Category Archives: Riffing

In a flash

It’s astounding to think that a person’s life often spans nearly a century. Even more so when I realize mine has already covered three-quarters of one.

In some ways, the experience of all those years has been futuristic.

As an aside in the midst of this ramble, I wonder if the cave dwellers in our distant past didn’t have that same intimation. When fire was discovered or the wheel, didn’t they feel they were encountering the future?

In my lifetime so far, it’s the digital information that I appreciate as new and fresh. Computers have evolved to help orchestrate my life from the smallest of screens.

AI, like Hal in the Star Trek film, is a real thing. My experience of it has a robot scheduled to assist with my upcoming mammogram (for an add-on fee of $59.) Many other examples of artificial intelligence abound. One, of the many I am only vaguely aware of, is the rather alarming driverless or self-driving car.

At the beginning of my time on earth, there were no such gadgets or doodads. They would soon become a reality but not an everyday presence. When they crept further into our consciousness, computing devices loomed large but seemed vaguely improbable.

Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy contended with one behemoth of a machine and a budding romance in Desk Set.

In 1957, there was room for some skepticism about just how useful such mechanical interventions would be. Not so anymore.

We carry a whole lot of computing power in our pockets now. Who woulda thunk? I mean back in the 1940s?

Ethical considerations about how much data we share and how much of our identities we give up or over to the machine are somewhere lost in the shuffle of convenience and notoriety. Look at all I am sharing here with strangers.

Without the devices we use to post these thoughts there would be no online forii.

The public square would be a sheep meadow in the middle of town. Those of us so inclined would argue our propositions from soap boxes. Others so inclined would be entertained by the spectacle.

There would be no data breach just a lot of shouting.

Why we watch

When I judge films, I consider the narrative. I want to be told a story. A movie’s success in my eyes has to do with how cogent a tale it tells.

What if the story isn’t the point? This is a visual medium. Pictures might be what you want to see. Sometimes the visuals are the story.

Splashes of color, images moving speedily or in slo-mo, all carefully superimposed over a generational chronicle are what you’ve come to see.

Or perhaps it’s just the art or the movement without the annals and references. Some films need no consistent content to be great or great fun.

Early films, before we had color to beguile us, were often short comedies, like the Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton movies or Western dramas or sometimes long dark fantasies like Nosferatu or Metropolis.

I hear, for instance, that Avatar 2 is spectacular. By all appearances that doesn’t mean I would find that it makes sense.

Likewise, I hear that Babylon, by the LaLaLand team, is another beautiful spectacle. In this case, based on its predecessor it likely has a lovely plot.

My assessments about a movie may need an overhaul. Just as I have come to like the ridiculous slapstick of The Stooges and the confusing dialog of the Brothers Marx, perhaps I can absorb and value fantastical ramblings in technicolor and beyond.

Seeing Red!

I would never argue against a red but I lack the subtlety of eye to recognize Viva Magenta as much different from the CNN logo or some other vibrant red.

Pantone has selected Viva Magenta as the color of the year.

Having been in a printing-adjacent biz, I value their judgment. I am also certain that they have the discernment to differentiate one red from another. It can be a close call.

One of the pleasures of working on a printing project is getting to use a Pantone color swatch book. Mine was a prized possession.

So many colors, how do I choose just one?

Laying out the colors one atop the next is a sensual pleasure I remember vividly.

My riches

For years, my attempt at keeping a plant in my home ended in brown leaves and disappointment.

I have finally found a plant that, starting as a small cutting, has done nothing but thrive. I missed my watering schedule a couple of weeks ago. It started to droop. Uh oh, that’s it, I thought, this looks familiar.

A little remedial watering and back to our schedule, a hubby who greets the perky little thing and look where we are now.

Observed today

These two illustrated vehicles both represent some good transit options. The dismantled yellow bike no doubt the better of them.

Simon is cutting hair today. Salvo’s is closed. An uneven start to finding open establishments.

I saw the first poinsettias of the season today. Wanted to shout that at the young man making the delivery but his earbudds precluded meaningful communication.

It’s warm for Thanksgiving Thursday.**

**I added the unnecessary “Thursday” in case they turn the holiday into an official long weekend. It would then come complete with its own sales day.

There are places to sit. I know I mentioned this before but Le Petit Parisien has an excellent cappuccino. You know where else the coffee’s good? My local D’Agostino. Yeah, I too was surprised.

Worldly

Best License Plate

The World Cup has it wrong. Many of the countries competing are really not soccer people.

I know my countrymen aren’t. Is it the American pastime? Even the American pastime isn’t anymore. Baseball is great but it seems to have had its nine innings.

I am going off-topic here so back to my proposition to remedy the matchups.

If this were a Baseball World Cup, Japan and the USA might lead the matches. The World wants to participate in whatever games are afoot. We’re a playful lot.

A truly global event should give everyone an equal chance.

We could piece one together by letting the soccer-obsessed part of the earth play their soccer games. Maybe the US vs Japan in a round of baseball games would be fair. Frisbee anyone? Sailing? Golf? Fly-fishing?

The point is if a nation is dismally poor at one sport, it could partake of one where it excels.

New to me

I have learned a new word for “bewitch.” Ensorcell means to enchant, hex or charm. Thank you, AJ Willingham of CNN the Good Stuff for expanding my vocabulary with this bewitching word.

The noun for this verb is “ensorcellment” meaning enchantment or being under a spell. I notice that this whole witchy thing gets kind of awkward.

Always looking to listen and learn, although generally too lazy to do any of that the hard way. The inbox newsletter was a great eye-opener. In the same edition, AJ also shared a few of the five hundred new words in the Scrabble dictionary.

Boosting my language skills has never been more fun. Of the words represented here I found “zedonk” most intriguing and now I know what it means.

Gratitude

It’s Thanksgiving, a holiday designed for the expression of gratitude. I am happy to join in the festivities.

Thankful, I am thankful for nice days, rainbows, love, and laughter. I am grateful for both adversity and tranquility in the downs and ups of life.

No feast is necessary to celebrate. Don’t get me wrong, I like a nice turkey wing and some pecan-laden stuffing but I don’t need the poultry to underscore my appreciation.