February 11 2024 — Existential Autotrip

February 11, 2024
# 1644

In the first Super Bowl, officially known as the AFL-NFL World Championship Game at the time, the Green Bay Packers wore the white jerseys.
The game was played on January 15, 1967, and the Packers faced off against the Kansas City Chiefs. The Packers, representing the NFL, defeated the Chiefs, who were representing the AFL, with a score of 35-10.

The Super Bowl, the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), is of the most iconic and widely watched sporting events in the United States. It marks the culmination of the NFL season, pitting the champions of the NFL's two conferences against each other.

The day is a de facto holiday: almost everyone is a participant, if viewing can be called participating.

And you don’t have to be a football fan to enjoy the Super Bowl’s halftime shows, featuring performances by top musicians. So huge is the Super Bowl’s audience that, although the NFL pays the substantial production costs of the shows, the headline entertainers don’t get paid for their performances. The shows are renowned for its high-energy performances by some of the world's most famous artists. This mid-game extravaganza offers a dazzling display of music, dance, and special effects, transforming the football field into a concert stage. The halftime show not only provides entertainment for millions of viewers but also cements artists' status in entertainment history, making it a coveted gig in the music industry.

And many tune into the Super Bowl for the commercials which have become a cultural phenomenon, almost as iconic as the game itself.

These ads, airing during the NFL's championship game, are renowned for their creativity, humor, and innovation.

The size of the Super Bowl viewing audience offers advertisers a unique opportunity to showcase their brand to a massive audience, often resulting in memorable, high-budget spectacles. The commercials are a blend of entertainment and marketing, frequently featuring celebrities, cutting-edge special effects, and often, narrative storytelling. They generate significant buzz and discussion, both during and after the game, making them a staple of Super Bowl Sunday and a reflection of contemporary pop culture trends.

Super Bowl parties and gatherings are as significant a part of our culture as Thanksgiving, a beloved tradition in the United States, where friends and family gather to watch the NFL's championship game. These parties transcend football: they're social events, combining sports, entertainment, and food. Homes are often decorated in team colors. The food spread is key, with classic American snacks like wings, nachos, and dips.

And, of course, there is football. Teams compete fiercely for a spot in the Super Bowl, as winning the championship not only brings the coveted Vince Lombardi Trophy but also immense prestige and a place in football history. The game's MVP (Most Valuable Player) often becomes a household name, recognized for their critical role in securing victory. The Super Bowl is a spectacle of athletic prowess and strategic gameplay. The game is a display of top-tier football, featuring some of the best talents in football, from seasoned veterans to rising stars. The strategies, plays, and individual performances can turn players into legends. The intense atmosphere, the roar of the crowd, and the thrill of the competition encapsulate the essence of American football, making the Super Bowl a symbol of sporting excellence.

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Commentary
Nikki Haley's candidacy for the Republican nomination for President gives non-Trumpian Republicans an alternative to the extreme right and moderate Independents a candidate who closely aligns herself with them.

Her criticisms of Trump’s diverts his attention from Biden and the campaign donations, endorsements, and media attention she receives divert resources that Trump might have otherwise had exclusively.

For those of us opposed to extremism in any form, we say, “Run, Nikki, run.”

**More details**
Nikki Haley speaking at an event in Ankeny, Iowa.
Gage Skidmore
**Permission details**
Must attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere, other than on Wikimedia and its projects.

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Kat’s Gen Z Corner

You can admire birds anywhere in the world.

Birding brings you closer to nature

Every country is certain to provide the enthusiast with birds they have never seen.

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Tucker’s Corner
Who doesn’t love an epic? We don’t get too many these days so when one decides to make itself known to us we should do our duty and get out and see it. I grew up watching films like this with my parents. The great sweeping landscapes of John Ford’s films. The period dress and drama of movies like Barry Lyndon. The great American romance and tragedy of Gone With the Wind. Just typing their titles here makes we want to sit down and watch one right now. The good news is if you’re anything like me there’s an incredible one hitting theaters VERY soon. This is The Promised Land.

