Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, February 2
through
Saturday, February 8, 2020
It’s Saturday, February 8, 2020.
Welcome to the 673rd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Insomnia
Tacuina sanitatis (XIV century) 3-aspetti di vita quotidiana, insonnia, Taccuino Sanitatis,
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2.0 Commentary
Insomnia, also known as sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder in which people have trouble sleeping.
This Wikipedia definition, certainly circular, seems jocular.
While the affliction is anything but.
Sleep medicine is a medical specialty or subspecialty devoted to the diagnosis and therapy of sleep disturbances and disorders.
Sleep labs have advanced in the last two decades and offer help to insomniacs.
Over the counter medicines like melatonin and diphenhydramine may help some of us.
So far I have not tried sleep labs.
That may end on Monday at 5pm when I meet with my PCP.
I’m in my fourth week of insomnia, starting the night I cut my knee on the escalator.
My functionality is being seriously affected.
Stumbling.
Setting my oven at 300* instead of 200* and so producing a dried dinner. Sad.
Non-productivity for hours at a time.
My apologies.
I am just too tired to write much today.
Say a prayer for me tonight.
Certain tomorrow will be a better day.
Love you.
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4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
We the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
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It’s Friday, February 7, 2020.
Welcome to the 672nd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Spartacus' death
Hermann Vogel - http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Slave-Revolt-in-the-Final-Battle-Crassus-Defeats-the-Slaves-and-Spartacus-is-Killed-Posters_i1879371_.htm
For more, below in this section see 10.0 Movie Reviews and 11.0 Thumbnails.
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2.0 CommentaryA little dinner party last night with some friends who have been serving me cortados and cappuccinos for the last year.
We ate well, conversed animatedly, and relaxed.
Am still enjoying Ashley’s delicious peanut butter cookies.
See 6.0 for a terrific dinner idiom used at this meal.
Am going to catch up on work for the next several days.
Then begins a flurry of four dinner events in eight days.
Fun.
A little wintry weather in Boston for the next two or three days.
Nothing dramatic.
Meanwhile, winter continues towards an exit stage-left.
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4.0 Chuckles/ThoughtsVision without execution is daydreaming.
~Bill Gates
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
This from Tucker J:
Hey Dom,
I hope you're well. I actually had this in an unfinished form on my computer for a while but hearing that Kirk Douglas had passed away was enough for me to finish it. If there's room in the blog for it I'd be honored.
Blog Meister responds: We are the fortunate beneficiaries of that piece; and we are the ones honored by your efforts.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Here is an idiom for thickening pasta sauces.
Developed fifty years ago by Dom’s, always a cutting-edge restaurant, our son, Dom, has extended it to encompass other sauces as well.
The dish at Dom’s in which we first used the idiom,? Chicken, Broccoli, and Pasta.
Boil the broccoli stalks and puree them with Romano cheese, garlic oil, and pasta water.
Coat the pasta with the puree and then toss with chicken cubes and broccoli flowers cooked in olive oil and garlic.
Simple. Delicious.
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10.0 Movie Reviews
At the time it came out, William Wyler’s Ben-Hur was the most expensive movie ever made. It was a huge, overwhelming production, cast with thousands of extras and filmed on sets bigger than anyone had ever used. And the film turned out to be a phenomenon. It was the highest-grossing movie of 1959, and it won 11 Oscars, more than any movie before it. (There still hasn’t been a single movie that won more Oscars, though a couple have tied that number.) Kirk Douglas was one of the biggest stars of the ’50s, and he wanted that title role, but it ended up going to Charlton Heston instead. So Douglas went about making his own Ben-Hur. That was the idea, anyway.
And Spartacus, which would become the highest-grossing movie of 1960, is similar to Ben-Hur in a lot of ways. Like Ben-Hur, it’s a long, majestic story of an enslaved prisoner who heroically finds his way to freedom and ends up taking on the decadent evils of the Roman Empire. But there’s a key difference. Ben-Hur is a religious movie. It’s not an out-and-out biblical story, but Jesus shows up again and again—a silent supporting player who always happens to arrive at pivotal moments. The movie’s Christianity is relatively subtle, at least for its time, but it still thrums throughout. In some ways, Ben-Hur is the culmination of a whole wave of religious epics, the pinnacle of a lineage that includes huge ’50s hits like The Ten Commandments and The Robe. Spartacus is something else. It’s a movie about class struggle.
We hear about Christianity exactly once in Spartacus, and it’s in the opening minutes of the movie. A narrator sets the stage and then never returns. Our story, he tells us, takes place “in the last century before the birth of the new faith called Christianity, which was destined to overthrow the pagan tyranny of Rome and bring about a new society.” Once that’s dealt with, nobody brings up Jesus again for the entire vast span of the next 184 minutes.
Ben-Hur is a story about a man finding personal grace, reuniting with his family after years apart and seeing the effects of an actual divine miracle. In Spartacus, the hero doesn’t learn any personal lessons, except perhaps one about the futility of his own fight and one about how it’s worth fighting anyway. Ben-Hur tells the story of a nobleman who’s brought low when powerful forces turn him into a scapegoat. Spartacus, on the other hand, tells us about a slave who’s been exploited for his entire existence, who knows no other way of being. But he also knows that he’s “not an animal,” as he howls at his captors at one point. And he ends up shaking off his exploiters and becoming a big problem for them.
All of this is political. Spartacus was a real historical figure, a Thracian slave and gladiator who helped lead an uprising against Rome in 71 BC. He was a leftist hero long before he became the subject of a movie; Karl Marx was an admirer. The novelist Howard Fast started writing Spartacus, the book that was adapted into the movie, in 1950, when he was in prison. Fast had been given a three-month sentence for contempt of Congress—he’d refused to name names when called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Fast had to self-publish Spartacus because publishing houses wouldn’t deal with a convicted communist.
