And then you go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "I hate you"

LOOKS LIKE A SHIT HOLE TO ME

No sooner had the cameras stopped and reporters left the room where the bi-partisan meeting on DACA was being conducted than Trump called Haiti, El Salvador and Africa "shit holes".  Well of course they are — that's precisely the argument Democrats are using to prevent citizens of those countries  from being returned — but describing them as such to senators and congressmen was exceptionally stupid. By making the comments to Democrats, he must have known they'd be publicly disclosed, so why, then, did he deny making them in today's morning tweet? He's now shown himself to be a liar, as well as a political fool.

Too bad, too, because the 55 televised minutes of his performance made him look presidential (different from former presidents, admittedly, but that's probably a good thing). If he thought his shit hole comments would appeal to his base, I think he badly miscalculated. Maybe he really is as dumb as his critics claim.

Probably thought he was heeding his friend Frank's advice on what not to say, but ... no. Bad idea.

And another old listing finally heads for new ownership

180 Stanwich Road

180 Stanwich Road, last asking $2.195 million, reports a contract.

I never quite understood why this house didn't move more quickly. It's an older home: 1928, and with just 3,000 square feet it's small by today's standards, but with 2-acres, there's plenty of room to expand. 

It sits far back from the road, giving it a nice presence, to my taste, and both the front and back yards are very nice. It was on the market for just 74 days in 2005, when these owners paid $2.6 for it but this time, returned to the market in April, 2014 at that same price, it took 1,211 and multiple price cuts to attract a buyer. 

No one ever said, I hope, that real estate is a liquid asset.

It took a while, but 80 Glenville Road has finally sold

80 Glenville road

For $2.270 million, down from its 2016 price of $2.950. I wrote about this property last April when, after a year on the market, it shaved $500,00 from its price. I praised the house then, particularly its employment of two zebras, the Orange, the Chair, and even a bearskin rug, but did question the merits of the road it sits on.

Last August the owner/agent moved out, taking her dead animal collection with her. The succeeding agent replaced The CHAIR but otherwise, wisely, I think, left the place bare. The removal of the menagerie (I think the Zebra, in particular, is growing stale) and another price cut, finally produced a buyer.

Greenwich's PR campaign is off to a rousing start. Sort of.

Old royal naval college, greenwich, connecticut

First four months encountered a few bumps but hey, we've hired professionals, and they'll figure out how to do it right — right?

In addition to pitches to A-List publications, which Kencel and Schoenberg said has been expanded out to the next tier, Loud [sic] Hammond Group has established Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts on behalf of Greenwich, all named “Think Greenwich.”

As of Thursday, the Think Greenwich Facebook page has 40 likes. Think Greenwich on Instagram has 296 followers, and Twitter has 84 followers....

Unfortunately, the Twitter feed features links to Greenwich in England, including a suggestion to visit Greenwich, UK @VisitGreenwich, take a walk in Greenwich Park @VisitGreenwich and peruse titles at @greenwichlibs.

There is a re-Tweet of an article on art therapy for cancer patients at Greenwich Hospital in Sydney, Australia.

There’s even a suggestion to enjoy pancakes at Greenwich Tavern in London (Located right outside the Royal Park’s lower gates) @Greenwich_Tav.

A Tweet on Thursday links to a story on a business founded by a mom in Greenwich Village, NY. Not only is it not Greenwich, Connecticut, but the business is defunct.

There may be hope for the world after all: The loonies are drinking unfiltered water and jumping onto subway tracks

There is a god, and his instrument is darwin

The latest craze among the Best and the Brightest is "raw water": unfiltered, untreated, and swarming with parasites. Costs $16 a bottle, and is selling out in all our finest cities.

And in New York, a gentleman jumped onto the tracks and threatened [sic] to lick the third rail, while screaming about sexual harassment, capitalism, and various other ills of modern society.

No mention as to whether he'd been drinking raw water but together, these are encouraging trends.

For those of us who believe location is destiny, this pending sale on Mallard Drive is a head scratcher

54 Mallard Drive, priced at $3.495 million, is reported as pending. One of the busiest streets in town, where prices have rarely, if ever, exceeded $2 million, this seems an odd place to choose to be a pioneer.

Nice house, though.

It's hard to keep up with maniacs. Just a day or so ago, it was considered a form of harassment to offer to kiss someone, today, it's wrongful to refuse the offer

Well if you insist, I'll shave first

English R&B singer declines to accept a kiss from a transgender on live TV, and the Left loses its mind

Next: A PC demand for men to drop trou and agree to be sodomized, so long as the fella with the instrument identifies as a woman? 

Wasn't there a concept floating around recently about the right of individuals to decide for themselves who they were attracted to?

Changing tastes: Pre-war buildings in NYC languishing, just like older Greenwich mansions

that was then

Sales at the Dakota are slow, because younger buyers want the amenities (and, probably, the less restrictive ownership rules) of younger condos

The Dakota — constructed in 1884 on Central Park West and 72nd Street as America’s first-ever luxury apartment building — has long boasted well-heeled residents with glitzy homes to match. In 2015, for instance, it nabbed a flurry of headlines for the $21 million sale of late starlet Lauren Bacall’s nine-room, park-facing residence, which spent less than a year listed.

But a handful of other apartments there have faced longer spells on the market and a number of price cuts before entering contract or being delisted. From one perspective, the Dakota may now be a place where savvy buyers can find a relative deal — should the notoriously strict co-op board approve them, of course.

At the same time, the lingering, discounted units indicate that the city’s high-end prewar co-op market is losing its luster, in part because it faces intense competition from new condo developments.

To my taste, the Dakota wins hands down over the sterile condo units in NYC, and I also prefer (some of) the older homes here in Greenwich, but that's no longer the market. Just as new buyers don't want their grandparents'  "brown furniture" (that would be handmade, beautifully crafted pieces from the 18th century), they don't want the houses that furniture sits in. Their loss, says I, but there you have it.  

Greenwich Time has sabotaged its own online version

Lately, the paper has been placing immovable advertisements on the face of its text, rendering the article itself unreadable. Other news sites do something similar, such as the Daily Mail, but they allow the option of swiping them aside, or closing them. Not GT. Is the paper trying to drive would-be readers  to another version, behind a cash wall (not that I'd pay for it anyway, but it doesn't exist), or are they just determined to render their online version useless in an attempt to rejuvenate sales of the dead tree version? 

If the latter, that's an idea as dead as the trees they're slaughtering.

Well damn: Willie Nelson, 84, is ill once again, and has cancelled his current tour

Stopped in mid-concert. He had to cancel another tour earlier this summer, so I fear the worst. His daughter Paula, on Sirius XM, said today that it's just the flu, but I worry. We've lost some of the best of the outlaw country stars the past few years, from Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, to Roy Clark, and it's getting downright depressing: I'm not hearing many great replacements, while mainstream country music has returned to the wasteland it was in the 70s. 

So maybe back to Beethoven — his Violin Concerto in D Major was my entry into classical music long, long ago (thank you, brother Anthony) and still sustains me. But no Willie? Unthinkable.

Here's Beethoven, then Willie and his daughters singing "Have you ever seen the rain?" The adoring looks he gives his girls throughout, and then the moment (3:00 in) when he hugs them and leaves the stage is, at least for this father, a real tear-jerker.

Beethoven: Try the larghetto, beginning at 25:08 — it was what turned a then-17-year-old philistine into a dumb kid who could appreciate at least one of the finer things in life.