Martin Scorcese said that Casino was “all story, no plot.”
I liked Casino a lot, though, I think because I didn’t need to hear the “why” behind any of the narrative. I just assumed that life in the Mafia is violent and chaotic and random.
Life in table tennis is violent and chaotic too, who knew, and exhausting to watch. Just exhausting. And so long. Was the plot meant to mimic table tennis itself, just a relentless back-and-forth effort?
Of course, props to Timothee for becoming a really good table tennis player. And the orange ball visual was lovely. But it all comes down to the ending, which was baffling. Baffling to me, anyway.
Summary: did not like , no thank you, I rooted for the dog more than the human.
8:00 pm Monday night: I am watching the credits to the 2025 recorded version of Merrily We Roll Along and I am astonished to see it was based on a 1934 play by Kaufman and Hart. And then I am gobsmacked to read that K&H’s 1934 version was told with the same backward narration.
6:00 pm Monday night: I pick up the musical where I left off, about thirty minutes in.
3:30 Sunday afternoon: I think, “I’ve got to stop watching this and finish it tomorrow if I’m going to get the gardening done. But I liked that ‘Franklin Shepard Inc.’ song because it had a tune.”
2:55 Sunday afternoon: I decide to watch the Merrily We Roll Along movie on Netflix because I vaguely remembered it was the rare Sondheim failure that inspired the documentary The Best Worst Thing to Ever Could Have Happened. One of the difficulties was that the musical was told in reverse chronological order.
1957: Stephen Sondheim debuts on Broadway with West Side Story, including the song “Something’s Coming,” which could just as well be the last (yet chronologically first) song of Merrily We Roll Along, “Our Time.”
How is it that a mystery play can essentially reveal events in reverse, and it doesn’t trouble me, and an opera can do the same and I think it’s fine, but not this? I suppose part of it is that you get invested in a character, and if the character is revealed to be originally different from what you were told then you feel cheated? Galileo doesn’t change from end to beginning. Good guys are revealed to be evil killers, and that’s delightful, because they were evil all along. But this musical gives you someone damaged who was better before, so you have to watch as they get more appealing but then you know that’s the beginning, not the ending.
So I suppose ultimately I didn’t like it. I didn’t like a Kaufman and Hart play, surprising, I know.
Well, tonight is the last night my teeth will spend in the aligners. It was just a four-month process and they feel like all-new teeth.
I mean, cosmetically they’re still too close to the ivory edge of the paint sample card. And my front teeth are still shorter than my canines (just like Mom’s).
But on the other hand, I can actually floss now without blood and violence. And before, the force exerted between the teeth caused every tooth to chip, like tiny tectonic plates rubbing against each other.
I started out comforted to have little snug life vests around every tooth, but in the last few weeks it has felt like I had a too-tight bra around every tooth, and taking it off felt like a little mouth vacation.
But in about 12 hours, I will take them off and then … start eating and flossing nonstop, I guess.
I think I am not the only one this week to wonder about mileage. (Because of Artemis, of course, not gas prices.)
Evidently measuring statute miles in feet and inches is deficient. I suppose that’s why we ended up with terms like “a country mile” and “as the crow flies.” If you’re navigating huge expanses, like an ocean, you need something more exact. Can’t put a tape measure on the ocean.
At any rate, after rational people decided the earth was not flat, they covered the globe with grid lines of latitude and longitude. And I’m quoting here, because this is math: ”A Nautical Mile is the distance you cover when you travel along a longitude, within a slice of latitude that’s one-sixtieth of a degree (1/60).”
It’s longer than a statute land mile, but close enough they can both still use the word “mile”.
So the moon is about 200,000 nautical miles (nm) away. Mars is 30 million nm away. Pluto (I still count you Pluto) is 231 billion nm away.
Or, in light terminology, Mars is 19 light-minutes away, Pluto is almost 5 light-hours away.
Seems like we need a measurement between nautical miles and light-years. And so there is, astronomical units, which I copied freely from NASA, because there are no NASA copyrights because U.S. taxes paid for it.
Screenshot
I give that to fellow members of the globe to make up for the way I have utterly disregarded kilometers in this post.
So instead of having a fraction of latitude and longitude be the standard, the distance from the Earth to the Sun is the standard. That seems very earth-centric. We’ll probably meet people orbiting Alpha Centauri and find they use kilometers too.
When my neurologist asks me if I’ve fallen in the last six months, and I say yes, and he says, “What were you doing,”I say “Gardening,” because I often fall while I’m gardening. I’m tired, the ground is uneven, and I’m often too hot.
Gary’s never around, so it isn’t a crisis, and frankly, I think the neighbors expect it.
In the last three weeks I’ve fallen every time I’ve gardened. Today’s fall was particularly dramatic.
I was tidying the peony bed. I had bought new cages: some plastic and substantial, some metal and graceful. I had just assembled the first plastic one with great difficulty, set it over some peonies in bud, stepped back, admired it, turned, tripped, and fell backward on top of the new peony cage.
Sadly, Gary was in the garage and heard the impact and ensuing cursing. And moaning. Aside from my damage, I think one stem of the peonies broke, and of course the cage is in pieces again. I know one support leg is bent. I didn’t have the heart to inspect it, I just gathered the bits and piled them on the workbench.
Tomorrow’s a new day. But tonight I am very discouraged.
Astronauts are back and safe. I can stand down. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been on edge these past ten days. Gary didn’t help this morning when he shared the heat shield worries.
Anyway, good work NASA, you waited until April this time.
Excellent work on the animated graphics in particular.
Early on while the solar panels adjusted, the panels in the graphic sloooowly adjusted as well. Nice work.
Evidently the toilet was never fixed, so points off for that. Then again, Buzz Aldrin famously never pooped during his week on Apollo 11.
As for myself, I am as exhausted as if I had personally willed it to space and back.
Okay, this is Sunday evening, and I have a comment for the astronaut giving notes on the far side of the moon.
You mentioned two key things.
The shadow where the moon split from sunlight to shadow, “the Terminator,” was extraordinary. You said It made obvious how craggy and dramatic the far side of the lunar surface was. Mountains and valleys and cliffs. Good to know.
THERE ARE GREEN PATCHES ON THE MOON.
Evidently some parts OF THE MOON are brown, and some are tinged green. So stop rhapsodizing about the Terminator. Tell me more about the green. Lime green or olive green? Green like baby poop? Green like a spring lawn? Green like the Martian flag?
I do not think your priorities were aligned correctly. Hope you took a lot of photos.
It is a shame that the president has chosen the same day and time for his public speech on the current war in Iran. Is he competing with the moon for attention?
I bet the astronauts are pretty excited. It really is a shame the toilet has been working only on and off. I would find that a huge inconvenience if I knew millions of people would have eyes on me.
I find this quote odd: “They also may be the first humans to see some parts of the moon’s far side with the unaided eye.” May be? Really? That statement came from NASA. I mean, all the Apollo 13 astronauts and all the command module pilots all saw some parts of the far side surface with their eyes, right? I suppose they were too close to see the poles. This group will be further away. Or maybe there have been secret Soviet missions and there’s some skeletal cosmonaut corpse down there.
