tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37077961077268978492024-03-10T22:25:30.898-07:00Robert Manners@ Robert Manners dot comRobert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.comBlogger751125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-68524364603909636482024-03-10T17:37:00.000-07:002024-03-10T22:24:58.049-07:00Let's Go the Movies!<p><i>Introductions to each of the songs on the playlist, which is made up of three categories: 1) some favorite songs from movie musicals (very few, in the end, because showtunes in excess don't go over so well at Starfall), 2) some of my favorite musical moments in non-musical movies, and 3) songs used in so many films that they've become cliches (though still great songs).</i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></p><iframe allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="352" loading="lazy" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/2sxKlqatbQ040ylfPJDv3J?utm_source=generator" style="border-radius: 12px;" width="100%"></iframe><div><br /></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Opening up with the newest song on this list, from <i>Wonka</i> and my beloved Timothée; he has such a lovely voice, not much range but a beautiful tone, and <a href="https://youtu.be/I-wJZWDNZuI?si=7hdTh-EvmRFDHve2" target="_blank">this central production number</a> shows it off to great effect.</li><li><i>The Blues Brothers</i> is one of the greatest musical movies of all time, and it was hard to choose which song to feature in this list; but I think<a href="https://youtu.be/EHV0zs0kVGg?si=rZZHIyZ4kIFtM8ks" target="_blank"> this one </a>is the most joyfully energetic and really invests you into the narrative.</li><li>"Low Rider" is frequently used to indicate a barrio setting or a character becoming inexplicably cool, and appears in seventeen films from <i>Cheech & Chong Up In Smoke</i>, <i>Gone in 60 Seconds</i>, <i>Fridays</i>, and <i>A Knight's Tale</i>.</li><li>"Bad to the Bone" is a reliable stand-by to indicate a character doing something naughty, or rebelling, or putting on a leather jacket. 28 film appearances include <i>Terminator 2</i>, <i>Beverly Hills Chihuahua</i>, and <i>The Parent Trap</i>.</li><li>Aretha Franklin is an immediately recognizable performer with 333 IMDB soundtrack credits, and "Respect" appears in 29 feature films including <i>Blues Brothers 2000</i>, <i>Mystic Pizza</i>, and <i>That Darn Cat</i>.</li><li>"Tequila" by the Champs was a #1 R&B hit when it was released in 1958, but was largely forgotten until suddenly rocketed into popular culture by one of cinema's most memorable moments in 1985's <i>Pee-Wee's Big Adventure</i>.</li><li>"Mr. Blue Sky" is one of my all-time favorite songs, memorably scoring the opening credits of <i>Guardians of the Galaxy 2</i>, but also appearing in <i>Megamind</i>, <i>Role Models</i>, and <i>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</i>.</li><li>"Walking on Sunshine" is another of my personal favorites; this song gets trotted out any time a character is shown to be in an exceptionally good mood, and features in 22 films, from <i>Look Who's Talking</i> to <i>American Psycho</i>.</li><li>"Fame" from <i>Fame</i> is an energetic tune scoring a very energetic scene when the High School for the Performing Arts spills out into New York City traffic for an impromptu dance party, one of the more memorable scenes in cinema history. Fun piece of trivia: the song wasn't ready when the scene was filmed, so the students are filmed dancing to Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff."</li><li>One of my all-time favorite films, 1994's <i>Interview With the Vampire</i>, ends with a Guns-n-Roses cover of "Sympathy for the Devil" recorded for the occasion, providing one of the most exciting end credit moments in film history.</li><li>Joan Jett is another popular soundtrack artist, and "Bad Reputation" one of the most reliable songs to show transformative montages and dirty fight scenes, with eight feature films to its credit, including <i>Kick-Ass</i> and <i>Shrek</i>, plus many more featuring covers.</li><li>"Immigrant Song" is a favorite of mine, and its appearance at the opening scene of <i>Thor: Ragnarok</i> was so epic that it rescued the rest of the movie from ennui. It also appeared in <i>Shool of Rock</i>, <i>Soldier</i>, and <i>Shrek the Third</i>.</li><li>Day-O! Da-a-a-yo! Daylight come and me wan' go home! We all remember the <a href="https://youtu.be/AQXVHITd1N4?si=nTr1zpou--cXU0ZM" target="_blank">fantastic dinner party scene</a> in <i>Beetlejuice </i>even if we didn't see the movie, and it remains one of my favorite go-to videos when I need a smile.</li><li>The Dickies had a UK #7 hit in 1979 with "Banana Splits (the Tra La La Song)" covered from the theme of the classic psychedelic children's show, but it came to greater prominence on the soundtrack of Hit Girl's <a href="https://youtu.be/rGblJtJlPbU?si=QeqspqrUdE2qr-ky" target="_blank">incredible first fight scene</a> in 2010's <i>Kick-Ass</i>, one of my favorite exciting moments in a movie theater. </li><li>"All Along the Watchtower" usually indicates we're in the Vietnam era, and/or getting stoned, and has appeared in 17 feature films including <i>Watchmen</i> and <i>Forrest Gump</i>.</li><li>"Gimme Shelter" - Martin Scorcese seems unable to make a movie without this song, and it's been used in fourteen films, more than half of which are his.</li><li>"Just take those old records off the shelf" and a still-innocent-and-adorable Tom Cruise slides into frame in his underwear and a pink shirt in <a href="https://youtu.be/G2UVsyVLLcE?si=GBJ-WTxnW1khhMyg" target="_blank">this most memorable moment</a> in film; I had a boner for three days solid from seeing <i>Risky Business</i> when I was fifteen. </li><li><a href="https://youtu.be/uEv_d6zAYHk?si=pcVxNwxq-rMtkpkx" target="_blank">This scene</a> in <i>The Color Purple</i> always has me in floods of tears, but happy tears, and it's so glorious that I can forgive it being a gospel song. Táta Vega provides Shug Avery's voice, I think the choir soloist is the actress in the movie, Maria Howell, but I can't find a credit anywhere.</li><li>"Stayin' Alive" - Written for the movie <i>Saturday Night Fever</i>, it has appeared in 140 films and TV shows, usually when a character is strutting with confidence; since the original gives me a headache, here's a cover from Tropical Fuck Storm.</li><li>"<a href="https://youtu.be/WsiBdK9wE3A?si=W5v0HDuvZV23iWdT" target="_blank">Cinema Italiano</a>" - this song isn't as good outside of its movie (<i>Nine</i>), in which it is incredibly cool and flashy and sexy and just one of my favorite moments in a movie musical, but it's still a good song and worth sharing. </li><li><i>The Hunger</i> is one of my all-time favorite films despite being not very well-written or well-directed... extreme case of style over substance, the music and art direction are exquisite and the actors and sets a joy to the eye... but <a href="https://youtu.be/W_zodjf-YbA?si=tor_vlNX0k0Yw7QB" target="_blank">this song opens the film</a> and is so damn sexy it sets the tone for the rest of the film. Famously the song did not appear on the distributed soundtrack recording, but was published separately as a promotional 7" with the theatrical release.</li><li><i>Ferris Bueller's Day Off</i> pushed a whole host of otherwise-obscure music into the zeitgeist, such as Wayne Newton's "Danke Schoen" and Mello's "Oh, Yeah"... the Beatles' early hit "Twist and Shout" scores Ferris's lipsynch <a href="https://youtu.be/7VhlSmPNsDA?si=FvKILf6CoyNLELm7" target="_blank">performance on a parade float</a> that unbelievably but wonderfully inspires all of downtown Chicago to dance in the streets.</li><li>"Under Pressure" - this Queen/David Bowie teamup is one of the best songs in the world, and has eighteen film credits including <i>Atomic Blonde</i>, <i>The Girl Next Door</i>, and <i>40 Days & 40 Nights</i>. Queen is a popular soundtrack staple with a total of 525 IMDB credits across film, television, video games, and even podcasts.</li><li>"Kung Fu Fighting" has 30 film credits and more than sixty for TV shows, shorts, and video games; it usually heralds a comic fight scene in which kung fu may or may not be used.</li><li>"A Town Called Malice" scores one of my <a href="https://youtu.be/dp7yjqSTwuA?si=Pa233nQxfsH4kXks" target="_blank">favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies</a>, 2000's <i>Billy Elliot</i>; the song also appears in fifteen other films including <i>Morbius</i> and <i>Spiderman: Far From Home</i>.</li><li>"This Is Me" - I've still not seen <i>The Greatest Showman</i> and don't really care if I ever do, but <a href="https://youtu.be/CjxugyZCfuw?si=Pb2JRQBHKWtxQ01h" target="_blank">this song thrills me</a> right down to my marrow, the perfect outsider's anthem that aligns with my own queer experience.</li><li>AC/DC are a reliable sound to indicate something super cool and very metal is going down in the film; "Back in Black" is a popular choice, appearing in thirteen films ranging from <i>Iron Man</i> to <i>The Muppets</i>.</li><li>"London Calling" turns out almost any time an establishing shot of a London location rolls into view; this song has appeared in 13 films and over 200 documentaries and TV shows.</li><li>If a strait-laced character suddenly throws off the shackles of propriety and/or gets on a motorcycle, chances are "Born to Be Wild" will be heard. It's appeared in 41 films, starting with <i>Easy Rider</i> and most recently with <i>Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom</i>.</li><li>Rusted Root's one hit "Send Me On My Way" scores a favorite scene in <i>Matilda</i>, but also appears in twelve other films, such as <i>Ice Age</i> and <i>Twister</i>, usually to indicate hopeful traveling.</li><li>"Over the Rainbow" - Written for the 1939 film <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, this song appears in dozens of films, usually to set a mood of wistful hope, but often just with the film playing in the background. Since the original is a little too saccharine for this setting, here's a nice punk cover.</li><li>David Bowie's 1971 album <i>Hunky Dory</i> has provided more songs to film soundtracks than any other, though no one song sets records on its own. "Changes", "Life on Mars?", and "Queen Bitch" are the most popular tracks.</li><li>The most frequently used recording artist in film soundtracks is Bob Dylan, with his songs appearing in more than 200 films, not counting covers of Dylan songs which bumps the number up even higher. "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" is the most popular but "The Times They Are A-Changing" is arguably the most iconic. </li><li>Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit In the Sky" is film's most frequently used single song, appearing in fifty-three films including <i>Apollo 13</i>, <i>Remember the Titans</i>, and <i>This is the End</i>; my favorite was <a href="https://youtu.be/8zCfN8knlvo?si=vWOxDbt07tbmtBDL" target="_blank">the end-credits scene</a> in <i>The Wolves of Kromer</i>.</li><li>Ending the evening with the best ending song in the list is Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"...with 24 films and hundreds of TV and shorts appearances, sung by himself or more frequently Jeff Buckley, which the late songsmith thought excessive and once asked for a break from his own track. “I think it’s a good song, but too many people sing it,” he told <i>The Guardian</i> in 2009, agreeing with a critic for <i>The New York Times</i> who asked for a moratorium on “Hallelujah” in movies.</li></ol>And that's my Oscar Party Playlist, thanks for coming out to play!<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7ALMheCNhLC7cybYlZe0disAgbAD_-tSQISB-end7bGHsIiV4gEYYL00SvEiEqFMVIa4KZm0BmoPFNtmDJcvP-cQcCMG7gnrv1nY7EHOqK5yy8Tn0OWr6YXDekmYyA7BlZGl53m6qqbCBGNy4-FwCKuwuuU8A7hyEfLCOt3CptCmqfpNuNj2jcWe33rc/s2048/LetsGoToTheMovies_03102024.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7ALMheCNhLC7cybYlZe0disAgbAD_-tSQISB-end7bGHsIiV4gEYYL00SvEiEqFMVIa4KZm0BmoPFNtmDJcvP-cQcCMG7gnrv1nY7EHOqK5yy8Tn0OWr6YXDekmYyA7BlZGl53m6qqbCBGNy4-FwCKuwuuU8A7hyEfLCOt3CptCmqfpNuNj2jcWe33rc/w400-h400/LetsGoToTheMovies_03102024.png" width="400" /></a></div></div>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-11079701054639520532023-12-27T23:51:00.000-08:002024-01-10T23:59:25.667-08:00I'm Still Here...Good times and bum times<br />I've seen 'em all and, my dear<br />I'm still here<br />Plush velvet sometimes<br />Sometimes just pretzels and beer<br />But I'm here<br />I've run the gamut<br />A to Z<br />Three cheers and dammit<br />C'est la vie<br />I got through all of last year<br />And I'm here<br />Lord knows, at least I've been there<br />And I'm here!<br />Look who's here!<br />I'm still here!<div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc7zsOKsN-A5FcB1BHwMyQHhk5L94FmfExkLS7tX6oo_xf5B2Wahy8uGszDuF-0BQyxAfX6kwyZF00DU_NZ3Y-8l21s_B4N-fJCes2R9j4BJSDtzjF9o96Ia49_mWUY2YRu_ukPsowqBE6cyABiqC19tyJOApnNZaHXS3GalD_hR5PnGXA-CgIG4aM3K4/s2162/tumblr_09595cd16b0370eb4b3a32a14ea5caeb_57aca032_2048.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2162" data-original-width="1700" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc7zsOKsN-A5FcB1BHwMyQHhk5L94FmfExkLS7tX6oo_xf5B2Wahy8uGszDuF-0BQyxAfX6kwyZF00DU_NZ3Y-8l21s_B4N-fJCes2R9j4BJSDtzjF9o96Ia49_mWUY2YRu_ukPsowqBE6cyABiqC19tyJOApnNZaHXS3GalD_hR5PnGXA-CgIG4aM3K4/w503-h640/tumblr_09595cd16b0370eb4b3a32a14ea5caeb_57aca032_2048.jpg" width="503" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div></div>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-71520806468110051292023-04-27T16:07:00.008-07:002023-05-10T16:30:50.332-07:00Picture Post: DAFUQ?<p>I was moving some files around from my desktop to my cloud and came across this folder entitled "Facebook Files" and I have no idea where some of these things came from. I mean, there are pictures of FB friends and things that I've no doubt looked at or had ads thrown at me about, and some things I must have liked because they're weird and wonderful, but some are just inexplicable.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg43zBawmJTHmynjd3otembYcUtjv_POnHvjc9sqph3CTcEEwZ9iAHDzb2Elt3rBYfaiIbUsYrXpnx0lBi-ZzBuvVF-KySxH54LG-WQ9HnirkVldsF6WXYEx6oc9_kY7J8YCFQL5stxbPNXrStYsON9gUIvOLTqaD7WXH5lUmJQ2f0l4AQkMUjKT814/s599/167624405_1650778275122512_4604390805427048100_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg43zBawmJTHmynjd3otembYcUtjv_POnHvjc9sqph3CTcEEwZ9iAHDzb2Elt3rBYfaiIbUsYrXpnx0lBi-ZzBuvVF-KySxH54LG-WQ9HnirkVldsF6WXYEx6oc9_kY7J8YCFQL5stxbPNXrStYsON9gUIvOLTqaD7WXH5lUmJQ2f0l4AQkMUjKT814/s320/167624405_1650778275122512_4604390805427048100_n.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggji_WFZSGIS8Nf91EUUrefpQJ_O2GDjAT0hWGLGOyTw9ikcR9Yh_o0C-IrM8jaNJnPBuCTqZNXPynE9UQezK0ChbeC3MOGU5AwVLs68DN2fnOv-U_HKExS2EDJST8D4aUnlSmxSsgFwIxrIdYZSO0bplo4gGJLLg-7-U_7RcCf47iDN_LRXvoeebE/s526/167144041_4343712615656159_8736017186565787505_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggji_WFZSGIS8Nf91EUUrefpQJ_O2GDjAT0hWGLGOyTw9ikcR9Yh_o0C-IrM8jaNJnPBuCTqZNXPynE9UQezK0ChbeC3MOGU5AwVLs68DN2fnOv-U_HKExS2EDJST8D4aUnlSmxSsgFwIxrIdYZSO0bplo4gGJLLg-7-U_7RcCf47iDN_LRXvoeebE/s320/167144041_4343712615656159_8736017186565787505_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzn_ehXkf3z2sSF1gezv50reUfFPfO5J3AVQF29ShCMFFcMOz8-7nyi0CM3OEpycV2_5H-2TRjluXG6A4gPFhDIDk0rrphSRn9A9zZKYORZw8VwUoyLWEG3HlFjvjQlbjgHuDTaF0SkymZeEXtpLrzEwpmn30mOt2dFUA59M1i0ThuFVK-mO0YG3GM/s540/166747304_3739087929474450_927731806681541369_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="540" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzn_ehXkf3z2sSF1gezv50reUfFPfO5J3AVQF29ShCMFFcMOz8-7nyi0CM3OEpycV2_5H-2TRjluXG6A4gPFhDIDk0rrphSRn9A9zZKYORZw8VwUoyLWEG3HlFjvjQlbjgHuDTaF0SkymZeEXtpLrzEwpmn30mOt2dFUA59M1i0ThuFVK-mO0YG3GM/s320/166747304_3739087929474450_927731806681541369_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ_0suBjPk1twcU_o3N0gTRV-Qi3x7z7mO0vyrXt0RJ01zqGtIS1e-JgJ9M7mr3Uw5P93tRZByybeTdETwkPTQI44aO3z7jYIvYGqFDXKhibKnnBTjvnsUalgMQCKQ8MaOnj7FOYzfKQ_LHN6gb6772oxU59NK84sB2EB-6HPXyldn3UP_dOyp6YTs/s640/166048252_1023075168217414_7965270119812872561_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ_0suBjPk1twcU_o3N0gTRV-Qi3x7z7mO0vyrXt0RJ01zqGtIS1e-JgJ9M7mr3Uw5P93tRZByybeTdETwkPTQI44aO3z7jYIvYGqFDXKhibKnnBTjvnsUalgMQCKQ8MaOnj7FOYzfKQ_LHN6gb6772oxU59NK84sB2EB-6HPXyldn3UP_dOyp6YTs/w256-h320/166048252_1023075168217414_7965270119812872561_n.