I have been fascinated by the hospital secret codes since my Grandmother told me about them when I was ten.

I’ve been in two of them. For my first stay at the hospital we had a Code Green on the neurology floor (a patient got out of bed and was staggering into other people’s rooms ), and then I also was at a hospital during a Code Amber. I never got the details on this; it just occurred while I was waiting for a mammogram. I kept my eye out but I saw no abducted children.

That list was posted at the dermatology office. The darling children’s board book below was at the opera.

There was a page for “Masks” with cute drawings of masks.

“No page for murder?” Anne asked. “Banishment? No Poison page?”

This is a British show about the Mitford sisters. These siblings were in part known for their spouses or cousins (Guinness, Churchill, Duke of Devonshire), and in part known for their politics (Communist, Nazi, Fascist), and then for their novels and autobiographies.

There are seven of them. They look distinctive, thank God. It’s not like The Thin Man, where every man is slender with dark hair and a thin moustache.

But … it’s seven names to keep straight. And then, and I am serious, seven nicknames like Decca and Bobo and I don’t know, Chowd or some nonsense. And then TWO OF THEM call each other “Baud.”

I am half done, and those nicknames better be a plot point otherwise I don’t know why they were included. I had to make a Rosetta Stone to keep track of who had what political bent, who they were sleeping with, plus hair color, name, and nickname. Even still, I keep clicking the supplemental streaming icon that tells me who plays who in this scene.

I’m wearing that icon out anyway because Star City has two main female characters, both soft-bodied with soft brown hair, and they both sleep with two similar blond men. It’s possible it’s the same man. I can’t keep them straight either.

Consider your audience, Britbox and Apple TV. Start applying fake moles or glasses or name tags.

I’ve got your TL;DR here for you right here: we left at intermission.

Why, you ask?

• The music was unpleasant. Picture Wagnerian opera sopranos singing discordant meandering jazz.
• And it was all sung, every word, full-throated, operatically, even lines like, “Stella, get me a beer.”
• The question you want answered: Stanley half-yells and half-sings “STELLLAHHHH.”
• The subject matter for Streetcar Named Desire was very toothy for a movie in the fifties, but not toothy enough for an opera — at least not a 2.5-hour-long opera.
  • Well, there was one part that wasn’t toothless. You may not know that Blanche catches her young husband with a man, she says he disgusts her, and he kills himself. They took that out of the movie. That was toothy.
• I’m sure it is hard to project vulnerability when you also have to literally project. Vivien Leigh could whisper her lines and look haunted, while Opera Blanche had to sing her lines to the back row.
• Blanche covers the light bulb with the Japanese lantern to soften the light, and that’s just a fire hazard.

So, Anne and I discussed it at the intermission and we agreed we were not keen on seeing the next act when Stanley rapes Blanche, especially given there’d already been a really explicit thrusting sex scene with Stella. Plus, I didn’t want to see him gaslight Blanche. And, really, I just didn’t want to see him, period. I hate to say it, Marlon Brando made Stanley less of an ass just by being so handsome, somehow.

So we left, and when Anne got out of the car she said, “You know, we can’t be sure how it ends. Maybe they re-wrote it like they did Cosi Fan Tutti. Maybe Mitch and Blanche get married and Stella kicks Stanley to the curb. Let’s just believe that.”

A postscript: Andre Previn wrote this opera. He wrote two operas. Guess what other movie he turned into an opera. Guess.

Yiiiiissssss. My favorite movie, Brief Encounter. Kill me now, for I am compelled to find that on YouTube. Does little Margaret sing “My birthday’s in June and they don’t have pantomimes in June?” Because she would have to sing it in the same monotone she uses in the movie.

Updated: Margaret and Bobby, the best part of the movie, are not in the Andre Previn Brief Encounter opera. Even so, I preferred it to Streetcar. He wrote it years after and it’s more dreamy, less strident, and the lyrics pull some weight. They put words to what’s behind Alec and Fred’s eyes.

Where we ate – We ate again at at the Clover and the Bee, and I got exactly what I got the first time: delicious chewy crusty bread with soft cheese, honey, and pistachios. Oddly, I didn’t remember what I’d had before, and Ann had to remind me. (This concludes today’s edition of “What I didn’t remember.” I have discovered my auditory memory is still strong – I can remember the exact words from the discussion about your second cousin and her husband’s gambling addiction from 20 years ago – but at the same time all my visuals are off. I picture that 20-year-old discussion happening in the car you bought seven years ago, and that’s impossible.)

What I wore – I saw a photo of Rene Fleming in the role of Blanche DuBois and she was wearing a tiara. “Ohh,” I thought, “I have the tiara I got for the Coronation of Poppea.” But then I realized the wig I wore has bangs, and what is more on theme for Blanche Dubois than a 63-year-old woman in bangs, I ask.

Who was there –

No SalmonPants, nor any of his kin, and no other notables. For the first time the seats next to us were empty, though they’ve been occupied with opera staff the last two times. While the opera wasn’t full of my personal celebrities, Webster Groves was packed with people for a summer Beatles tribute concert, and there was quite a crush.

I recently had just an awful sneezing attack. I sneezed twice a minute for at least 15 minutes. When it happened again a few days later, I of course, thought “nasal cancer,” but no.

Evidently people on GLP1s have a new way for our bodies to signal they are sated – or experiencing satiety, or satiation. The stomach signals the vagus nerve and that causes attacks of sneezing, or – hah – “snatiation.”

That article above sounded familiar. My food tracker said on the days of these sneezing attacks I ate a small breakfast, forgot it, ate another small breakfast because otherwise I would forget to eat breakfast, can’t have that, and then somehow ate a normal lunch. And then sneezed and sneezed and etc.

I had a friend with a nose that ran after every meal. Evidently, it’s the same thing.

A long-lost love I have truly pined for has come back to me.

McDonalds is bringing back the hot apple pies of my youth.

Warning: pie is hot, ten times hotter than today’s lame bready pies. I want to see memes of children’s reactions to these pies. I want to see the lines of Boomers waiting for these pies. In a decade I want to see an uptick in deaths by arteriosclerosis.

Now, to see the original Pop-Tart formula too before I die.