And it doesn’t stop there. Dalton Trumbo, who wrote the screenplay, had also done prison time for the same reason. Trumbo was a famous victim of the blacklist, one of the Hollywood Ten. He kept writing screenplays while blacklisted, but the movies he wrote—two of which won screenwriting Oscars—didn’t credit him by name, and he was working for way less money. Spartacus stopped that. Kirk Douglas and producer Edward Lewis decided to credit both Fast and Trumbo, and the movie is widely credited with ending the Hollywood blacklist, something that Douglas has played up ever since. The truth might be a little murkier, since McCarthyism was already losing its grip on the nation and Trumbo’s family has generally refused to buy into the Douglas narrative. But it’s become part of Hollywood lore anyway, to the point where Bryan Cranston was nominated for an Oscar a couple of years ago for playing Trumbo in a biopic.
In any case, you can see all of this play out in the movie. Fast and Trumbo had both been full-blooded Communists, and Spartacus is a movie that absolutely drips with contempt for the ruling classes. Again and again, the movie draws contrasts. We spend about an hour watching Kirk Douglas beaten down and humiliated again and again, scrunching up his chiseled face in confusion and anguish at the cruelty of his owners. Pampered noblemen sit in steam baths and decide the fate of people who are living full and vital lives miles away. They buy and sell women just to infuriate each other. Douglas and his friends are whipped, branded, and taught to kill each other with businesslike imperiousness. Spartacus and a woman who’s also a slave fall in love, but only after they’re made to mate, like cattle. Deep into the movie, as Spartacus’ rebellion is already raging, someone asks him, “Surely, you know you’re going to lose, don’t you?” And when Spartacus responds, he does it with a sense of historical perspective: “Death is the only freedom a slave knows. It’s why he’s not afraid of it. It’s why we’ll win.” Workers of the world, unite.
He doesn’t win, of course. Spartacus’ freed-slave army is betrayed by the pirates who they paid to sail them out of Italy, forced to face a far-superior Roman military force, and slaughtered on the battlefield. At the end of the movie, scores of heroic freedom-fighters are lined up and crucified, and Spartacus is made to walk down a long road, lined with his dying friends. We see a huge valley full of dead bodies, including women and kids. Spartacus dies, too—on a cross, just like his comrades. He learns that his wife and son will live free, but that freedom comes to them on a rich man’s whim, not as a result of some glorious battlefield victory. For such a huge movie, it’s a stunningly dark ending.
Spartacus’ only victories are moral. Going to war against Spartacus, the Roman dictator Crassus, played by Laurence Olivier, says, “This campaign is not alone to kill Spartacus. It’s to kill the legend of Spartacus.” The existence of the movie proves that he failed. After being defeated, Spartacus says, “Just by fighting them, we won something. When just one man says, ‘No, I won’t,’ Rome begins to fear.” As one of his friends dies, Spartacus warns Crassus: “He’ll come back. He’ll come back, and he’ll be millions.” In the movie’s most famous moment, all of Spartacus’ comrades refuse to give him up. They all say that they’re Spartacus, even though they know they’re daring the Roman forces to execute them. And they’re all telling the truth. They’re all Spartacus. It’s not a moment of individual heroism; it’s the proletarian mass coming together and becoming the hero.
Spartacus was a straight-up leftist movie, one that never even tried to hide its politics. It dressed itself as an old-fashioned biblical epic, but its story was all about worker solidarity. It romanticizes a whole class of people who don’t even need to discuss a plan with each other before they start killing the people higher than them on the social strata.
So why was a nakedly leftist movie this big of a hit? Spartacus didn’t pull down Ben-Hur’s Oscar haul. (The only major award for Spartacus was Best Supporting Actor, for Peter Ustinov’s wearily cynical gladiator trainer.) But the movie was a box office hit, grossing $60 million, or about $515 million in today’s money. It didn’t make all that money by tricking people about its politics. Those politics were well-publicized; it was a news story, for instance, when John F. Kennedy, just two weeks into his presidency, went out to see Spartacus, crossing an American Legion picket line to do it.
But I don’t think all those people bought tickets to the movie as a political act, either. They weren’t going to see Spartacus because they wanted to repudiate the McCarthy era, though it probably says something that they didn’t care whether they were doing that. They went to see Spartacus because Spartacus was something to see. Kirk Douglas has a lot to do with that. He gives a classic movie-star performance—a physically absurd specimen of a man projecting himself as a larger-than-life champion of righteousness and vigor. The cast of seasoned stage actors has something to do with it, too; Olivier, Ustinov, and Charles Laughton give the movie an air of prestige. And Stanley Kubrick has a lot to do with it, too.
Kubrick was a last-minute replacement on Spartacus, and he was a gamble. The director was still in his early 30s at the time. He’d only made four movies. All of them had been relatively harsh and experimental, and none of them had been hits. But one of them was the bleak 1957 World War I masterpiece Paths Of Glory, which Kubrick had made with Kirk Douglas. Douglas needed a new director after he fired Anthony Mann a week into production. The actor liked working with Kubrick, and he gave him a shot, even though Kubrick had never done anything close to that scope before. It was a good call.
Spartacus is the only thing Kubrick ever directed where he didn’t have total control, and he disowned the movie and swore off the Hollywood studio system immediately after making it, moving to England to make his films. And Spartacus is probably the only Kubrick movie that’s not immediately recognizable as a Kubrick movie; it doesn’t have his icy precision or his utter detachment from petty humanity. But you can see his mastery at work all through it.