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEilrtyd9BMd75vuXcJvBpubFBGI9MwcFPtYrcQOwO2GbVx4UxPOkMXXivB5cRpN6FfTJPpzvo0BT0KNLr40xfJm8IwsoKuFAmqctJph6JyLfiiwrmydgBJiv_LzT_j1_SI3dXb9ajAt9w-tj1QFrj8xwDpHR05Lzk9T1lAmruAXf_JLv6oY9ehMeMSC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="782" data-original-width="526" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEilrtyd9BMd75vuXcJvBpubFBGI9MwcFPtYrcQOwO2GbVx4UxPOkMXXivB5cRpN6FfTJPpzvo0BT0KNLr40xfJm8IwsoKuFAmqctJph6JyLfiiwrmydgBJiv_LzT_j1_SI3dXb9ajAt9w-tj1QFrj8xwDpHR05Lzk9T1lAmruAXf_JLv6oY9ehMeMSC" width="161" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p>But let's close with something more attuned to the aesthetic, though still in the weird and wonderful wheelhouse. Until we meet again!</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0M5PATH9bKgqmqehIbLan9B01ZapbVdisF4YO147C1sKl30qxN1hbnFlNOJma9S0bMYh2JiWBgMsCECzM0XKt5WjSP1-6qIF6SE0mioetQhHqAmAOoDjK4-dsbMDdKiBSF6dP-cT-rsZF1NxG_HdSBku2QVcvHZ4-fkikiMz-eIbgiIstQzW7Rr8q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1280" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0M5PATH9bKgqmqehIbLan9B01ZapbVdisF4YO147C1sKl30qxN1hbnFlNOJma9S0bMYh2JiWBgMsCECzM0XKt5WjSP1-6qIF6SE0mioetQhHqAmAOoDjK4-dsbMDdKiBSF6dP-cT-rsZF1NxG_HdSBku2QVcvHZ4-fkikiMz-eIbgiIstQzW7Rr8q=w427-h640" width="427" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-28346008749147653052022-12-29T03:44:00.046-08:002023-01-06T10:25:40.406-08:00I Dreamed a Dream<p>The weirdest dream last night...</p><p>I was at home in Oakland, Grandmother was still alive, and I think I was in my thirties... I was thin, and had dark brown hair, and felt good, so was somewhere between quitting drinking and getting fat. At any rate, in the dream I discovered that I am naturally incredibly good at baseball, or rather at hitting a baseball far and fast, and I needed to become a good runner to qualify to play baseball, I think for a business league team rather than a pro team, but still I wanted to pursue it. I went to a doctor at Kaiser to discuss what I needed to do to become a good runner, having never run anywhere for very long in my life, and she gave me eight different dietary supplements to take, one of which was a gel substance in clear capsules that hydrated your body so you didn't have to carry water with you. The doctor looked like the psychiatrist I had at Kaiser, but with bigger hair, like Carol Kane, or maybe Blyth Danner.</p><p>Anyway, I got home and argued with Grandmother some about I-don't-remember-what, took all my new pills, and went out to go running. And I decided to take our dog Maggie (a lhasa apso who died in 1997) with me, and she ran alongside me through a dream version of my old neighborhood, Crocker Highlands and Piedmont, and even via some space-and-time bending all the way down Tunnel Road past the Claremont to UC Berkeley before turning back. The running felt amazing, just floating along without any effort at all, which is unusual for my dreams, which are usually spent walking or swimming against resistance for incredible distances. </p><p>On my way back up College Avenue, I stopped off to work a shift at a cafe that I apparently worked at, though I'm pretty sure at the beginning of the dream I was working in a corporate-type office that had a baseball team. This happens in my dreams a lot, where I'm in a food counter service job that I don't remember how to do. Anyway, it was sort of an amalgamation of all the cafes I'd worked in before college, and it migrated from College and Ashby where Espresso Elmwood had been to Grand Avenue where the Coffee Mill was (or still is, I don't know). It was a full shift, too, longer than I was asleep for, and had all sorts of dramas and struggles and weirdness to do with patio seating, negotiating power plays between two assistant managers, and something to do with baked goods. </p><p>I took off home after my shift was over and a lot more weird things happened on the way, getting lost a couple of times, finding myself all the way in West Oakland, running on the freeway that looked a lot like the Cypress Superstructure that collapsed in the Loma Prieta quake, and navigating through a terribly complicated dream version of Downtown Oakland to get back home. But still running effortlessly and perhaps even joyfully. What I imagine running feels like to real athletes.</p><p>I realized as I was running over the hill on Mandana (which in waking life would have winded me to even <i>drive </i>over) that I'd lost Maggie somewhere along the way, since I hadn't had her on a leash. But I found her by the gas station at Mandana and Lakeshore in a sort of utility enclosure, basically a plywood box built at chest height around a utility pole, where she was hanging out with a small colony of feral cats. She was happily humping away at a disinterested black and white shorthair, the way she used to do to her littermate and dam and any other small dog she met...I never understood why she did that, some kind of instinctive dominance ploy, I guess. </p><p>I pulled her out of there and started jogging up the hill toward home, Maggie wriggling like crazy to get away from me... oh, and somewhere during the course of the dream, before I lost her even, she'd changed into an entirely different kind of dog, no longer a white and caramel lhasa apso but sort of a cross between a dachshund and an Australian shepherd, with the short legs and pointed nose of the former and the brindle coat of the latter, but she was nevertheless Maggie. </p><p>Anyway, she argued with me the whole way home, wanting to get back to the black-and-white cat she was convinced she'd gotten pregnant, wanting to be there to take care of the babies and be a good father. I had to point out that A) she's a dog, B) she's a female, and C) she was neutered as a puppy, so there was no way in hell she'd impregnated that cat. It did not seem odd in the dream that she talked, any more than that she'd changed shape and color... the sort of thing that makes my dreams really bizarre.</p><p>When I got into the house, Grandmother had the kitchen all in a whirl with dishes and Tupperware everywhere, rearranging the cabinets for some reason, and annoyed with me for being gone all day. I wanted to go back out running some more, though, so I looked for my water capsules, but Grandmother had moved them in her mad reorganization and didn't know where they'd gone, so I had to go through all the piles of bowls and utensils and containers, looking for them... and that's when I woke up.</p><p>Not <i>the </i>weirdest dream I've ever had, but it was stuck in my head so I had to write it down. Plus I've been thinking a lot about dreams lately, wondering about the phrase I always use when wishing people good-night—"happy dreams!"—and whether or not I've ever <i>had </i>a happy dream, myself, or only anxiety dreams of greater or lesser degree. It has been suggested that perhaps I don't remember the happy dreams because nothing awful or bizarre happens in them to haunt my waking hours, just as you'd never remember a movie or book in which only nice things happened. I kind of like that idea except that it leaves the question of why we talk of ideal situations as "a dream come true" or quests for success "pursuing your dreams" or glibly wishing people "sweet dreams" when they go to bed. </p><p>Anyway, I hope your dreams are perfectly lovely and not at all day-hauntingly weird.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGThZDuuNCm28H1nUuk-7eCpHEzphfbk8wEaYzmcDiE4VVsm8Phgq0qJjznSU_wUEPyA-o8tjN_tYp-GrbTwQsZNNOLCmWeFxlXQOQoP4HahQdIxnld-qi9qA1Xbr8c2z_FUu5eBCkxlqP0O43j0ITnFVOBlHHwXsUu9LWCXq6Dmdwt93or3Wvrn0y/s2048/FfSmZQkXwAIClzn.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1586" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGThZDuuNCm28H1nUuk-7eCpHEzphfbk8wEaYzmcDiE4VVsm8Phgq0qJjznSU_wUEPyA-o8tjN_tYp-GrbTwQsZNNOLCmWeFxlXQOQoP4HahQdIxnld-qi9qA1Xbr8c2z_FUu5eBCkxlqP0O43j0ITnFVOBlHHwXsUu9LWCXq6Dmdwt93or3Wvrn0y/w496-h640/FfSmZQkXwAIClzn.jpg" width="496" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-70877863291415688342022-12-27T11:20:00.004-08:002023-01-23T09:54:39.477-08:00Thoughts on Ageing<p>Or is it aging? I'm never sure about that word. Spellcheck doesn't catch on it, so I guess both are OK? <i>(editorial note: aging is preferred in the US while ageing is preferred in the UK, and either is acceptable in Canada)</i></p><p>Anyway here I am on the morning of my fifty-fifth birthday and thinking about age, about the expectations we have about specific ages, how few of us Gen-Xers seem to feel the age we are, and what it means to finally qualify for senior housing and to order off the Senior Menu at Denny's.</p><p>I'm honestly kind of excited about it. It feels like a milestone, though I'm not treating it as a milestone birthday in any way...I don't intend to leave the house, much less have a party or even go out to dinner. I'll be hosting in Second Life, though I was offered the night off to celebrate, but I find I like working more than just being there, plus people tip like crazy on your birthday (or rezday, your SL avatar's birthday). So that and clicking the Love icon on all the birthday wishes on Facebook will be my birthday party.</p><p>It feels like I'm entering the sacred halls of Old on this birthday, like I've finished the Middle Age portion of the race and can relax. Of course if I relax any further than I already have, I am in danger of melting altogether and being absorbed by the carpeting, but there is nevertheless a sense of arrival having reached 55, safely under the marquee of "Golden Years."</p><p>Mostly it feels like I am now the appropriate age to be the physical and emotional wreck that I already am, like I am now allowed to settle into this curmudgeonly heap of thinning gray hair and drooping flesh that I've been occupying these last ten or more years as a birthright citizen instead of an interloper. I feel like I'm <i>properly </i>old instead of <i>prematurely </i>old, I guess.</p><p>Of course this is all based on expectations developed in early childhood, our first understanding of how the world works by observing our parents and grandparents and how they lived. I'm now in the age range that my multifarious grandparents and step-grandparents were when I was about five or six, starting school and learning about family structure and social structure in my early reading and television viewing. </p><p>All my grandparents had certain things in common because of their generation, the so-called Greatest Generation who grew up in the Depression and were young adults in WWII. Well, to be specific, both my grandfathers were older than that, born in the first decade of the 20th century, but their experiences were not dissimilar to their fifteen-years-younger wives' except they were too old to be drafted by 1940. </p><p>And then my parents and stepparents and aunts and uncles and all their cohort were first-wave Boomers, and they all had certain things in common, having grown up in the same place at the same point in history, with the same cultural references and social structures and sets of expectations to either succeed or fail at. The Boomers had a lot more choices of mainstreams to enter than their Greatest Generation parents had, but they were the same choices that all their peers had, and for the most part they aimed at having adult lives similar to their parents' adult lives, with long-term jobs and owned homes—but with a nostalgia for their golden childhoods and adolescences that the previous generation did not have.</p><p>Then my generation, Generation X as we came to be known as people started studying American culture through a lens of generational subculture, based our expectations of what adult life would be like on what our parents' lives were like when we were little, though we doubled down on the nostalgia by never letting go of our childhood obsessions and pastimes. We nevertheless based our expectations on what was modeled for us early on. </p><p>What was different, I think, is that the world changed faster and faster as we grew up, and has continued to change at increasing speed as we age, and we really don't know where we are or where we should be. Our grandparents' lifestyle that our parents more often than not emulated is simply not available anymore, and we've got generations of children and grandchildren now that we simply don't know what to do with. </p><p>That's the real mind-fucker, that our grandchildren are now coming of age and forming Gen-Z. That we've passed where our parents were when we formed our expectations of life, and are now zooming through where our grandparents were, and our models have turned out to be completely irrelevant. But they're still our base for what we think we can and should do.</p><p>These are of course sweeping generalizations, as most discussions of Generation Whichever tend to be, requiring sub-generations like Generation Jones and Gen-Y to bridge the gaps between actual population surges whose experiences will be different from those born at the beginnings of the Generations. But I find as I observe and talk with my own born-in-the-late-sixties peers that there are generalizations one <i>can </i>make, and the main observation is that we can't, and shouldn't, base our expectations on previous generations. But those expectations were formed in childhood, and anything formed in childhood will continue to echo through one's whole life. You can change your expectations, subvert your expectations, but you can't escape your expectations.</p><p>So that's what I'm thinking about on my fifty-fifth birthday. I'm off to write some notices and making some posters for tonight's Starfall shows, and make a nearly-naked outfit so I can party in my birthday suit, and expect to have a lot of fun. So here's a wish and a prayer that every dream comes true; and now, 'til we meet again, <i>adios</i>, <i>au revoir</i>, <i>auf wiedersehn</i>!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2XqErFpSSRRpGzyPKu0Ayev2Wh3psvUoq1LIhFA4dsqpJ1OYiaaUrmJTy4swZu76z-XdjLGcZiWA91nrvVYIKNrRHV9R5lBH8wacXinh1z2U4KJD96vnAYFkjC_H-NPOUUs4R9uVtlceGltlagD6mgbPmQ6W9RyNrVUs2dcuzGdYJqFKvmOEoh02X/s900/birthday_2019_by_stromoxxx_dd82o27-fullview.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2XqErFpSSRRpGzyPKu0Ayev2Wh3psvUoq1LIhFA4dsqpJ1OYiaaUrmJTy4swZu76z-XdjLGcZiWA91nrvVYIKNrRHV9R5lBH8wacXinh1z2U4KJD96vnAYFkjC_H-NPOUUs4R9uVtlceGltlagD6mgbPmQ6W9RyNrVUs2dcuzGdYJqFKvmOEoh02X/w400-h400/birthday_2019_by_stromoxxx_dd82o27-fullview.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-53716509218011416382022-08-02T14:25:00.001-07:002023-01-23T09:56:54.802-08:00House of Grief<p>I was reminded of the Five Stages of Grief trope earlier today in a context that had nothing to do with grief; but since I was dealing with grief at the moment, processing what would have been Grandmother's 104th birthday today, the little background buzzword hit me like a clanging bell. </p><p>Of course I can't remember what the five stages of grief are, exactly... I know anger, depression, and acceptance, but is bargaining one of them? OK, a quick Google reveals that the stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, in that order...but that's not what I want to talk about right now... I want to talk about why I grieve for Grandmother's house as much as I grieve for Grandmother.</p><p>I have these dreams—not really a recurring dream because the circumstances and personnel change around with each outing, like different adaptations of the same play—where I am having to move out of Grandmother's house for some reason, seldom ever the reason for which I did move out, but the dream is always full of grief and I wake up from it sad for most of the ensuing day. </p><p>In most of the house dreams, Grandmother is still alive, and in a lot of them everybody in the family who's died in my lifetime is alive and involved in the moving out somehow... Grandpa, Aunt Terry, sometimes my father. The most common reason for moving out is that Grandmother is moving into a senior living facility, sometimes I'm going with her and sometimes I'm going to a separate apartment I already have, sometimes I'm moving someplace new. Weirdly, I'm usually a lot younger in these dreams, like in my early 30s. Or at least I look like I did then, thin and relatively attractive.