Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, July 17, 2022
through
Saturday, July 23, 2022
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It’s Saturday, July 23, 2022
Welcome to the 1,510th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Michael Fanone
Police officer Michael Fanone testifies before the January 6 Select Committee on July 27, 2021. Screencap at 23:58.
C-SPAN - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=801J3ohEIW0
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Commentary
I like full employment. We are near full employment. I like it.
I am tolerant of inflation as long as wages always gain on the inflation.
I am firmly opposed to a Volckerian hiking of interest rates that throws people who want to work out of their jobs.
No way.
What is more depressing than spending public funds to help the unemployed who want to work? Than paying people for staying home?
Keep us working.
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Wellness
Sleep, or rather lack of, continues to plague me. Should I return to melatonin for a bit? Am leaning to using a small dose to see if it helps.
I can drop it when I get uncomfortable. Or ‘if’.
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Social Life
Very slow. An open calendar for next ten days.
And then a busy period.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Progress was all right.
Only it went on too long.
~James Thurber
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
When I discovered that the optional keyboard for my new touch screen GO3 laptop from Microsoft has to wait until the end of August for delivery, our sweet friend from Microsoft, Tucker J, responded to the news,
“Dang...I should have suspected supply chain issues.”
Blog meister responds: Reminds me of the Roger Miller 1964 song. Do you remember it?
Well, dang me, dang me
They oughta take a rope and hang me
High from the highest tree
Woman, would you weep for me?
Meanwhile, Sally C responded to my note that I was desiring red meat with this comment:
Dear Dom,
Mmmmmmmm … red meat …
I find it especially appealing in the hot weather, especially if I’ve been engaged in heavy, manual labor (or woolen-encased reenacting).
Sally
Blog meister responds: Interesting.
And Jim P, after I posted a photo of cousin Lauren and I, commented:
Looks good! Nice photo of you and Lauren. She is so lovely. And you are too 😊
Blog meister responds: Thanks, Jim
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Wednesday Lauren and I had dinner at Douzo. We had the Chef’s Dinner. It was excellent.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Grace reacting to a dinner invite to a favored restaurant
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Short Essay*
Michael Fanone is an American law enforcement analyst and former police officer. Fanone is a CNN on-air contributor. He worked for the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia from 2001 to 2021. Fanone was dragged by a mob down the Capitol steps, beaten with pipes, stunned with a Taser and threatened with his own gun during the 2021 United States Capitol attack and had a heart attack. He had joined the United States Capitol Police after the September 11 attacks.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Friday, July 22, 2022
Welcome to the 1,509th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
The Rehearsal
The photo is from HBO and likely carries their copyright. This is Nathan Fielder, Producer and star of “The Rehearsal,” a psychological thriller of a reality TV concept, on the set of the show.
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Commentary
Dan Cox, a Maryland state delegate endorsed by former President Trump, easily won the Republican primary for governor. His 16-point victory over moderate Kelly Schulz, who was backed by Gov. Larry Hogan (R), is also a win for Democrats. Thinking he'd be the easier candidate in November, they boosted him with ads highlighting his hard-right stands. Interesting. You remember my painting this very scenario months ago. It’s happened in several races across the country, Democrats supporting the hard-right Republican candidates.
For myself, the historic war for the control of the Republican Party is far more interesting than the individual battles between Republican v Democratic candidates and I consider every victory for centrist Republicans to be a victory for democracy. In November, I will likely vote for whatever centrist Republican I find on the Massachusetts ballot.
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Reading
My niece Lisa and I have finished reading Killer Angels and are in discussion re: sharing another book.
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Screen time
Pachinko is an excellent TV series on several levels, including the history of Japan’s occupation of Korea. I’m loving it. However, this is one of those movies that benefits from an advance reading of the episode’s context. Why? Because a change of scene also means movement from one decade to another, one moment following the character as a young girl and next as a grandmother. I find that experience confusing. Thank you, Wikipedia.
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Wellness
While I had to skip lifting on Tuesday, too fatigued from sleeping only 90 minutes, on Wednesday, having slept for five hours, I was feeling fine.
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Social Life
August beginning to define itself.
