The Month That Was - January 2022

The latest symptom of mortality.  I have arthritis.  Hallux rigidus, to be exact.  It has kept me from running for a few months and quite possibly will continue to do so forever.  There are treatments so I guess we'll see.  And the fact is that as long as I don't overdo it and can deal with pain, I should be able to resume some running, at least a few miles.  To quote the great philosopher Dalton, "Pain don't hurt."

Also under the heading Getting Old, below there is a write up on The Villages based on a recent retirement investigation visit.  I'm beginning to realize that the reason old people always talk about how old they are is because that's what dominates your life after a certain point.

I shall resist the urge to wallow in my agedness with all my might so...Happy New Year(?)

[Travel] The Villages

[Roaring 20s] Round-up

[TV] Cobra Kai

[Travel] The Villages

Having, above, promised not to wallow in my agedness, let me update you on my latest adventure looking at retirement properties.  I spent three nights in The Villages.  Exploring the community and hoping for some winter warmth.

For those who have never heard of it, The Villages is an enormous retirement community just shy of an hour north of Orlando.  When I say enormous I mean nearly 130,000 in population (depending on your source), five and a half square miles.  Probably 15 times bigger than my current home of Dexter, MI, approaching the size of the nearest significant city to me, Ann Arbor.  Other cities of comparable size are Pasadena, CA or Waco, TX.  Except The Villages is all retirees.

Well, almost all.  They have a couple of areas where under 55s are allowed to live, mostly in an effort to maintain a labor base for the needed services.  And just because you're over 55 doesn't mean you're retired -- work-from-home to the rescue. But the bulk of the population is seeking The Good Life on the back nine, so to speak.

So what is the big deal about a huge pile of oldsters?  Well for starters it's one of the fastest growing cities in the country.  They can't build more homes fast enough.  For another, there is very little crime, for somewhat obvious reasons.  Oldsters generally don't go around mugging and vandalizing each other.  Oh there is some, mostly domestics, DUIs, and spillover from the surrounding areas.  And there was at least one case of an illegal drug operation/golf cart chop shop.  But you can feel very comfortable walking around anytime night or day without fear (other than drunken golf cart drivers).

One point of pride for Villagers is that everything in the city can be accessed via golf cart. Now, it would be a long golf cart ride from one end of the city to another, but there are three -- soon to be four -- central commercial areas loaded with shops and restaurants that are easily accessible via golf cart.  Each neighborhood has multiple rec centers with pools and activities, each group of neighborhoods has a regional rec center that is even more impressive.  There are in excess of 100 pools of varying accessibility throughout the city.  In fact, if there is one thing Villagers really, really love about the Villages it is how much there is to do.  Pretty much any sort of activity you can think of is available, and probably has a club around it.  Here is an event calendar if you are curious.  I have not found a club for weightlifting yet, but there are clubs and clubs and clubs.  The bias for activity is pervasive. My real estate guide suggested that pickleball is huge as is pool volleyball, with archery coming on strong. The guy who rented me a golf cart couldn't wait to tell me about his fitness routine and his golf habits.  

The best salespeople seemed to be the existing residents.  On more than one occasion we were greeted with "Welcome to paradise."  In my travels I have occasionally encountered people who live in The Villages and I have never heard anything but enthusiasm. A few notes, before I get to the negatives.

• There were recent semi-comical news stories about a breakout of STDs in The Villages.  That was fake news.

• The Villages are a big enough force for employment that when, at one point, they were planning on reducing the speed of their expansion, the State of Florida stepped in and made concessions (tax breaks) so they could keep going.

• They needle Disney by calling The Villages the real happiest place on Earth.

• It is one of the few places in the world where Polo (horse, not water) is popular.

• I forgot to mention golf.  Probably because I don't golf.  But there are 48 golf courses, including 10 "Championship Level", whatever that means.

• The Villages runs its own charter school for children of employees -- 99% graduation rate, 93% enter college.

So what's not to like?

Interestingly, the housing is not all that impressive.  The house designs are straightforward mostly, with extreme premiums for certain locations that give you nice views or privacy.  On the whole the houses are very close together and fencing is controlled so your option for not having your neighbor keep an eye on your activities on your lanai is a hedgerow of some kind.  I should note that housing is not exclusively, or even majorly, high-end.  Small bungalows abound and there are even apartment-style condos.  All the neighborhoods have a mix of housing, so it's not like there is a rich area and a poor area.  Still, I have seen much more appealing housing options in other places.