</p><p>A common trope in these dreams is that the whole damned family is staying in the house, especially my cousin Kellie and her vast brood, and we're trying to put on a family event, either Christmas or Grandmother's birthday, at the same time as packing up to move out. This of course makes everything more difficult, trying to pack up and throw out stuff that we need to put on a tree or make a big dinner party, with children getting in the way and Grandmother wanting to look at everything as we're packing.</p><p>The thing that makes the dreams so memorable is that it's always me doing lots of work to get the house emptied out while everyone is hindering me; when in fact it was the other way around--I mean, I don't think I <i>actively </i>hindered progress, but I was unable to take part in the packing and sorting in any meaningful way. I just couldn't <i>move</i>. I wanted to help, to at least take care of my own stuff, but I just couldn't do it. My uncle did a lot of it for me, and my friend Abby volunteered as a paid packer who sorted the things to get rid of from the things to pack up, and Caroline helped in the last push getting the things I wanted to keep packed. But for the most part, I just lay in bed like a lump...I guess that was the denial stage?</p><p>In the last years of Grandmother's life, I decided that I wouldn't keep anything from Grandmother's house when the time came, I'd maybe keep my own stuff but otherwise would make a clean start. And with a few exceptions (I kept a lot of things I'd need in the kitchen, and a few small decoratives that suddenly felt too precious to abandon) that's what I did. I got rid of or left behind everything but my clothes and books and decoratives, and didn't keep anything personal of Grandmother's except for a couple of things that I'd given her as gifts that meant a lot to me.</p><p>When I finally did get packed up and moved out, taking a room in Old Town Eureka to inhabit until the estate was settled and I'd have the money to secure permanent housing, it was an exciting adventure. The room was so small that I decided to leave my heavy wood furniture behind as well, and got some dorm-room-type furniture, all white-enameled, with navy or cobalt blue soft furnishings like pillows and blankets and towels. Living on my own for the first time in my whole life was so novel that I didn't really miss anything, didn't just sit down and grieve. I mean, I wasn't exactly dancing and frolicking and strewing flowers around me, but I wasn't as sad as I expected I'd be.</p><p>Of course, I was going home about once a month to take care of various business, and talking to Caroline on the phone daily, and my uncle and my sister at least once a week, and didn't unpack much into my new room so it felt really temporary. Suspended emotional animation, I guess. But after I bought my new home and moved into it, had all the painting and roofing and window-fixing and carpeting and furnishing done, all those feelings that had been suspended over the previous months came crashing down on me all at once and I was a wreck.</p><p>One of the things that wrecked me was wishing I'd kept certain things from Grandmother's house... like when Caroline brought fresh asparagus from the Farmer's Market, I wished like hell I still had the asparagus pot, which nobody else in the family even remembers or knew that's what it was, which was part of a set Grandmother got as a prize for top selling Tupperware in the 70s. I would be looking for something on my phone (I photographed a lot of documents and licenses to have them handy) and saw pictures I'd taken for the estate sale we had after I moved to Eureka, and would just weep over all the things I missed, stupid things that I didn't really care about before but which were now invested with a painful nostalgia. I eventually moved those all into a folder on my desktop so I wouldn't keep stumbling across them.</p><p>So in the last almost-four years (Grandmother's 100th birthday was five weeks before her death), I have been grieving for Grandmother, which I was prepared to do in some ways as I'd been working on the inevitable eventuality with my therapist for years in advance of the event; but I wasn't prepared to grieve for the house. Almost four years later, I still cry when I see pictures of the house the same as I do pictures of Grandmother.</p><p>And I know that grief doesn't work on an external timeline, everyone processes it differently, and that it takes how long it takes and no more or less. But I guess I wish that I'd known to prepare for the grief of losing the house as assiduously as I prepared for the grief of losing Grandmother. When you live in a place for a long time, it takes on its own persona, it becomes a character in your life, and when several generations of a family live in the same house for a long time, it really becomes a family member. I knew that before, but I didn't really consider it at the time when mourning Grandmother was fresh and new, and didn't take it into account when I planned what to do with various things in the house that I miss now.</p><p>So that's me today. I see it's been seven months since I last posted, which is shameful, but not the first time I've gone so long without writing here. Hope to come back sooner next time, this has been exceptionally cathartic, writing all this out. Thanks for listening to me whine.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn9miIkHij8M3-XWhOGpR0kI3CGkNkejXzTuIPvhdmvlWzFXcCXOr41315Broen9LWR2VWl7N6llAmlFwUUGhSe99ytEIwlPhNpvfRWo0jgP-oiuz3GWIk466zcxkjB3B-tgDnbsDhlA0Sl0s4B4gHMz_uw0KYgSrXj2WX2XPCpoZla06Q6kMmMmT1/s1440/tumblr_c1833ab7c919b34dd07f44ddb4905d13_ea3c9d8b_1280.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn9miIkHij8M3-XWhOGpR0kI3CGkNkejXzTuIPvhdmvlWzFXcCXOr41315Broen9LWR2VWl7N6llAmlFwUUGhSe99ytEIwlPhNpvfRWo0jgP-oiuz3GWIk466zcxkjB3B-tgDnbsDhlA0Sl0s4B4gHMz_uw0KYgSrXj2WX2XPCpoZla06Q6kMmMmT1/w426-h640/tumblr_c1833ab7c919b34dd07f44ddb4905d13_ea3c9d8b_1280.jpg" width="426" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-72479641679690154592022-01-17T21:32:00.045-08:002022-01-27T16:30:27.639-08:00Faith No More<p> A few weeks ago, Facebook gave me a "memory" from some time back, something I'd posted on that date in a different year... it does this every day, sometimes several times a day, and it often offers me a bewildering glimpse of a person I've forgotten I ever was. In this case it was a list meme (remember those?) called "Five Things You May Not Know About Me" or some such; in it I state that something people might not know about me is that I believe in ghosts. Looking at this list ten years or so later, I found that <i>I </i>didn't know that about me...not only had I forgotten I'd ever said such a thing, but I'd forgotten I ever believed in ghosts. Needless to say, I do not believe in ghosts now. And that got me to wondering: do I believe in <i>anything</i>? The notion of belief itself felt unfamiliar somehow.</p><p>In another Facebook-based instance, I was messaging with an old friend from AA whom I haven't seen or talked to in well over a decade; and as one does with old AA fellows, I said I was keeping sober and practicing the principles in all of my affairs despite not going to AA meetings or interacting with the program at all. But when I thought about it later, I can't say I was practicing <i>all </i>of the principles, since one of the principles is reaching out to the alcoholic still suffering, sharing the gift of sobriety with those who seek it. And though I didn't go into all that with the friend in Facebook Messenger, one of the other principles, the one I <i>do </i>consciously practice, is rigorous self-honesty; so I spent a lot of time dissecting the statement "I am practicing the principles still"... and realized that I had also let go of all the higher-power-centric steps, too. So, with God and the Fellowship both out of the equation, which principles <i>was </i>I still practicing?</p><p>That's a topic for another post, but for this post I asked myself why <i>did </i>I give up the God parts? When exactly did I stop praying? Why? I don't remember when, though I assume it was some time after I stopped going to meetings, as I would have noticed if I'd done it when I <i>was </i>going to meetings, as praying is part of the meeting; but the <i>why </i>came quickly: I'd stopped believing in God. There was no reason for it, no watershed moment where I saw it happen, I just stopped somewhere along the line. And I wondered, like I did with the ghosts, what <i>do </i>I believe in? What do I even just <i>believe</i>?</p><p>I couldn't think of anything. Not a single article of faith anywhere in my brain. It was just things I know and things I don't know, nothing in between but guesses and opinions. And of course a lot more of the latter than the former, things that I used to <i>think </i>I knew but turned out to be things I just believed, and had to be added to the things I don't know instead. And that's not even addressing the things I thought I knew and discovered that I'd misremembered, which is the topic of a whole other essay.</p><p>The very concept of belief feels foreign now, like how does one <i>just believe </i>anything? What does that even feel like? I don't remember. I remember believing things, but I don't remember what it feels like to believe, I don't remember <i>how </i>to believe. It's just gone.</p><p>I guess or opine that it's the depression that's done this, stopped my ability to connect to something that once gave me comfort and purpose like it stopped me connecting to lots of things that gave me comfort and purpose. But more, I have a feeling (perhaps this is a belief, but probably just a hypothesis) that it has to do with brain chemistry. </p><p>There was a study published some years ago that claimed to have discovered a subunit of the brain that was directly responsible for the concept of God... a part that was activated during neural-imaging scans when the subject was praying, or thinking about God or the lack of God, or engaging in any kind of "spiritual" activity. I'm probably not remembering that right, or at least not exactly, but I don't have the energy to do research on it right now, I'm just going to take it as the premise for my hypothesis. </p><p>Discussions of this discovery or study took two separate interpretations: some said that it showed that there was no God, there was just a knob in your head that makes you think there's a God (or any gods); others said that this knob made us capable of perceiving an existing God in the first place; but most agreed that a big part of our evolution into a successful species is our ability to engage in abstract thought, our ability to imagine things we cannot see, which might well have developed from this segment of our brains that perceives God, and our ability to rationalize and imagine, to construct philosophy and language and art is a direct result of that perception. </p><p>If that is so, if the ability to believe in God, or anything that can't be seen or touched or smelled or heard, is centered in a part of the brain, then it is also possible to <i>disable </i>that part of the brain with a lack of serotonin or excess of some other chemical. Whether belief is an illusion caused by the brain or another degree of perception, I can't say, but it's suggestive that my ability to believe has waned as my depression has progressed. It may be coincidental, though, so I can't say for sure. I should do some research on this if I'm interested enough, but I'm not sure I am... I mean, will knowing the answer help me get my faith back? Or give me a sense of natural inevitability for its loss? Do I even <i>miss </i>my faith?</p><p>I did, when Grandmother died. I wanted to take comfort in the knowledge that she wasn't really gone, that she still existed somewhere else, reunited with loved ones who'd gone before, retaining her memories and her personality without the pain and limitations of her decaying body. I used to believe that's what happened to people when they died. I <i>think</i> I believed it, anyway... I mean, I had a hypothesis that the neural networks that make up our memories and personalities survive the death of the brain that created them, and that the human will would hold those networks together without a body, in the ethers perhaps, floating around on the air, as light as radio waves, retaining organization and consciousness. That when these conscious networks floated around where they'd lived, they could be perceived as ghosts, and when they floated off into the atmosphere they went "into the light," mingling with lost loved ones somewhere up there, attracted to each other by the connections formed in life. </p><p>It was just an opinion, but was based on something I simply believed, that there <i>is </i>an afterlife, that the individual soul continues to exist after death. Now, though, I don't quite see how that could be possible, that a neural network can exist without the flesh and blood that created them through sensory input; and if they could, they certainly couldn't interact with the rest of the world without those organs, they couldn't take in new information at all, they could not be sapient and conscious... they'd be in a permanent dream state, reliving what was already in their minds when they died, without any kind of direction or mobility.</p><p>But, though it seems unlikely, I can't say for sure that's <i>not </i>what happens. I have no belief in the opposite possibility as truth, either. I <i>just don't know</i>. And that not-knowing is far more uncomfortable than believing one way or another. They say that atheists have no beliefs, but they do: they believe very firmly that there is no God. They have made up their minds as to what is true and can think about something else.</p><p>Much stickier wicket being caught in between, unable to believe that there is or isn't a God, or an afterlife, or a purpose to existence either in general or individually. You're caught in a perpetual shrug with an eternal question-mark floating over your head. And that's just unpleasant, is all.</p><p>Well, anyway, I don't think I've drawn a conclusion from having aired and organized these thoughts in blog form, but I've <i>written </i>something, and I'm going to take that as a win for the day. Celebrating little victories usually improves my mood, and that's enough of a takeaway.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7mv6iGb1BFTIeF5lfEU1hV_svu-N_rrvt1LEW3S4W_682Fq8f2KpL9M38u5_wkBbQdADGtaGUCWCdg8JcG3p7WFx-iJ75OuvbciQDPvncgonLnGvCVU8BR-12Xkzz4j-Z9aMqzp8_YlY/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1049" data-original-width="1080" height="389" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7mv6iGb1BFTIeF5lfEU1hV_svu-N_rrvt1LEW3S4W_682Fq8f2KpL9M38u5_wkBbQdADGtaGUCWCdg8JcG3p7WFx-iJ75OuvbciQDPvncgonLnGvCVU8BR-12Xkzz4j-Z9aMqzp8_YlY/w400-h389/tumblr_022a14236f3104c8d9ef25eb79768256_d7e33613_1280.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-36670566761455632022-01-01T13:08:00.001-08:002022-01-01T13:08:18.009-08:00New Year, Same Old Me<p>I'm avoiding working on my finances for last year and budget for the coming year; the first part only takes plugging in the rest of December's transactions and copying the page formats into a new spreadsheet, but the second part is bound to be depressing. But it's necessary, and I'm already depressed, so why not just poke the bruise and get it over with? Because there are other things I can be doing to avoid it, so here we are.</p><p>As you can imagine, I'm not terribly excited about a new year... it's pretty arbitrary, when the year starts and what date is which, since they're not timed so that things start and finish on solstices and equinoxes and moon phases, which are the only non-arbitrary constants we have... weather and seasons are different in different parts of the world, and move in too complex of patterns (so complex that we haven't figured them out yet and it still looks like capricious divine behavior). Of course, it is pretty close, the Winter Solstice was just a couple weeks ago, so it's not <i>too </i>farfetched to start the calendar year here.