Daughter Katherine will be visiting for a weekend in August. The Saturday of that trip we will spend with my niece Lisa and nephew David, and their extraordinary daughters, Savannah and Tessa.
August 13 is our annual Cousins Party. A hundred of us will show up for a pot luck, all-day event.
And one day in August, TBD, Lisa, David, and I will spend 24-hours together at their lovely home in NH.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.
~Mel Brooks
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from our friend, JP.
https://www.womensdeclaration.com/en/resources/statements-and-letters/wdi-statement-in-support-of-christina-ellingsen/
And it raises the logical question: If sentenced, will she be sent to a “women’s” prison?
Blog meister responds: I commented to the writer that I don’t have time to read the link.
At which point I received this:
“It says that Norway has threatened to jail a feminist for 3 years for tweeting that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a man to be a woman and even a lesbian. Does that seem extreme?”
Blog meister responds: To the extreme.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I suddenly have a desire for red meat. I just had a steak two days ago but I’m wanting another, or perhaps Lamb Chops, a rack of lamb.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
The ether monument in Public Garden celebrates the first use of ether in anesthesia
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Short Essay*
by Tucker Johnson
In 2008, Charlie Kaufman, a then lauded screenwriter for films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich released Synecdoche, New York his first film as a director. It’s rare that a filmmaker’s first effort is labeled an opus but there simply is no other word for this movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as a temperamental playwright longing to graduate from community theater into a higher artistic realm. At the same time his marriage to Catherine Keener falls apart, Hoffman receives a MacArthur genius grant and sets about making a play about life—not an aspect of life, but the whole enchilada. Hence the ironic title: A "synecdoche" is when a word for part of something is meant to represent the whole.
Such a project is impossible, of course, but Hoffman keeps expanding the set from warehouse to warehouse, adding more scenes and plotlines and doppelgangers until his play is the equivalent of dropping a Mogwai into a swimming pool. Scenes from his dissolved marriage and anxieties about his absent daughter are mixed up with bits from his current romantic adventures, to the point where he and flirty box-office attendant Samantha Morton both have doubles (Tom Noonan and Emily Watson) that follow them around.
The film ultimately is how even from a position of total control over our lives things can never fully occur by design. Fourteen years after Synecdoche’s release it finally feels like that film is getting its due in our cultural imagination thanks to a man named Nathan Fielder.
In his last tv series, Nathan for You, Fielder offered solutions (always strange, often damaging) to help real, struggling small businesses. In The Rehearsal, he returns to that mixture of artifice and substance by finding people who want to rehearse some element of their lives — difficult conversations they’ve been putting off, major life changes they’re uncertain about adopting. In the first episode, Fielder works with a man who wants to tell a friend on his bar-trivia team he’s spent years lying to her about his educational background. Fielder stages a mind-bogglingly detailed recreation of all the ways this interaction could go. He gets the production team to build a perfect duplicate of the bar so Fielder and his rehearsal team can understand every possible dynamic of the space. They practice and practice, over and over again, until the man finds a conversational strategy he’s comfortable with. They game out strategies for minor interruptions and emotional detours. They plan where to sit, what drinks to order. Most incredibly, Fielder hires an actress to play the man’s friend, then sends that actress off to meet the friend so that when she returns, she can be the best possible match for this person inside Fielder’s baroque alternate universe. This is where Synecdoche really seems to have inspired Fielder. It isn’t enough to practice a tough conversation or experience a life event you aren’t ready for. It’s the idea of completely controlling the situation so that it can only go the way you wish it to.
It is a stunning display of scale. The Rehearsal is impressive simply from a production standpoint: There is a shock in seeing someone’s entire world rebuilt in perfect detail on a soundstage solely so they can playact one short conversation. Every time the premise of a rehearsal seems as if it should hit a dead end, Fielder finds a way to open some new avenue of verisimilitude and experimentation, like as Kor calls him, a Willy Wonka of social anxieties with endless resources and zero common sense. That scale is spectacular, and it’s also functional. It is meant to disorient the viewer, and it works. The show is off-putting in the way an uncannily sharp Imax screen can feel overwhelming or how the “real but not” feeling of déjà vu can make you dizzy. It elicits that sinking feeling of the moment when you’re sure you recognize someone but can’t figure out from where.
