November 5 2023
November 5, 2023
# 1628
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COVER:
Abe and Louie’s
A stylish Boston restaurant throwback
Predictable in a strongly positive way
Boston’s best value lunch
A $19.00 burger with all the trimmings (including French fries)
A martini doubles the tab.
But come on, it’s still a good deal.
A delicious chocolate cake.
Two of us share it and there is sill sometimes a bot leftover to take home.
The interior.
My favorite table is off to the immediate left, not shown.
I like the panoramic view and its isolation.
The lobster savannah is delicious.
For dinner with another person, we sometimes share the lobster as a first entree,
followed by a shared steak as a second entree.
I love their martini service,
especially the glass ice bucket to keep the remainder of the liquor cold while you sip what’s been poured into your glass.
And their Old Fashioned is classic.
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Cover Story
For the last half dozen years, Abe and Louie’s has been among the handful of my favorite Boston restaurants for its consistently good service, good food, and its terrific atmosphere.
It’s an expensive restaurant but it puts the truth to the old saw, You get what you pay for.”
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Commentary
I’ve been watching Janus films on MAX, particularly those dealing with the dangers of Nazism.
Roberto Rossellini directed a few of these. I was particularly struck by Rossellini’s Trilogy, that included ‘Rome, Open City,’ ‘Paisan,’ and ‘Germany Year Zero.’
One of Rossellini's most renowned films is "Rome, Open City" (1945). Shot in black and white and set in Nazi-occupied Rome, the film offers an unflinching portrayal of the Italian Resistance. It depicts the struggles and sacrifices of ordinary citizens who resist the oppressive Nazi regime. Rossellini's raw and documentary-like style brought a sense of authenticity to the screen, capturing the emotional toll of the war on the characters.
Anna Magnani as Pina in a famous scene from the film
Another notable work by Rossellini is "Germany, Year Zero" (1948), which delves into the post-war chaos and moral decay in Berlin. This film portrays the shattered lives of German citizens as they grapple with the aftermath of Nazism and the bleak prospects of rebuilding their society.
Rossellini's art films are characterized by their stark realism, minimalistic sets, and focus on the human condition. These qualities allowed audiences to connect deeply with the characters and the historical context, making his films powerful reflections of the wartime and post-war experiences. Through his innovative approach to storytelling and cinematography, Rossellini created a lasting cinematic legacy that continues to be celebrated for its artistic and historical significance. His work serves as a testament to the ability of cinema to explore the complexities of history and humanity.
These films are brilliant, historically accurate illustrations of the devastation wrought by madmen like Adolf Hitler and their followers. Most frightening is how easily even educated nations can be duped. And how we don’t learn from history.
You watch these movies and are frightened. Are we in America following the Germans of the 1930s and 40s? Are we doomed to repeat their experiences? Pray, my friends.
The Forward
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Jews Failed to Spot Hitler’s Menace
By Andrew Nagorski
June 19, 2012
Rising Menace: Despite the obvious writing on the wall, many American and German Jews failed to adequately recognize the devastating threat posed by Nazism. Image by getty images.
In the very early 1920s, when Adolf Hitler was still only a local rabble rouser in Munich, two men from Munich’s American consulate made a point of observing his rallies: Robert Murphy, the young acting consul, and Paul Drey, a German employee who was a member of a distinguished Bavarian Jewish family.
“Do you think these agitators will ever get far?” Murphy asked his colleague.
“Of course not!” Drey replied. “The German people are much too intelligent to be taken in by such scamps.”
Quarter Life Crisis?
I turn 25 on Monday.
I turn 25 on Monday. Every day from then on, I’ll be closer to 30 than 20, and that idea has kickstarted a mini season of anxiety for me. I still feel so untamed and ungrounded. I constantly need to remind myself to calm down, to take deep breaths, to slow the pace of my scattered mind.
Part of me longs to quit the 9 to 5 monotony and dedicate a year to spiritual realization and betterment, just so I can return to the modern day world with a bit more perspective and wisdom. In many ways, I still feel like I’m 15, obsessing over things I can’t change about my body or face, resenting myself for being too loud or inarticulate. I long to be a natural beauty, a woman whose presence alone can help still an entire room and remind everyone of their deeper selves. I’m still so emotionally uncontrollable, caught in the trapping cycle of sense gratification and self hatred.
I’m grateful that I’ve found rituals and tools in the first half of my 20s to help keep me from spiraling, and this week I’ve found myself aggressively leaning into them. I spent all of Saturday in the park: journaling, meditating, breathing in fresh air. I am committing to journaling daily, reading the Bhagavad Gita, and keeping my home tidy and warm. It feels like a full time job, though, attempting to retrain myself out of overwhelmingly negative thoughts. In the second half of my 20s, I hope to use these tools with a bit more ease and grace, instead of wielding them like weapons against my mind patterns.