</p><p>Years of experience have taught me that it's useless to try and start good habits at the new year, it simply never works out. And the last few years have indicated that it's useless to attempt new habits after a certain age. After reaching adulthood, new practices never become habitual: it's a permanent, ongoing, repeated effort to keep achieving the behavior. At least for me, I shouldn't state that like it's a universal truth. But it's like I've had to relearn how to walk, to allow for the extra weight and the decreased flexibility of the joints; I can't just walk as a background process like I did when I was young, I have to think about it and adapt to the new physics of walking, have to deliberately take each step, aware of every movement and cognizant of each destination. It's like that with everything, if I take my mind off what I'm doing for even a second I can become disoriented as my body falls into habits learned thirty years ago and I autopilot toward things and places that no longer exist.</p><p>Well, that doesn't mean I shouldn't learn new habits, especially new healthy habits, just that it's no longer a matter of "just do it" or making resolutions on an arbitrary date. When I learn what it <i>is </i>a matter of, when I discover how to get myself to do things that I don't want to do, I'll let you know. Until then, I'll just do what I can to get through the day. And work on my budget, which I'm going to go do now.</p><p>Happy New Year! </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0YZ8r-37ew_qAfijOAYmZFkZ3O3hQxBbZguqQhviA-FS6q2566g7M9Gur-QhxuH-DR4qkYmsBwGGEU6Kjmwak2ie0HmWJDR4waB-u4Min_tme7Wgq-ACs-_q9qRzQ2_Ckj3_6SrPGk-9Pz6jQXj9KFYFlHXPb43WAhiGr1EIQ7XOeE1MhhAW0LPYt=s1024" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="819" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0YZ8r-37ew_qAfijOAYmZFkZ3O3hQxBbZguqQhviA-FS6q2566g7M9Gur-QhxuH-DR4qkYmsBwGGEU6Kjmwak2ie0HmWJDR4waB-u4Min_tme7Wgq-ACs-_q9qRzQ2_Ckj3_6SrPGk-9Pz6jQXj9KFYFlHXPb43WAhiGr1EIQ7XOeE1MhhAW0LPYt=w512-h640" width="512" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-75815362377439251352021-12-02T07:55:00.000-08:002021-12-02T07:55:20.083-08:00So, That Didn't Pan Out...<p>I swear, that's going to be my epitaph, if I ever have a gravestone. Which I won't because that requires planning ahead and is pretty expensive, too. But either way, NaNoWriMo was a bust again this year. I only managed a week of autoflagellatory bouts of squeezing out a couple hundred words before I gave up. A new record, I think.</p><p>I'm worried that I will never write another book—no, I am worried that I can <i>no longer write</i>, that it's lost completely along with other pursuits and endeavors that once defined my selfhood, like drag and AA. That maybe this isn't a matter of learning a new process, of rediscovering my muse, of just buckling down and getting on with it, but instead a matter of accepting a new normal.</p><p>But balancing that worry is the idea that maybe I'm just not telling the right story. The last few NaNo attempts have been attempts at expanding my range beyond Lord Foxbridge, and perhaps that's the problem... I could be developing further episodes with him despite not having finished the sequel that's been sitting three-quarters done but mired in self-doubt and nit-picking. In fact I had an idea for how to start the third book and have been picking at that in my mind during my morning periods of laying awake before my bladder or my belly drives me out of bed.</p><p>There's also the idea that maybe NaNoWriMo is no longer a useful tool in my arsenal, that even though it was the structured frenzy of pressure-cooked wordcount that squeezed my first two novels out of me, it just doesn't work with my new brain chemistry. And my failures are more discouraging than the memory of past NaNo successes are inspiring. Maybe I won't try again next year, I'll give it a break. Of course, I know that when I take a break from things, I tend to not pick them back up again, ever. But not necessarily. We shall just have to see what happens.</p><p>Anyway, I'm going to go waste my creative energy building country cottages in The Sims 4, my most recent obsession with the purchase of the Cottage Living expansion pack. And of course futzing around in Blade & Soul, and collecting music for my occasional Second Life DJ gigs (but <i>not </i>working on my store with new clothes... I spent a lot of November putting together a collection of graphic sweaters for autumn but didn't finish the textures until Thanksgiving, at which point an autumn collection was completely irrelevant), and trolling the interwebz for pictures of beautiful boys, the only hobby to have survived undimmed in all these recent years.</p><p>Speaking of, here's one I discovered yesterday at <a href="https://www.vanityteen.com/santiago-robledo-by-hector-m-murillo/" target="_blank">Vanity Teen</a>, Santiago Robledo who gives very distinct Tadzio vibes (to the extent he's made it part of his <a href="https://www.instagram.com/santadzio.robledo_/">Instagram name</a>):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiehfrgD24dsKKW1FSAFLEDgwHU87KYS_Tf7Vdz_5jd6JlJBx8MarfmT7xUg6ZHGqz9idJyCtd56mickXEaz2WIoDiX4zF6OGVE1e4tsjdeU4EbfUw86uR0SRfsk_Nqoggxo90K_hT_HvE/s2048/Vanity-Teen-He%25CC%2581ctor-M-%2540_MORALHM-vteen8-scaled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1364" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiehfrgD24dsKKW1FSAFLEDgwHU87KYS_Tf7Vdz_5jd6JlJBx8MarfmT7xUg6ZHGqz9idJyCtd56mickXEaz2WIoDiX4zF6OGVE1e4tsjdeU4EbfUw86uR0SRfsk_Nqoggxo90K_hT_HvE/w426-h640/Vanity-Teen-He%25CC%2581ctor-M-%2540_MORALHM-vteen8-scaled.jpg" width="426" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-91705656462122363562021-11-25T19:06:00.000-08:002021-12-02T07:24:38.401-08:00That Old Attitude of Gratitude<p>So a few nights ago, Grandmother came to me in a dream—I mean, I don't believe it was her ghost come to visit, or that she communicates with me from the afterlife via dreams, but rather that my unconscious brain needed to tell me something and knew I would listen if it came from Grandmother—anyway, unlike most of my dreams of Grandmother, I woke up from this one feeling hopeful instead of sad. In the dream she reminded me that gratitude is the antidote to resentment, and that all I had to do to be happier was to focus on those things in my life for which I am grateful, instead of those things in my life that I resent. It came as a revolutionary solution, though it's something I've known for years and used to practice in my everyday thinking.</p><p>I've been practicing this since, though it's not as easy as it used to be. I don't think it's because I have so markedly fewer things to be grateful for, though certainly I've lost a lot of things I used to count when I'd count my blessings; but my brain chemistry has devolved to a point where it's hard to be grateful. Like, when I woke up from that dream I just felt grateful without having to enumerate the things, but today I'm hunting through my consciousness to find some scrap of gratitude. I have just as many things to be grateful for as I had two days ago, with the exception of however many micrograms of serotonin required for the emotion.</p><p>Either way, I'm going to keep looking for good things instead of staring at the bad things, and hope that will have some effect on my day-to-day feelings. And hope that I can parlay that little bit of a lift into motivation to do other things I know will make me feel better, like getting some exercise and bathing before I get stinky and itchy. I don't know. We'll see. </p><p>Until then, I hope your day is full of things to be grateful for, and full of gratitude for those things.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUCZ3B9F0QGgzOMvjyf6HPq4sGIelOiMo9obDDJ5uhaEOJ4iaONbj1lI_LhpToZy_dnrM_LRoQmLKDAr2Vj1wZBAKXyqYgsbyzHrgECG5WTEcsN1wvgQRJ0x-GatU7KEls-WZkxc_WrOI/s1856/tumblr_e73368839d581ae65586144cd60f5c28_397e7a21_2048.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1856" data-original-width="1430" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUCZ3B9F0QGgzOMvjyf6HPq4sGIelOiMo9obDDJ5uhaEOJ4iaONbj1lI_LhpToZy_dnrM_LRoQmLKDAr2Vj1wZBAKXyqYgsbyzHrgECG5WTEcsN1wvgQRJ0x-GatU7KEls-WZkxc_WrOI/w494-h640/tumblr_e73368839d581ae65586144cd60f5c28_397e7a21_2048.jpg" width="494" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-71591818804424408212021-11-01T15:27:00.002-07:002021-11-01T15:45:01.642-07:00NaNoWriMo 2021 - Day 1<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC-EmUuWLtK7xRpo0pK5HFvkim_ZCnisSkHHw7GHcDMIo75o6woOG2ST4cAO_WEyN08WgwszZrLQMhNGmHpEZyWUblEN5sLLIy0jhSOFLYYkIGlHFa_bPr1iLfQI_ry4yEE25MM1nqTq8/s2048/Snapshot11012021_003.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC-EmUuWLtK7xRpo0pK5HFvkim_ZCnisSkHHw7GHcDMIo75o6woOG2ST4cAO_WEyN08WgwszZrLQMhNGmHpEZyWUblEN5sLLIy0jhSOFLYYkIGlHFa_bPr1iLfQI_ry4yEE25MM1nqTq8/s320/Snapshot11012021_003.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">
I'm starting <a href="https://nanowrimo.org/" target="_blank">National Novel-Writing Month</a> today... my twelfth year in a row participating, and hoping for my third finished project. I'm resurrecting a previous year's project (or rather a project I've resurrected twice before without result), <i>The Lord of the Wanderwood</i>, a supernatural/fantasy/romance outing involving an ancient fae and the last scion of the noble family to which he's been attached for centuries.
I don't think I'll post my daily output here, but I will keep you updated on my progress. </span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I actually did a little writing so far today, exactly 300 words in three paragraphs, which struck me as a good moment to stop and crow about it for a minute. And here it is!
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fae jolted awake to the smell of chocolate—such a delicious smell, rich and complex, both earthy and delicate, sweet and savory at once with a tantalizing thread of bitterness drifting through. So different from the usual scents of the forest, the dark acid rot of oak leaves and the deep green tang of moss, the metallic ichor of cold water over stone, the sharp punch of animal spoor and the dainty song of wildflowers; it was a scent that didn't, perhaps </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">couldn't </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">occur in nature.</span></span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-1cae493a-7fff-4bf6-ec9d-8675a57c4e02"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which woke the fae further to consciousness: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">how </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was there chocolate in his forest? Chocolate can only occur in conjunction with Man, like bread and liquor and chemicals. Concentrating his senses, the fae sought the source, and scented a man underneath the scent of chocolate. Not a very strong scent, the man must be very clean or very young, or both, with none of the luxuriant musk the fae associated with man. But the faint man-scent was there, fascinating and unexpected. It had been a very long time since any men had come this close to the fae in his deep—he would have said impenetrable—fortress of oak.</span></span></p></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-1cae493a-7fff-4bf6-ec9d-8675a57c4e02"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-1cae493a-7fff-4bf6-ec9d-8675a57c4e02"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It wasn't impenetrable, of course, the fae remembered his forest being penetrated: the last time he woke from dreams, when soldiers and fallen from the sky buoyed by great clouds of dark silk, seeking to take his Stones, the ancient gateposts that anchored his brugh on the border between England and Faerie. He'd killed those soldiers, bidding the roots under the forest floor to entwine and entomb them in the rich earth, and taking flight to pursue the steel machine that had dropped the soldiers, interfering with its machinery so that it crashed into the Salisbury Plain in a foul explosion of stinking petroleum and hot metal.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></p></span></blockquote><span id="docs-internal-guid-1cae493a-7fff-4bf6-ec9d-8675a57c4e02"><div><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm going to go back to writing, now, and hope I can squeeze out the recommended daily 1,667 words. <i>À bientôt</i>!</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOAxRqap__UawAJBrfQxtHIZdS3HrPJ1FQtJihlDBTb7ePJPUMXhMSWbQ1zBz9WfWr259ZJFQ-dVOqfQrwKDEvucVdMjc0CCMNLKcsLQH7PNnHsMYWGAVlIOVzeUwnAEUgsEMxAC2beHA/s960/242314023_4386129704768187_3267575337968163691_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="638" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOAxRqap__UawAJBrfQxtHIZdS3HrPJ1FQtJihlDBTb7ePJPUMXhMSWbQ1zBz9WfWr259ZJFQ-dVOqfQrwKDEvucVdMjc0CCMNLKcsLQH7PNnHsMYWGAVlIOVzeUwnAEUgsEMxAC2beHA/w426-h640/242314023_4386129704768187_3267575337968163691_n.jpg" width="426" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-53511731075849138892021-10-30T12:31:00.000-07:002021-11-01T12:31:58.914-07:00Non-Newtonian Fluid<p>That's how I characterized my overall being, the combination of mood and energy level and physical condition... like a room-temperature flan, limp and flabby, gelatinous but not jiggly, not in much pain but not in much of anything else, either. Just blah. Flaccid.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHUyz3rKxswHXkZggQfz38GKrl_bOYf9KGWYjVdIe0azeZjhnmishWkj9D5do_P-mMCIuAvBVAhX7Y3GAdNwQZ0gpuBrTAKAUCNU52s19QrMg0dYdfjUzNjDaf0JPTTDIOLIRdbQtrsU4/s500/Flaccid.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="269" data-original-width="500" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHUyz3rKxswHXkZggQfz38GKrl_bOYf9KGWYjVdIe0azeZjhnmishWkj9D5do_P-mMCIuAvBVAhX7Y3GAdNwQZ0gpuBrTAKAUCNU52s19QrMg0dYdfjUzNjDaf0JPTTDIOLIRdbQtrsU4/s320/Flaccid.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>I guess that's OK. The sadness has passed, though it still washes through every now and then, same as the fibromyalgia pain that pops up here and there without lingering. I just don't have the mental energy to do anything, I'm just dragging myself through the motions of my daily rounds, keeping up with my Second Life social and creative commitments just because it would take more energy to let go of them, to make excuses to not do them or arrange for someone else to do them, than to just buckle up and do them. </p><p>Fake it 'til you make it, right?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixyloKpVGQpoJMJIqhyIh-ztEEL78QmEbn3gTES2EIq1sFgYbYk1Gnwx93RYgbMBBahTz39DFMvPZyTQC1j2ug6kuhI8pEIu_WhFq89vrNSjoUDufBocsuqoZBDL99fgrN173nr3i35iE/s1067/tumblr_415c31f9782a34bc3cacd1df00ba5c1b_f4eb94a8_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="800" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixyloKpVGQpoJMJIqhyIh-ztEEL78QmEbn3gTES2EIq1sFgYbYk1Gnwx93RYgbMBBahTz39DFMvPZyTQC1j2ug6kuhI8pEIu_WhFq89vrNSjoUDufBocsuqoZBDL99fgrN173nr3i35iE/w480-h640/tumblr_415c31f9782a34bc3cacd1df00ba5c1b_f4eb94a8_1280.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-53106064195815541122021-10-06T11:34:00.000-07:002021-10-06T12:04:43.530-07:00The Sun'll Come Out... Whenever...<p>I'm feeling a lot better, moodwise, though the fibromyalgia is a lot worse now than it was when I was way down in the deepest root-cellar under the sub-basement of the dumps. Weird. But I'd rather be in physical pain than emotional pain, it's easier to avoid by lying still. </p><p>The chief indicator of improved mood is a desire to do something about the morass I live in. I want to take a shower, I want to take on homemaking projects like putting up shelves and unpacking boxes, I want to start a writing project, I want to start a Second Life clothing project. I am brimming with desires.</p><p>Sadly I am not brimming with the energy to bring those desires to fruition. And what energy I do have is spent pushing against the inertia or resistance (I haven't figured out yet which it is, a passive or an active force, that keeps me from moving), but I hope that's on the way. The next stage in feeling better. </p><p>Still, it's nice to want things again. I didn't like not wanting anything. When the only argument against suicide is a sense of obligation to the people who depend on me, it makes you look at your life through a very distorting lens. When you want to know what happens next, when you want things to happen, you want to see things and do things, negating the disease's urgings toward self-destruction is a lot easier and even entertaining. </p><p>I think I shall go take that shower now... I've been putting it off since Sunday, and I feel very sticky and stinky. Or maybe I'll take another run at the Desolate Tomb in Blade & Soul, I've been farming it for the outfit parts to complete a collection, and I still need the goggles. Or I might go back to bed. We'll see.