There’s not a lot of fighting in Spartacus, considering that it’s a movie about a gladiator. There’s no signature showcase action set piece, like the iconic Ben-Hur chariot race. Instead, again and again, Kubrick pulls away from action. In the first gladiator fight, we don’t see a lot of what’s happening. Kubrick doesn’t make the classic mistake of glamorizing the fights that the story regards as atrocities. Instead, we only see bits of bodies moving around, the way Spartacus himself sees them when he’s waiting to fight and die. We see it play out as reaction shots, on the faces of Spartacus and his future opponent, the towering black man whose moment of self-destructive, nonverbal rebellion will help kick off the whole story. (That actor, Woody Strode, had been one of the first black players in the NFL. He became an iconic Western character actor, and Woody from Toy Story is named after him.) We hear the sound effects of men desperately clinging to survival. And then we hear one dying, and we see the victor, hurt and winded, going right back to his slave quarters, getting ready to do it all again soon enough. That’s riveting, emotional filmmaking. It trusts its audience to follow the story through visual cues, through moments of eye contact.
But Kubrick also shows total command of spectacle, of vast forces coming together. In the movie’s one big battle scene, we see geometric formations of Roman soldiers on the move—a sight that required thousands of extras to stage. And when the armies come together, it becomes a bloody, feverish death-party. We lose all sense of where the two armies are, of who’s winning. (I love the shot of Spartacus lopping a guy’s arm off.) It’s terrible, and it’s breathtaking.
There are scenes, too, where you can see Kubrick’s viewpoint at work, aiding the story where it can. Take the scene of two rich Roman women picking the gladiators that they want to see fighting to the death. They’re there with their husbands, but they’re also clearly picking the slaves who they most want to fuck. “I feel so sorry for the poor things in all this heat,” says one. That’s not an expression of empathy; it’s a signal for them to strip down. It’s a sex/death trip almost as horrifying as anything in A Clockwork Orange.
And there’s some of that, too, in the scene where Olivier’s Crassus clearly announces his intentions on another man, a slave played by Tony Curtis. Olivier tells Curtis that preferences have nothing to do with morality: “My taste includes both snails and oysters.” And he attempts to seduce him by speechifying about how it’s pointless to even think about fighting Rome: “You must serve her. You must abase yourself before her. You must grovel at her feet. You must love her.” He’s talking about himself, too.
I’d love to know what Kubrick and Trumbo had in mind with all this. Is Olivier’s bisexuality supposed to make him more villainous? Is it a sign of Roman decadence? Or is he simply looking for one more way to enforce his power over someone else? Curtis immediately runs away and joins up with the slave rebellion. He’s a house slave, an effete poet, and Spartacus starts out by making fun of him. But he stands in solidarity anyway, and he and Spartacus come to love each other. I read that character as Fast and Trumbo declaring their own solidarity, making the point that writers and artists and entertainers can be part of the exploited underclass, too. And maybe they’re also making a statement about sexuality being no big deal, since it also seems possible that there’s something going on between Spartacus and Curtis’ character.
In a lot of ways, Spartacus fits into the grand-spectacle entertainment of its era. It’s big and long and overwhelming, sometimes thrilling and sometimes boring. (Seriously: 184 minutes, complete with overture and intermission.) But little touches like those are subversive and complicated and fascinating. They point the way forward, to the movies that Kubrick and his admirers would be making soon enough.
11.0 Thumbnail
Spartacus (111–71 BC) was a Thracian gladiator who, along with Crixus, Gannicus, Castus, and Oenomaus, was one of the escaped slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic.
Little is known about him beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable.
However, all sources agree that he was a former gladiator and an accomplished military leader.
This rebellion, interpreted by some as an example of oppressed people fighting for their freedom against a slave-owning oligarchy, has provided inspiration for many political thinkers, and has been featured in literature, television, and film.
Although this interpretation is not specifically contradicted by classical historians, no historical account mentions that the goal was to end slavery in the Republic.
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It’s Thursday, February 6, 2020.
Welcome to the 671st consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Cover of the original London cast recording of the musical "Oh, What a Lovely War!" from 1963
Source (WP:NFCC#4)
See 2.0 Commentary and 11.0 Thumbnails below for more information on this wonderful work.
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2.0 Commentary
On Thursday I will do a podcast for Forbes magazine.
We had a preliminary interview and I was satisfied with the reporter’s motives.
Will publish the link here when it’s available.
Wednesday night we’re having a dinner party featuring Lobster Fra Diavolo.
I’ll be tossing the spaghetti using a method my son Dom developed as a variation of the restaurant’s method of preparing Chicken, Broccoli, and Pasta.
Will update.
Great news for musical movie buffs: available from Prime Video, “Oh, What a lovely war!”
Richard Attenborough's film adaptation was released in 1969 and won numerous awards.
It was Attenborough's debut as a director, and one of Maggie Smith's earliest film appearances.
Several Australian World War I movies and miniseries (e.g. The Lighthorsemen and Gallipoli) have used these songs to give a stronger sense of period to them.
The 1985 series Anzacs used "Oh, it's a lovely war" as one of the numbers while the credits rolled, had "I wore a tunic" performed as part of an entertainment piece while the characters were on easy duties, used "Keep the home fires burning" as another credit number, and featured "The Bells of Hell" sung by Tony Bonner and Andrew Clarke.
As a collection of period songs the movie is unsurpassed.
Referencing Maggie Smith’s role as a featured actress singing, this was 1963.