Location is another point of concern.  It is realistically an hour to get to any sizable city outside the bubble; that would be Ocala to the north and Orlando to the south.  The upside is almost everything you could need is available in The Villages so you hope you don't need to make a run to the big city too often. If you are struggling with a specific health issue, though, location could be the deal-breaker.

Along the same lines, either coast, Gulf or Atlantic is a couple of hours away.  A day trip. In my image of retirement I am near the beach, but most people who retire to a beach town will tell you they hardly ever go to the beach.  (The joke in Florida is that no one on the beach is from Florida.)  So as far as that goes, I have to explore whether my image is realistic.

My final analysis is that The Villages really could be paradise…for extroverts.  An extrovert here will always have new people to talk to, always have something to do, and be able to feel completely safe and secure in engaging that way.  But what about us introverts?  Will I be able to sit quietly by the pool and read a book, or will I be forced to discuss matters of the day with the woman who takes the chair next to me?  Will I be able to focus on my workout or will some guy step off the elliptical and regale me with stories of his osteopathic adventures?  Will I be able to hide myself away from that block party, or will folks be ringing my doorbell to remind me to come out and meet all my neighbors?  Can I sit quietly at the bar with a bourbon or will I have to make small talk about pickleball?  To someone like me, The Villages can seem a little…intense.

Still, The Villages is a great and unique place and, I say this sincerely, a tremendous accomplishment of human engineering.  No less impressive than Disney or, say, the Vegas Strip.  An awful lot of people are choosing to live the life that is offered there and while it's easy to scoff at popular trends, very often everyone is doing it for a reason.  I don't know if I will actually end up in The Villages, but I suspect if I do, I won't be disappointed.

[Roaring 20s] Round-up

Since we haven't revisited this topic in a while, some notes:

Brain implants.  Thoughts to text.  Sight to the blind.  Thoughts to text is getting stuff out of a closed brain.  Sight to the blind is putting stuff in.  I have been one of the belittling majority on the Metaverse.  But if you happen to have a brain that won't let stuff out or in (or both), getting the Metaverse injected in your brain could bring astonishing relief and meaning to your existence.

Free power.  The combination of astonishing progress in renewable energy sources (which I have been skeptical of for years, but am I on the verge of yielding) along with advances in battery storage means the cost of energy will continue to drop and may even approach zero.  Probably not in my life, but maybe millennials will see it.  This is not an unmitigated blessing.  It would provide us with the ability to reshape the world in ways we can barely imagine. But, like the atom bomb, it would also make it very easy to destroy ourselves.  Also, it will be wasted if it's just used so the masses can exit the job market and play video games in the metaverse all day.  It will only be of use if we have a strong culture of building and creation.

Web3. Have you heard of it? It is effectively a catch-all word to cover the possibilities of crypto/blockchain technologies in the world.  I have been trying to follow it for a while and I barely understand it.  I feel like I should involve myself in it in some way just to keep up with where everyday life might be soon.  Still I think I have a vague idea of where they are going with this, at least in the crypto arena.  Short description that I may expand on in the future:  They are attempting to treat fiat money as a feature, not a bug.  Our current monetary system amounts to an act of faith that everybody will continue to agree that our currency has value.  Most folks see this as a problem, as a risk, as something make-shift.  The Web3 guys think, no, it's perfectly human to have faith in that which will benefit you to to have faith in, and we can leverage that for Dogecoins and Bored Apes and such.  I have no idea if they are correct.  I have no idea if I am correct about their intentions, for that matter.  Here's a primer if you can make sense of it.

We are only in year 2 of the decade.

[TV] Cobra Kai

Yes, I am late to this party, but the Cobra Kai Netflix series is just about perfect popcorn TV.  Ralph Macchio and William Zabka do a terrific job with adult versions of their Karate Kid characters and I'm sure it wasn't easy to bring them to life without descending into camp or cliche.  We usually celebrate transcendent performances from actors, but we should also take time to appreciate it when they just hit the perfect balance for a role that could so easily be screwed up.

The episodes are only a half hour-ish so the writers have to make the most of it. And they do.  In the first season (all I've seen so far) there are really no wasted scenes, no padded dialogue, no extended exposition.  The whole crew manages to hit exactly the right tone -- underlying serious plot covered with wit and irony.  The cinematic dark arts of pacing and tone are 100% on point.