The more I watched Nathan and Kor work through the kinks of his confession the more I began to wonder about the ethical and moral implications of this endeavor. To be fair, the show does not shy away from this question. During Nathan’s first interaction with Kor, he openly tells him that he’d rehearsed that conversation with a “Fake Kor” he’d hired to play the role. It’s a small moment where you’re first confronted with how someone may react to this underhanded way of having, in not so many words, manipulated a two-person conversation. The power imbalance is gestured toward but never quite interrogated, even as Kor slowly finds himself further coerced into cheating at his trivia game in subtle but decidedly intentional ways.
This brings me to the final moments of the episode. (So I guess I didn’t start this recap with them after all?) There should be a wistful and celebratory air to the conclusion of Kor’s story: Despite his anxiety and his misgivings and even his hangups (see: the fact that he wouldn’t put this personal confession above his trivia game), the conversation goes without a hitch and he and Tricia bond in ways that hadn’t ever before. There should be a bow tied around the entire experience. Only The Rehearsal has a more nuanced approach to its premise.
At the end of the episode, Nathan, presumably guilty about pushing Kor into cheating, decides to come clean. He confesses what he’s done and waits patiently to see how this person he’s spent so much time with will react: Only the reaction we get is not from Kor but from “Fake Kor,” who absolutely loses it, capturing the kind of woundedness we wouldn’t be surprised to find from real Kor. And then we switch back to Nathan who opts instead to not follow that path and he decides to compliment real Kor instead, arguably sanding down the more unsavory aspects of the episode and their interactions.
That’s the moment where The Rehearsal hooked me. As a haunting rendition of “Pure Imagination” plays us out into the episode’s credits, Fielder’s show establishes a darker and even insidious tone to what at first seemed like a good samaritan proposition. Maybe Fielder is, as Kor had unwittingly dubbed him, a “Willy Wonka” character—an imaginative and manipulative trickster who may be more of a villain than he’d like to admit. With Fielder choosing the easier path toward the episode’s resolution we see the fault in the whole enterprise. Having absolute power over a situation will corrupt us absolutely and in social and life situations like these maybe the idea of not having any kind of control is really what makes life worth living.
· Tucker
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Thursday, July 21, 2022
Welcome to the 1,508th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Director Tony Scott
Unknown - Huffington Post article from August 2009
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Commentary
“Thank you for sending me your work.
While I thought there was much to admire here, I’m afraid I just wasn’t quite grabbed fully enough to think I’d be the right agent for this.
I’m sorry not to have better news, but do of course wish you all the best in your work and in your search for an agent and publisher.
All good wishes,
Alex”
This from a prominent agent of a prominent publishing house.
This makes me feel good. If you’re not a little-known writer I suppose it’s a bit difficult to understand why this rejection makes me feel good.
Because unlike most, he took a moment to say he admired the work. He’s an unrelated professional expressing admiration.
He doesn’t want to represent me but, “Yippee!”
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Word of the Day: Pachinko
For definition, see below, immediately after the Short Essay
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Screen time
I am watching Pachinko, a TV series on Apple TV.
Comparing it to Borgen, Pachinko is a more delicate, sensitive drama.
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Wellness
The dentist went well on Monday.
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Social Life
I spent considerable time this week with son Dom and cousin Lauren. And add in three medical appointments. That’s enough of direct contact with people.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Rhetoric does not get you anywhere,
because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric.
But if you can bring these people down with comedy,
they stand no chance.
~Mel Brooks
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
From our friend and movie gurus, Tucker and Scout:
Hi Dom,
. Here it is, episode 10 – The End of the End - The End of History - Chapter 10 on Vimeo
Here we try our best to wrap up the project and the Scott bros. full impact on culture.
And here are all the episodes - The Home of The End of History | Scout Tafoya on Patreon
Thank you so much as always for watching and sharing these essays with your audience.