She filmed Downton Abbey in 2017.
Fifty years of great movie making.
How many actors/actresses even come close to that?
Here are the lyrics to the song Ms Smith performs:
The Army and the Navy need attention
The outlook isn't healthy you'll admit
But I've a perfect dream of a new recruiting scheme
Which I really think is absolutely it
If only other girls would do as I do
I believe that we could manage it alone
For I turn all suitors from me, but the Sailor and the Tommy
I've an Army and a Navy of my own.
On Sunday I walk out with a Soldier
Monday I'm taken by a Tar
Tuesday I'm out with a baby Boy Scout
On Wednesday a Hussar
On Thursday I gang out wi' a Scottie
On Friday the Captain of the crew
But on Saturday I'm willing if you'll only take the shilling
To make a man of any one of you.
I teach the tenderfoot to face the powder
That gives an added lustre to my skin
And I show the raw recruit how to give a chaste salute
So when I'm presenting arms, he's falling in
It makes you almost proud to be a woman
When you make a strapping soldier of a kid
And he says, "You put me through it and I didn't want to do it
But you went and made me love you, so I did!"
On Sunday I walk out with a Bosun
On Monday a Rifleman in green
On Tuesday I choose a Sub in the Blues
On Wednesday a Marine
On Thursday a Terrier from Tooting
On Friday a Midshipman or two
But on Saturday I'm willing if you'll only take the shilling
To make a man of any one of you![2]
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4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
‘Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.
~A. A. Milne
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
From Ann H, re: my trouble falling asleep.
Awww so glad you found the culprit
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Blog Meister responds: Thank you, my dear.
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11.0 Thumbnails
Oh, What a Lovely War! is an epic musical developed by Joan Littlewood and her ensemble at the Theatre Workshop in 1963.
It is a satire on World War I, and by extension on war in general.
The title is derived from the "somewhat satirical" music hall song "Oh! It's a Lovely War!", which is one of the major numbers in the production.
The idea for the production started on Armistice Day 1962 when Gerry Raffles heard the repeat of the second version of Charles Chilton's radio musical for the BBC Home Service, called The Long Long Trail about World War I.
Written and produced by Chilton in memory of his father whose name was inscribed on the memorial at Arras, the piece was a radio documentary that used facts and statistics, juxtaposed with reminiscences and versions of songs of the time, as an ironic critique of the reality of the war.
The songs were found in a book published in 1917 called Tommy's Tunes which had new lyrics written in the trenches to well-known songs of the era, many from hymns or from West End shows.
Bud Flanagan provided the voice of the "ordinary soldier".
The title came from the popular music hall song "There's a Long Long Trail A-Winding" published in 1913, mentioned in the introduction of Tommy's Tunes.
Raffles proposed the idea of using it as the basis of a production to his partner, Joan Littlewood, but she detested the idea, hating World War I, military uniforms, and everything they stood for. Gerry though, brought Chilton along to the theatre and they played through the songs.
Eventually Littlewood considered it might work, but refused any military uniforms, deciding on pierrot costumes from Commedia dell'arte very early on as a "soft, fluffy entertainment mode" providing an ironic contrast to the tin hats which they also wore.
Littlewood said, in 1995, that "Nobody died on my stage, they died in the film – that they ruined".
She wanted audiences to leave the theatre laughing at the "vulgarity of war".
The idea was to portray how groups of people could lose their sense of individuality by conforming to those of a higher authority, which Littlewood despised.
The Theatre Workshop developed productions through improvisation and initially the cast would learn the original script but then have that taken away and have to retell the story in their own words for performance.
Each member of the Theatre Workshop was tasked with learning about a particular topic, such as Ypres or gas.
As the production developed, it also used scenes from The Donkeys by military historian (and future Conservative politician) Alan Clark, initially without acknowledgement: Clark took Littlewood to court to get credited.
Some scenes in the production, notably one on the first time the trenches were gassed, were worked on for many days only for Littlewood to conclude they were too horrific for an audience, and delete them.
This was another reason why uniforms were not worn in the production.
The musical premiered at the Theatre Royal Stratford East on 19 March 1963 to rave audience reaction.
Kenneth Tynan's review in The Observer was titled "Littlewood returns in triumph".
The official censor did not grant permission for a transfer to the West End until Princess Margaret attended a performance and commented to the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Cobbold, that "What you've said here tonight should have been said long ago, don't you agree, Lord Cobbold?";
at this point the transfer was more or less assured despite the objections of the family of Field Marshal Haig.
It was an ensemble production featuring members of the theatre's regular company, which included Brian Murphy, Victor Spinetti and Glynn Edwards, all of whom played several roles. The sets were designed by John Bury.
The production subsequently transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in June of the same year.
The production was a surprise hit, and the musical was adapted by the BBC for radio several times.
The musical premiered in the United States on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on 30 September 1964 and closed on 16 January 1965 after 125 performances.
It was seen there by actor and former subaltern Basil Rathbone, who wrote to Charles Chilton that "we were duped, it was a disgusting war".
Directed by Littlewood, the cast featured Spinetti and Murphy, plus Barbara Windsor.
It received four Tony Award nominations: for Best Musical, Best Direction, Best Featured Actress, and Best Featured Actor, winning Best Featured Actor. Spinetti also won the Theatre World Award.
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It’s Wednesday, February 5, 2020.
Welcome to the 670th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs
Jeffrey Beall - Own work
Patrick Mahomes II, a National Football League player.
For more info, see 11.0 Thumbnail, this section.
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2.0 Commentary
I believe I have found the culprit.
The source of my recent inability to fall asleep.