Scene from Saturday, featuring the truly life changing backpack my dad gifted me for my birthday.
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Do You Believe in Magic? Anthology of Stories from the North End
Edited by Dom Capossela
5.0 out of 5 stars I believe in magic 🪄
Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2023
A wonderful collection of authentic stories which takes you back in time complimented with many pictures that are priceless make this book a magical read ..
I was truly captivated by the rich tapestry of raw history it presents , it is a captivating journey through time, offering deep insights into our past, and reminding me too of some moments that have shaped my world.
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Tucker’s Corner
David Fincher has been my favorite director for as long as I can remember caring about film to that level. His new film is spending a brief period in theaters before hitting Netflix this month and I implore anyone who is interested to see it on the big screen. If you’re really feeling crazy you can go to the Coolidge Corner Theater over then next three weekends and see nearly all of Fincher’s work on 35mm. I’ll be there for at least a handful of what they’re showing.
After Midnite | Coolidge Corner Theater
For now though, I wanted to spend some time talking about his return to form. This is The Killer.
The Killer - Directed by David Fincher
David Fincher is back and I for one couldn’t be happier. His last film, 2020’s Mank (about the writer who penned Citizen Kane) was a deeply personal passion project, co-written by Fincher’s late father. Despite its gorgeous production and incredible performances, it’s a tough film to engage with and many consider it a total failure. With The Killer (adapted from the French graphic novel Le Tueur, by writer Matz and artist Luc Jacamon), the director returns to the kind of material that cemented his status as one of Hollywood’s most singular, incisive, ingenious genre filmmakers. The Killer is exactly what you’d expect from a David Fincher movie centered on a hired assassin: a detail-rich procedural about what a hitman is forced to do as his calculated world implodes. And by telling this story of a deadly perfectionist who repeats phrases like "Forbid Empathy" to keep himself centered, Fincher leans into his reputation as a precise—almost obsessive—filmmaker making The Killer feel incredibly personal.
Of course, it helps to have a leading man who’s proven himself adept at playing soulless monsters before and there are elements of David from Prometheus in what Michael Fassbender brings to Fincher's nameless protagonist. The Killer opens with a lengthy voiceover scene as we watch this assassin on a multi-day stakeout in Paris. He keeps an eye on the café below, dips out to McDonald's for protein, and listens to The Smiths on repeat (about a dozen songs from the landmark band give the film an incredible soundtrack and add to its deadpan humor). But he generally tries to blend in, noting that he picked his disguise as a German tourist because most French people avoid German tourists. In this character-defining prologue, Fincher and writer Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) set the pace that nothing is rushed. It’s a deliberate peek into the mind of a murderer, someone who justifies his actions by noting how many people are born and die each day—anything he does is just a drop in a massive bucket. Through Fassbender’s coolly delivered, dry-as-dust voiceover, which falls somewhere between a novel written in the first-person and the character’s own internal monologue, we learn a little of what it takes to do what he does. He is pure efficiency, methodical to the Nth degree; every scenario gamed, every outcome foreseen. He is, in short, a well-oiled machine.
After a few days in Paris, The Killer’s target finally appears in the penthouse across the street. And then something happens that never has happened to this film’s “hero”—he misses, hitting an innocent bystander instead of the intended victim. He immediately knows what this means and races home to the Dominican Republic to find his partner clinging to life. The clean-up crew has already come for both of them. It’s here where The Killer essentially breaks his own rules. He has stocked storage units in multiple cities and enough money in foreign accounts to never be seen again. He could run. But the man who has told himself never to improvise and always to keep things from getting personal goes in the other direction, trying to burn those who came into his house and those who hired them. It sets in motion a series of events that sees his stock- in-trade violence seep into his private life, initiating a jet-setting revenge yarn that recalls everything from Death Wish to Kill Bill.
The Killer feels like the film Fincher has always been dancing around directing based solely on the themes at its heart: obsession, perfectionism, and power. He’s made himself famous for his exacting behavior on his film sets, asking actors to perform as many as 99 takes of the same scene to achieve precisely what he wanted. It helps a great deal that he brings along several of his most accomplished collaborators, including cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (“Gone Girl”), editor Kirk Baxter (“The Social Network”), and even Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross to handle the score. On a technical level, “The Killer” hums like few films of its type in recent years just because of the pedigree of the team behind it. One senses they all have the same perfectionism as the notoriously detailed filmmaker, and this is the kind of production that rewards that sense of detail. It’s not a film that should be rough around the edges—it succeeds because it’s as finely tuned as one of The Killer’s jobs.
Though the film spends the majority of its runtime in the aftermath of a single job, Walker’s script is incredibly diverse, taking us to numerous locales but also several approaches to The Killer’s path to revenge. The opening sequence is a perfect exercise in building tension. There’s a brilliantly choreographed fight sequence that I’d stack up against any full tilt action film ever released. One of the film’s finest sequences is comprised of quiet cerebral dialogue between The Killer and a fellow assassin played by the ever-amazing Tilda Swinton.