Blog meister responds: We are the most fortunate of bloggers to have access to these visual analyses. Thank you, my friends.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Thursday afternoon Lauren and I had dinner at Douzo. It’s a terrific Japanese restaurant.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Lovely Public Garden view of Swan Boat
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Short Essay*
Anthony David Leighton Scott (21 June 1944 – 19 August 2012) was an English film director and producer. He was known for directing highly successful action and thriller films such as Top Gun (1986), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Days of Thunder (1990), The Last Boy Scout (1991), True Romance (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Enemy of the State (1998), Man on Fire (2004), Déjà Vu (2006), and Unstoppable (2010).
Scott was the younger brother of film director Sir Ridley Scott. They both graduated from the Royal College of Art in London, and were among a generation of British film directors who were successful in Hollywood having started their careers making television commercials. In 1995, both Tony and Ridley received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Contribution To Cinema. In 2010, they received the BAFTA Britannia Award for Worldwide Contribution to Filmed Entertainment.
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Definition of Today’s word:
Pachinko: a Japanese form of pinball.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Welcome to the 1,507th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Knud Rasmussen
Knud Rasmussen died 1933
Unknown author - [1]
Permission details
Copyright has expired with age
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Commentary
Joe Scarborough Says It's 'Pretty Obvious': 'Fox News Has Left the Trump Train'.
Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy food show won some Emmy nominations. That surprises me as I was disappointed in his work on that show.
Will 187 become a new slogan? In Italian, it would be “centottantasette” or “chent-o-tanta-sette.”
Joe Biden’s poll numbers are historically low.
Democrats have given support to a bunch of hard-right Republicans on the premise that the far-right candidates will be easier to defeat in the fall. Really? In the long run, aren’t we better served by having centrist Republicans win early and often? At least until the Trumpians are thoroughly defeated.
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Wellness, Understanding aging
On Monday, I woke up feeling well, a sudden break from the fatigue I had been feeling. Which is the real me? I don’t know. Really.
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Word of the Day: “187”
See definition immediately following the Short Essay section.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
If God wanted us to fly,
He would have given us tickets.
~Mel Brooks
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from our dear New Englander, Sally C
Dear Dom,
With regards to your comments and observations on aging, I have conflicting feelings. One is that you (meaning everyone in general) do need to recognize that age does curtail abilities, hopefully only in small increments. The other is that you need to fight those increments with all your power, to retain your abilities as long as possible.
My mother, who died at age 96, always told people who offered to do something for her, “No, I’ll do it myself. If I stop doing for myself, I will stop BEING ABLE to do for myself.” Because of the virus lockdowns, her last year (well, the last eight months of it) was one of frailness and decline, primarily because the social stimulation that had sustained her for decades was gone. Prior to that, she was still driving, living independently, cooking her own meals, making six loaves of homemade bread every week (most of which she gave away – if she had eaten six loaves a week, she would not have maintained her 110-pound fighting weight, ha ha!), cleaning house, sewing, gardening, attending every meeting in town to report as her job as newspaper correspondent (sometimes out every night of the week), and so forth. (Even at age 90, she was still rowing her own boat at our summer place in Maine.) She also had only one medical prescription, for thyroid, which strength was smaller and smaller with each renewal. She kept doing as long as she was able. Granted, she obviously had some remarkable genes, but those aren’t the only factor in one’s longevity and abilities. Like you, she took her health and well-being very seriously, and thrived as a result.
So, it’s a tricky balance one must find for oneself – just where is the line between acceptance and not? Where to push beyond what we think we can do, and how far, safely?
I know you’ll keep us posted, as you always do. You’ve got a lot of fans out here rooting for your long, able life.
Sally
Blog meister responds: So much love. Thank you, Sally.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Tuesday I had a small dry-aged steak and a small bowl of my own Chicken Soup.
What a lucky guy I am.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Dom and Lauren
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Short Essay*
Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (7 June 1879 – 21 December 1933) was a Greenlandic–Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" and was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. He remains well known in Greenland, Denmark and among Canadian Inuit.