For the three-week duration I’ve tended to ascribe the problem to the trauma on the escalator, whether it was the slice to me knee or the pain in my leg or the shock to my system, any of them capable of some disruption.
But no.
None of those.
In a way, the sleeplessness was caused by the accident, but only tangentially.
The accident not the proximate cause, did not produce the foreseeable consequence that led to my inability to fall asleep.
So?
What was the proximate cause?
Sugar.
Some days (weeks?) ago I wrote of my discovery of a 40-calorie, watermelon popsicle that greatly appealed to me.
I was consuming two every night.
Didn’t seem to affect my sleep.
Recently, to help relieve the stress and pains stemming from the accident, I upped my intake to three and even four of those babies every night.
Mmmm good!
At least tastewise.
But when I closed my eyes?
No way, Hose’.
I was awake.
To stay.
Monday night, when I reached for my third Watermelon Popsicle it dawned on me.
What am I doing?
I consulted the Internet and found the support I needed: cane sugar can make it more difficult to fall asleep.
I did not eat number three.
At bedtime, I followed my pre-accident routine, except for taking nine mg of melatonin instead of six, and I straightaway I fell asleep.
Five hours.
Perfect for me.
After my morning chores, about two hours, I lay down again and rested well for thirty minutes.
Sweet.
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4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society.
Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values.
Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen.
These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.
~Zbigniew Brzezinski
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11.0 Thumbnails
Patrick Lavon Mahomes II (born September 17, 1995) is an American professional football player who is a quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League (NFL).
He is the son of former Major League Baseball (MLB) pitcher Pat Mahomes.
Mahomes initially played college football and baseball at Texas Tech University.
Following his sophomore year, he quit baseball to focus solely on football.
In Mahomes' junior year, he led all NCAA Division I FBS players in multiple categories including passing yards (5,052 yards) and passing touchdowns (53 touchdowns).
He then entered the 2017 NFL Draft, where he was the tenth overall selection by the Kansas City Chiefs.
Mahomes spent his rookie season as the backup to Alex Smith.
After Smith was traded the following season, Mahomes was named the starter.
That season, Mahomes threw for 5,097 yards and 50 touchdowns, becoming the first and only quarterback to throw for over 5,000 yards in a season in both college and the NFL.
Mahomes also joined Tom Brady and Peyton Manning as the only players in NFL history to throw at least 50 touchdown passes in a single season.
For his performances, Mahomes was named to the Pro Bowl, the First Team All-Pro, and won the NFL Offensive Player of the Year and NFL Most Valuable Player awards.
Mahomes, along with Lamar Jackson, Cam Newton, and Steve McNair, is one of only four African-American quarterbacks to win the MVP award.
In the 2020 season, Mahomes led the Chiefs to Super Bowl LIV, their first Super Bowl appearance and victory in 50 years, defeating the San Francisco 49ers.
Mahomes was named Super Bowl MVP after inspiring a fourth-quarter comeback.
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12.0 Diary of the Surrender of a Private Car
I thought this section would be more interesting than it has proven to be.
So far, not a single adventure in renting a car or travel by taxi.
Everything on foot or on the transit system.
Sold car on December 27.
January 27 is 30 days; today, Feb 4, is four more. 34days x $53 per day: $1802.00 in my account that would not be there if I owned a car.
That’s a trip to the Caribbean.
OK, a short trip.
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13.0 Travel
Last night I spent time fleshing out a 30-calendar for a trip to Paris and Northern Italy.
First ten days based in Paris, staying put at one hotel, taking perhaps four day-trips to cities within two hours of Paris (that’s a radius of 400 miles.)
Then short stays in the North visiting Geneva, Turin, Milan, Genoa.
Then more leisurely stays to visit Venice, Verona, and Bologna.
Then even more leisurely stays in Florence and Tuscany.
Obviously, the trip will based on extensive use of the high-speed TGV trains.
Must research a Euro Rail Pass.
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It’s Tuesday, February 4, 2020.
Welcome to the 669th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Ghost Stories was a magazine of fantasy and occult fiction.
Cover of the November 1929 issue of Ghost Stories
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2.0 Commentary
We are into February, galloping past the winter of 2020 without a disaster since the early days of December past.
I do love looking at winter in my rear view mirror.
Sleep has exited my life
Leaving me exhausted to non-functionality.
Will call my PCP today.
Spoke to my son Dom about Chicken, Broccoli, and Ziti.
Years ago we served a great one at Dom’s and he reminded me what set our version apart.
We pureed the broccoli stems and mixed them with Romano cheese, butter, and pasta water before integrating the resulting sauce with the broccoli flowers, chicken, and al dente penne.
I’m making this soon for the family of the recently deceased Rico Ponzo whose favorite dish in all the world was Dom’s Chicken, Broccoli, and Pasta.
I’ll share the recipe with our bloggers after I’ve tested it.
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4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
Peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no trouble, noise, or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart
~Lady Gaga
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11.0 Thumbnails
Fantasy and occult fiction had often appeared in popular magazines prior to the twentieth century, but the first magazine to specialize in the genre, Weird Tales, did not appear until 1923.
Ghost Stories, which was launched by Bernarr Macfadden in July 1926, is one of Weird Tales earliest competitors.
Macfadden also published true confession magazines such as True Story; Ghost Stories followed this format, with the contents mostly produced by the publisher's staff writers, and attributed in print to a first-person narrator.
The magazine was initially printed on slick paper, which was sufficiently good quality to allow photographs to be used, and many of the stories had accompanying photographs purporting to be of their protagonists.
These were replaced by line drawings when the magazine was switched to pulp paper in July 1928.