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk2eWB8NxVfn6iAwVmRfOnWXjFhnYt4rqLwkBYv0x-vU-iAK57Xvja4qZngLKJdjGWwpl-LvUQkrS6Uam0rDpPU_JvYoVz8YaBakuwKc_jMHxvnZOUxBq-ZxNZqu1R6XRgdEVjzxpenIs/s1444/tumblr_3b151bbce8948db8f80f3ec4fc5cdc5b_20c28734_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1444" data-original-width="1170" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk2eWB8NxVfn6iAwVmRfOnWXjFhnYt4rqLwkBYv0x-vU-iAK57Xvja4qZngLKJdjGWwpl-LvUQkrS6Uam0rDpPU_JvYoVz8YaBakuwKc_jMHxvnZOUxBq-ZxNZqu1R6XRgdEVjzxpenIs/w518-h640/tumblr_3b151bbce8948db8f80f3ec4fc5cdc5b_20c28734_1280.jpg" width="518" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-91631221051410462252021-09-27T09:58:00.002-07:002021-09-27T19:58:06.497-07:00Abysmal Albatross Abyss<p>I feel terrible. That right-on-the-verge-of-crying sadness settled in my chest and nose, random aches and pains, a feeling of heaviness in all my limbs, a sense of every activity being a waste of time and every project a pretension of overestimated abilities, the question "why even bother?" ringing in my mind's ear and my mind's eye filled with forearms sliced open to let all the ick out with the blood on an endless loop. I don't feel like I'm <i>going </i>to cut myself, I don't feel out of control or desperate to escape the pain, but it's immensely unpleasant nonetheless, like having shitty music on a radio you can't turn off.</p><p>And I've felt terrible for a while now... pretty much since we got settled into this house in McKinleyville, starting with a sort of an end-of-an-adventure letdown where your journey ends at the furthest point instead of back at home. Then came the Pandemic, with increased isolation and a background fear, which pressure-cooked a lot of problems between Caroline and me, resulting in a lot of emotional upheaval and plain old rage. Then the diabetes diagnoses, which was kind of enlivening at first but ultimately depressing as the new diet took away the major coping mechanism of comfort eating; then some financial problems that not only depressed me further but exacerbated my problems with Caroline to crisis point. Once we got those two things resolved, though, we still had the Pandemic isolation and then a resurgence of grief over losing Grandmother and leaving my lifelong home, which has come to a head in the last few weeks as anniversaries of her last birthday, her stroke, her death, and her funeral have come along and poisoned all of August and September for me.</p><p>Making matters worse is that I just can't drum up the afflatus to give a shit, not enough fucks to give to <i>do </i>anything about any of it. I don't even want to stop hurting, which has always been my last go-to of desire. I don't know if I believe deep down that I deserve to feel like this, or if I don't have the mental energy to do the things I need to do in order to feel better, or <i>what </i>exactly I feel or believe... just that I'm tired of fighting. </p><p>This isn't unbearable, is all. Maybe unbearable-adjacent. Or fully bearable but I'd prefer to not have to bear it. But I feel like I <i>should </i>be doing something about it, and feel guilty for <i>not </i>doing anything about it, and I worry that if I don't do something about it, it'll get a lot worse... maybe that's the thing I need to change, though, the idea that I'm supposed to fix it. Maybe I just need to accept that this is my life and settle into it. </p><p>Or maybe not. I don't know.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDIOnmdX8VEtaZeBOQMYiTVGLQA3ieIvGQjpGC980uQSChk_CdHuuBuUz4_LbPWa1VAVEyQ9zxn75L6FShyphenhyphenqsPhOsPC8yuYarCEB3iURCFVPMTpa1eDlxZmAecKS0GrWvmUwxkOPJeUao/s900/Vanity-Teen-10-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDIOnmdX8VEtaZeBOQMYiTVGLQA3ieIvGQjpGC980uQSChk_CdHuuBuUz4_LbPWa1VAVEyQ9zxn75L6FShyphenhyphenqsPhOsPC8yuYarCEB3iURCFVPMTpa1eDlxZmAecKS0GrWvmUwxkOPJeUao/w400-h400/Vanity-Teen-10-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-11522493329273370412021-09-25T20:00:00.001-07:002021-09-27T20:01:48.670-07:00FAUGH!<p>That is all. </p><p>Just <i>faugh.</i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzW09a-2A2ZKZAMmUzlKiFESlJ5pZ4Yl57tTKJBr0iQxkOGZ51pEnrR-ug6A7ZkaEA06MTpfpB-nQqGSMWlDsUEzBKXr44H3wbJOdq0zZhnziq39fKt-oNq_QMb95lntAQCVgeNnHbubo/s700/tumblr_5971dd422b562ed63f7125699bb50325_3c00a257_540.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="540" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzW09a-2A2ZKZAMmUzlKiFESlJ5pZ4Yl57tTKJBr0iQxkOGZ51pEnrR-ug6A7ZkaEA06MTpfpB-nQqGSMWlDsUEzBKXr44H3wbJOdq0zZhnziq39fKt-oNq_QMb95lntAQCVgeNnHbubo/w494-h640/tumblr_5971dd422b562ed63f7125699bb50325_3c00a257_540.png" width="494" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-27296320670514357572021-09-23T08:29:00.001-07:002021-09-23T08:29:52.100-07:00Checking In With Myself<p>So, that "write every day no matter what" hasn't worked out so well... I'm trying to decide if I should go back and edit the post where I stated my intention, or work out a new intention (like, every week or every other day or every day with a U in it), or just address it with the usual shrug of flaccid inertia. I'm guessing the latter is going to turn out to be the winner. It usually is.</p><p>I've been having to ask myself how I feel, lately... it seems I've been depressed for so long that I've gotten used to it and the overwhelming sorrow has become an old sweater that I forget I'm wearing. Or an old hair shirt is probably more appropriate. I don't feel anything in particular on the surface, so I have to launch an interior diagnostic, how do I <i>actually </i>feel? Is there a squeezy feeling in my chest like my heart is imploding slowly? Check. Am I going to start crying any second but probably won't actually cry because I seldom ever do, I just feel like I am? Check. Does my blood feel itchy and seem to want to get out of my veins and go walkabout? No, not today, so that's something. </p><p>Do I have anything I <i>want </i>to do today, anything I'm looking forward to, anything I'm even remotely excited about? Mmmm... no check. Do I have anything I <i>need </i>to do today? Yes, unusually, I do: I need to go to the bank, and I need to get a birthday card for Caroline and a "you're the best" card for my uncle and get the latter into the mail... that's nice to have things to do. Do I <i>want </i>to do any of those things? Mmm... maybe? Better stated, do I have an <i>aversion </i>to doing any of those things...do I sense any resistance to doing any of those things... do I have the energy to do any of those things? Mmm, not sure. We'll see how the day develops. The birthday card is time-sensitive so I'll probably be able to make myself do it, and get the other things done while I'm up because I have to capitalize on anything that forces me out of the house because I never know when I'll be able to do it again.</p><p>So, how am I today? I'll rate myself Low Neutral, not great but not terrible, just under baseline OK. I'll probably feel better after I run my errands, as getting out of the house on any pretext always makes me feel better. One would think that would be sufficient motivation to get out of the house, but either I don't want to feel better enough, or don't believe I deserve to feel better, or don't have the strength to push back against my disease wanting me to feel worse, so getting out of the house is this massive struggle, same as taking a shower or grooming myself in any way. </p><p>Maybe I should go back to bed for a little while, have another cup of coffee and read a nice escapist suspense/romance on my phone, before undertaking this grand adventure of Going Outside. Consider whether or not I can put it off until tomorrow... no, let's not think about that.</p><p>Well, we'll have to see what we see. Until next time, goodbye and good luck and don't take any wooden igloos.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPIce-BuDtOBCp-3HZ8Nf3rMdMiblycBTiAtc1cEAv8UliXEiZYUz0YuoKyfMUfKBxKGc5q8qVYR_dWSwHIl7AoaR1lbOb_ZDXG3vN7IQikxCcHnG885tNTKYo9oukPtxOcdkvt0GsVkk/s1200/tumblr_eeac22f06c136896943c8351f9e748fd_065f26fb_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="876" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPIce-BuDtOBCp-3HZ8Nf3rMdMiblycBTiAtc1cEAv8UliXEiZYUz0YuoKyfMUfKBxKGc5q8qVYR_dWSwHIl7AoaR1lbOb_ZDXG3vN7IQikxCcHnG885tNTKYo9oukPtxOcdkvt0GsVkk/w468-h640/tumblr_eeac22f06c136896943c8351f9e748fd_065f26fb_1280.jpg" width="468" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-68380549187783632382021-09-18T23:30:00.002-07:002021-09-18T23:30:28.135-07:00O.o<p> Another "I can't write" day. Oh well.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj3vcu26z3AED3r6EbinFRWkvEliLY4MuP7-wfKctfzbvnEOKl9vNmQ2G0Lyt_-YPR8gZh_bLURqNcTjXQXDN-CFNdT-ZUBTeTuKxceaNvhRnOFxGSCqKPchYXc5yR8_wVnVwac2Ah8Ww/s1536/1G4A5984f-1024x1536.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="1024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj3vcu26z3AED3r6EbinFRWkvEliLY4MuP7-wfKctfzbvnEOKl9vNmQ2G0Lyt_-YPR8gZh_bLURqNcTjXQXDN-CFNdT-ZUBTeTuKxceaNvhRnOFxGSCqKPchYXc5yR8_wVnVwac2Ah8Ww/w426-h640/1G4A5984f-1024x1536.jpg" width="426" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-53246791153086552542021-09-17T23:52:00.001-07:002021-09-17T23:52:06.099-07:00The Dom is Lost in Adaptation<p>I've been watching videos today... well, aside from when I was playing Blade & Soul, and hosting in SL, and reading <i><a href="The Hitman's Guide to Staying Alive Despite Past Mistakes">The Hitman's Guide to Staying Alive Despite Past Mistakes</a></i>, I've been watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDom" target="_blank">Dominic Noble's channel</a> of brilliant book reviews and even more brilliant <i>Lost In Adaptation</i> videos. I really enjoy his take on book-to-movie adaptations, which is practically a genre for me as I love to collect movies of books I've read, even when they're terrible... especially when I can parse out <i>why </i>they're terrible... and Dominic's analyses are right up my street. Oh, and he's cute, of course ;-)</p><p>Here are some I particularly enjoyed today (the first is the beginning of a series, I'll let you follow the links embedded in the video if you want to watch the whole set):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/d7VDnpVG55c" width="320" youtube-src-id="d7VDnpVG55c"></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aT0TZDDxCAs" width="320" youtube-src-id="aT0TZDDxCAs"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_hPQ6EvHZ_Q" width="320" youtube-src-id="_hPQ6EvHZ_Q"></iframe></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VpGx1VtZXJU" width="320" youtube-src-id="VpGx1VtZXJU"></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q8ypi5HPjLM" width="320" youtube-src-id="Q8ypi5HPjLM"></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OHB9smEweno" width="320" youtube-src-id="OHB9smEweno"></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Un0zTQxsJfo" width="320" youtube-src-id="Un0zTQxsJfo"></iframe><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ml_4FH1oPEc" width="320" youtube-src-id="Ml_4FH1oPEc"></iframe></div><br /><p>So that's what I was doing instead of writing. See yers termorrah!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtocCc1hlqpJUkGmT0XMXdrUcWb0p6k2jHt6WzfsWFmkmsHMGJ9AAQAGnBEVNgwu9guOFUFgruPhk-8LfMQyhxZOfbB_igMUGhZHn-xiDToczorCFuPX9FdtPOT2nYXpTDQAfR9GugnoY/s900/E_HudJwX0AE0KAk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="720" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtocCc1hlqpJUkGmT0XMXdrUcWb0p6k2jHt6WzfsWFmkmsHMGJ9AAQAGnBEVNgwu9guOFUFgruPhk-8LfMQyhxZOfbB_igMUGhZHn-xiDToczorCFuPX9FdtPOT2nYXpTDQAfR9GugnoY/w512-h640/E_HudJwX0AE0KAk.jpg" width="512" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-36881182480767818482021-09-16T20:36:00.010-07:002021-09-17T09:23:51.964-07:00NO! Just... no.<p>I don't feel like it today. I played Blade & Soul mostly and just don't feel like writing. Even this much is too much. I'll try again tomorrow.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4mk5XDDXZ744aIKL0dIWCPGZB4CiKWeYeN2wPH0Q6IZDmrCcnSBPlM2S_Ne4Gd6jtuQKY9ppbvoIVxJtKGIgcBRjdV_WNFTPgF0jEZlud1BtjQj4ZB7llKvR9dmqH6khgC3z_WDeB8Ic/s1585/tumblr_309a54bdbdfc73cfdbc04cff1a9c9e7b_1eba88e3_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1585" data-original-width="1246" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4mk5XDDXZ744aIKL0dIWCPGZB4CiKWeYeN2wPH0Q6IZDmrCcnSBPlM2S_Ne4Gd6jtuQKY9ppbvoIVxJtKGIgcBRjdV_WNFTPgF0jEZlud1BtjQj4ZB7llKvR9dmqH6khgC3z_WDeB8Ic/w504-h640/tumblr_309a54bdbdfc73cfdbc04cff1a9c9e7b_1eba88e3_1280.jpg" width="504" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-8947777223577640652021-09-15T12:43:00.057-07:002021-09-26T19:48:30.116-07:00GALA!<span style="font-family: georgia;">I don't know when the Met Gala (the annual fundraising effort for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute) became such a <i>thing</i>. I've been aware of it for years, having since youth been a fan of Fashion and reader of such thick fashion and lifestyle magazines as <i>Vogue</i> and <i>W</i> and <i>Vanity Fair</i>, and seen the annual event covered since it was started by <i>Vogue </i>editor Anna Wintour in 1996; the reporting was always featured in the front-of-issue "parties around town" segments, and showed fairly epic gowns on New York socialites and the more fashion-conscious Hollywood stars, exclusively covered by the fashion press; but sometime in the last three or five years it's become this huge media explosion of fabulous productions reported on by <i>all</i> the celebrity news organs as well as the major news agencies on top of the fashion press. I daresay it's a rival to the Oscars' red carpet in terms of grandeur and status in the Red Carpet hierarchy. I have a feeling it's something to do with Twitter, but it's more likely the Metropolitan Museum shifting its chairmanship and invitation list to boost awareness and donations. </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">At any rate, it's this big Thing now, with celebrities of every stripe and degree flocking down its red carpet (which isn't always red, this year it's ivory), many of them making huge production-number entrances with multiple looks layered on that they shed with the assistance of little flocks of tuxedoed handlers as they make their way down what appears to be a mile or so of press-lined concourse. And I've enjoyed it immensely, especially since the themes for the last two years really resonated with me aesthetically (2020: “About Time: Fashion and Duration”; 2019: “Camp: Notes on Fashion”) and featured a whole lot of beautiful men in outrageous clothes... the 2019 Camp theme turned everyone into drag queens for the night and I just adored it. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">So this year the Met Gala (which is usually done in May but was delayed this year by renovations to the Anna Wintour Costume Center wing, itself delayed by the Covid) started filling up my Twitter feed on Monday evening as the PR teams of my particular pet celebrities live-tweeted their appearances and were disseminated by multiple stan accounts, pushing the porn boys and cat videos out of the spotlight. Then all day Tuesday was just a flood of images, and me investigating the images, and wondering what in the world the theme was as I looked at the pictures without reading the accompanying text beyond the names of the persons pictured (most of whom I did not recognize), but enjoying many of the <i>looks </i>and <i>'fits</i> on display. And then I got to talking about it with my internet-buddy-pal Gabby as we perused the Vogue Online gallery together and dished the couture. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">A lot of my thoughts centered on the theme, which was American Independence, as the title of this year's Met Costume Institute show is called "In America: A Lexicon of Fashion"; so a lot of my filter is based on how each outfit reflected the theme (or didn't, as is the case in most of these). <i><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-and-off-the-avenue/the-met-gala-searches-for-america" target="_blank">The New Yorker</a></i> reported that despite the American Independence theme, or perhaps because of it, the majority of the outfits on the carpet were from European designers, which I find hilarious. And I really was left scratching my head trying to figure out what people were trying to say about the theme with their outfits, many of which were merely glamorous and didn't suggest anything at all. Maybe that <i>was </i>their statement, that America is all style and no content, I don't know.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">This was the outfit that got me wondering what the theme actually was, as I'd noticed a few red-white-and-blue things, some denim fantasias, and star-spangled gowns but didn't make the connection. Debbie Harry looks pretty damned fierce, here, in a Zac Posen creation and escorted by Zac Posen (who's wearing Tom Ford, which I find amusing somehow).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRw7cUSQtWdk1GFP10e7LwYaFlVvPPWTLlrLE95UI4d6YJsukshPP9hKXetN67gB0mR0EInZeQLFuiRdt5EPoLlnhWXROralbBXcHYLDKSietcgefQ4u4iqZ9JrC5j3jkmaRncm42qP5g/s960/Debbie+Harry+241949946_10157919845785806_5491568343827767232_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="642" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRw7cUSQtWdk1GFP10e7LwYaFlVvPPWTLlrLE95UI4d6YJsukshPP9hKXetN67gB0mR0EInZeQLFuiRdt5EPoLlnhWXROralbBXcHYLDKSietcgefQ4u4iqZ9JrC5j3jkmaRncm42qP5g/s320/Debbie+Harry+241949946_10157919845785806_5491568343827767232_n.jpg" width="214" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikQjld90BxaisjVUot8Z-Y_8a1OniAxoI-QkWr_TzaRlW3BJis-Pgat-ab5pYUGlKcTImTRcA5ob7zLiZVuM75bMsGD5nH63B8UD0moQcmw_nr4efTEu9K5eEFO_n5-r9VWHwCNl3N1yg/s2048/Zac+Posen+in+Tom+Ford+and+Debbie+Harry+in+Zac+Posen+GettyImages-1340133106.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikQjld90BxaisjVUot8Z-Y_8a1OniAxoI-QkWr_TzaRlW3BJis-Pgat-ab5pYUGlKcTImTRcA5ob7zLiZVuM75bMsGD5nH63B8UD0moQcmw_nr4efTEu9K5eEFO_n5-r9VWHwCNl3N1yg/s320/Zac+Posen+in+Tom+Ford+and+Debbie+Harry+in+Zac+Posen+GettyImages-1340133106.jpg" width="213" /> </a></span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I was thrown off the theme by an inordinate number of yellow outfits, some in rather difficult shades though others I suppose were meant to be gold (of which there was a whole lot, I guess people associate America with gold). Here we see American singer Normani (former X Factor contestant and member of Fifth Harmony) in Valentino, British actor and dreamboat Dominic Cooper in uncredited designers presumably from his own closet, Maria Sharapova in Gabriela Hearst, German-American actress/model Diane Kruger in Prabal Gurung, and Scottish actress Rose Leslie in Oscar de la Renta with her met-on-set-of-GoT husband Kit Harington in bespoke Saint Laurent... Rose's yellow hurts my eyes but it really complements her skin tone. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXk2JKQYM236SKNrVhCvChkR1N-mSfhpQsu8U-4q7agg4gGI_ryPRRRpROpzHkhmC_SPVJXHyfVuEjcfBDi3WAVT1Gu895FXKuQHOKXOPWTf-pxBvj7QgWHdO65aDQZVKixqll9S_313s/s2048/ShadesofYellow.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2040" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXk2JKQYM236SKNrVhCvChkR1N-mSfhpQsu8U-4q7agg4gGI_ryPRRRpROpzHkhmC_SPVJXHyfVuEjcfBDi3WAVT1Gu895FXKuQHOKXOPWTf-pxBvj7QgWHdO65aDQZVKixqll9S_313s/w398-h400/ShadesofYellow.png" width="398" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">A lot of the red-carpeters took advantage of the really wide concourse and dramatic stairs to wear things with massive trains. Here is singer Billie Eilish looking wildly uncharacteristic in Oscar de la Renta and Marilyn Monroe coiffure, as if trying to pull off Lady GaGa's Pygmalion routine from a couple years back (I later learned that she was paying homage to Hollywood in general and Marilyn Monroe in particular as American icons). She was one of the co-chairs of this year's gala... I don't know what a co-chair for the Met Gala <i>does</i>, exactly, but it's certainly a good reason to dress up nice.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ngriarRn9Imu7T4hzBR8WPyzAnEk1CCUS04ti_O0Knw9uvNbuj0CGo9xmLuH6w_uel1IxZ2mUIY_ZFikvbNWNiME5wOYbbTomL01wUYNknCb_RsqDqZeODkF2Oxzd8SrdkKEE9ccRiY/s1600/Billie+Eilish+in+Oscar+de+la+Renta+and+Cartier+jewelry+GettyImages-1340128876.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ngriarRn9Imu7T4hzBR8WPyzAnEk1CCUS04ti_O0Knw9uvNbuj0CGo9xmLuH6w_uel1IxZ2mUIY_ZFikvbNWNiME5wOYbbTomL01wUYNknCb_RsqDqZeODkF2Oxzd8SrdkKEE9ccRiY/s320/Billie+Eilish+in+Oscar+de+la+Renta+and+Cartier+jewelry+GettyImages-1340128876.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mah Timmeh! <i>Le swoon, le sigh, le melt</i>... I love this boy to the point of obsession though not to the point of seeing all his movies... or even <i>any </i>of his movies (I've only seen <i>Call Me By Your Name; </i>I am not averse to seeing his other films, I just haven't got around to it yet) though he is the wallpaper on my phone and was my desktop wallpaper until recently. Fresh from flogging <i>Dune </i>in Venice, he appeared at the Met Gala (of which he is another co-chair) and a bunch of other media in this very snappy turnout by Haider Ackermann featuring sweatpants and vintage Converse chucks with Cartier jewels.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJaj5lE7B-2Uvo26fiHPFytyu6Fiui-KcUpza1sR6FvwP6MAQNJviq4uPN2iq76fcEsPv7MoWXb4wP-dl7rrUi47iASQqQIb2Ib0Zvt2UpIA0ngmKclCPiCK6YDTgF4vlB6_4iI46r_Q/s2048/Timoth%25C3%25A9e+Chalamet+in+Haider+Ackermann%252C+Rick+Owens%252C+and+Converse+GettyImages-1340124992.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJaj5lE7B-2Uvo26fiHPFytyu6Fiui-KcUpza1sR6FvwP6MAQNJviq4uPN2iq76fcEsPv7MoWXb4wP-dl7rrUi47iASQqQIb2Ib0Zvt2UpIA0ngmKclCPiCK6YDTgF4vlB6_4iI46r_Q/s320/Timoth%25C3%25A9e+Chalamet+in+Haider+Ackermann%252C+Rick+Owens%252C+and+Converse+GettyImages-1340124992.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another of my obsessions, pop singer and actor Troye Sivan, whom I've been following since his Golden Age of YouTube vlogging days, and have immensely enjoyed his development from an adorably gawky but impossibly pretty boy into a deeply sexy and impossibly pretty young man. I only wish I liked his music better, it's just not my style... kind of vapid, to tell the truth. Which also goes for this outfit, it looks like something you'd get at Macy's during prom season, and though he <i>looks</i> fantastic, I was a little disappointed in this ALTU dress and Cartier necklace. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvdek1Q4OR-SHsze5CsTCDxhJ4BYF9lcbplRlTMhXt2qejQwqH25Q3EU69_0W59-kyZEzzMugqklOsEMx80RI0TnbMU58iL9h2KGAoBhpYDzFXiLPxCDe7VG9C37UQkegt_8q3JvuJoE/s2048/Troye+Sivan+in+Altu%252C+Rick+Owens+shoes%252C+and+Cartier+jewelry+GettyImages-1340130055.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvdek1Q4OR-SHsze5CsTCDxhJ4BYF9lcbplRlTMhXt2qejQwqH25Q3EU69_0W59-kyZEzzMugqklOsEMx80RI0TnbMU58iL9h2KGAoBhpYDzFXiLPxCDe7VG9C37UQkegt_8q3JvuJoE/s320/Troye+Sivan+in+Altu%252C+Rick+Owens+shoes%252C+and+Cartier+jewelry+GettyImages-1340130055.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now this one made a real statement and was absolutely breathtaking. I don't know if that image of cotton fields (Danny Lyon "The Cotton Pickers, Texas" 1968) is part of the Met installation or if the photo was done beforehand to show the outfit's inspiration and tribute, but this is Broadway and <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9827854/" target="_blank">Hollywood</a> </i>actor Jeremy Pope in a gorgeous and politically charged ensemble by Australian designer Dion Lee with a cotton-sack train by James Flemons and cotton-boll boutonniere by Denim Tears. The tied-off pants legs are kind of off-putting but are true to the inspiration of the outfit.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBbZaBfEbS369ytjNZI6qGJrubq9e7055VK404lrTa32hatKnTucZaH_EBcFRpqvWqyuEsPED7LgCp-4Vn-GIvPVcPd6-SVxj1FI2lcyCVBakrlWLc3ZRIzu8ghIqtf3A41qjsIH9H0TQ/s2048/JeremyPopeMetGalaE_M_N5BXEAYQ84j.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1364" data-original-width="2048" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBbZaBfEbS369ytjNZI6qGJrubq9e7055VK404lrTa32hatKnTucZaH_EBcFRpqvWqyuEsPED7LgCp-4Vn-GIvPVcPd6-SVxj1FI2lcyCVBakrlWLc3ZRIzu8ghIqtf3A41qjsIH9H0TQ/s320/JeremyPopeMetGalaE_M_N5BXEAYQ84j.jpg" width="320" /> </a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzWEbob7gFONpBs57Cg3GIgUQbfP5qO57pNJS1-_Qt6xSaVcqFjb47tD2bWM3uuwM_TTW2PpSdf1DctZXAvPURRCJxm5Awc6L-O-bHWzr1WVsupVQwTUl6biRRbrfosW9_hAeK6bPY8aA/s1024/Jeremy%252BPope%252B2021%252BMet%252BGala%252BCelebrating%252BAmerica%252BSc--heRTFDGx.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="795" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzWEbob7gFONpBs57Cg3GIgUQbfP5qO57pNJS1-_Qt6xSaVcqFjb47tD2bWM3uuwM_TTW2PpSdf1DctZXAvPURRCJxm5Awc6L-O-bHWzr1WVsupVQwTUl6biRRbrfosW9_hAeK6bPY8aA/s320/Jeremy%252BPope%252B2021%252BMet%252BGala%252BCelebrating%252BAmerica%252BSc--heRTFDGx.jpg" width="248" /></a></span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lil Nas-X was one of the few who did the full three-layer entrance production, which was a lot more popular last year and the year before that. No idea what it has to do with American Independence, but it's cute, from Versace, and suits him very well. Another one where I wish I liked his music better, but hip-hop is not really my jam.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfJFqgPjp0hpabQhhlGJljx2k1jFtr3Qo87K4B1TQBbFzDOzZ9kkETIBhwPYzs_NxEzQKBNDaO0CylhyphenhyphenCSsreEeT-b_lWci5KanTxSz1IgxXD532Ve8-kTNzNQvtqhiwbpNcfVjQQDwMA/s2048/LilNasXinVersace.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1366" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfJFqgPjp0hpabQhhlGJljx2k1jFtr3Qo87K4B1TQBbFzDOzZ9kkETIBhwPYzs_NxEzQKBNDaO0CylhyphenhyphenCSsreEeT-b_lWci5KanTxSz1IgxXD532Ve8-kTNzNQvtqhiwbpNcfVjQQDwMA/s320/LilNasXinVersace.png" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I about choked on my own drool at this shot of Shawn Mendes in uncredited designers (later found out it was Michael Kors), one of the most beautiful boys on the pop charts, and I even <i>almost </i>like his music. It has <i>some </i>texture, anyway. What his lady-friend is got up as, I don't know, but I didn't really see her in the picture at first (<i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10155932/" target="_blank">Cinderella</a> </i>actress Camila Cabello in Michael Kors).</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX08h_61ZVmrbRqSJuXfoRnS3xIHpHJr4PKlwtJjA0Scn-5Rcy7G-nQ_Yei9jOvqp_qs4XL2SXH-riqwcQ_Po8LvZ34d9eTQeqdav3IF7696mbUXWmoMV9ZpJPHaoqtL53vxUKLAwmQAw/s2048/Shawn+Mendes+and+Camila+Cabello+in+Michael+Kors+Collection+and+Jimmy+Choo+shoes+GettyImages-1340145436.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX08h_61ZVmrbRqSJuXfoRnS3xIHpHJr4PKlwtJjA0Scn-5Rcy7G-nQ_Yei9jOvqp_qs4XL2SXH-riqwcQ_Po8LvZ34d9eTQeqdav3IF7696mbUXWmoMV9ZpJPHaoqtL53vxUKLAwmQAw/s320/Shawn+Mendes+and+Camila+Cabello+in+Michael+Kors+Collection+and+Jimmy+Choo+shoes+GettyImages-1340145436.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Comedian Pete Davidson in Thom Browne... he's just adorable. And on a side note, there were a <i>lot </i>of black-and-white ensembles on this carpet. I'm curious how that relates to American Independence, but whatever the rationale, I like it. </span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_GEySlmBsz4YRoFwqaVFg6bw_L6kiVPqStKCbqe1yMQ-TxH6Awy1ewCAj3ihkgiKtUAx7RHWhXUVmuR9XSo3992fTZS3NP1MEzDLThVf8upcaiN1uAf8bOytTGJkBt7m-xrhog7W8rp0/s2048/Pete+Davidson+in+Thom+Browne+and+Silhouette+eyewear+GettyImages-1340139859.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_GEySlmBsz4YRoFwqaVFg6bw_L6kiVPqStKCbqe1yMQ-TxH6Awy1ewCAj3ihkgiKtUAx7RHWhXUVmuR9XSo3992fTZS3NP1MEzDLThVf8upcaiN1uAf8bOytTGJkBt7m-xrhog7W8rp0/s320/Pete+Davidson+in+Thom+Browne+and+Silhouette+eyewear+GettyImages-1340139859.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Comedian Dan Levy looking very uncomfortable in a weird but somehow attractive outfit by Loewe.</span></div></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLHfW9aXO851NeIDUXA4JvgF71PxNpctnvN_jYbrV5Ud0k2JwYcn2WH763fJXGgc0oW9D0UtKKDI9syESZPaCNr2KzQq915fW7yi8qGcZL15lzlOI4BLcVoj1P8abRU6KH5u2-bFB51ak/s2048/Dan+Levy+in+Loewe+and+Cartier+jewelry+GettyImages-1340126077.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLHfW9aXO851NeIDUXA4JvgF71PxNpctnvN_jYbrV5Ud0k2JwYcn2WH763fJXGgc0oW9D0UtKKDI9syESZPaCNr2KzQq915fW7yi8qGcZL15lzlOI4BLcVoj1P8abRU6KH5u2-bFB51ak/s320/Dan+Levy+in+Loewe+and+Cartier+jewelry+GettyImages-1340126077.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like many of the people in this list, I have never seen or heard of this guy before, but he's cute and I like his outfit (Colombian singer-songwriter heartthrob Maluma in Versace).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsUUj6tVH0CaYMgJQmBBWdGG3KaZfgyW0wgi6iFM8Nx-QwnNo15F-G8OrrayphhhfdXiKjjd8D8OuTCV6wiXEbuGY08uFgyvqWyUwQNYzIXtCO1u5H46OVW3THZz_D_wpTNW904Wxr62o/s2048/Maluma+in+Versace+and+Maria+Tash+jewelry+GettyImages-1340138525.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsUUj6tVH0CaYMgJQmBBWdGG3KaZfgyW0wgi6iFM8Nx-QwnNo15F-G8OrrayphhhfdXiKjjd8D8OuTCV6wiXEbuGY08uFgyvqWyUwQNYzIXtCO1u5H46OVW3THZz_D_wpTNW904Wxr62o/s320/Maluma+in+Versace+and+Maria+Tash+jewelry+GettyImages-1340138525.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Elliot Page looks thirty years younger than Ellen did, and utterly adorable. Balenciaga suit, green rose a tribute to Oscar Wilde.</span></div></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaJ2TOoVlU2JRa9pG2LDjZG0C7LAd_cuPlLCpCP2_P9-GgVLeJKqzipMnvTIN2KkC8q-SAA_c2qY9T-S6TM5lXipDDKIw-U4sxOYEce352oL236d_YAAbGWrICaZI1FJWgEvVyhDWXQ7w/s2048/Elliot+Page+GettyImages-1340133085.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaJ2TOoVlU2JRa9pG2LDjZG0C7LAd_cuPlLCpCP2_P9-GgVLeJKqzipMnvTIN2KkC8q-SAA_c2qY9T-S6TM5lXipDDKIw-U4sxOYEce352oL236d_YAAbGWrICaZI1FJWgEvVyhDWXQ7w/s320/Elliot+Page+GettyImages-1340133085.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now a lot of the gowns I saw as I scrolled through the <a href="https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/met-gala-2021-red-carpet-live-celebrity-fashion" target="_blank"><i>Vogue </i>online gallery</a> just made me gasp and say "absolutely <i>majestic</i>!" and so I bundled them all together. Here we have famous person Kendall Jenner in Givenchy, actress Emily Blunt in Miu Miu, fashion models Taylor Hill in Versace and Anok Yai in Oscar de la Renta, <i>Pose </i>actress Mj Rodriguez in Thom Browne, and David Bowie's widow and legendary fashion model Iman in Dolce & Gabanna by Harris Reed.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXwML94FFXNac1Ep0vSFkNFr9DpcaIKrGZPLHmmkrtS_7XygrFVzgTaoCdGq7f3730inWqu9XANgTUDB0H-CkPbO81aBFovwpbFZ1Q3euKUTYfN_rQo0iY0KB7oHj21Y6mmi4-n68CHdg/s2048/Kendall+Jenner+in+Givenchy+GettyImages-1340145870.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXwML94FFXNac1Ep0vSFkNFr9DpcaIKrGZPLHmmkrtS_7XygrFVzgTaoCdGq7f3730inWqu9XANgTUDB0H-CkPbO81aBFovwpbFZ1Q3euKUTYfN_rQo0iY0KB7oHj21Y6mmi4-n68CHdg/s320/Kendall+Jenner+in+Givenchy+GettyImages-1340145870.jpg" width="213" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq_17P8p7_1Sev2NyMbI7ZCxKEyfdfA-nLvoyhqAFwDQmA42GKi6xiuTda3xYOFBMSJcedu9X7cUptAN0S2Ahc7WBGKQV4hlafgFlm643a9Ec9bh8ZIYEUldcajNqalM7kt1p-EfWrk_U/s2048/Emily+Blunt+GettyImages-1340140366.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq_17P8p7_1Sev2NyMbI7ZCxKEyfdfA-nLvoyhqAFwDQmA42GKi6xiuTda3xYOFBMSJcedu9X7cUptAN0S2Ahc7WBGKQV4hlafgFlm643a9Ec9bh8ZIYEUldcajNqalM7kt1p-EfWrk_U/s320/Emily+Blunt+GettyImages-1340140366.jpg" width="213" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6d8RJh0uPjvs8key_eysJAvHD7KBfZgQkEX4PVgIpkQ3mMokkPSbo-vC8mGVzRHWa-W1OUki61iRY7AKFu6L8o2NxRx5PEhsCxcgsW7tIqi_mStPlJJWIKUqrnGMrY60aMGwZuT2OlWk/s2048/Taylor+Hill+in+Versace+GettyImages-1340141251.