Lastly, I love that they are not afraid to have characters behave in politically incorrect, completely un-woke ways, and not turn around and crush them with poetic justice. They still get to be human beings. Johnny Lawrence calls kids horrible names, bullies them, treats them in ways you could probably get arrested for, but he is not portrayed as a force of pure evil and some of the kids even respond positively.  A rare pro thick-skin-and-resilience message.  In the end, all of the characters are finding their way between acquiescence to the world and going too far to control it.

I called it popcorn TV, but it really is better than that. It's not throw-away entertainment, there is real quality and craftsmanship here.  Looking forward to more seasons and hoping they keep the quality high.

The Month That Was - December 2021

2021 was a rough one.  I have a couple of nagging injuries that, in a frightening preview of the future, have not been healing.  I nearly lost my job.  I got Covid (more below).  Still, every time I feel myself yielding to sorrow I acknowledge that I have it better than most, perhaps even WAY better than most.  I don't need to count my blessings, they are always evident.

I find New Year's resolutions silly, but I do like to renew the two rules I try to live by:

1. Enhance and enrich the lives of the people I care about.

2. Fight sloth (the Deadly Sin, not the adorable forest creature).

If I can do those two things well, everything else is gravy.

[Covid19] Covid For Everyone

[TV] Binge Monkey

[Travel] Travel Friends

[Covid19] Covid for Everyone

So, yeah, I got Covid.  Delta variant I believe.  It truly kicked my ass.  It was as sick as I ever remember being in my life.  That said, I never felt like I was in mortal danger or considered going to the hospital.  But, at its peak, it did keep me in bed for three days straight and kept me near bed for a couple days on either side of that.  As I write this, perhaps three weeks from my first symptoms, I still have a bit of a cough and my endurance hasn't yet recovered.  Here is the full timeline; more than you want to know probably:

11/28 - It feels like I might be getting a cold.

11/29 - Yep, definitely feels like I'm developing a chest cold.

11/30 - Um, this is getting bad; I should get a Covid test just in case.  I stop at several pharmacies and none have a rapid test available.  I snag a quick drive-thru lab test appointment at CVS, wait in the drive thru line for 45 minutes, get to the window and they no longer have my appointment and won't give me a test.  I am done with CVS forever.  I make an appointment at Rite-Aid for the next day.

12/1 - OK this is bad, I'm coughing incessantly and I have the sorest throat in recorded history.  I made a few short, futile attempts at doing work (from home) and got to Rite-Aid for my test.  Otherwise bed-bound.

12/2 - This is awful. It's Covid, I just know it.  A couple more futile attempts at work, but I'm pretty sure this is not a bad cold and, since I had my flu shot, it's probably not the common flu.  Even without my results, I'm pretty sure it's Covid.

12/3 - Is there any way I can be unconscious until this is over?  I don't even make an attempt at work.  I sleep as much as possible.  Going through cough drops at an alarming rate.  Acetaminophen and Naproxen are my best friends.  Finally, at 6pm on Friday, I get the email verifying that I have Covid.  Duh.  I consider contacting my primary to see if I can get the monoclonal antibody treatment, but my primary won't be around until Monday.  I consider calling urgent care, but I am not in a high risk group and they will tell me to keep taking OTC stuff and let them know if it gets worse.  

12/4 - Worse?  How could it be worse?  Well, the fact is that, yes, it could be.  It's awful, but in truth I am nowhere near death's door and I'm breathing pretty freely.  I write off seeking treatment.  Suck it up buttercup.  It's Saturday.  And my third day bedridden.  If there's no improvement by Monday I will call my primary.

12/5 - I'm hungry.  I'm actually hungry.  This is great!  I eat some soup, which I realize may be the first thing I have eaten in over 48 hours.  The soup tastes like a pound of salt has been dumped in it.  Some people lose their sense of smell or taste and others (like me) experience everything tasting like salt. Cough and sore throat are still with me, but I have the strength to actually get out of bed and watch an hour or two of TV.

12/6 - I think I'm going to survive. I still can't work a full day.  I'm weak and fatigued. But, from this point on each day is an incremental improvement.

As I write this I guess I am in what might be called the long tail.  Coming up on three weeks since my first symptoms.  I am back to working full days and light workouts at the gym.  I have a minor cough that doesn't affect me other than to possibly scare people (when in fact I may be one of the safest people in the world to be near at the moment). My quarantine is over, and I am flush with antibodies.  The process has made me terribly jealous of those who have mild or no symptoms and deeply sympathetic for those who are in mortal peril.  