What sets The Killer apart from other revenge films is that the titular character really isn’t in any position to demand or deserve what he seeks and neither Fincher nor Walker shy away from this. I kept expecting the film to try and soften its leading man, but there’s no escaping that he is a cold-blooded murderer. When he snapped one victim's neck, I heard a gasp in my audience, like they expected mercy. That’s not an item in this character’s go-bag, and his completely cynical and procedural approach to murder will turn some people off. This is not a story of redemption but precision; it's what happens when one of the most precise people in the world makes a mistake.
All of this might make The Killer sound like a drag, but it’s worth noting that it’s actually one of Fincher's funniest films. There’s a phenomenal running bit about the assassin’s fake names. And there's a cavalcade of familiar brands like Starbucks, Amazon, WeWork, and even Wordle, a comment on a world that’s commodified and cold enough to allow a killer to slide through it unseen because people are too distracted by something else. He counts on that to do his job.
Throughout it all, as you might well expect, Fincher’s filmmaking is immaculate. It is pure pleasure to luxuriate in imagery made with such obvious, deliberate care. You can see his precise framing, his careful composition, his notorious multiple takes. It seems, too, like Fincher is drawing on his past strengths: you can recognize the patient procedural plotting of Se7en or Zodiac, the nihilistic themes and sarcastic narration of Fight Club, the ruthless, unsettling violence of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the outlandish moral gray areas of Gone Girl.
But what does it all amount to? To the very end, The Killer remains something of a cipher. We are welcomed inside the head of this unthinkable perspective, without ever truly learning the whys. Therein lies the film’s success. Thanks to its blank canvas approach there’s a huge list of ways to read the film. Is Fincher pondering the soul-cost that such a vocation might bring? Yes. Is it another angry screed on capitalism and masculinity? Could be. Should we even draw parallels between The Killer’s diligent approach to work and Fincher’s own attention and concern for detail and accuracy? Why not? Or should we just take it all at face value: simply a slickly made genre exercise, enough on its own merits? All of the above.
One could see The Killer as a filmmaker playing his greatest hits with his best bandmates again, but there’s something deeper at play here. This isn’t just the work of an artist repeating himself; it’s the work of one reworking his themes and obsessions into something brave and new. It ultimately asks if people like The Killer can shut the world out to get the job done. The Killer might by the film’s end but I can tell you that David Fincher certainly does.
A little relax time in the near future.
Well-deserved, my son.
Love
Oct 26, 2023 | Microsoft Corporate Blogs
Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer, shared the below communication today with Microsoft employees.
Marketing excellence at Microsoft is key to how we drive business growth and for the past ten years, Chris Capossela has done a terrific job as our CMO driving revenue and brand love for the company. The numerous accolades Microsoft continues to receive in terms of brand recognition and marketing awards are impressive and a testament to the strong team he has built. Chris and I have been working on his succession plan for some time, and as this new era of AI is upon us, we’ve decided this is the right time to put that plan into action.
After 32 years of dedicated service to our company, employees, and customers, Chris is leaving Microsoft. Over the many years we’ve worked together, I’ve known and respected Chris as a leader who has exemplified a complete, unwavering commitment to our mission and our culture. As a leader and a colleague, he’s always shown how deeply he cares about both the “what” and the “how” of driving our business forward. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to work closely with him and for the significant impact he’s had on our company through marketing leadership, championing our culture and D&I, and developing world class talent that will serve us well into the future.
Please join me in congratulating Takeshi and Yusuf on their new roles and extending a big thank you to Chris for all his contributions to Microsoft.
Satya
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Writing
I am editing my novel exactly the way I hoped I would: in a rhythmic, detailed way. Love having AI available for punctuation and spelling errors. Saves hiring a line editor.
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MONTHLY HEALTH REPORT CARD: of an 81-year-old male.
OCTOBER, 2023
After an unusually thorough annual physical, my PCP declared: “You are incredibly [his word] healthy.”
Liked that.
Natural Physiological Change
Although a hearing aid will be of benefit, I can hear perfectly well in my everyday life so I will pass on getting a hearing aid for now.
Grade: B
Weight-lifting
Got my rhythm back. October was a great month for my strength-training.
Grade: a B, up from a gentleman’s C.
Walking
October was a great walking month. I’m at my peak.
Grade: A-
Illness
After a successful treatment of a bout of actinic keratosis, I developed a pimple on my arm that had to be scraped off. Unfortunately, the biopsy revealed a deeper treatment was necessary. I returned for a minor, in office, operation. Am waiting for results of that biopsy. Thinking they gouged enough of my skin. Hoping.