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6d8RJh0uPjvs8key_eysJAvHD7KBfZgQkEX4PVgIpkQ3mMokkPSbo-vC8mGVzRHWa-W1OUki61iRY7AKFu6L8o2NxRx5PEhsCxcgsW7tIqi_mStPlJJWIKUqrnGMrY60aMGwZuT2OlWk/s320/Taylor+Hill+in+Versace+GettyImages-1340141251.jpg" width="213" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRS88C06Fqm-cHtJ08eEhE8suX0yKn9pFJviYi4qP_9rUOXqms6IYjeIc9o6qB_LPEtFP0ZfwFAreLIjCdfWUJ88ayqibxYusr75Ii_Gm_3PLAVRk5Ffnwes_pgrFI2a1_cmpxZXqnGuE/s2048/Anok+Yai+in+Oscar+de+la+Renta+GettyImages-1340137079.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRS88C06Fqm-cHtJ08eEhE8suX0yKn9pFJviYi4qP_9rUOXqms6IYjeIc9o6qB_LPEtFP0ZfwFAreLIjCdfWUJ88ayqibxYusr75Ii_Gm_3PLAVRk5Ffnwes_pgrFI2a1_cmpxZXqnGuE/s320/Anok+Yai+in+Oscar+de+la+Renta+GettyImages-1340137079.jpg" width="213" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimHh3vK22Y77UtT5gozyvQKePs1JRz_3Piig6YER3KudIZ92qEvgP6EEe8oU6U7xJivh7A_DR2UXG1g_MS9x0L99xbGK7wZm_w3JywRZNYopZSgajrkpE33JsNOtn6lSNe3hBxEu19xgk/s2048/Mj+Rodriguez+in+Thom+Browne+GettyImages-1340133827.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1366" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimHh3vK22Y77UtT5gozyvQKePs1JRz_3Piig6YER3KudIZ92qEvgP6EEe8oU6U7xJivh7A_DR2UXG1g_MS9x0L99xbGK7wZm_w3JywRZNYopZSgajrkpE33JsNOtn6lSNe3hBxEu19xgk/s320/Mj+Rodriguez+in+Thom+Browne+GettyImages-1340133827.jpg" width="213" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiILLavu21skCyIM-3kwquuzGvV9XFkz9ebF_H-hnj5TlhUbPZmQ3wxTHabF6zlJs4dlZmjAjTkCj8Jl14eEdWifcitrAd1TnIF6gPIVqHx_pdy0L4KnPEJzUpIsy3G0hgBPeqmzXg_NAQ/s2048/Iman+in+Dolce%2526Gabbana+x+Harris+Reed+GettyImages-1340132760.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiILLavu21skCyIM-3kwquuzGvV9XFkz9ebF_H-hnj5TlhUbPZmQ3wxTHabF6zlJs4dlZmjAjTkCj8Jl14eEdWifcitrAd1TnIF6gPIVqHx_pdy0L4KnPEJzUpIsy3G0hgBPeqmzXg_NAQ/s320/Iman+in+Dolce%2526Gabbana+x+Harris+Reed+GettyImages-1340132760.jpg" width="236" /></a></span></div></div><div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Also of note were some pretty spectacular plus-size gowns on the carpet: Dutch makeup artist and vlogger Nikkie de Jager in Edwin Oudshoorn gown paying tribute to Stonewall icon Marsha P Johnson; fashion model Paloma Elesser in Zac Posen, and Euphoria actress Barbie Ferreira in Jonathan Simkhai.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKbFycr6ce8Xx_dquiLKyCONQmNKF3r5D8Tk_5BnIXERdrwKs9bqDmMyrmJGbdyNEt3Yu5w_aeuOHEeKx6tRbNUbUJTjHvGcWhJypD5BOe8gw2HOQevv1PQ2OBPP-xCEt0reePlRRWHjQ/s2048/Nikkie+de+Jager+GettyImages-1340135288.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKbFycr6ce8Xx_dquiLKyCONQmNKF3r5D8Tk_5BnIXERdrwKs9bqDmMyrmJGbdyNEt3Yu5w_aeuOHEeKx6tRbNUbUJTjHvGcWhJypD5BOe8gw2HOQevv1PQ2OBPP-xCEt0reePlRRWHjQ/s320/Nikkie+de+Jager+GettyImages-1340135288.jpg" width="213" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio5BEBq921aTC5R2tNHdwFkJamOlsSx88wy0RlLKbejFUJAPpse1ZjMNpyU09ZS8zsFiwCiyoSLFbAEv3PSqmfSXF9Sg_BXNMvF3vWp4E6OPnZhcM17ffmxzxAj2YLThu9v7TtZ9quxtc/s2048/Paloma+Elsesser+in+Zac+Posen+GettyImages-1340154068.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio5BEBq921aTC5R2tNHdwFkJamOlsSx88wy0RlLKbejFUJAPpse1ZjMNpyU09ZS8zsFiwCiyoSLFbAEv3PSqmfSXF9Sg_BXNMvF3vWp4E6OPnZhcM17ffmxzxAj2YLThu9v7TtZ9quxtc/s320/Paloma+Elsesser+in+Zac+Posen+GettyImages-1340154068.jpg" width="213" /></a><span style="text-align: center;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHoGxFmZP6j25LFYkytWDNlNfc2ijQl6ZNco7bjcsbPtzwL8RL-SmC7wzthsMjHPAilOF5M2FJF_8pRACqo4aRrYnuV3FhYNO0iCXalqd4sGvdFQEa1hnKL0_gtKv340x0KtJuL7jNjhU/s2048/Barbie+Ferreira+in+Jonathan+Simkhai+GettyImages-1340127859.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1453" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHoGxFmZP6j25LFYkytWDNlNfc2ijQl6ZNco7bjcsbPtzwL8RL-SmC7wzthsMjHPAilOF5M2FJF_8pRACqo4aRrYnuV3FhYNO0iCXalqd4sGvdFQEa1hnKL0_gtKv340x0KtJuL7jNjhU/s320/Barbie+Ferreira+in+Jonathan+Simkhai+GettyImages-1340127859.jpg" width="227" /></a></span></div></div><div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">... as well as some not-very-spectacular ones. I don't know what the designer was trying to achieve here with the sculpted hips and painfully squashed bosom, but I don't like it. Fashion model Precious Lee in Area.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC-0jRs2mQLAllhUyLEuv1xHjPBzX_I_IuLkeHYaaB85m1d1VpsQcUowklOu3Sbfqo6k8NtO5SwriLZ9yyP7Wbf7G1XDhRaCZ-7yDNhGyZmfTKocQYJ8E55xpsNWN35x0PxhqTs8YGZXs/s2048/Precious+Lee+in+Area+GettyImages-1340137376.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC-0jRs2mQLAllhUyLEuv1xHjPBzX_I_IuLkeHYaaB85m1d1VpsQcUowklOu3Sbfqo6k8NtO5SwriLZ9yyP7Wbf7G1XDhRaCZ-7yDNhGyZmfTKocQYJ8E55xpsNWN35x0PxhqTs8YGZXs/s320/Precious+Lee+in+Area+GettyImages-1340137376.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some more things I didn't like...Claire Danes in a Prabal Gurung that looks like she's wearing a tablecloth. It just doesn't look well-made, it doesn't hang nicely, and the fabric looks cheap though it probably cost hundreds a yard. </span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ocb_emOKQaYTh11tgf6jY7vcFnAS1n5dhfTO3wLnf_HpxtF1DIoAUIMGLv1QZChFcBaNYnnO4pQnOyMuEKfRsyj8o6xF5PwIPwHuGruzR6dX37YFbkuCMPcmtn4chIq8d90n83zfegM/s2048/Claire+Danes+in+Prabal+Gurung+GettyImages-1340138913.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ocb_emOKQaYTh11tgf6jY7vcFnAS1n5dhfTO3wLnf_HpxtF1DIoAUIMGLv1QZChFcBaNYnnO4pQnOyMuEKfRsyj8o6xF5PwIPwHuGruzR6dX37YFbkuCMPcmtn4chIq8d90n83zfegM/s320/Claire+Danes+in+Prabal+Gurung+GettyImages-1340138913.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gillian Anderson is one of my favorite actresses, one of the most beautiful women on the planet, but this dress from Chloé bothers me. The cutouts on the side, or is it a sort of halter-back effect, are really poorly fitted, and the proportions make her look short and weirdly big-headed.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ypgfdUXgm2S2ywJTFjHaEYUm1vvhyBdCNrFKrymFc_YbfL7mrjjnHnrZvKXp2jM9Np6PHP5z8Xf3FrctldfoInhc1xS1n4E3aXDX8UpIPnu9i4Ih5cN06XUd_c91O2uEGrrggmqBZ8Q/s2048/Gillian+Anderson+in+Chlo%25C3%25A9+GettyImages-1340138665.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ypgfdUXgm2S2ywJTFjHaEYUm1vvhyBdCNrFKrymFc_YbfL7mrjjnHnrZvKXp2jM9Np6PHP5z8Xf3FrctldfoInhc1xS1n4E3aXDX8UpIPnu9i4Ih5cN06XUd_c91O2uEGrrggmqBZ8Q/s320/Gillian+Anderson+in+Chlo%25C3%25A9+GettyImages-1340138665.jpg" width="213" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maisie Williams in Reuben Selby looks like a squashed Christina Ricci. There's nothing wrong with being short, but dresses that make you <i>look </i>shorter than you are, and stumpy to boot, ought to be avoided. Again with a sculpted peplum, which really doesn't look good on anyone, along with the chunky heels and that train like the tongue of an old sneaker... what's even going on here?</span></div></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhafBs4X2alj5UtmoSFSXeV__OUdFC8llkVby_hnXRgqSS2KDWHzsMH-EHhgkwD6KskEsl5TNgT0rur9ec1rX9XPq5kfr98Rc9TdvyddL18fEa81mMOK4P2uepz4z50k6owCv-aKVXwzkM/s1600/Maisie+Williams+in+Reuben+Selby+and+Cartier+jewelry+GettyImages-1340127044.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhafBs4X2alj5UtmoSFSXeV__OUdFC8llkVby_hnXRgqSS2KDWHzsMH-EHhgkwD6KskEsl5TNgT0rur9ec1rX9XPq5kfr98Rc9TdvyddL18fEa81mMOK4P2uepz4z50k6owCv-aKVXwzkM/s320/Maisie+Williams+in+Reuben+Selby+and+Cartier+jewelry+GettyImages-1340127044.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">This dress actually offends me, to the point of nausea. It's kind of clever, the juxtaposition of flour-sack cotton and black latex in this sort of Holly Hobby farmgirl fantasy is interesting, but in execution it just looks droopy and uncomfortable. English actress Rebecca Hall looks so sad wearing this Batsheva gown.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2gwC3S3a_-wYQn0BDexZ_egSkcv5l_ssNOfPbYw3-wnm0yYbz0I2Zdyqf9o4v-E0jWzEANjSmwIyFsA0drJYsqAKizmwRYxoFD1gOhe_7xGIFFBzOJCZntOzKUmqgY7OmpXJhNvOD7eU/s2048/Rebecca+Hall+in+Batsheva+and+Monique+P%25C3%25A9an+jewelry+GettyImages-1340128034.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1478" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2gwC3S3a_-wYQn0BDexZ_egSkcv5l_ssNOfPbYw3-wnm0yYbz0I2Zdyqf9o4v-E0jWzEANjSmwIyFsA0drJYsqAKizmwRYxoFD1gOhe_7xGIFFBzOJCZntOzKUmqgY7OmpXJhNvOD7eU/s320/Rebecca+Hall+in+Batsheva+and+Monique+P%25C3%25A9an+jewelry+GettyImages-1340128034.jpg" width="231" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here are some weird but oddly appealing looks that I didn't like at first but grew on me after I really looked at them. Fashion journalist Amy Fine Collins in Thom Browne (but is that a French flag sticker on her deltoid? Why?), German singer Kim Petras in Collina Strada, New Zealand musician Lorde in Bode (it would probably look better with a higher, pointier shoe), Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong'o in an all-too-American denim fantasia from Versace, and <i>Bring It On</i> actress Gabrielle Union in Iris van Herpen (aside from the <i>Little Mermaid</i> feel to this dress, I am impressed by how long it must've taken to glue all those little plastic circles together).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9BmW2PWHmxleZ_e_gFzK7bxGWlX8ovGfUzgUMkKuxXCWQm-Qi5wN8yyicrBke4AqAy1OvpvQAjYAIJqZ1cbogMyh1UwO6bEq_bPIZ5mlOs8Zwj3Tz93FIBRomXPjvvziVBainemcaZWw/s2048/Amy+Fine+Collins+in+Thom+Browne+GettyImages-1340131151.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9BmW2PWHmxleZ_e_gFzK7bxGWlX8ovGfUzgUMkKuxXCWQm-Qi5wN8yyicrBke4AqAy1OvpvQAjYAIJqZ1cbogMyh1UwO6bEq_bPIZ5mlOs8Zwj3Tz93FIBRomXPjvvziVBainemcaZWw/s320/Amy+Fine+Collins+in+Thom+Browne+GettyImages-1340131151.jpg" width="213" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH5X8e4aCvt96PbS7BivzrAcquMmzvxw9QjC0jz0rT66yKgXJXKBIE1dJ-3MRbphNAxI1ttzl81lKtfcOzcjng52Yl4OHtLB5KUVshdX4mr2XBw8cDmq3ZbQU7eRAf7AmoaqIHejicVZg/s2048/Kim+Petras+in+Collina+Strada+GettyImages-1340133857.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH5X8e4aCvt96PbS7BivzrAcquMmzvxw9QjC0jz0rT66yKgXJXKBIE1dJ-3MRbphNAxI1ttzl81lKtfcOzcjng52Yl4OHtLB5KUVshdX4mr2XBw8cDmq3ZbQU7eRAf7AmoaqIHejicVZg/s320/Kim+Petras+in+Collina+Strada+GettyImages-1340133857.jpg" width="213" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCwb-rAvkZe0GMseF4-ZEL5Rtojjsb7M_ZJ9RYO2PfmkHV9swsxB6gb-_Zud3q9vN3VssW5l5KK7LPV4OkwiV8CvErWM4UhSrhxm12DZRTcvDmvdqIHWvTZMCRfez9NLtdkRzeTa6OjoM/s2048/Lorde+in+Bode+GettyImages-1340138470.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1366" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCwb-rAvkZe0GMseF4-ZEL5Rtojjsb7M_ZJ9RYO2PfmkHV9swsxB6gb-_Zud3q9vN3VssW5l5KK7LPV4OkwiV8CvErWM4UhSrhxm12DZRTcvDmvdqIHWvTZMCRfez9NLtdkRzeTa6OjoM/s320/Lorde+in+Bode+GettyImages-1340138470.jpg" width="213" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPriyVVOcblzGDMEvkpTL1xJ9gTyAWHeP_aad-m5lZ0wOd7QmZ6QO08rdLlOknMlGY8qYnd6PSWonwo8ivxheMJas7BniFOwwU4UotPoWWU8LHuapWXjHtAE1vKUosnhttX4CAJJzHNKo/s2048/Lupita+Nyong%2527o+in+Versace+GettyImages-1340142823.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPriyVVOcblzGDMEvkpTL1xJ9gTyAWHeP_aad-m5lZ0wOd7QmZ6QO08rdLlOknMlGY8qYnd6PSWonwo8ivxheMJas7BniFOwwU4UotPoWWU8LHuapWXjHtAE1vKUosnhttX4CAJJzHNKo/s320/Lupita+Nyong%2527o+in+Versace+GettyImages-1340142823.jpg" width="213" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6z3Rx92pg1rNu0gwOe-RmjH5DCvSGID-TymoCPVf0z4WJvtKlKSakMvltWDyGR_vRTVDP9lSGxtnglUx13PTFqGBnb50aUXLY3xX3ezroinuzlnJ5UmCMnavb5nZBCnJvcYhvEiTIL8U/s2048/abrielle+Union+in+Iris+van+Herpen+and+Jimmy+Choo+shoesGettyImages-1340141311.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6z3Rx92pg1rNu0gwOe-RmjH5DCvSGID-TymoCPVf0z4WJvtKlKSakMvltWDyGR_vRTVDP9lSGxtnglUx13PTFqGBnb50aUXLY3xX3ezroinuzlnJ5UmCMnavb5nZBCnJvcYhvEiTIL8U/s320/abrielle+Union+in+Iris+van+Herpen+and+Jimmy+Choo+shoesGettyImages-1340141311.jpg" width="213" /></a></span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Anyway, that's a lot to chew on for now. Go check out <a href="https://www.vogue.com/tag/event/met-gala" target="_blank">the other galleries</a> of images, or throw #MetGala2021 into your Twitter, and see what I missed or skipped because I got tired (or check out this kid on YouTube who displays questionable aesthetic sense but has a lot of information about the individual looks <a href="https://youtu.be/ZMrgtotgThk" target="_blank">Haute le Mode</a>).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">This post counts as two, since I didn't write yesterday like I intended but spent a lot of time thinking about writing this article, and a lot of today writing it and looking up who all these people are and what they're wearing when it wasn't listed. So until tomorrow...<br /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>À bientôt</i>!</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG17fsgWnaNXYbx5NuvY2Vav4kN7epWCJ6dhLisGt1lyfvaf0op2U-x8JJ54-aXHkUcbMu72ejcqy525J-GLxffZ0yIAIkXBbJnhsOtmaP053E41Ri5THKEcZkgtgPq-ezqIT4_eLAJTI/s1080/E_JJap3VgAQJWgY.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="803" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG17fsgWnaNXYbx5NuvY2Vav4kN7epWCJ6dhLisGt1lyfvaf0op2U-x8JJ54-aXHkUcbMu72ejcqy525J-GLxffZ0yIAIkXBbJnhsOtmaP053E41Ri5THKEcZkgtgPq-ezqIT4_eLAJTI/w476-h640/E_JJap3VgAQJWgY.jpg" width="476" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div><br /></div>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-50045371800209186382021-09-13T14:00:00.006-07:002021-09-15T17:56:42.609-07:00Hakuna Ma Freakin' Tata!<span style="font-family: georgia;">The phrase "hakuna matata" was in my crossword puzzle (I have a big book of NYT Sunday crosswords in the bathroom and go through maybe a third of a puzzle a day, it takes me so long to get anything accomplished on the toilet anymore, and I tend to hang out for a while working on the puzzle since I have nothing more important to do with my life); and as soon as I solved it, the song from the Disney movie was in my head... or at least the parts of it I know, which are basically the title and a couple of other phrases. </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Hakuna matata, what a wonderful phrase... hakuna matata, something something heys! It's a problem-free... philosophy... hakuna matata! </i>(repeat) </span></div></blockquote><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's like "A Small World" as far as earworms go, but not nearly as annoying. In fact I find I don't mind getting it stuck in my head — which is good, since it gets stuck in my head any time I see the phrase, and I see it a lot more often than one would imagine. Like when I saw the tweet on Facebook pointing out that "Timon and Pumbaa made up the entire Hakuna Matata song just to get Simba to eat bugs instead of them," and the song was in my head for a couple of hours. So, in the interest of seeing if there's anything to be gained from this unfortunate mental tic, let's see if the lyrics give us any deeper meaning:<br /><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase<br />Hakuna Matata! Ain't no passing craze<br />It means no worries for the rest of your days<br />It's our problem-free philosophy<br />Hakuna Matata!</i><br /><br />Timon: <i>Why, when he was a young warthog</i><br />Pumbaa: <i>When I was a young wart-hoooog!</i><br />Timon: <i>Very nice!</i><br />Pumbaa:<i> Thanks!</i><br />Timon: <i>He found his aroma lacked a certain appeal, <br /> He could clear the Savannah after every meal</i><br />Pumbaa: <i>I'm a sensitive soul, though I seem thick-skinned, <br /> And it hurt that my friends never stood downwind<br /> And oh, the shame</i><br />Timon: <i>He was ashamed!</i><br />Pumbaa: <i>Thought of changin' my name</i><br />Timon: <i>Oh, what's in a name?</i><br />Pumbaa: <i>And I got downhearted</i><br />Timon: <i>How did you feel?</i><br />Pumbaa: <i>Every time that I-</i><br />Timon: <i>Pumbaa! Not in front of the kids!</i><br />Pumbaa: <i>Oh... sorry</i><br /><br /><i>Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase<br />Hakuna Matata! Ain't no passing craze<br />It means no worries for the rest of your days<br />Yeah, sing it, kid!<br />It's our problem-free philosophy<br />Hakuna Matata!</i></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not real deep. And it doesn't actually say how "Hakuna Matata" (which is Swahili for "no worries," as I'm sure you know) relates to Pumbaa's narrative vignette. Nor does it seem to have anything to do with Simba's non-predatory diet. But it's a good way to live, not worrying. Worry doesn't do much for anyone, and for me it tends to ramp up my anxiety by giving it something tangible to work with, so it's just best avoided.