Crispin Glover

 Over the weekend I engaged in a few activities that reminded me of why it's important to start at the bottom of the ladder in worse conditions, before getting to the good stuff (why I eat the veggies and other lower-quality food items in a dish before I get to the main course, or the juicy stuff). Otherwise known as, "don't spoil your kids." 

When I was a kid, I grew up on Chicago Bulls basketball: it seemed to be the only thing anyone talked about in my neighborhood growing up: Michael Jordan, (maybe) Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman and his weird haircuts, Space Jam, the 72-win season in 1996, and of course, winning the NBA Championship year after year after year after year. I just took it for granted that the Bulls would make it to the championship every season in a path of least resistance, basically spoiling me for any future fandom of any team. So when the Baltimore Ravens lost to Travis Kelce, Patrick Mahomes, and the Taylor Swift-supported Chiefs this Sunday, I realized that a lot of fanbases have it really hard: basically every team except one experiences losing at some point during a season, and for even successful franchises like the Ravens who were at various points the best team in the NFL, it still feels like a loss for fans, another lost year in a string of lost years, failure after failure after failure, the one bad loss at the end of the season overshadowing every other good thing that happened this season. Also, I feel for those young sports fans in Kansas City now rooting for the Chiefs; they've known nothing but success, and at some point they'll realize like me how rare and fleeting sports hegemony can be. Enjoy it while it lasts. 

I did NOT get spoiled, however, about food. My parents are really good at cooking Chinese food, but definitely not expansive about their ethnicity of food (it was a lot of eggs with tomatoes, black bean noodles, Dan-dan noodles, Mapo Tofu with rice, eggplant with sauce, etc., etc., so many sauces), and nothing to take pictures about (MJ loves taking pictures of her food, and her new obsession with cooking and making it LOOK good likely triumphs over the necessity to make it TASTE good). And especially breakfast and lunch, a lifetime of school cafeteria selections (hot dog day! Pizza day! Subway day!) made eating kind of a chore, a routine to get over with at most meals, even into adulthood, with Five-Dollar Footlongs (the Chess grandmaster Hans Niemann said he lived in New York City eating only $5 footlong Subway sandwiches for years, yea OK) so I never really branched out, experienced good food, etc. So eating at a Michelin restaurant really opens my world to actually ENJOYING a meal and paying for the experience of it, the pristinely made food that forces me to reconsider the philosophy of just getting full to "maybe I should cherish the times when I'm hungry because that's when I get to eat good food." It's like being mired in a few decades of .500 mediocre seasons (below-.500 would be like not having choices in food, which I've had, I just haven't taken advantage of them) but then becoming a championship team for just a meal or two. For as much as I complain about some highly-rated (Michelin star) restaurants being overrated and having their own foibles of haughtiness and not even providing enough to make me food, there are certain restaurants that really make me want to go back (back-to-back championships). When a mushroom steak is better than any steak I've ever had, that restaurant is doing something good. 

Finally, Crispin Glover, who played Marty McFly's dad on one of the "perfect" films of the 1980s by Robert Zemeckis (but produced by Steven Spielberg), Back to the Future. First of all, not seeing the movie in my childhood in its entirety as a kid was a missed opportunity (although it does have some adult themes and language in it), but seeing it as an adult made me appreciate the intricacies of what makes it considered to be a "perfect movie." That is, except for Crispin Glover, who refused to be in the 2nd movie because of philosophical differences in opinion with the director, saying the McFlys should not have changed their fate at the end from a messy unsuccessful family to one that drove sportscars and employed Biff. I personally think plenty of movies have gotten away with flawed messages and morality, but maybe Crispin Glover has a point: the McFlys should not have ended up enriched by their gratuitous fortune of having Marty work for Doc Brown who used a flux capacitor to turn a DeLorean into a time machine. They suddenly were enriched in the second version of their lives without having understood what it was like to be at the bottom and work their way up to the top. They definitely did feel like a spoiled family at the end, and would not have been a relatable family to root for had they been like that at the end. Don't spoil your kids! 

UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) - 不明飞行物, 미확인 비행 물체, ユーフォー

 People have some wild imaginations, and there have plenty of myths and legends about UFOs (the technical term now is UAPs- I know, it's news to me but apparently it's like learning Pluto is no longer a planet, and the country of Turkey is now Turkiye...) but my stance is that until there are definite videos of UFOs that are not just weird lights in the sky, fog, a drone flying at night that someone thought was a UFO, a private helicopter, etc., etc., there's so many smart phones with photo and video capability nowadays that if alien life forms did exist in the world, someone should have been able to film a clear video already. And even with video now there are deepfakes, ways to play around with video that an authentic video would be discredited. 

Why am I bringing up UFO's again? Oh yea just a reminder that people in this country and the world in general are capable of believing all kinds of things, and they're also capable of being very, very wrong. I went to my blood donation place the other day and told my vein guy (some people have a plumber guy, or a car mechanic guy, someone I rely on to get a specific task done, I have a vein guy to put needles into my arm) about this theory that another phlebotomist had that she could see if someone's blood was healthy and had enough iron in it by looking at the color.... my vein guy brushed off the theory as a myth immediaely and declared that it had no scientific backing. So it's hard to believe almost anything (yet MJ will believe all kinds of theories about how acupunture helps fertility, or green tea will help fertility, or being less stressed will help fertility, etc.) Or Amy Schneider, 40-game champion, who has great knowledege about all kinds of things from earth science to historical figures to businesses, who believes in the power of Tarot cards, with the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana, Magician card means to keep your imagination open, High Priestess card means you need more spirituality in your life, etc. It's like the biggest placebo effect ever: you go to a fortune teller or Tarot Card reader to get some confirmation about what you believe, and then you act no it because of that thing with no substance affirms that belief and you act on it. So in that sense, I guess Tarot cards can be somewhat effective, as effective as buying a rabbit foot or anything else, but I definitely don't believe there's actually any meaning in the random pieces of paper turned into cards that somehow can be dialed into your fortune and life. 

I just finished watching True Detective: Season 1 with Matthew McConaguhey and Woody Harrelson, 2 of my preferred actors anyway, and I have to agree it's in the running for best season of TV, period. The 2 detectives tackle a weird cult or ritual in Louisiana that's similar to voodoo, and it reminds me of the danger that suspending belief and thinking one is some sort of divine figure can be. 

The Monkey's Paw (猴爪, 猿の足, 원숭이의 발)

 I pride myself as a "bookish" guy who is well versed in classical literature, 20th century literature, and modern-day literature (I go to various bookstores just to browse the covers for this express purpose), but I admittedly am not caught up on every single piece of literature ever written, but especially so for short stories. For some reason famous short stories I know range from melancholy to sad to horrific, like a bunch of Edger Allen Poe's works (Cask of Amontillado where a guy gets buried alive, the Tell-Tale Heart where someone's heart is beating loudly throughout the house), Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, where someone gets stoned to death, or Guy Maupassant's "The Necklace," where a woman spends years trying to repay a debt on a necklace and living in poverty only to find that the necklace was a fake and worth almost nothing..... (sad!) to The Monkey's Paw, which came up as a J6! answer in today's edition. J6! is a fun game, an extra round of Jeopardy that has multiple choice (MJ's favorite) that were written as real clues for a category but were thrown out because each category only needs 5 clues. 

I guess these horror short stories are more engaging and leave a lasting impression, but Monkey's Paw is another scary short story basically about getting 3 wishes, but then being careful what you wish for, as the first wish by the old couple who have the monkey's paw inadvertently kills their son, then the 2nd wish is to revive the son from the dead, but then they get scared by what the son will be as an "undead" that the 3rd wish is spent wishing the son disappear again. Scary stuff but definitely another cautionary tale about wanting things so bad but they might not turn out like you wished they would. Like going on Jeopardy. Or having a child; that's definitely ripe for Monkey's Paw consequences. Or... when I was in law school I was desperate to get a job at a law firm, any job, because that would lead to a career in law, a prestigious field, and give me job security, maybe one day I'll make partner, win a big case, but almost most importantly, get my name on a website as an assoicate at a law firm, to show everyone who googled my name that I had made it. Well, I did finally get a job at a law firm and my name on their website, but it's like Peter Parker aka Spiderman says, "with great power comes great responsibility." I have big responsibilities on the case that I'm working on for the law firm, but because of my position I have to always be on task, always assign the contract attorneys with tasks, meanwhile also reporting to the partner above me who has tasks for me and assumes I am handling everything including leading the contract attorney team. I'm drowning in responsibilities, and all because I wished all those years ago for a law firm job. I almost wish that the case would settle and I would not have the job anymore, but hen that risks the wrath of the Monkey Paw the other way: I might never get a job again and be wishing I still had this current job. Life is cruel. 