Ghost Stories occasionally printed contributions from outside writers, including "The Apparition in the Prize Ring", by Robert E. Howard, under the pseudonym "John Taverel". Popular writers such as Frank Belknap Long, Hugh B. Cave, Victor Rousseau, Stuart Palmer, and Robert W. Sneddon all sold stories to Ghost Stories, though the quality suffered because of the limited scope the magazine's formula gave them.
Carl Jacobi's first published story, "The Haunted Ring", appeared in the final issue.
In addition to original material, Ghost Stories ran many reprints, including well-known Victorian ghost stories such as "The Signalman" by Charles Dickens, and "The Open Door" by Mrs. Oliphant. Agatha Christie's "The Last Seance" appeared in the November 1926 issue, with the title "The Woman Who Stole a Ghost", and six stories by H.G. Wells were reprinted, including ghost stories such as "The Red Room" and stories with less obvious appeal to the readership of Ghost Stories, such as "Pollock and the Porroh Man".
Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Captain of the Polestar" appeared in the April 1931 issue, and he also contributed a non-fiction piece, "Houdini's Last Escape", which appeared in March 1930.
Macfadden set up an arrangement with Walter Hutchinson, a U.K. publisher, to exchange suitable material with The Sovereign Magazine and Mystery-Story Magazine, two of Hutchinson's U.K. genre pulps, and many stories appeared on both sides of the Atlantic as a result.
The magazine was initially fairly successful, but sales soon began to fall.
In March 1930 Harold Hersey bought the magazine from Macfadden and took over as editor, but he was unable to revive the magazine's fortunes.
In 1931 the schedule slipped to bimonthly, and three issues later the magazine ceased publication, probably because readers grew bored with the limited scope and predictable content.
The final issue is dated December 1931/January 1932.
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It’s Monday, February 3, 2020.
Welcome to the 668th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (2 February 1754 – 17 May 1838) was a French politician and diplomat.
This portrait in oils was painted by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon in 1817
The picture is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
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2.0 Commentary
Apropos of two meetups that last Monday I had no idea were going to take place:
Life is full of riches.
They’re called people.
Last night broke the streak of terrible sleep nights.
Not coincidentally, I think, my leg is feeling substantially better.
See 5.0 Mail below.
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4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
Don't you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can't be exactly who you are.
~Lady Gaga
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
Lots of ‘get well’ messages.
More messages keep coming in.
Thank you all.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Last night I made the Clam Chowder recipe and the recipe for Egg Drop Soup.
Both were delicious.
Look them up in our recipes or just click the magnifying glass, type in the one you want, and hit ‘enter.’
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11.0 Thumbnails
Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (2 February 1754 – 17 May 1838), 1st Prince of Benevento, then 1st Duke of Talleyrand, was a French politician and diplomat.
After theology studies, he became in 1780 Agent-General of the Clergy and represented the Catholic Church to the French Crown.
He worked at the highest levels of successive French governments, most commonly as foreign minister or in some other diplomatic capacity.
His career spanned the regimes of Louis XVI, the years of the French Revolution, Napoleon, Louis XVIII, and Louis-Philippe.
Those he served often distrusted Talleyrand but, like Napoleon, found him extremely useful.
The name "Talleyrand" has become a byword for crafty, cynical diplomacy.
He was Napoleon's chief diplomat during the years when French military victories brought one European state after another under French hegemony.
However, most of the time, Talleyrand worked for peace so as to consolidate France's gains.
He succeeded in obtaining peace with Austria through the 1801 Treaty of Luneville and with Britain in the
1802 Treaty of Amiens.
He could not prevent the renewal of war in 1803 but by 1805, he opposed his emperor's renewed wars against Austria, Prussia, and Russia.
He resigned as foreign minister in August 1807, but retained the trust of Napoleon and conspired to undermine the emperor's plans through secret dealings with Tsar Alexander of Russia and Austrian minister Metternich.
Talleyrand sought a negotiated secure peace to perpetuate the gains of the French revolution. Napoleon rejected peace and, when he fell in 1814, Talleyrand eased the Bourbon restoration decided by the Allies.
He played a major role at the Congress of Vienna in 1814–1815, where he negotiated a favorable settlement for France and played a role in decisions regarding the undoing of Napoleon's conquests.
Talleyrand polarizes scholarly opinion.
Some regard him as one of the most versatile, skilled and influential diplomats in European history, and some believe that he was a traitor, betraying in turn the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, Napoleon, and the Restoration.
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It’s Sunday, February 2, 2020.
Welcome to the 667th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Death Stranding is an action game developed by Kojima Productions.
Cover art for Death Stranding
Source (WP:NFCC#4)
See Review by Tucker J in 10.0 Game Review below in this section.
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2.0 Commentary
It’s 11.12am Saturday morning, and I am, as usual, at the Blue Bottle typing up my thoughts for the day.
Feeling decently, not modestly dressed, but as in physically and mentally capable of performing.
Why shouldn’t I?
Well since the injury to my knee, about eleven days ago, I have slept poorly, perhaps dangerously poorly.
At about 3:00am I decided to chronicle my activities from 10.00pm until 10.00am, when I was fully engaged in the day’s activities.
At 10.00pm I had a bowl of cereal, took a shower, and popped two 3gram melatonin pills as sleep aids. Leg muscles, quads, hurting a bit, a seven on a scale of twenty, enough to be a bit bothersome.
At 11.00pm I was in bed and read for fifteen minutes, at which point I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
Turned off the lights and lay down.
In fifteen minutes I was wide awake.
I got up, did some computer work, especially organizing Saturday, and at 1.00am, tried lying down again.
To no avail.