If you're curious about my status, I was vaxxed.  Regular readers know that I was vaxxed as part of the Astra-Zeneca clinical trial when they were trying to get approval by the FDA, a thing they appear to have given up on.  My second shot was 10 months before my infection.  To my knowledge Astra-Zeneca has never issued guidance on boosters. A week or so before I contracted Covid, the folks who are running my part of the clinical study (Michigan Medicine) finally just threw up their hands and said to go get the Pfizer booster, I just hadn't gotten around to it yet.  So for those of you obsessed with the vax, I can think of three possibilities.

1. The vax did me no good.  I got full on Covid anyway.

2. The vax worked for a while, but eventually wore off and I was too slow in getting a booster.

3. The vax worked because were I not vaxxed I would really have been at death's door.

I have no idea which of these is correct, although I suspect (2).  In any event, I'm going to live with my natural immunity for two or three months, then I'll probably go for a booster.

In terms of Covid response gripes, I have 2:

1. We really need more rapid tests.  I understand in the UK they give them directly to households for free.  Here I couldn't even buy one.  This would have saved me a couple of days of wondering and may even have permitted me to get some treatment.

2. Treatment should not require extra steps.  If you get a positive Covid test, the prescription for treatment should come along with it.  No trying to track down your doctor and explain yourself and beg and have to prove how bad off you are.  "Here's your positive test and here's your treatment," should be the goal. (I understand production of treatments may not be ramped up enough to do this yet.)

Sorry, but I can't resist further rumination.  The latest expectation on Omicron is that it is much more contagious, more resistant to our current vaccines, but significantly less deadly than previous strains.  Also interestingly, I read somewhere that it follows a pattern of how the 1914-18 Spanish flu subsided. Newer, less deadly strains began to dominate eventually leading us down the road to where we are now -- most everyone can handle the flu, or respond well to treatment, and an annual vax for high risk or anyone else who wants it is available.

It's beginning to look to me like that's where we are going to land in a couple of years with Covid.  I stand by my original prediction from more that a year ago, which is eventually, we will all get Covid.  It will just be in a form we can handle for the most part.  That suggests we should stop over-emphasizing masks and travel limits and start focusing on ramping up treatments and having a regular vaccine available, perhaps even a combined flu/covid vaccine. 

Anyway, I really don't want to deep dive back into the state of Covid like I did when I was doing a monthly update.  I'm just weary of it and am confident that, over time, it will sort itself out and not be a concern anymore. 

Related: A variant-proof vaccine is getting closer.  This could be another huge step forward. 

[TV] Binge Monkey

Between the holidays and my Covid downtime I went on massive TV binges. Get ready for a lightning round of reviews. 

True Detective Season 1 -- I binged this while I had Covid and was in need of something familiar.  This was the first time I had seen it since its initial run.  My opinion hasn't really changed.  The plot and action was marginal TV police procedural level stuff.  Where it excelled was in the expression of the dark souls of the lead characters, both nihilistic -- one knowingly by choice, the other uncomprehending -- and the portrayals of those characters by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConnaughey.  It was familiar but offered no comfort so I switched to…

Justified -- I think I watched seasons 1,3 and 5.  Just wonderful as I remember.  The dialogue sizzles, the plots are Elmore Leonard-clever, drama and comedy are perfectly balanced.  There are subtleties like the protagonist and antagonist both having fathers that tried to kill them.  The deft handling of the trope of the hero who does great harm in the course of administering justice.  My favorite dramatic moment: the hard-won closure Raylan gets when he finally sees his deceased and hated father's secret cabin, a place of fearsome legend, only to find there is nothing to it.  I get the feeling this series will eternally be my comfort food.

Trailer Park Boys -- I can't for the life of me remember why I started watching this. It's a very low budget, almost amateur level, schoolyard humor comedy about some lowlife white trash criminals in a trailer park in Nova Scotia.  It certainly is not for refined tastes.  Yet, in every episode I found at least one thing to laugh about, whether it was a sublime bit of character acting or a piece of outright slapstick.  I'll also suggest that it is more accurate than most people would like to admit in its portrayal of lowlifes.  Even when presented with straightforward and obvious ways to sort out their lives, they still choose to repeat the behavior that keeps them beat down. The show became a bit of a cult sensation garnering guest appearances from actual celebrities later in it's run. If you watch one episode, you will know if it's for you.  

Squid Game -- This was the hottest show around a few weeks ago, remember?  It's Korean with subtitles.  A shadowy organization gathers up people who are desperately in debt and offers them riches in return for playing a series of what seem like kids games, but failure means death.  It is a truly compelling watch. Alliances are built, and betrayed. Truly nail-biting stuff.  The ending is a failure as we discover it's the most prosaic trope imaginable, all in the service of a sequel.  Still, absolutely worth watching.  It deserved all the attention it got.