Another short story clue today was about an apparently viral short story I missed in 2023, "Cat Person." Apparently the guy in the story is a needy, fake, not-good-at-sex dude in his mid-thirties named "Robert" who eventually stalks the female narrator (much younger woman) over texting and calls her a "whore." I Damn. I mean, I guess it could be worse? Could have had a Poe ending. Maybe I'll write a happy short story and make it famous. Call it "The Bobby's Claw." 

Farro (麦香, ファッロ, 파로)

 Things I learned today: North Korea apparently has the nickname "Hermet Kingdom." An innocent-sounding name, but that regime is one fo the most brutal at punishing defectors or people trying to escape, often torturing and killing those who try to escape but are caught; really terrible stuff. There's a lot going on in the world that's horrible and wicked that feels difficult to comprehend, like the Israeli military forces now using what happened on Oct. 6 to go after Hamas in a brutal way but also killing civilians in the process. A classic "fighting wrongs with more wrongs" scenario. It makes one thankful to be living in America, where immediate death or threat to one's life (some counties excluded), but then again we're entering a Presidential election year where it's almost certain Trump and Biden are going to have a rematch, and more likely that we have President Trump again by next year (even if he's in prison). 2016 (a lot of celebrities died, Trump turmoil) and 2020 were NOT peaceful years.... taking a deep breath that we whistle past the graveyard this year. 

On the bright side this year, MJ has already made some great dishes for us to eat thanks to a meal service called Purple Carrot. Lots of veggies, whole foods, new ideas, and "protein-rich" courses....trying to avoid processed foods as much as possible this year. (I'm also trying to implement anger management control on myself because for aforementioned reasons, there will likely be quite a lot of triggers). Farro was one of the ingredients in an excellent salad dish that didn't make me full but made me feel healthy; no I did not know what farro was before eating. Apparently it's one of these "ancient" foods that have been around since the Mesopotamia civilization, and it tastes, smells, and feels like rice. As a kid in my Chinese food-eating household I would have just called it "rice." There is, apparently, a lot of distinction between grains than just "rice" like basmati rice, jasmine rice, sapphron rice, and then a bunch of rice substitues like farro and couscous, something I warmed up to due to it feeling a little less coarse than rice. Feels like eating Dip N' Dots except without the sugar and ice cream of Dip N Dots. Then there's this Italian dish called arancini or "little oranges" that are just rice balls that I'd like to try. I guess I was just not a very adventurous eater as a kid (although my weight certainly reflected that I was), the sad thing is I got chubby just from eating the same ol' same ol' without even trying new ethnicities of food or learning what I was eating, basically just inhaling food to satisfy my hunger, which is ANOTHER thing I'm trying to do this year, chew food more (fletcherizing) and take my time eating. Not the easiest thing to do on a busy work schedule, but important for health. 

Due to my limited cultural aptitude for fine dining options (if only there was an SAT for food vocab in high school, I would have studied my butt off) I am terrible at the food and drink categories in trivia, and the worst part is some of those meat courses like osso bucco (Italian dish of bone marrow) or beef wellington, I now probably won't experience because I don't want to make MJ feel bad, when I go to a fine dining option it is usually with MJ in tow, unless of course there is a vegan version of them, which is becoming more and more common: we went to a vegan Chinese restaurant in London and if they can make Fuqi Feipian (or husband and wife meat slices) into a vegan dish, anything is possible. Seriously, I'm just waiting for duck l'orange or beef bourgignon or lobster risotto to show up at on a menu of one of the restaurants MJ has on her Instagram feed, and we're in! 