At 1.15am I got up and made what might be considered breakfast: an egg on toast, half a jelly donut, and nine ounces of coffee, half-decaf.
At 2.15am I shaved, shaving always makes me sleepy.
At 3.00am I got back into bed and read and tried to sleep.
No good.
I got up and worked until 4.30am when I decided to try the couch and watch TV.
I was asleep in five minutes and slept through until 7.00am, exactly, two and a half hours sleep.
I dressed and went out to Whole Foods for food shopping, returning laden in about an hour.
At 8.30, chicken wings slow-roasting, I lay down on the couch again and slept for near forty minutes, bringing my total to three hours and fifteen minutes, plus an hour or so of resting time garnered while I waited unsuccessfully for a serious sleep.
At 10.00am I walked out to Hook’s, a five-minute walk, and bought some cherrystone clams.
After refrigerating the clams, I headed out to Blue Bottle where I am now.
I have a 12.30pm appointment at Microsoft for some personal training which will include effective reading of a resume and other accomplishments of a computer engineer with whom I am working.
At 2.00pm I must wait for a Comcast tech to get my TV back online.
If I can nap once more I will visit Planet Fitness. If I cannot nap well, I will not have the strength to follow even an abbreviated routine.
This is going on now for the last ten days, during which, off my routine, I’ve gained four unwanted pounds.
What am I going to do about this?
So any of my friends have written their concern for my cut, then for my hyper-extended muscles (my diagnosis) and now I’m adding a layer to my ills, reporting on this terribly unhealthy sleep situation.
I will listen to those experienced in sleep deprivation and perhaps see a doctor.
I hesitate on this latter, having zero confidence in the ability of a PCP to help.
Perhaps I’ll send this note to Internal Medicine and they will straightaway approve my seeing a sleep specialist.
Perhaps.
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4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because
they know what it's like to feel absolutely worthless and
they don't want anyone else to feel like that.
~Robin Williams
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
From Ann H:
Awww 666 the sign of the devil.
Blog Meister responds: Scary!!!
And from Kali L, (responding to exhortations from our readers that she stay connected to her writing)
Dear Dom,
I'm so sorry to hear your knee is disrupting your joy. I hope it mends soon and I too am thankful this winter hasn't brought too much traumatic weather events to Boston-
I got rid of Facebook and it's been amazing for my mind!
I don't want to spend my life minutes that way.
I loved doing my MFA at Lesley - I was able to hone my craft there-can't believe it's been 10 years since I did that! Time goes by...
After my time at Lesley, I of course continued to write and I even worked with a talented person at Grubstreet on a manuscript that now lives in a desk drawer.
I have found poets don't seem to socialize or keep up with writing groups...all my fiction and non fiction people have long term writing groups.
When I move to RI in a couple months, I'll be around several great colleges and I can find a writer's group there! I still maintain friendships with my professors :)
I love this blog and the generosity of its readers :)
Love,
Kali
Blog Meister responds: Sounds upbeat, hopeful. A wonderful environment for a creative mind. We wish you a smooth transition and the best of the future.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
This week we post Chapter 18 in which the girls take Laini home from her first chemo/radiation, and in which their first day in their new high school is noteworthy.
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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10.0 Game Review
There is no elevator pitch for Death Stranding.
Death Stranding is set in an alternate future where a cataclysmic event called the Death Stranding has devastated most of the world. The incident, described as a great explosion, has blurred the lines between the land of the living and the afterlife. In the world of Death Stranding, there is in fact something after death, and it is observable and measurable. Furthermore, every person has been discovered to contain their own “Beach,” which is a limbo-like space that they arrive at before finally moving into the great beyond. The thinning boundaries between our world and the afterlife released spirits called “beached things,” or BTs. BTs ravage communities, wreaking havoc on the living. They are so dangerous that if a human makes contact with a larger BT, it can trigger an event called a “voidout,” a sort of miniature nuclear explosion that can destroy cities in the blink of an eye. The world has been fractured into a few remaining cities and pioneer outposts. Connecting them are delivery services, staffed by porters who brave the expansive waste and sneak through BT territory to bring essential supplies to the disjointed smattering of humanity that remains.
Players control Sam Porter Bridges, a lone wolf courier who is more content in the wasteland than around other people. After the last living president of the United States passes away, Sam is asked to carry out her final directive: connect the remaining settlements to the “chiral network,” a futuristic internet that allows for instant communication and fast 3D printing of infrastructure and supplies. The goal, he is told, is to “make America whole again.”
Carrying out this directive becomes ever more complicated as terrorist factions conspire to kickstart mankind’s extinction, politicians cover up horrible crimes, and a literal ghost bent on revenge wages a personal war against those who wronged him. It’s operatic, excessive, and ultimately leads to a finale so spectacular and absurd that it moves beyond overindulgence into a glorious pimple popping of plot.
So, there are grand political machinations that extend far beyond Sam’s reach. But throughout it all, he’s still just a postman who needs to make his deliveries while living in the worst possible world. To help him navigate that world, Sam is given a “bridge baby.” This baby in a pod grants Sam the ability to perceive BTs and progress on his journey across the continent. Throughout the journey, he will deliver countless packages and supplies from outpost to outpost, hiking untold miles in solitude while slowly bringing settlements into the network. Each new excursion is dogged by tough terrain, lurking BTs, raiders, and a corrosive rain called “timefall” that rapidly accelerates everything it touches. It’s a daunting world for just Sam and his “bridge baby” to face alone.