The Thule expeditions
The First Thule Expedition (1912, Rasmussen and Freuchen) aimed to test Robert Peary's claim that a channel divided Peary Land from Greenland. They proved this was not the case in a remarkable 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) journey across the inland ice that almost killed them.[5] Clements Markham, president of the Royal Geographical Society, called the journey the "finest ever performed by dogs."[9] Freuchen wrote personal accounts of this journey (and others) in Vagrant Viking (1953) and I Sailed with Rasmussen (1958). In 1915, he translated Mathias Storch's novel Singnagtugaq into Danish (The Dream in English; translated as En grønlœnders drøm), the first novel written in Greenlandic.
The Second Thule Expedition (1916–1918) was larger with a team of seven men, which set out to map a little-known area of Greenland's north coast. This journey was documented in Rasmussen's account Greenland by the Polar Sea (1921). The trip was beset with two fatalities, the only in Rasmussen's career, namely Thorild Wulff and Hendrik Olsen. The Third Thule Expedition (1919) was depot-laying for Roald Amundsen's polar drift in Maud. The Fourth Thule Expedition (1919–1920) was in east Greenland where Rasmussen spent several months collecting ethnographic data near Angmagssalik.
Rasmussen's "greatest achievement" was the massive Fifth Thule Expedition (1921–1924) which was designed to "attack the great primary problem of the origin of the Eskimo race."[6] A ten volume account (The Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–1924 (1946)) of ethnographic, archaeological and biological data was collected, and many artifacts are still on display in museums in Denmark. The team of seven first went to eastern Arctic Canada where they began collecting specimens, taking interviews (including the shaman Aua, who told him of Uvavnuk), and excavating sites.
Rasmussen left the team and traveled for 16 months with two Inuit hunters by dog sled across North America to Nome, Alaska – he tried to continue to Russia but his visa was refused. He was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. His journey is recounted in Across Arctic America (1927), considered today a classic of polar expedition literature. This trip has also been called the "Great Sled Journey" and was dramatized in the Canadian film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006).
For the next seven years Rasmussen traveled between Greenland and Denmark giving lectures and writing. In 1931, he went on the Sixth Thule Expedition, designed to consolidate Denmark's claim on a portion of eastern Greenland that was contested by Norway.
The Seventh Thule Expedition (1933) was meant to continue the work of the sixth, but Rasmussen contracted pneumonia after an episode of food poisoning attributed to eating kiviaq,[citation needed] dying a few weeks later in Copenhagen at the age of 54. During this expedition Rasmussen worked on the film The Wedding of Palo, which Rasmussen wrote the screenplay for. The film was directed by Friedrich Dalsheim and completed in 1934 under the Danish title Palos brudefærd.
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Definition of Today’s word:
187: the time it took Nero to finish his fiddling while Rome burned. Or was it the time it took President Trump to realize that his frightening attempt to overthrow American democracy was not going to succeed and led him to surrender, i.e. to tell his followers that they were again losers and should stop the rioting in Washington DC that he had orchestrated.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Tuesday, July 19, 2022
Welcome to the 1,506th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Janeane Garofalo at Bumbershoot 2008
Geoff Carter - cropped from https://www.flickr.com/photos/beatnikside/2814283867/
CC BY 2.0
File:Janeanegarofalochair.jpg
Created: 31 August 2008
About Media Viewer
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Commentary
In the August 2 Republican primary in Arizona, former President Donald Trump has endorsed Kari Lake, the far-right candidate.
Former Vice-President Mike Pence and other mainline Republicans have endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson.
At the moment, Lake appears to be well ahead of Robson.
Many primaries are still to be run and will serve as some type of measure of the strength of the Trump supporters against the Anyone Buts.
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Word of the Day: CLAY PIGEON
For definition, see below, immediately after the Short Essay
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Screen time
I am watching the fourth season of Borgen, a Danish political drama. FYI: The fourth season is separated from the first three. To find in on Netflix, search for Borgen: Power and Glory.
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Wellness
I had been laid low for a couple of days when suddenly, after two 45-minute onversations during which I reclined in my Mistral chair, my energy returned. Burt by now it was time for bed. Hopefully, I’ll be fully functional on Monday.
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Understanding aging
My friend, Dr. Mike, advises that I am simply experiencing the natural aging process I should adjust to that realization. Unfortunately, I think that’s right.