Tiger King Season 2 - Could have been subtitled "The Insanity Continues".  Those who came out of the first season OK and now in trouble.  Stories flip-flop.  Attention-whores of all stripes latch on to share the ride.  And, dare I say it, it looks like Joe Exotic might actually find his way out of jail early.  If you're the type who likes to settle in with a bowl of popcorn and gawk at the crazies, this is for you.  

Hawkeye -- probably the best MCU series yet.  It suffers from the inveterate pacing problems all the series have.  It spends too much time on talking and not enough on resolving plots in a coherent way.  But, in the absence of razor sharp writing or direction, these series live or die on the likability of the main characters and how well the actors portray them.  In that category Hawkeye did well.  Jeremy Renner did his fine reluctant hero stuff.  Hailee Stienfield didn't really spread her wings but played the slightly daffy precocious upstart well.  Some of the supporting cast, notably Tony Dalton (who you may remember as Lalo Salamanca) got to chew a bit of scenery.  And of course, the mighty Vincent D'onofrio made his MCU Kingpin debut. All in all entertaining and nicely Christmas themed.

Aside: One final note about Hawkeye, there was the introduction of a character called Echo, who is deaf, and in the comics starts out as a Kingpin sidekick then eventually becomes entangled with DareDevil.  There seems to be plans to build an entire series around her.  This is horribly misguided.  From what I saw she has only very rudimentary acting skills (she can make an angry face, and that's about it).  Both D'onofrio and Charlie Cox (as DareDevil) will make her disappear in every scene they share.  She is simply out of her league.  Big mistake to make her the centerpiece of a series like that.  I hope Marvel rethinks it.

Another Aside: Yes, I watch too much TV.

[Travel] Travel Friends

For many people, travelling is an exercise in trying to save every penny.  They use every tool and trick on the internet to save $20 here or there. I understand this for folks on a shoestring.  In fact, one thing I have noticed in people such as myself who were raised in lower-middle class frugality, getting the best deal, even if it is just by a few pennies, is a reward in itself.

What's interesting to me is that once you have the means to loosen the purse strings a bit, there are many different ways you can use your newfound freedom.  People often think that the way to spend extra travel money is on luxuries and extravagance.  I disagree with that entirely.  I believe the way to spend extra money is on convenience.  And convenience in this case can often mean having travel friends.

My main travel friend is Delta Airlines.  Delta is certainly the best domestic U.S. airline.  That makes me lucky that the airport nearest me is a hub.  It means I can fly direct to most places in the country.  But that's not why I always fly Delta.  Delta was formerly Northwest and when they were Northwest they were the rudest, most antagonistic organization in service industry in history.  They outright hated their customers and were not shy about it.  It got to the point where, despite living near a hub, I would fly two, sometimes three legs just to avoid flying Northwest.  The turn around in corporate culture from Northwest to Delta has been astonishing.  It's a story I hope someone tells it one day.  I am not usually a corporate fanboy. I generally feel no loyalty to corporations or products because I know they mostly have none for me.  But I do admire Delta and that keeps me from hitting Kayak.com or any other price comparison site when I need to book a flight.  I feel confident Delta will take good care of me.  This eases my mind of the possibility of having to go ten rounds with a gate agent over some idiotic snafu.

The other aspects of surrounding flying are also rife with opportunities to simplify your travels.  Going through security, I am registered for TSA-Pre and signed up for Clear.  With Clear I don't even have to show my ID.  They scan my eyes to verify my identity, I flash my boarding pass on my phone, and I move on.  The downside to Clear is that they are not in all airports yet and you can still get a random check, in which case I have to show my driver's license (how awful, eh?).

I have found no way of speeding through the actual screening, although I think TSA-pre helps some with that in that I don't have to take off my shoes.  Still, and this is going to sound prissy, I have a certain pocket in my carry-on and I always take everything out of my pockets and my watch and glasses and so forth and put it there. That way, once I'm through, I can quickly reverse the process and I'm back to normal.  Like I said, that's prissy, but it also stops me from forgetting anything which I have proven very, very capable of doing.

