you have to question your underlying beliefs.

Like sales are coming back. No they are not, streaming killed them long ago. There is a sales business, but I point you to this story:

“Luminate report: Taylor Swift fans drive millions in physical album sales”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2026/09/04/luminate-report-taylor-swifts-fans-power-record-album-sales/91601521007/

All you need to know is this:

“Luminate counted 65 different physical and digital product releases for Swift’s 2025 album, ‘The Life of a Showgirl.’ Her previous two original albums had similarly sprawling rollouts: ‘Midnights’ had 67 product releases and ‘The Tortured Poets Department” had 54.”

This isn’t about listening, this is about merch. Selling to rabid fans who must have everything. No one ignored Swift and then weeks, months later, decided to buy the latest iteration of one of these albums, no it’s FANS!

I could go on, but the facts here are self-evident.

But like Daniel Glass referenced, you’ll tell me about cassette sales. I’ve got to ask you, do you know anybody with a cassette player? Do YOU have a cassette player?

Now I’d like to say the three major label groups have their heads in the sand, ignoring reality, but in truth that ship sailed long ago. They put out few new releases, they find it almost impossible to break an act and their bottom lines are padded for paid-for catalog.

As for news outlets… They don’t want to admit they’re fighting for attention, they don’t want to question their platform, they’d just rather be holier-than-thou.

So what do you print in the newspaper, on the paper’s website? Well, you can’t cover everything. Hell, look at all the news articles in Apple News+, never mind elsewhere online. No, you put forth a limited number of stories and say these are the important ones, and by the way we employ JOURNALISTS, educated and experienced, and we must be TRUSTED!

Ain’t that laughable.

The emperor is wearing no clothes. And the news media is denying this. Telling us stuff is happening and important when it is not.

Meanwhile, fewer than ever are paying attention to these traditional outlets.

And oldsters decry social media. Forget entertainment, my TikTok stream is informative, that’s where I find out about so much, that never shows up on mainstream media, if for no other reason than it’s massive for me and miniature for others.

This is the world we live in, but if we all admit it…

We live in a Tower of Babel society. Everyone is in their own world, their own niche, there is no consensus. And we have the old guard saying there is consensus when there is not! Never mind too often they’re in their ivory tower and detached from the street, having no clue what is really going on.

The foregoing is daunting. But the solution is not to wear blinders or express a desire to jet back into the past. Funny, all the left wing intelligentsia/elite decry the right wing “Make America Great Again,” yet they feel the same way! The Boomers want to bring back the past, and the Gen-X’ers too. And it seems the more educated you are, the more you’re steadfast in the belief that technology is evil and if we could just go back to the old way of doing things…

That is never going to happen.

In eras of chaos… That’s when you end up with authoritarians, they make the trains run on time, they say they’re going to make society comprehensible. Which people are yearning for.

If that’s not scary…

But D.C. in total, all the elected officials, are so out of touch with America it’s mind-blowing.

The only way out of this is through this. And in order to accomplish this, you’ve got to own the present, lock stock and barrel.

There are no more universal number ones, no matter what the charts may tell you. That’s history. Done for. Theoretically it could happen again, but everybody is so deep into their own niche…including the 808 in country songs, as if this is what the public is really interested in!

“Choosin’ Texas” is the biggest song of the year. But like the biggest movie and biggest TV show there’s a good chance you’ve never heard it/experienced it. And that’s got nothing to do with the song itself, it’s got to do with society and how people spend their time today.

Case closed.

“Roll the Calls: A Memoir”: https://bit.ly/4dl125e

I read this whole damn book and I still don’t know who Ari Emanuel is.

What we’ve got here is a package deal, as in Ari agented his own book. In other words, he hired J.R. Moehringer to write it. Moehringer is famous for writing the legendary Andre Agassi autobiography, wherein Andre revealed his inner truth, busting myths of the sport of tennis, never mind his personal identity, it is still considered the paragon of the form. Before that Moehringer wrote the autobiographical “Tender Bar,” one of the best books of 2005. So Ari obviously thought if he got the best writer, he’d end up with the best book, but nothing could be further from the truth.

You start reading the book and there are just brief notes, mere paragraphs, before a break and another set of paragraphs. You think this is just the intro, but IT’S THE WHOLE DAMN BOOK! There’s never a consistent narrative. I’ve got to believe Moehringer got overwhelmed by Ari, and this was the best he could do. Because if Ari gave up control, the result wouldn’t be this book.

What we’ve got here is a timeline, a veritable syllabus, of Ari Emanuel’s career. First I did this and then I did that. And it’s not long before the reader decides he wants no part of Ari’s world, hustlers fighting for power and money… And then they die, and they’re forgotten. There’s a scene with Warren Littlefield, one of the most-liked men in television, whose name I haven’t heard in years, I truly thought he was dead until I just Googled him… If you want to be remembered, don’t be an agent, don’t be a BUSINESSMAN!