Mads Mikkelsen is a phenomenally skilled actor, but he’s also clearly the kind of performer who understands the value of a good, cold, hard stare. Partly this is because of the marvelous quality of his face, one of the greatest in all of cinema. Those deep eyes and those perpetually jutting lips seem like they can evoke rage, pity, bemusement, or desire with almost no effort. It’s one of the reasons why so many Mikkelsen roles seem like they were designed in a lab specifically for him. Beyond his actual talents, we can read what we want in the man.

Even with all that, Mikkelsen is uniquely well-suited for the role of Captain Ludvig Kahlen, an impoverished Danish war veteran who sets out in the mid-18th century to try and tame the Jutland Heath, a huge and forbidding area where no crop can grow and where lawlessness reigns. Kahlen was a historical figure, but not much is known about him. (The film is based on the novel The Captain and Ann Barbara by the Danish author Ida Jessen.) We first see him sitting by a fire, polishing his medals. He has nothing else in this world — not even, apparently, a house — but he aspires to nobility and status. He wants to establish a settlement on the heath in the name of the king. The royal advisers, assuming he’ll fail like everyone else who’s tried to do it, give Kahlen the permission to do so, because the King himself has a dream of settling the area and they can pretend to be pursuing this quixotic goal.

The Danish title of the film, Bastarden, translates as “the bastard,” and could be both a literal and spiritual description of Kahlen. He was born to an unwed servant (most likely the result of her master taking advantage), and he is, at least at first, a tough, at times heartless taskmaster. He’s a stickler for propriety and order, obsessed with his mission and his quest for a title. But he also learns that in order to survive on the heath, he has to learn to rely on others. A fugitive couple, Johannes and Ann-Barbara (Morten Hee Andersen and Amanda Collin), soon join his meager settlement. Despite the grubbiness of his surroundings, Kahlen insists that Ann Barbara serve him his gruel in neat, centered bowls. In his mind, he’s already the proper aristocrat he hopes to be. (Again, I cannot adequately express to you how perfect Mikkelsen is in this role; that sensuous frown of his has infinite layers.)

Johannes and Ann Barbara have fled the clutches of a local landowner, a preening and sadistic aristocrat named Frederik de Schinkel (another historical figure, played with flamboyant insolence by Simon Bennebjerg). De Schinkel wants his servants back, and he’s also irked at the thought of Kahlen establishing a settlement in the name of the king, which would dilute the nobleman’s power. Plus, de Schinkel is, to put it mildly, something of a psychopath. This is where The Promised Land transforms from a stately and lyrical tale of rural survival to something more primal and intense; think Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven crossed with Michael Caton-Jones’s Rob Roy, only with more scenes of people being boiled alive. De Schinkel’s cruelty and violence force Kahlen into changing his own ways, because here is a confrontation with a repulsive, real-life version of the privilege he seeks for himself. Now, Mikkelsen’s face takes on the quality of disgust, and of slow-burning vengefulness.

Nikolaj Arcel was one of Denmark’s most acclaimed directors (having made the political thriller King’s Game and the doomed historical romance A Royal Affair, which was nominated for an Oscar) when he came to the U.S. and made the much-reviled (and much tampered-with) Stephen King adaptation The Dark Tower in 2017. Some directors, when faced with such disappointment, stick around and continue to try and prove themselves in the Hollywood blockbuster game. Others go back to basics. Arcel seems to have picked up where he left off in Denmark, telling stories of individuals who have bought into the rules of the established order, only to find their devotion, and sometimes their very selves, snuffed out by the ruthlessness of power. But he’s also kept a foot in genre, in the visceral storytelling that American movies have traditionally done so well. The result is the kind of ravishing, rousing epic we don’t really get much of anymore.

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”Do You Believe in Magic”
is the title both of the book I had the privilege of editing and of my upcoming [March 23] TEDx talk at Babson College.
As per AI, TED talks are influential presentations from expert speakers on education, business, science, tech, and creativity, aiming to share ideas, inspire, and foster global knowledge and understanding.

As part of the TED talks program, the organizers ask that we publicize the event.

Here are the two posters they sent.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
Comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma.
Stephen Wright

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Six Word Stories
"Flickering candle, shadows dance, memories ignite."

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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts, including links.

Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
text to 617.852.7192

This from Sally C:
Wed 1/31/2024 8:39 AM

Dear Dom,

A few remarks on your recent newsletter that may be of use or interest:

With regard to your hamstring cramp, you might try drinking a few ounces of club soda before sleep. My husband was advised to do this quite a number of years ago – I don’t know who recommended it – for the seizures in the calves of his legs when he was sleeping. Such a cramp would wake him up and he had to stand up and force his foot flat to the floor to stretch the calf out – painful! – and wait for the cramp to pass. The club soda did the trick.

A year ago, I began blood-pressure medication. About six months into it, I suffered the same problem one night. When it happened a second time a couple weeks later, I remembered the club soda. Now I take it every night before bed and sometimes an extra swig in the morning upon arising.

Almost all the mineral ingredients in club soda are potassium compounds. The potassium relaxes the muscles. (So does calcium. Maybe that’s why we hear of drinking warm milk before bed, to prevent muscle cramps.) The nice thing about club soda is that, whether or not it works on your hamstrings, it won’t do you any harm and it costs practically nothing.

With regard to the Chinese New Year, here I am before 7 am, looking at all those glorious pictures of Chinese foods. The growls from my stomach are deafening. I must descend to the kitchen to prepare breakfast and eliminate the noise.

I love Tucker’s notes on the vital importance of finding a bit of serenity in one’s day, as a measure to take control of at least a soupcon of the day’s activities, to calm the soul, by preparing and sharing a meal in the atmosphere of loving family, no matter how small the union. It is a form of love. Often it’s the only way a person knows how to express that. I’ve experienced that kind of generosity from what I call Old World Europeans, some of whom are generational Americans like me and some who are direct immigrants. They have lived in distinct cultural communities, maintaining traditions from their European origins, like your North End roots. No matter their economic circumstances, they always offer food to their guests, a kind of intimacy that welcomes one into their family circle.

My husband’s Aunt Elsie married a Pole who slipped out the back door of Poland when the German army barged in the front door. Whenever anyone visited Aunt Elsie and Uncle John, immediately the refrigerator was emptied and the table groaned under the weight of their offering. “Eat! Eat!” Uncle John would exclaim. “You no eat: you must be sick!”

A former girlfriend of my husband, Bex, went to Poland to visit family – her father had emigrated from Poland in the 1930s. As Bex and her traveling companion were ushered up the stairs to put their suitcases in the guest bedroom, the woman of the house followed them with a tray buried under two dozen sandwiches – a snack to tide them over until supper. Bex had not believed our stories about the Polish hospitality of Uncle John, but we soon received a post card from her in Poland, which said, “You’re right! We have to go sight-seeing in order to escape all the food!”

A trustee of my college was also a customs inspector, and he often took me (and often other students) with him when he had a ship to inspect. These cargo vessels came from all over the world, carrying all kinds of goods (I still don’t’ know what “black hing powder” is) and were crewed by Europeans, Arabs, Asians, and others. Invariably, while my friend Dick went over the manifest, the captain had one of his crew give us a tour of the ship. Sometimes the galley sent up a tray of light finger foods; always we were offered Coca Cola and Winston cigarettes – those two brands exclusively, no matter if the vessel and/or crew were Greek or Filipino or Spanish or Norwegian. (This was in the early 1970s, which perhaps explains the prominence of cigarettes.) One time, a captain and three crew members entertained us with music. The singing and playing of their small band were very good, but “Lemon Tree” and “I Walk the Line” did sound a bit odd in a Filipino accent.

Those were fascinating times.

Time to go make that breakfast before I faint away.

Sally

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__________________________________________________________________________________________ Sally M. Chetwynd
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AUTHOR OF: Bead of Sand and The Sturgeon’s Dance

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And this from our own stalwart contributor, Tucker Johnson:

To: You; Katherine Capossela;Victor Passacantilli

Thu 1/18/2024 10:17 AM

Very kind of you to mention my review, Victor.

It's a great movie. I kind of couldn't get over how invested I got in the rowing sequences. Really thrilling stuff!

I hope you enjoy it.

Tucker

And from our dear friend and publisher of “Do You Believe in Magic?”

Victor P:

Dom,

Kat is an amazing young lady. We knew no such women among our contemporaries.

Tucker, can’t wait to see ‘Boys In The Boat’ after reading your review.

Victor

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Last Thought
In less than a week I’ll be enjoying the balmy climate of Cancun in winter. I am looking forward to the break.

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Feb 7 February 11 2024