The last thing I do flight-wise is what I would consider my one true luxury splurge.  I pay a healthy amount of money for a high-end American Express card that gets me access to the airline lounges.  Again, this seems like a huge luxury, but really it's a convenience.  There is nothing you can do in the lounge that you can't do in the terminal, it's just a little better and easier in the lounge.  The wi-fi is a bit quicker.  The food and drinks are better and included in the cost.  The bathrooms are cleaner.  The chairs are more comfortable.  Recharge outlets are more available.  If you have to work, there are desks. I have taken to stopping in before or after flights for a quick meal and refresh.  And, believe me, if you have an extended weather or mechanical delay, it will feel like the best money you ever spent.  I once spent nearly an eight hour weather delay in the lounge in Houston slowly sipping cocktails and working on my laptop in comfort as opposed to the madness in the terminal just outside.

So I guess I better list American Express as a Travel Friend.

Another key source of stress in travel is rental cars, and oh boy am I about to go on a rant.  Car Rental agencies are awful.  The best of them nickel and dime you.  The worst of them outright scam you.  The cheap ones are outright crooks.  They play the games and make veiled threats to get you to buy insurance.  They upsell you at a certain cost, hoping you don't realize that it's not one amount but per day.  They hurry you on your way without noting any damage to the car then try to charge you for it upon return. Honestly, if there is one area of travel I would suggest you focus on to reduce stress it's car rental.  Here's how I do it.

I belong to the National Car Rentals Emerald Club.  It's free to join.  When you sign up you give all the relevant information about yourself -- DL#, credit card, etc. -- which they keep on file.  When you need to rent a car, you go to their site, sign in with your Emerald ID number, and make the reservation.  Upon arrival, you don't have to wait in line for anything, you just go to the National lot and there will be a row or two of cars that are reserved for Emerald club members.  You just pick the car you want, the keys will be in it.  At the exit booth you show your ID, they look up your reservation, record that you picked up the car, and you're off.  Trust me, once you get used to this process, if you have to go back to waiting in line to pick up keys at a rental desk, you will want to cry and curse the universe.

The second car rental luxury I treat myself to is prepaying for gas if I am unfamiliar with the area around the airport or fear I will be in a hurry.  For those who don't realize, a rental car comes with a full tank of gas.  You are expected to return it full.  If you don't, they will charge you an exorbitant rate to fill it, like half again higher than the going rate. What that means is that you can find yourself scrambling to find a gas station in an unfamiliar locale when you are already in a mad rush to get to your plane.  Rental companies let you out of this by effectively buying a full tank of gas at the time of rental, this time at a low market rate.  If you do that you can bring the car back with any amount of gas, even empty.  So it's a game.  Any gas you return is effectively out of pocket cost to you.  So, is the cost of whatever gas you return worth less to you than the hassle of finding a gas station at the last minute?  If I know the area I'm flying into (most places in Florida, for example)  I don't prepay and fill the tank before I return.  If I am in an unfamiliar place and likely to have used the bulk of the gas in the tank, then I allow myself the luxury of pre-paying just to avoid the last minute refill hassle.  IF I return with a quarter tank, I'm out a few dollars, but…oh well.

So those are my travel friends as of now.  Delta, Amex, National.  If I had a hotel friend it would be Hilton, but my experiences have been a bit spotty the last few times.  And AirBnB has made inroads with me.

As I look back on this post, why on earth did I go through this exercise? I generally dwell on this topic when I am confronted with stories of travel hassles accepted in the interest of saving a few dollars.  I genuinely understand that for people who are really on a shoestring budget and need to scrimp on travel expenses so they can, perhaps, spend more at the destination.  But I also know others who put themselves through difficulties and hassles on principle as if saving $100 by putting up with a stressful or uncomfortable situation is some sort of moral victory.  Not worth it.  Not when you're on vacation.

As I read this, it makes it seem like I am some sort of snotty rich guy throwing money around.  I'm not.  I spent many years shoe-stringing travel where I could.  I can't count the number of times I drove from Michigan to Florida in the summer heat (off season), in a car without a/c and only an AM/FM radio.  So I get it. But why do that if you don't have to. A little bit of money can go a long way to making travel more convenient.  NOw that I've stopped sweating every dollar, I have virtually no travel anxiety and it has improved my state of mind while venturing about tremendously.

The Month That Was - November 2020

For what I think is only the third time in history I am not going post this month (except this).  A while back I quipped that my expectation is that, eventually, we will all get Covid.  Well I can now say I have done my share to make that true.

It nailed me hard right after Thanksgiving.  Oppressive cough, monstrous sore throat, fever, chills, deep fatigue.  There was a three day stretch where I was barely ambulatory.  I am still fighting a lingering cough and general weakness.  It was as sick as I have ever been in my life.