Though as you learn slowly, you aren’t alone. Death Stranding will put you on a server with other players, each of them building their own structures that you can share and use. You can even deliver packages that they’ve dropped or leave behind packages you can’t deliver yourself. Every time Sam connects another town in the world to the fictional chiral network, Death Stranding will connect you to the real-life network of other players and their structures.
Time and time again in Death Stranding, you wander through harsh red deserts and snow-capped peaks with the mission of bringing people together. You cross bridges left by strangers, trusting that the paths they have laid would bring you where you need to go. Death Stranding insists on a simple idea: that we are made strong by the grace and, more beautifully, the chance of others. That we travel on the roads of those who went before us, leaving our own marks that ultimately affect the path those behind us take. We walk alone more often than we walk together, losing and gaining things along the way. And yet, we sometimes see signs of care. In life, they’re small. A random text message from an old friend, a free coffee at your usual spot, an enthusiastic conversation with a co-worker about nothing important, the sound of your family members moving around the house. In Death Stranding, these things are literal. A generator powering our car in the middle of nowhere, a glowing thumbs up emblem at the city gates, a ladder crossing a flowing stream, a structure protecting us from the acid rain.
In practice, building structures and expanding pathways creates more camaraderie than contention. There’s no denying the strange narrative context underpinning it all—you are, after all, extending from coast to coast in an effort to make America whole again—but the effect of these mechanics is more romantic than unfortunate. Countless workers, united in the solidarity of their task, creating public and functional means to allow essential services to continue. The work mattered enough that players had each other’s backs and tended to the essential parts without prompting. Death Stranding waxes poetic about intertwining souls and bonds that last from one world to the next. If love, sadness or duty could move from the land of the living to the dead, then perhaps these feelings of pride and solidarity can shift from the digital to the actual. We made something; we helped each other. Video game or not, there’s a comfort in that. It turns out that being an Amazon worker in the apocalypse isn’t so bad when solidarity prevails.
Death Stranding deals with many universal themes but the idea of children and their guardians is chief among them. Sam is given Lou, his bridge baby, very early on and for a game that will demand player’s attention for at least sixty hours to complete it that means Sam and Lou spend a lot of time together. It's a relationship that is expressed through some typically ingenious ideas. First and most striking is Lou’s audio being transmitted from the speaker’s built into the controller, an unsettling effect that also superimposes the player and Sam for an instant: Lou is strapped to Sam's midsection and, when it cries, you hear the sound coming from your own midsection. The noises are also isolated in this way from the rest of the game's soundscape, giving them an attention-grabbing urgency that any parent will attest to. A baby crying is one of the most unsettling sounds a human can hear and, if you’re the caretaker of that child something in your brain responds in a primal way. It can therefore be a brilliant element of a horror experience. Hearing Lou cry is something that puts you on edge, and so it's used to both punish and motivate the player. Fall over and, as well as Sam's cargo scattering and taking damage, Lou will cry for an extended period unless soothed: you've already taken the hit, but the game rams the point home. Conversely, Lou’s cries when around enemies and under threat served to make me protective. The ambient noise when under threat from BTs half-drowns the sound of Lou’s cries and, as you focus on dealing with or escaping the situation, this cue is a reminder of what matters.
Crying is one thing but there are dozens of tiny mechanics that feed into creating a bond between the player and Lou, the best of which are based on observation of how young children and their parents interact. If you run or drive across the landscape for an uninterrupted period, Lou loves it and will reward you with laughs and gurgles. At seemingly random points in the game you'll hear similar outbursts of happiness, but there's always some sort of milestone behind them. Lou likes it when you move out of a dangerous area; Lou likes it when you've travelled a long distance and are nearing your destination; Lou likes it when you do things for other players.
On top of which is the fact that you're never really away from Lou. Once you strap on the little tyke, the only times Lou is removed are when Sam is sleeping in a room, at which point Lou’s tank is suspended on a wall facing his bed. Death Stranding is in some respects a lonely game: in this landscape, not many people can do what Sam Bridges can. That's offset later by the remnants of other players' work, the neon projection of comrades-in-arms, but parts of this game will send you on long treks where the only other things around are hostile.
Except Lou. Focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, forcing yourself up a sheer slope, you sometimes forget about your most precious cargo. Then as you crest the peak and smile, and a laugh remind you that someone else is along for the ride too. Sam might feel alone, but he's not.
And if you're on one of Death Stranding's longer journeys, you may well choose to have a snooze along the way. You can only rest at larger outposts, initially at least, so often it's a good idea to catch some z’s in the doorway of any bases you've delivered to. In this sleep animation, Sam takes the weight off his back, cradles Lou with both arms, and drops off. Not that Sam would notice but, if you keep watching long enough, you'll see Lou’s tank turn transparent as it peers up into Sam's face, making a happy noise before it fades to black.
The game’s finest accomplishment in my mind is how it attempts to show player’s what it is like to be a parent and namely, a stepparent. I was raised by a stepparent. I am one now. Taking on responsibility for a child that doesn’t share your DNA is something that requires patience and courage. Love and affection must be nurtured and cared for the same way a parent must care for the child. Nothing is automatic. The mechanics that make up caring for Lou are of course oversimplified compared to reality but Death Stranding does an impeccable job of cutting to the core of what being a parent is about. You are responsible for a person who couldn’t possibly have all the things they need to survive without you. Not yet. But as much as you must work to take care of Lou or an actual child so much of your time spent together is simply joyful.
Death Stranding is not the first game to use life's first real bond as its own foundation but, in what it builds from this, it manages to capture flashes of what it's like: the endless 'stuff' you accrue, the mundanity, the tears, the times you fall asleep together, the years where you're just a packhorse and, above all else, the simple joy of making a child laugh.