Endorphins (内啡肽, エンドルフィン, 엔돌핀)

 This weekend I realized how important endorphins are to my daily happiness: I often explain that I like dodgeball because it relieves stress and allows aggression to get out; turns out it might just be the endorphins, those "feel-good" chemicals released both by the pituarity gland and the hypothalamus when we feel pain or exericese, and they literally mean "inside the body" and "morphine." The word kind proves the point in "Big Fat Greek Wedding 3," that almost all words in English can be traced back to the Greek language. Actually, a bunch of naturally occuring things in the body sound scary: more than just morphine is "opioid receptor," or the brain's reward centers. And the 4 "feel-good" hormones are dopamine (sounds like a narcotic), seratonin, endorphins, and oxytocin (literally an anagram of oxycotin, a main cause of America's opioid crisis)

 I guess my natural highs all can be credited to these little guys (I'll call them "bobby-dorphins") , and why I can stay relatively happy most days with just an hour of running (in fact, I crave my runs outside to a level of addiction, likely because my body is just itching to let out a burst of endorphins to make me happy again after a long day of working) and why I feel SO good after playing dodgeball, I can't think of anything else: my brain is high on that feeling of natural high and needs to calm down from it, to the point I can't think about anything else. 

I think also that I'm one of those people who gets an Bobbydorphin rush from talking to people: if I go a whole day without talking, I don't get the pleasure boost from communicating my thoughts or laughing or making a joke. So much of everything I do makes sense now! It's why I actively seek out conversation with other people, even though it probably won't be productive and won't amount to much, I still do it because it's fun, and my brain likes it like it likes candy. I took several Ubers this past weekend; I'm the passenger who would select the "likes chatting" option for Ubers, as opposed to "leave me alone" quiet mode. I'll give Uber drivers a chance to earn their tip upon entering the car: I'll initiate a topic, and if they give me a certain response to keep going, I'll strike up a conversation. I play it cool like I'd be OK either way, but secretly I'm definitely hoping for a talkative driver, because really that's the only time you'll ever see the driver ever again. 

One final source of Bobbydorphin-boosting activity that's mostly unique to me: I like reffing. Referees have one of the worst reputations in the world, almost as bad as lawyers and insurance salesmen, or a more apt analogy, like cops, because they are the police of sports and games. If they're doing a good job, you don't notice them. If they do a bad job, everyone hates them, even the side they rule in favor of. It's a no-win situation, yet I'm drawn to it, like I'm trying to right the wrongs of society or prevent the cheaters of dodgeball to get away from it or something. I've done a lot of soul searching on this and haven't come up with a precise answer: part of it is definitely pride, thinking (maybe erroneously) that I'm good at reffing and can get more calls right than the average dodgeball referee (however many there are in the world) but also it's probably the rush of knowing I make a call that will likely impact this game, so I better get it right, similar to playing in a game and having a stake in what's happening in the game. The world is so messed up nowadays and the lines between what's right and wrong and what's fair or unjust are so blurry, it's kind of exciting to do an activity that has a right or wrong answer and try to solve the puzzle, get it right most of the time. I tend to get almost as big of a rush reffing it as playing it, as both have sort of a goal-accomplish hook to it that draws me and the Bobby-dorphins. 

Too Much Carrot Tartare

 It's Oscars season, meaning publications I read like the WSJ, Time, and the NY Times will be pushing the best films of 2023 for viewers to catch up on the Oscars buzz.... already some controversy at the Golden Globes with Cilian Murphy winning Best Actor over Bradley Cooper for Maestro, despite Bradley Cooper having dedicated 6 years of his life to prepare himself to play the role of Leonard Bernstein, or so he says. The thing is, I was all pumped up to watch Maestro with MJ when it came out on Netflix.....and then after the laborious first 30 minutes of Cooper playing music and smoking, playing music and smoking......I went to go work out. The problem with these critically acclaimed movies, for a novice like me at least, there's too much nuance, too much symbolism, too much unexpressed emotion and messages below the service, it's like having too much of a good thing all at once, like going to Eleven Madison Park (at one time the best restaurant in the world) and getting too much quality, too many exquisite sauces over fancy made dishes like carrot tartare, too much one-bite food with professional chefs coming out to explain their creations to you......when really I would have been OK with a nice pasta and salad with cashew sauce mix, or curry over bok choi and rice, 2 dishes MJ expertly made this week (with the help of her new subscription meal service, ironically called the Purple Carrot- did the company also enjoy carrot tartare at Eleven Madison?). Like quality is subjective; fashion is subjective; it brings me back to high school English class where I thought some my papers were great, but the collective opinion of writers and literature experts gave the opinion that my paper wasn't good. All of which leads to Past Lives, the movie set in NYC, with more than half of the dialogue in Korean, with an admittedly interesting message about what-could-have-been; it's too slow for me. not enough things happening, not enough characters (just 3 people, a love triangle). Which is what's allowing me to write about it here while watching it at half attention. It's a beautiful movie, but the message is kind of simple: yes, I get it, you had a past life where you loved this man from Korean, you could have been with him, but you chose a different life with a white guy in the U.S. and now you don't know how things would have turned out with the other guy. Welcome to probably everyone in the world who's ever been in love with someone else and looks back fondly and with regret. "We were really babies back then." A line in the movie- yup, all adults feel that way about when they were younger, so many things we would all do differently. Not taking much risks here. 