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Social Life
Although I didn’t have any face-to-face encounters, Sunday I spoke for 45miinutes with my daughter Katherine, just chittering. And later on, another 45 minutes on the cell with Dr. Mike, a friendly call. The conversation went from medications to family to friends to getting together.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and
anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
~George Carlin
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
On both Saturday and Sunday I had lasagna, eggplant parmigiana, and pork ribs for dinner.
I bought the Italian items from Table on Hanover Street in the North End. They were very good. I would buy them again.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Mike’s Grandson
Dr. Mike is a private person but after several conversations he agreed to share this photo of his very accomplished grandson, Lucas Michael Borja and friend. Our discussions were boring tales of pride in our offspring. Boring to anyone but us eighty-year-olds. Lucas was awarded a full scholarship to the University of Chicago. An unrelated group awarded him additional sums to pay books and whatever other expenses not included in the first award. He’s a star. Our future is in good hands with a generation like his.
Oh! And my daughter as well, not pictured.
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Short Essay*
Janeane Marie Garofalo (/dʒəˈniːn ɡəˈrɒfəloʊ/; born September 28, 1964) is an American comedian, actress, and former co-host on the now-defunct Air America Radio's The Majority Report.
Garofalo began her career as a stand-up comedian and became a cast member on The Ben Stiller Show, The Larry Sanders Show, and Saturday Night Live, then appeared in more than 50 movies, with leading or major roles in The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Wet Hot American Summer, The Matchmaker, Reality Bites, The Wild, Steal This Movie!, Clay Pigeons, Sweethearts, Mystery Men, The Minus Man, and The Independent, among numerous others. She has been a series regular on television programs such as Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, 24, and Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce.
Garofalo continues to circulate regularly within New York City's local comedy and performance art scene.
You may not have heard much about the comedian Janeane Garofalo, 57, in a while. She has no social media presence, not even a smartphone.
But she’s still performing across New York, often sharing bills with young unknown comedians, even as she eschews online life or even doing a television special. That prompted the Times critic Jason Zinoman to ask: Is this what not selling out looks like?
“It would be easy to see Garofalo performing with comics half her age to a sparse Brooklyn crowd as a portrait of decline,” Jason writes. “But to my Generation X eyes, it looks like a kind of triumph.”
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Definition of Today’s word:
Clay Pigeons: a saucer-shaped piece of baked clay or other material thrown up in the air from a trap as a target for shooting
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Monday, July 18, 2022
Welcome to the 1,505th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Paper Mario: Color Splash
The original uploader was Tom Inverno at Wikimedia Commons.
Logo de Paper Mario
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Commentary
After reading the potential side effects of taking this medication, I decided to stop taking it, even though I was only taking two a day, where eight was permitted. I’m worried about constipation and I did, in fact, have vivid dreams. In the three nights that I took it, it did in fact alleviate my aches and make me drowsy and I got three good nights of sleep.
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Word of the Day: TRAMADOL.
For definition, see below, immediately after the Short Essay
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Screen time
Still watching Borgen on Netflix. Season 2 of four seasons.
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Wellness
I’m healing well. It’s taking a while, about ten days so far. Still taking Tramadol, two tablets a day.
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Understanding aging
My new big adventure: standing up after sitting for a few minutes,
aka, Whose legs are these anyway?
Younger people lack this experience. They can only read about it or, seeing an older person hold on as they rise up, can only wonder at the issue.
And the issue is simply that immediately on rising, my legs and feet cannot hold my body weight. They need a moment to remember where the muscles must go and how they work together. Only a moment. Three or four steps and then all is in order. But remember that this is just the start of my decrepitude, the good part. In the months (Might I be so bold as to suggest ‘years’?) to come I expect I’ll look back at needing three or four steps to put myself in order as the good old days.
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Social Life
I have two personal appointments and three, that’s 3, medical appointments this coming week. Monday is my bi-annual dental appointment. Wednesday is with a podiatrist so I can start wearing sneakers or shoes again, and Thursday is my first visit ever to a chiropractor to reset my bones after that six-foot in the air, bike induced flight, and crash landing.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
When I read about the evils of drinking,
I gave up reading.