Used to be people read these books for an inside view of Hollywood. Because Hollywood was the dream factory, running the world. That’s far from the case today, for decades the focus has been on tech. Movies don’t change the world, TV can…and that’s where Ari starts out and…

He keeps telling us he’s dyslexic, he’s got a chip on his shoulder. But this comes up over and over again. WE GET IT ARI! But we don’t completely buy it, because whatever is going on you ended up very successful, it couldn’t have held you back that much.

And we’ve got people like Michael Ovitz. If you weren’t around during his heyday, you’ve got no idea who he is. Kind of like Johnny Carson… A king in his era, barely a footnote in the future.

And Michael Eisner… All these men, and they are almost all men, making deals, screwing each other, doesn’t make you envious at all, makes them look like losers who don’t know themselves.

Because if Ari let Moehringer write the real story of his life… Ari keeps talking about going to his shrink, but it doesn’t seem to have worked, because Ari doesn’t grow, he doesn’t gain insight into his abrasive personality, and all you really have to know is Ari makes his shrink break up with his girlfriend. That’s an inherent weakness, a character flaw, never mind a shrink who doesn’t know where the boundaries are.

So Ari goes on and on about his rage. Gives example after example and… What are we to take from this? That oftentimes he gets his way? This entire book is about settling a score, getting more than even, elbowing the people who were in his way and justifying his ultimate success. After all, he bought the UFC and WWE!

Ain’t that the height of respectable entertainment. What next, cage fights? Oh, that’s right, the UFC IS cage fights! Ari says that some people pooh-pooh the UFC, but since it makes money, how can you criticize it?

And then he buys IMG, squeezes out Patrick Whitesell by comparing report cards, what Ari did and Patrick did not, and then he wants us to acknowledge that he’s worthy.

Meanwhile, he calls people ad infinitum to get his way. Okay, that evidences perseverance. But the ultimate woman he marries tells him again and again he’s too old for her, but he browbeats her into caving. You see Ari needs someone who he can control, not an equal. Arm candy to impress his friends.

So he’s running all over town and then the world making deals. WHOO-HOO! You’re rich and have famous friends, but to a great degree you missed your life, you were so busy doing that you were not in touch with your emotions and what it all means.

So, Ari can’t really be the guy in this book. Because this guy is completely unlikable. And no one could be successful and be this unlikable. He must have some redeeming characteristics, but they’re not in this book. Otherwise, none of the talent would sign with him. You’ve got to connect, be empathetic, and I’m sure Ari has that talent, but it’s nowhere in evidence.

And Ari lives in a scorched earth world, believing if he gets all high and mighty, rages enough, not only will he get his way, but people will be afraid of him, to his advantage.

God, there are very few negative reviews of this book, because people are sucking at the tit of whatever they’re calling it this week, Endeavor, WME… It’s like Trump in miniature, you don’t mess with the king.

You’ve got to be worried that Ari will write you out of his life, that you’ll be dead to him. That would probably be a badge of honor, you’ve got to stand up to bull-headed people like this, show them you won’t take any of their crap. But Ari keeps telling us everybody is inferior to him. He’s working around the clock, he’s reading even though he can’t, everybody else is a loser… It’s just a matter of when Ari is going to turn on you, because it’s Ari’s way or the highway, he doesn’t want to hear anything conflicting, you’re either with him or against him. Ari has a hair trigger, god, it’s like he’s never heard the words “can we all get along”?

So he gets married in the south of France. I’m supposed to be impressed? He absconds from medical treatment to make deals. He will never shut the phone off. This is “What Makes Sammy Run” on steroids, and at the end of it all, Ari is still not fulfilled, he’s still unhappy. He’s constantly trying to make everybody else happy, that’s his number one question, whether you’re happy, but he seems to have no understanding of personal happiness whatsoever.

Ari wants us to be impressed, he’s a big swinging dick! But you’ll squirm and laugh at him.

What will you learn?

Maybe if you didn’t live through the agency wars and know none of this you’ll learn a bit of history. But in reality, this book could be about the changing landscape of entertainment, the future, but all Ari does is say he knows, pisses on those who do not, and moves on.

And as you read you realize there are always people bigger than Ari. so he’s the majordomo of this entertainment complex… But ultimately, he’s beholden to the billionaires, some bankers, some just plainly rich. Seems like Ari had more freedom when he was just a mere talent agent.

As for lessons… Don’t read this book for those, even though you can divine a few. That would be a useful book, but that is not this book.

Or a self-examination, a coming clean, a tale of misperceptions and inner life. But that’s not this book either.

We’ve just got one business deal after another. Sure, Ari is sometimes in pain, but it always comes down to the same damn thing, HE’S WORKING TOO HARD! If he wants sympathy, I don’t know who would give it to him.

So “Roll the Calls” is a megalomaniacal victory lap. It is not unreadable, but at times you want to stop, because it’s only “I did this and then I did that,” over and over and over again.

I don’t care how much money you’ve got Ari, how many famous friends, reading this book I can only come to one conclusion…

YOUR’E A LOSER!

Tune in Saturday October 3rd to Faction Talk, channel 137, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

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