I read somewhere that the only horror movie ever to win an Oscar for best picture was....Silence of the Lambs? Uh, are people forgetting about Parasite? When the old housekeeper opened up the hidden entrance down to the basement leading down the path of a hell to a horrible underworld? That was horrifying. Still the best Korean movie I've ever seen. 

Today I learned a phrase called "the maintenance phase," the time to keep the weight off after losing a substantial amount of weight. I've never had to worry about that; I've had a standard deviation of 10 pounds or so, give or take, my normal weight for the last 20 years of my life, but I get how hard the maintenance phase is. (Keep it up, MJ!) There was one winter in Chicago with MJ where we both gained substantial amount of weight in the cold harsh winter with a wildly irresponsible diets of Subway sandwiches and roast beef late at night and then sitting all day in the office (at least I was). The retreat back to L.A. helped to take off some of that weight, and the maintenance phase was just eating LESS.... much, much less. Without making too big of a leap, the secret to a maintenance phase might just be getting the best quality food without eating too much of it, like eating only carrot tartare and not junk food; watching only quality films like Past Lives that make us ruminate about our lives in a healthy and introspective way (yes, as I've been writing this post the film has started growing on me) instead of the junk-food equivalent "Trolls World Tour" or "Fast and Furious 10" or whatever iteration they are on..... I guess I'll have to settle into a maintenance phase of watching quality movies from now until the Oscars. 

Laceration (划破, 열상, 裂傷)

 I hurt myself today. But unlike the Johnny Cash song "Hurt," I didn't do it to see if I felt pain, I did it because I stupidly tried to catch a falling bowl near a sink, and when the bowl split into several pieces I was still holding the jagged end, thus allowing for a laceration of the skin right under the skin. It wasn't bad, stung for a little bit but I was fine with the sight of my own blood, whereas MJ the nurse kept making disgusted noises about the blood splurging out, claiming that it was "unexpected" blood so it wasn't like what she's used to at the hospital. Within about 15 minutes of putting on a bandaid, though, the bleeding had stopped, the pain subsided, and I was back to normal. Funny how it works. I didn't know this before, but the bleedings stops because of platelets in the blood, which arrive at the laceration site and clump up to form a clot that helps stop bleeding. Not everyone is as lucky as I am, with my Wolverine-like abilities to heal quickly; lot of people need platelets. (OH NO THIS IS ANOTHER POST WHERE BOBBY BRAGS ABOUT DONATING BLOOD?) Yup, but platelets are actually cool and interesting, and takes quite a while to get out of my system, so I get to boast about it! And also apparently there's the most desperate need right now for platelets, due to winter vacation and lack of donations (I can attest to this, my local Red Cross was totally empty on December 29) but hospitals need the most right now due to surgeries to begin the year right now, no kids in school for blood drives or workers in offices (not that there are many workers in offices right now anyway). 