~Henny Youngman
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
On Friday I had Kielbasa and my own Bean Soup. It was delicious. I got the kielbasa at the Boston Public Market at Farmhouse Meats.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
family portrait includes my three sons and daughter, plus assorted grandchildren and daughters-in-law.
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Short Essay*
Paper Mario: Color Splash[a] is a 2016 video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Wii U console. It is the fifth installment in the Paper Mario series, a part of the larger Mario franchise. The story follows Mario and his new ally Huey on a quest to save Prisma Island and rescue Princess Peach from Bowser.
Color Splash contains elements of the action-adventure and role-playing (RPG) genres. Players control Mario as he traverses levels made to look like craft materials, reaching endpoints and retrieving each Big Paint Star through linear gameplay. Mario is equipped with a paint hammer, which is used to solve coloring-themed puzzles and collect awards in levels. In turn-based combat phases, Mario uses a selection of cards that endow him with attacks and other abilities.
Nintendo's vision for the Paper Mario series following Paper Mario: Sticker Star was to differentiate it from their other RPG Mario series, Mario & Luigi. The development team focused on puzzle-solving and comedic elements, and to make each game different from one another, emphasize an overarching gimmick. The paint theme was conceived by Atsushi Isano, the director for Intelligent Systems, and developed to take advantage of the Wii U GamePad. A card-based battle system was implemented to use the GamePad touchscreen to sort, paint, and flick cards. The artists focused on making the paper textures appear as realistic as possible.
Color Splash was announced via a Nintendo Direct in March 2016 and released worldwide in October 2016. Upon its announcement, it drew controversy for continuing an action-adventure and gimmick-oriented format introduced in Sticker Star. On release, however, it received praise for its graphics, soundtrack, and improved dialogue. Conversely, the combat system and its lack of RPG elements were criticized, much like its predecessor, although some critics cited improvements to its structure. The game was followed with Paper Mario: The Origami King for the Nintendo Switch in 2020.
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Definition of Today’s word:
Tramadol: Tramadol, sold under the brand name Ultram among others, is an opioid pain medication used to treat moderate to moderately severe pain. When taken by mouth in an immediate-release formulation, the onset of pain relief usually begins within an hour. It is also available by injection. It is available in combination with paracetamol (acetaminophen).
As is typical of opioids, common side effects include constipation, itchiness, and nausea. Serious side effects may include hallucinations, seizures, increased risk of serotonin syndrome, decreased alertness, and drug addiction.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Sunday, July 17, 2022
Welcome to the 1,504th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Scout Tafoya
A young man devoted to film as art
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Commentary
Because he is an admirer of Scout’s work, I asked Howard D to write a blurb on Scout.
See “Short Essay” for Howard’s piece.
Dreams. I’ve had my second dream in two nights which I attribute directly to my taking Tramadol, 1 tablet a7 6.30pm and a second at 10.30pm. Adult recommended dosages are 1 to 2 per six hours. The first dream, charcoal animals jumping out of my microwave and running in circles. The second dream, seemed very long, concerned me and a very close friend, deceased now for 15 years, involved in a caper. No details remembered.
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Word of the Day
Patreon
See definition immediately following the Short Essay section below.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Life is just a bowl of pits.
~Rodney Dangerfield
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Wellness
I’m remembering that I increased the % of my regular coffee beans in my morning mix with decaf.
I’m wondering now if that has something to do with the fatigue I’m feeling.
Today I cut back my on my coffee and I’ll track my energy level.
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Social Life
I’m spending a good deal of Monday with my son Dom. We’re shopping at Costco and M Basket. Then we’ll have lunch at Zo’s, a Greek restaurant in Assembly Sq Mall.
Wednesday I’ll see a podiatrist and then hang out with my cousin Lauren.
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This is from Scout (aka Dave) Tafoya reacting to Howard’s piece below in the Short Essay section:
Wow! I don't know what to say. What a beautiful tribute. I'm stunned. Thank you so much.