Question 1:  Were you vaxxed?  Yes.  Since January.

Question 2:  Boosted?  No, that was delayed, for reasons I'll discuss in the full story next month.

I'll have a lot to say about the experience next month, along with a lot of other stuff, but for now I'm going to rest and heal and leave you with only apologies.  Thanksgiving-wise, I am grateful to be above ground and, at the moment, that's enough.

The Month That Was - October 2021

Another month passes into the mist.  Cognitively, I think I look at a year as about the same amount of time I would have thought of as a month when I was a wee lad.  A lot will happen, but once it's over, it just slips into an indistinct time frame of the past.  As a child, if I needed to know the month something happened in the past, I would probably try to relate it to things like summer vacation, who my teacher was, something that happened on a TV show, and from there figure out the more specific time frame.  I now do that with years.  If I have to remember when a certain event occurred, I will try to remember things like what car I was driving, or what tech I was using, or what happened on a TV show.    

Actually, most everything from the past 30 years has blurred into something like "grown up lifetime" and it's really hard to timeline the events in that era.  Apropos of nothing except that it's fall again, and I'm beginning to think I'll survive another year.

[Movies] Flick Check: Roundup

[Books] Book Look: Piranesi, by Susanna Clark

[Arts] Go Van Gogh

[Movies] Flick Check: Roundup

Many Saints of Newark 

Da hell?  That was awful. How did this steaming pile emerge from perhaps the most celebrated and renown TV series in history?  The tone is inconsistent; the motivations vague and unjustified; the acting (with the exception of the mighty Ray Liotta) was lame.  An entire subplot (maybe 30-40% of the film) was a misguided paean to social justice. It even fails as wanton fan service. Just a top-to-bottom disaster.

A month back I speculated whether any of the pantheon TV from the aughts could get made today.  I think this is the clear answer: no.  This is what The Sopranos would be in the current cultural atmosphere. It is a sad, sad time for the arts. My advice: do not watch this.  In fact, let's all agree it never happened.

Black Widow 

Not bad.  Nothing revelatory.  As seems to be common in movies of late, the tone is haphazard and the motivations contrived.  But then, it's a superhero film, not high art.  It's saved by likeable characters and engaging portrayals. Middle-of-the-road MCU fare. In the grand scheme it would probably have seemed more relevant had it come out a pre-Endgame.  

Dune

It's gotten to the point with movies that my first expectation of anything is that it will suck. Filmmakers generally have so many priorities that supercede dramatic quality (social justice, sequels and universe building, the Chinese market) that if you end up with a coherent, humanistic story you can count yourself lucky.  In that way, Dune was a pleasant surprise.

I read Dune as a youth and was left uninspired.  Perhaps I should read it again, but it strikes me as an odd story to have gathered so many admirers.  It is effectively an allegory of an aspect of late twentieth century cultural interaction between an advanced civilization (The Empire in Dune; The West in reality) and an un-advanced civilization (The Fremen in Dune; Arabs/Muslims in reality) where the un-advanced have a resource that the advanced need and will fight for (The Spice in Dune; Oil in reality).  From this we make a gumbo out of with imaginative tech and paranormal people and organizations as de rigueur for speculative fiction.  The elemental narrative is the bog-standard trope of The One.   

Saying Dune is visually impressive is an understatement.  On my 65-inch plasma it was mesmerizing; I can only imagine how good it would look in Imax.  It could have trimmed a bit of excess running time, but it never bogged down for too long.  To director Denis Villenueve's credit there was minimal wokery in a story line that is ripe for it.  To his discredit there was virtually no humor or light hearted moments to offset the rather grim tone and story.

Still it set the stage very well for the upcoming sequel (this movie only covered the first half of the book) and carried my interest enough that I am looking forward to the next installment.

Here's a question:  If Dune is an allegory for West/Islam relations in, say, the 1970s and '80s, why not make a contemporary movie of it.  Reset it in Riyadh in 1975, where Duke Leto is a British Petroleum exec assigned to Saudi Arabian production and the Bene Gesserat are, oh, I don't know, al-Jihad or something, and Ollie North is Baron Harkonnen.  I am only half kidding.  It could be the stuff of serious adult historical drama if handled correctly, which of course it would not be. It would require cliched, narrow, Aaron Sorkin-level viewpoints if it was to be greenlit.  Sigh.  But mix in some blasters and mind-control and you're golden.