Due to me signing up for Amazon Prime to get the free shipping for holiday season, MJ and I have started watching a little show that comes up on Jeopardy all the time with Rachel Brosnahan, Tony Shalhoub, and Alex Borstein: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It deserves the hype; MJ likes it for the scenes of Paris, high class New York in the 50's, the upbeat music, (did I mention that it's set in New York, MJ's favorite city?)  It explores what the U.S. was like in the U.S. (seems like it smelled like urine even more than it does now in the big cities), a time before cell phones, internet, and air conditioning in every home; what a time to be alive. In many ways it reminds me that our current society in 2024 is probably the best that humankind has ever had it, despite all the ongoing wars, bedbugs in Paris right ahead of the Olympics, social unrest, Harvard president stepping down for plagiarism, existental environmental risks, social media making everyone stupid, fake news and conspiracies, polarizing leaders, comedians falling flat at the Golden Globes (Jo Koy), and so many others, we would still live in 2024 than the 1950s, or the 1940s, or the 1850s, or the 1500s, or ever. If everyone who ever existed was given all the information about which time in history they'd want to live in up to 2024, I bet most would want to live from 2000-2024, with a parabola rising up from 2000 up to 2024, when everything has become so easy it actually makes life a little worse, because shows like Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are SO accessible (click of a few buttons) that you don't feel compelled to watch it, despite it being one of the best shows on TV (recently cancelled, but not for lack of quality. Also the standup comedy is good, I like rooting for the heroine Mrs. Maisel, and plenty of smart dialogue. 

Yea and that laceration I just got, if I had gotten them earlier in history? Probably my powers of healing would have allowed me to get by, but definitely higher risk of it getting infected, no ready band-aids available (invented 1920), and if I had hemophilia I'd have a big problem, especially since platelet donations weren't available until roughly early 1910's neither. Donate blood and platelets! We have the technology. 

Hitchcock Blondes

 Recently I learned a trope in classic cinema called "The Hitchcock Blondes," which are famous actresses who starred in famous Hitchcock movies who all happened to be blonde. It's a list of who's who in early talkie cinema (talkies being movies that actually had dialogue, as opposed to the silent movies that came before like Charlie Chaplin) and it's a list so important that Jeopardy regularly quizes about them (as well as their corresponding Hitchcok movies, iconic in their own right). What do they have in common? Apparently Hitchcock thought that blondes made the best victims. Tippi Hedren- The Birds, Grace Kelly- Rear Window, Kim Novak- Vertigo, Eve Marie Saint- North By Northwest, Janet Leigh- Psycho. I have seen zero of these movies from start to finish, bits and pieces of Rear Window, and heard about the famous "The Birds" scenes through tours of Universal Studios. These lists are difficult becaue they're not really common knowledge, except for trivia players, in which they're like collectibles, things that you just have to pick up like all the Caribbean Islands (I just learned Guadalupe was an island today) along with St. Kitts & Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Dominica, and the big one that seems to intersect all kinds of trivia questions: St. Lucia. Trivia people love St. Lucia. 

I wonder how many people at an NFL football game would know where St. Lucia is, much less where it was or even what sea it was in. This weekend I went to a NFL football game that reminded me all the reasons why I don't go to NFL games anymore: a.) The home team ALWAYS loses when I go: The cooler curse applies to other sports but there are rare exceptions where the home teams actually win; no exceptions for NFL. b.) The games are usually cold by the time December and January hits, especially in cold weather cities. c.) the stadiums don't have special features like baseball does; most are just a huge bowl without views of the city or the ocean or the river like baseball stadiums can, allowing for less variety. It's just a colisseum built for 100,000 screaming idiots. And that brings me to my last point: d.) the IQ of the average fan is disappointingly low. I walked into the stadium and almost immediately walked into a fight, caused by fans of rival teams cursing at each other. There's always alcohol involved (if fans had decent IQs normally, the alcohol brought that down dramatically by game time), people often get arrested or evacuated due to dumb things done under the influence of alcohol, it's just not worth it. Meanwhile the local orchestra hall playing that night INDOORS at room temperature playing Mozart's Jupiter symphony had almost no one show up; it's a little depressing that football occupies such a big part of this country's attention (and I'm part of the problem! Used to love all sports!) and the bookstores and classical music industries are dying. Taylor Swift, can you just a small percentage of your fans back to classical music? Maybe have the (insert city here) Philharmonic open for one of your concerts. 

Anyway, back to ranting about NFL games: I couldn't help but enjoy some of the opening theatrics with fireworks, players entering the field through the ramp, the pumped up music, it's a fun experience. What I can't imagine is slogging through all those for a whole season sitting through traffic, paying for parking, not being allowed to bring an umbrella into an icy rain-downfall game (yup, no umbrellas!) and being gouged for $15 for a cheap domestic beer only to see your second stringers (last game of the regular season, nothing to play for) lose. There's Netflix and any show you want to see at home now, no need to go to a game to see the outcome. Yet people still go and love it. Can't get enough of it. Well, a couple guys could I guess, puking their guts out outside the stadium passed out on the curb as I was leaving at halftime. Good grief. 