Blog meister responds: Besides having talent, Scout is a sweet young man.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Tucker visited and spent an hour helping me with some technical issues I had accumulated. After which we sat down to Old Raj gin martinis and Lobster Salad sandwiches made from live lobsters. The dressing was a spectacular mayonnaise based work whose uniquely powerful lobster flavor was supplied by mixing in the tomalley with the mayonnaise and other seasonings.
On Iggy’s ciabatta rolls, the meals was simple and spectacular.
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Community Photos**
Hey folks – here are a few pics and videos of a fun fly-fishing outing I had on Tuesday on the Naches River in Washington state. It’s a small river not too far from Mt. Rainier and it’s incredibly beautiful.
It’s a tricky to navigate and close to a more famous fly-fishing river call the Yakima River, so we had the river to ourselves and the fish were more eager to eat.
I was able to spend the day with a fishing guide name Joe Rotter who is a legend in the fly-fishing world out in this part of the country, and he was a fantastic teacher.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Akd2KKKj_Dz_trsEckKXCbh68eH79g?e=GYB3a7
What a nice middle of the week adventure!
Hope you are all well.
Chris
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Short Essay*
Scout Tafoya and Patreon by Howard Dinin.
There's no doubt in my mind that Scout Tafoya is the real McCoy. A genuine, well-informed, very intelligent, and incisively analytical observer, with expressive skills to complement his perceptions. Scout is apparently his _nom d'Arriflex_... the name he uses, instead of his given name (far more prosaic... less of a flourish). He is a writer, critic, and creator (as a director) on subjects cinematic. Or "cinema" if you'd prefer, the rubric under which he studied the formal discipline he acquired and a degree at Emerson College (now University) in Boston. It’s a name and a career choice he has deployed since some time in his youth and the first stirrings of his calling as a critic. It was a slight haul to Boston from his native haunt of the Borough of Doylestown, a town in Pennsylvania, located in what has long since been a creative refuge, sanctuary, and hive of ongoing productivity for writers and other artistic types (especially given its relative proximity to New York City), and called Bucks County.
One might guess that Scout, speaking of “ongoing” and, from my point of observation, virtually ceaseless productivity, was naturally disposed to take up his dedicated vocation. Apparently despairing of having the chops (though by whose estimate, I cannot say) to make it as a painter, his original great love as an expressive outlet, he turned to film. Nowadays, aside from the short films and fewer near-feature length efforts he writes and directs, Scout spends clearly enormous energy devoted to the creation of beautifully produced, technically astute, and well-written and rehearsed video essays. Some are as brief as a few minutes, and some much longer, as the subject or theme warrants. He has a narrative role (by way of voiceover), sometimes solo, but as often with his counterpart and co-equal (in Scout-produced efforts, one might say wingman; though he has an equally estimable string of pieces to his credit—and those who are regular readers, here, on ExistentialAutotrip will recognize the talent of Tucker Johnson readily with his brand of thorough, comprehensive, and highly articulate film reviews, of both recent releases and classics).
It would take some telling and a lot more space adequately to cover the accomplishments and the breadth of coverage of Scout’s beloved subject matter of this very much relatively young man. He has countless bylines and credits, in print, and in the ether, a formidable body of bona fides.
The best advice I can offer is that you visit two of his separate points of presence on the Web, and sample his work. One is on Vimeo. However, I urge all, together and severally—with even a slightly greater than the average interest in film—to support Scout's interests and efforts as a "member" on the Patreon site. Here's the link to his page for a glimpse: https://www.patreon.com/honorszombie. Even the lowest tier of support, which amounts to the cost of a single latte a month, will help him achieve his estimable goal of being able to abandon his other jobs, and devote his prodigious efforts to a full-time career as a critic. It's a worthy endeavor, and more than ever, art and creators need all the support they can muster.
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Definition of word of the day
Patreon is a membership platform that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service. It helps creators and artists earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers. Patreon charges a commission of 9 to 12 percent of creators' monthly income, in addition to payment processing fees.
Patreon is used by YouTube videographers, webcomic artists, writers, podcasters, musicians, adult content creators, and other categories of creators who post regularly online. It allows artists to receive funding directly from their fans, or patrons, on a recurring basis or per work of art. The company is based in San Francisco.
*The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Community Pictures with Captions are sent in by our followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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