Grade: B-
Injury
None.
Grade A+
Weight
(Using only weight as a measure of health is simplistic. I know. Health care specialists consider an entire range of metrics. Two commonly used indicators are the Body Mass Index that takes into account a person's weight and height. And Body composition, considering the distribution of body fat and muscle mass rather than solely focusing on weight. But this analysis of the state of our health is meant to be doable in our regular day’s living. We’ll use simple body weight and take other steps when we feel things going really poorly.)
After my trip to Tuscany, my diet has happily returned to normal and I’ve lost half of the weight gain from my trip.
Grade B+
Oral Health
I have no teeth or gum issues.
I brush and floss regularly.
Get a cleaning twice a year.
Grade A+
Substance Abuse
My morning coffee is getting a bit smaller. From 12oz, to now 11oz. My afternoon Italian coffee stays the same. I drank two glasses of wine at dinner time.
This grade is based on the absence of stimulants and mind-bending substances. I stay unchanged.
Grade: B+
Stress Management
Being retired and living alone I am deprived of the joys of gainful employment and daily social intercourse. But, on the other hand, I avoid the attendant stress that accompany both of those endeavors.
Grade: B+
Sleep
My PCP has advised me off the aspirin I had been nightly taking to help with my sleep. I’ve added 250mg of magnesium to my pill ingestion. Have no way of knowing if it is having an effect.
Meanwhile, I’m sleeping, but I’ve just started a new program and it’s too soon to know how that will work out.
Grade: None this month
Regularity
I maintain a decently balanced diet which is not only good for my weight-control, but also for my regularity.
I am convinced that the AI suggestion of a major change in my posture at the bowl, standing bent-over instead of sitting, is responsible for the regularity I have enjoyed over the last six months. AI stresses that everyone is different.
Grade: B+
Memory
I do a lot to stay mentally active. One of my primary activities is writing. I recently published a book, I work on this magazine, and I am also working on another book. My other major memory activity is meal preparation, from the planning of the menu, the shopping, the preparation which sometimes involves me in writing recipes.
Yet, despite all I do, memory loss is real and a nuisance: I am the subject of those 1,000 jokes about walking into a room and wondering what I’m doing here.
Grade: B+.
Social Activity
Social interaction helps ward off depression and stress. I am pleased with the level of social intercourse my daily rhythm brings on. The month of October was excellent, lots of company. My grade remains the same:
Grade B+
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Food
Love Fish Soup
SEAFOOD STEW
Dom’s favorite replacement for Bouillabaisse
Serves Two
12 cherrystone clams
2lbs assorted fish, 4 types @ ½ lb ea
1/2 lb russet potatoes [boiled and mashed]
CLAMS:
Steam open in 2 cups of water, reserving the resulting broth
Cool then remove clams from shell, cut in half, and reserve
PASTE
3oz olive oil
1oz each: red bell pepper, celery, onion, garlic
½ cups each, fresh chopped basil and Italian parsley
To Taste: chili pepper, salt, black pepper
1 T ea anchovy paste, tomato paste
The zest of a small orange
½ t each of dry fennel, ground bay leaves, and thyme
7 pistils (strands) of saffron
Pour the paste/puree into a Dutch Oven or equivalent, and simmer for 10 minutes
Stir in 3oz russet potato, boiled and mashed
BROTH
2 cups of clam broth
2 cups white wine
2 cups water
Add the broth to the Dutch Oven and bring to a boil.
Add the fish.
Simmer all for 20 minutes
Serve, me first.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
"I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
George Carlin
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Six Word Stories
"Faded photograph, timeless love, eternal connection."
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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
I don’t know if this is relevant.
I remember a professor from MIT when I was in the guards said that I wanted to do intellectual and creative things and take drugs and I will be conscious of how unhappy I was. Well,
Dom,
I took his advice on the drugs and found out that I was miserably unhappy.
So, I figured that I will read some books and stumbled upon the dialogues of Plato.
Socrates said the gods will not forsake the good man in life or death.
I thought what the fuck for a smart guy he really said something stupid
My father died my mother was insane alcoholic.
She was a loving mother who went insane with mental anguish.
Telling her children that they were no fucking good and other horrors.
I told her that I wanted to be a carpenter and she said I will only be a janitor and she never went to my college graduation.
I feel this is why all my brothers died tragically.
The only thing my Father asked was that I do my best and not quite. I promise him that I will.
I never did quite or stop trying to do my best.
What I want to communicate and intend to communicate to my readers, is that I deeply experience this to be true.
There are forces in this universe that will not forsake sake you in life and I feel death as long as one does not give up on life or love.
I have a dark self destructive side you can not believe.
How fuck did I get over come what I did and get too this place in life without some Devine assistance?
I hope and intend this e mail forwards our mutual commitments.
All my love and support
Forever
R
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