Fun fact: British Jeopardy started in 2024! The first few episodes were enjoyable! 

Chess: played the game my whole life (and still not very good at it) and didn't know it originated in India, of all places, Gupta Dynasty, 6th century. Which is interesting that the pieces have bishops and rooks and queens? Also I'm convinced that every single art museum that MJ and I go to has a decorate art set with the pieces as dogs, or pieces as clock accessories, or pieces as oddly-shaped Cubism-inspired objects, etc., etc. Does anyone ever actually PLAY chess on those sets? Or are they just art by sitting there? Hmm. 

Van Cleef & Arpels

 Van Cleef & Arpels is a jewelry company that is apparently more expensive than even Cartier, Rolex, and Hermes, which tells you everything you need to know why I haven't heard of them before, and when on Jeopardy the other day the clue was about a "jeweler who bears the name of a diamond broker and the daughter of a dealer in precious stones," I drew a blank but MJ dug into the back of her mind and thought of the most expensive brand she could.....but was timid and didn't think Jeopardy would even ask about such a highbrow brand that's fitted the likes of Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor. It was like a Voldemort situation, "the brand that shall not be named." In a sort of Baader- Meinhoff Phenomenon, though, I was reading the NY Times for Wednesday, January 3, and there on the back page was a full-page ad for Van Cleef & Arpels, as if they were supplementing their marketing campaign on Jeopardy with getting their name out there on another publication with high-IQ (and likely higher average income) patrons. 

I've noticed for sure that some names are just "stickier" than others; some names just have the right combination of quarkiness and uniqueness and certain letters just fitting together that make them impossible to forget, like the Susquehanna River, or the King Tutankhamen. It's also possible it's because we say those names so often that we get used to them and they just feel right off the tongue, something in our mind likes the physical repetition of saying that name. I can say Imelda Staunton all day, for instance, especially after seeing her performances in Harry Potter and the Crown, but I have a devil of a time remembering her show-husband on the Crown, playing Prince Phillip, Jonathan....Pryce. That's a rough name to stick out in your mind, because there are so many Jonathans in the realm of history and the world, and so many Prices. Could it be Jonathan Majors, the villain in the recent Ant Man: Quantummania? Or Jonathan Rhys Miller, the Irish actor? Or possibly Jonny Lee Miller, former spouse of Angelina Jolie and who portrayed John Major (a Jonny playing a John!) on the Crown, or could it even be Jonathan Lipnicki, the little kid in the Jerry Maguire movie? But there's only one Imelda Staunton. I actually suspect that's what Van Cleef & Arpels and a number of other brands are going for: a strong and prestigious name, but one that hasn't been used before so that it gets confused with something else. Elon Musk understood that: I FINALLY finished his biography by Walter Isaacson and he prided himself on making strong names and also having an "X" in them like Exa Dark Sidareal Musk. Also he once was with Amber Heard. Also he has 11 children (geez), many through IVF; also he can be very angry and upset about something and tell his subordinates to do something, but 3 hours later he'll just forget about it like he never said any of that, so it's better just not to do the thing he said. I can relate to that; I often finish a task and just completely shut it off from my mind. 

Ending the first post of 2024 on a bit of a sour note: reading the NY Times also exposed me to the horrors of what happened on October 7, 2023: no matter if you're pro-Israel or pro-Hamas you have to be appalled at what happened to the innocent civilians who were attacked by terrorists, especially the women who were raped and tortured and then killed for the crime of going to a rave that night. Pure evil is often justified by war, one of the worst things about war, that almost anything can be justified as the cost of doing war, but the things done to the women (cutting off breasts, stabbing them before performing sex acts) were all captured on video and shows some of the worst things that humanity can do to each other. It certainly makes me wonder that despite so many good people in the world and genuine acts of kindness that you see, does the human race deserve to exist if it has people like that to stoop to those levels? Elon Musk is trying to save our planet from extinction due to AI and any other number of existential threats....but is that even a worthy battle if people are capable of doing what happened on October 7 to each other? America's greatest tragedies are 9/11 and various other deaths, but I'd argue 10/7/2023 was worse: the kind of torture and brutality and things done to harmless women before they died is beyond just killing a large group of people: it's pure evil.