</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now that we've got that cleared up, have a lovely day and I'll talk to you again tomorrow.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuLmPybL0WdwqreQfjptM0XwD49sODIWO1Lwx5pa-28dPnNcOxLR8y3fEvIdNeH5E6pcuFB6dYT6yIejUXE77uUtqv8pOWyJp2X-AV0jqFfk9x7E2F5PpVEphEBRid8jcs9e1eXGRAr2Q/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuLmPybL0WdwqreQfjptM0XwD49sODIWO1Lwx5pa-28dPnNcOxLR8y3fEvIdNeH5E6pcuFB6dYT6yIejUXE77uUtqv8pOWyJp2X-AV0jqFfk9x7E2F5PpVEphEBRid8jcs9e1eXGRAr2Q/w427-h640/image.png" width="427" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><br /></div>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-7287347487502045382021-09-12T14:12:00.021-07:002021-09-15T17:56:14.231-07:00Oh, hi. Yeah. Uh...<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So this is awkward, trying to get back in touch after nine months of silent withdrawal. But I realized when speaking to someone about the diverse benefits of Blogger <i>versus </i>LiveJournal (about which I couldn't really speak because I've never used LiveJournal) that I've had this blog for nearly twenty years. That's a long old time, isn't it? And I have neglected it terribly for the last ten years, at least, half its life languishing in sporadic updates and NaNoWriMo attempts. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So I am inspired to do something about it — and, since September is my time for starting new things, engrained by eighteen years of new fall semesters, I am setting myself the task of writing something here every day; it doesn't have to be a grand essay, though it can be, or it can be a noveling idea, or a random observation, or song lyrics, or a movie review, or just a "hey I don't feel like writing today" with a hottie off Twitter for punctuation. A writer writes, and I haven't been writing daily like I should (and want to), so that's going to change as of this September day.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Let's see how I do.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHitDaYJrlNUQjSRwd0Hl7CNRlcl8YHuDjRcUQpg6sSvFGl6pWSf2b4gvO_5HVR2bptK1apY7t3TbIcuURs0JokVc3_WT_jUhScPa92EynQiUQpdiH6NKgw-InFZYwpUXZ7wCPx1aHQQs/s1600/E_LsHGdXIAgi8B1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1280" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHitDaYJrlNUQjSRwd0Hl7CNRlcl8YHuDjRcUQpg6sSvFGl6pWSf2b4gvO_5HVR2bptK1apY7t3TbIcuURs0JokVc3_WT_jUhScPa92EynQiUQpdiH6NKgw-InFZYwpUXZ7wCPx1aHQQs/w512-h640/E_LsHGdXIAgi8B1.jpg" width="512" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-38634862959815843632020-11-27T09:37:00.002-08:002020-12-22T21:07:22.993-08:00General UpdateLife is continuing fair. I'm still on my diet and it's still working, more or less--my blood-sugar is down to 113 average over the last seven days, my weight is finally under the 300 mark; but I'm impatient with the time it's taken to lose a meager 25 pounds and 50 or 60 mg/dL... I feel like it should be more, as hard as I've been working at it. I'm getting fairly regularly exercise, now, at least, Caroline and I walk up to Safeway every other day, a little over a mile and a half, and it's getting easier each time. The depression is still heavy on my heart and mind, I've added an extra antidepressant per my doc but it hasn't shown any results yet. And the NaNoWriMo is a bust, I've given up at about six thousand words. I'm going to keep working on that novel, though, I'm interested in it, I just can't write a lot at once these days. I'm still trying to find a new method that works with my current energy levels. So that's me in a chunky nutshell. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRhE-MURIgy9_11GJZLqTDdImq_oiQQkTFnD7ak0wFs8PmImQ5flLarSdMXSLnn91FdN842lFY_SiEictnQJODg1Pm7T0BS4ofGixVYTSne1GbA3lpLaO12N2zwFHD86jYaSDeJFif3W8/s1125/tumblr_0a15ffae886f5c61145e7e45fe94e7e1_d9efa037_1280.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="772" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRhE-MURIgy9_11GJZLqTDdImq_oiQQkTFnD7ak0wFs8PmImQ5flLarSdMXSLnn91FdN842lFY_SiEictnQJODg1Pm7T0BS4ofGixVYTSne1GbA3lpLaO12N2zwFHD86jYaSDeJFif3W8/w275-h400/tumblr_0a15ffae886f5c61145e7e45fe94e7e1_d9efa037_1280.jpg" width="275" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-44646513396533810432020-11-18T22:14:00.004-08:002020-11-23T23:11:53.194-08:00NaNoWriMo 2020 - Days 14 thru 18<p><br /></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-7ee59c61-7fff-4689-e191-192b0d777957"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The house next door was perfectly quiet for the next few days. I suppose they were settling in, so there was no coming and going, but there also wasn't any noise. There's about three feet of space between that house and mine, except in the dining-room where the outer walls abut, so there's not usually a lot of noise, not like an apartment or a party-wall kind of arrangement; but still there had always been a low distant sort of lived-in sound when the last owners were there, and when the house was being shown. Even with my ear pressed against the wall that touched theirs (my head inside my built-in china cabinets) I could hear nothing, no footsteps or voices or music. It was a little eerie.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I also couldn't </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">see </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">into the house: the front windows had been covered by paper blinds all along, though they'd been kept open during the sale and were now tightly closed; but on the rare occasions that lights came on behind them, there were no shadows cast nor any other signs of life within; and then the back atrium windows had been completely frosted at some point between the sale and the move-in, as all three stories of the thing were now translucent white, though I could see the shadows of plants up against the windows all the way up; The Boy must've done it himself with cut-and-stick film, because there'd been no glass-men in, I'd have noticed.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was quite dejected, unable to catch sneaky peeks of The Boy at home, from either my back yard or my front window. And as the days dragged on without a sighting of my obsession, my depression grew. I worried about him, wondering if he was even in the house still, or if it had all been some sort of mistake— perhaps The Diva had not liked the house and they'd left the same night as they arrived, sometime when I wasn't at the window to see them— and they would disappear to some more stylish neighborhood and put the house back on the market.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or more optimistically, perhaps The Diva had caught a cold or something and was laid up in bed, The Boy assiduously tending her with pots of tea and bowls of broth. I just knew it could not be normal for her to stay at home for days on end, women like that are not shut-ins, as a rule. A woman who wears a Chanel cape and carries a Kelly handbag is not going to be indoors on her duff all day, she has to be out where she can be admired and envied.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was more likely they were going out late at night, when I wasn't watching. Though I live in my window most of the day, after dark I tend to back off since I'm visible to passersby—mirrored glass requires it to be brighter outside than inside to work, and with no sun and insufficient streetlights it was the other way around. So I tend not to turn my lights on, and stay on the couch at night, where I can only be seen from the upper windows directly across the street, with my laptop and the television (and the occasional fire on the hearth) the only illumination to betray me.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I did sit at my desk later than usual, watching for my neighbors, but after about eight or nine o'clock, with uncounted strangers staring at me as they walked by, I couldn't stand it and retreated to the couch. I considered getting some of those DIY security cameras and mounting one outside the bay window, pointing at the house next door as well as one pointed at my front door and up the street in the other direction so it wasn't obvious that I was spying on that particular part of the sidewalk; but I wasn't sure I'd be able to install them and would have to contact strangers to get them set up—and then it would be spying again, tacky tacky tacky, so I dismissed the idea.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My next sighting came from an unexpected quarter: on my usual Thursday afternoon on the lam from my cleaners, immersed in a pile of "Lifestyle" magazines (you know the sort, rich people's decorated homes and rich people's fancy-dressed pastimes and rich people's luxury goods adverts, I'm hopelessly addicted to them and have been since the TV show </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> entranced me as a teenager in the 80s) I found my new neighbors in the new issue of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">San Francisco Social</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, snapped at a prestigious fundraiser in the Legion of Honor—one of those dinner and cocktails and silent auction affairs for vague catch-all causes that are so expensive to buy into that only the very rich can be bothered.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Diva was stunning in a black sheath dress and an Egyptian-style gemstone necklace so vast it really qualified as armor, The Boy standing behind her to one side again and just </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">toothsome </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in black tie with his hair neatly brushed and gleaming in the darkness. The two-by-two-inch snap was captioned</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Agatha de Momerie and Tristan Mallow at the Philanthropy Circle Fine Arts Gala</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tristan. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tristan</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">! Trissssssstannnnn— </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a beautiful name, and it suited him perfectly. I wondered that he had a different surname than The Diva (I didn't have the nerve to say her name aloud), perhaps it was his father's name and she went by her maiden name? Or they hadn't been married? Or perhaps he wasn't her son, a nephew or cousin—or maybe not even related to her at all? A secretary or kept boy? It was a tantalizing mystery.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I hit the computer at a run when I got home later that afternoon, Googling Agatha de Momerie and Tristan Mallow to see what I could find out about them. It should not have surprised me that they had absolutely zero social media presence, The Diva didn't seem the type to post selfies on Instagram or muse over banalities on Twitter or share recipes on Pinterest; The Boy, though, was of an age that he should've been all over the place, but it was fairly likely he used a nom de guerre to mask his identity from stalkers— I mean, who wouldn't want to stalk him? I don't use </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">real name, either, I am Charlie Curmudgeon on every single platform, Charles Pugh only to my bank.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I did find some more fundraiser red carpet snaps of them, though, from society pages over the last several years. They were buried deep, underneath discussions of Dorothy L. Sayers' </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Murder Must Advertise</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a million marshmallow recipes, and how to raise mallow plants (who knew that was a flower? I thought it was a sort of reed), but they were there in the archives of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New York Magazine</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Town & Country</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The Boy must be older than he looks, though, for as old as some of those pictures were, going back as far as ten years—he had to be in his middle to late twenties, or else The Diva had been dragging him around in her wake since he was a child. A very </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tall</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and developed child, as they both looked exactly the same ten years ago as they did at the Fine Arts Gala. That presented a puzzle, but not as tantalizing as the other puzzles, so it slipped my mind.</span></p><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">these </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pictures I could share with my friends online without being a creepy creeper, they were more-or-less public domain and consent had been given. </span> </p><p>1,261 Words<br />6,694 Total Words</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzMIFyD7xFArCAs_2lIbnmIQtwa9WAUpl-cVi8hJyGr0xnTvDcMLPgOYC8s6rOGu9X6YpPMuECtWJuQq_upzuFCJD2r0i4zoBNXgs_3FmE__JltEAm7ZZgMW7hE9Z9s5wucE4JRPpsgqM/s564/fe2203ec20b9a3fdcea8ee7af3ba0cf6.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="564" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzMIFyD7xFArCAs_2lIbnmIQtwa9WAUpl-cVi8hJyGr0xnTvDcMLPgOYC8s6rOGu9X6YpPMuECtWJuQq_upzuFCJD2r0i4zoBNXgs_3FmE__JltEAm7ZZgMW7hE9Z9s5wucE4JRPpsgqM/w400-h400/fe2203ec20b9a3fdcea8ee7af3ba0cf6.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRhGjrsf4C_l2mheJwXhkFxsLNCbyWNi_DFNBkiAr4ekiHuQb8LysvB8GaClcmaUlT2dkBBbfZM4znKbu70VL8f54xilaxdXLmxpDVdHmsss9NsVvVD4F_uOu_U0oD0xiR1B2EF0x8wpM/s564/db497c209b39d9775c9a178f69122664.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="423" data-original-width="564" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRhGjrsf4C_l2mheJwXhkFxsLNCbyWNi_DFNBkiAr4ekiHuQb8LysvB8GaClcmaUlT2dkBBbfZM4znKbu70VL8f54xilaxdXLmxpDVdHmsss9NsVvVD4F_uOu_U0oD0xiR1B2EF0x8wpM/w400-h300/db497c209b39d9775c9a178f69122664.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707796107726897849.post-52118708297869592912020-11-12T23:29:00.002-08:002020-11-23T23:12:08.916-08:00NaNoWriMo 2020 - Day Twelve<p><br /></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-aa90e026-7fff-9b62-d945-3fc3852f1418"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Diva made a subtle but perfectly intelligible gesture with her right hand, directing The Boy to open the door to the house for her; he rushed up the steps to unlock the door and rushed back down to grab a few of the bags off the driver; The Diva sailed into the house like a tall ship entering a harbor. The Boy followed and the uniformed driver, who incidentally looked exactly like Odd Job from </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dr. No</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> minus the lethal bowler hat, brought up the rear.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The driver emerged a moment later, drove the gorgeous pearl gray Rolls away, and the show was over. I sat at my desk for the longest time, agog, simply digesting what I'd seen. The Diva was just amazing, the kind of fabulous that you simply don't get in San Francisco— she was New York fabulous, Paris fabulous, and was as fascinating in her own way as The Boy. And far more puzzling: beautiful boys happen everywhere, but a glamorous woman like that simply isn't to be found on the wrong side of Market Street in the most provincial of the world's capitals. I couldn't imagine what she was doing here.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">197 Words</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5,441 Total Words</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirs7vd2OsF8dpK0siGRKHu3OPMpp_xPdBUHC4U8VzMG3ZuHvH9L7ahBis79XIH_hTECLYuMeRxN5RO2SWtvemaLjx3-fFVZwjtmwxiN2Z5vu7eqH4e8yuqH4kp6ZUTFWsBZOcUbw7TZCU/s1500/1958_rr_sc1_sss.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1500" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirs7vd2OsF8dpK0siGRKHu3OPMpp_xPdBUHC4U8VzMG3ZuHvH9L7ahBis79XIH_hTECLYuMeRxN5RO2SWtvemaLjx3-fFVZwjtmwxiN2Z5vu7eqH4e8yuqH4kp6ZUTFWsBZOcUbw7TZCU/w400-h300/1958_rr_sc1_sss.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p></span><p> </p>Robert Mannershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00750253662683370745noreply@blogger.com0