[Books] Book Look: Piranesi, by Susanna Clark

This is a delightful book in so many ways.  Briefly described, a man is trapped in a sort of alternate reality which consists of a building of some stripe with an infinite number of cavernous rooms filled with gargantuan statues.  The building is such that it has its own sky, its own ocean, its own ecosystem.  The man, Piranesi, has completely acclimated to reality such that he never seems to question its existence or the existential contradictions of it.  Through his interactions with the only other person in the reality, a man he refers to as The Other, the mysteries surrounding the building resurface and he must face a disturbing new reality.

Yes, but.  The unravelling of reality is not where the beauty of this book is found.  The loveliness here is in the descriptions of the building (referred to as the House) and how Piranesi has adapted not only to survival in the House, but building a belief system and a scientific philosophy out of it.  It is both beautiful and, to my mind, quite realistic.  The house contains dangers, but also great beauty; natural rhythms and random surprises.  Confronted with this Piranesi has created both a scientific outlook -- he assiduously maps his world, tracks tides, observes causal connections -- and religious beliefs -- he has faith the house will provide for him, reveres the dead, accepts the fate the house grants.  Clark's prose builds a beautiful aesthetic for all this, as one would expect from the author of Jonathan Strange & Dr. Norrell, so much so that I was somewhat disappointed that actual reality had to intrude on it.

The other blessed aspect of this book is that it is short.  Clark offers no fluff, no padding, nothing to skip over.  My hobby horse over the years has been that books are almost universally 30%-40% too long.  Not Piranesi.  God bless Clark for that.

Should you read Piranesi? Yes. You may not be as touched by it as I was, but I can;t imagine you regretting it. If there is a larger moral to the story I can't see it, it's just a lovely and intriguing way to spend some time.

[Arts] Go Van Gogh

I had a spontaneous opportunity to see the rather popular Van Gogh immersive experience that is touring the country.  It was pretty cool (that's my deeply considered, intricately reasoned opinion).  The entire experience takes just shy of an hour.  I suspect the installations may vary in their processes. In Houston where I was, you are ushered into a  large room, roughly the size of the gymnasium and are seated on the floor on cushions or, if your entry is well timed, on one of a handful of benches scattered about the room.  You can get a feel for it from the website.

Various famous Van Gogh paintings are given subtle and quite lovely animations then projected onto the walls so you feel surrounded by the paintings.  The motion is gentle and the details of the paintings really get highlighted well.  Of course it is set to music which ranges from ambient to lo-fi to pseudo-classical.  Photography is encouraged, and the result is a room full of backlit people shaped images angling the brightly colored screens to get brief snippets of videos.  The net effect is to almost embed the audience in the animated presentations of the paintings.  Like I said, it's pretty cool.  Certainly worth a trip if it comes to your neck of the woods.  (It's been in Detroit, but I don't go to Detroit.)

I would love to see more of these sorts of shows.  Even more interesting would be to embed them in commercial areas.  There is a tunnel in the Detroit Metro Airport that connects terminals wherein they try to pump calming music and have a '70s era light show.  One of these installations would be much cooler.  Or better yet, how about a bar/restaurant.  It would beat the hell out of having a crummy guitar player with synthesized back-up. I hereby copyright that idea. Hit me up if you want to buy the rights.

The Month That Was - September 2021

For the first time in my life, I think I'm really beginning to feel my age. This may be psychological as my 61st birthday passed in September, but it sure seems like muscle and joint soreness have kicked up a notch and I can't tell you the last time I made it through the day without a short (10 minute) nap.  And if you want to see what an old man looks like, you would look at me when I get out of bed in the morning.  You would think I was 90.

Still, I don't count myself out of any physical activity, and am in fact quite healthy in general.  My mind is not as pliable and quick to understand new concepts as it was, but I can still focus as well as ever (although that may not be saying much). So, no, as much as I may feel like I'm slipping, I am far from out of the game.

Aging is tricky.  It's easy to blame failings on age, but that can also be a convenient excuse.  Whenever I'm tempted to use "because I'm old" as an explanation I ask myself, is it really any different than before and often I find I may be romanticizing the past.  And, even though I can't do everything I used to, behaving as if I could at least keeps the degradation from being self-fulfilling.

I now have two separate versions of my manuscript.  One is not historically accurate but flows a little more smoothly and is more economical, the other is historically unimpeachable.  I'm on the fence about which one to publish.  I think the accurate one, since the work is very niche oriented, meaning the handful of people who eventually read it may be jarred by any inaccuracies. I remain disheartened by this last minute setback.

[House and Home] Amidst Pestilence

[TV] Outer Banks

[Travel] Weekend Warrioring