AI AI AI AI (Part 2)

There are so many AI failures and atrocities, it's difficult to know where to begin. Chatbots are coaching vulnerable folks to commit suicide, to commit crimes. The government wants the cooperation of AI vendors to accelerate the completion of the compleat surveillance state. (Can't wait.) There've been AI misdiagnoses. AI job losses - even when the AIs are nowhere near as good as the workers who've been replaced. AI mistargeting. (What's a hundred or so Iranian schoolgirls?)

Not all of AI's failures and atrocities are dire.

The other day, I had to call a bank for some information that required my speaking with a human. The first "human" I was connected to was clearly an AI. Either that, or someone doing a mighty good impression of an AI. Anyway, the AI "human" was able to finally get me to a human human. 

This encounter wasn't life threatening. Just annoying.

And there's no doubt plenty more where that came from.

Meanwhile, there are many (and increasing) instances of AIs that are just plain soul-crushing. And high on my list of the soul-crushers are AI when it starts tampering with the arts.

Last month I wrote about a Revolutionary War "series" concocted via AI. 

Ken Burns has nothing to worry about, but if folks start accepting AI slop wherever they may find it...I don't even want to think about it.

And one place where I sure don't want to see AI slop rearing its ugly little non-head is the written word, especially when it comes to fiction.

Even if that fiction is just romance novels, where AI is apparently making some headway.

Take Coral Hart.

There is no Coral Hart for reals. It's one of the many pennames of a modestly successful legit romance novel writer whose "real" work had been published by Harlequin. Hart started playing around with AI and found that she could churn out hundreds of titles a year and pull down six figure earnings. Sure, she's had to tweak the prose. AI is apparently not all that good at sex scenes and the nuances of true love, romance novel edition.

But once she's entered her prompts and high level outline, AI can churn a book out in less than an hour.

There are also certain phrases that AI uses to death. Those not-so-great sex scenes often include the heroes uttering his enamorata's name "like a ragged prayer." Whatever that means. (Maybe I'm just jelly because no one's ragged prayering the name Maureen.)

Romance novels are a big business, accounting for over one-fifth of adult fiction sales. And the big biz of romance is growing. Unlike, say, literary fiction, which is not. (Other than among us discerning readers.)

The genre may be especially vulnerable to disruption by A.I., for all the reasons that readers love it. Romance relies on familiar narrative formulas, like the guarantee of an “H.E.A.” or “happily ever after.” And romance novels are often built around popular plot tropes — like enemies-to-lovers or forced proximity — that can be fed into a chatbot.

A.I. remains contentious in the romance community. A vocal contingent of readers oppose its use and are quick to call out suspected transgressions. Furor erupted on social media last year when two romance authors published works with A.I. prompts accidentally left in. “You’re an opportunist hack using a theft machine,” the fantasy writer Rebecca Crunden wrote in an expletive-laced message on Bluesky. (Source: NY Times)

When it comes to writing fiction, you can put me in Camp Crunden. 

If an AI is doing the "writing," just who are you, Coral Hart. You're an outliner. A prompter. But you're sure as hell not a writer. Or not much of one. 

Maybe she doesn't care. She's added teaching to her repertoire, offering classes on how "writers" can use AI. She sees AI as the absolute wave of the future.

“If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?” she said.

There's a lot of junk out there that's not written by AI, but produced the old fashioned way. And it's god-awful. I read a couple of books a week. (Thank you, Boston Public Library.) Some whodunits, but mostly serious (or quasi-serious) fiction. (No romance novels, no obvious beach reads. I.e., if "Nantucket's" in the title, I'll take a hard pass.)

I tend towards writers I know who are good because I've read them in the past. Or come recommended by friends and families I know to be good, serious-y readers. If I've seen a review, I'll try someone new. Or I'll just pick something off the shelf and give it a go. 

Some of the off-the-shelf writers turn into writers I'll be looking for. Others aren't all that well written, leaving me to ask "how in god's name did this get published?" (And, of course, giving my hope for my coming - ahem - literary career.)

The poorly written books I stumble across put me in mind of Truman Capote's words for those he found lacking: "that's not writing, it's just typing."

What does that make AI novels? They're not even typing! (Wonder if Coral Hart even types in her prompts. Or does she use voice?)

Romance novel fans consume a lot of books. The word ingest if probably closer to the true experience than is reading. 

As Elizabeth Ann West, an AI romance writer notes that, while many readers disparage the idea of AI generated novels, the reality may be different. 

“If you hide that there’s A.I., [a book] sells just fine,” she said.

Ms. West, who also teaches classes on how to write with A.I., has gotten blowback from opponents of the technology, including occasional death threats on social media. But she believes that in time, A.I. generated fiction will become widespread and popular.

“Eventually” Ms. West said, “readers will not care.”

Since I haven't read any AI-generated fiction, I can't tell you waht separates human writing from AI slop. Character authenticity? Nuanced interactions? True emotion? Original ways of describing things. Novel situations?

Just like I recognized the bank bot when I encountered him it, I'm pretty sure I'll know it when I see it. And I sure hope that AI doesn't put human creatives out of business any time soon.

AI AI AI AI! (Sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh!)

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Image Source: KosMosaicBooks

Triple deckers

I always tell people that I grew up in a triple decker, which is kinda-sorta true. I only lived there until I was six-and-a-half, when we moved to a modest one-family ranch on a street full of VA-loan new-builds on the street behind Winchester Avenue in Worcester. And that triple decker, with the gabled, pitched roof third floor, may technically be a two-and-a-half decker. 

In any case, it was definitely a three flat.

When I was a baby, we lived on the top floor, with the slanted ceilings in pretty much every thus-crampy room. Then the tenants on the second floor moved out, and we moved down. (Those tenants, the Deignans, now occupy a gravesite kitty-corner to where my parents, my grandmother, and my Uncle Charlie are buried.)

The third floor was never again occupied, but when I was a kid, it was a fun place to explore. As was the second floor flat, which remained empty after we moved out.

This was my grandmother's house, and although she could have used the rental income, once we decamped, Nanny and her boon companion, my feckless Uncle Charlie, stayed put on the first floor, the big old house otherwise empty. The story told was that Nanny didn't want the noise of tenants clomping around over her head, but I suspect it had more to do with the fact that my father did 100% of the maintenance, yardwork, snow shoveling, and everything else that needed to get done at 5 Winchester Avenue, including shoveling coal into the furnaces. Now he had a home and yard of his own to maintain, and could now do only 75% of the work at Nanny's that needed to get done and may not have been satisfied with whatever level attention Charlie was paying to keeping the place in shape.

Not that he had to do all that much. The heating was converted to oil, sparing Charlie for having to stir his lazy stumps and shovel coal. I believe that the only work around the house he did was mow the strip of grass that flanked the left side of the house, and scythe the clumps of grass on the steep front lawn. He must have shoveled, too. But my father dropped by to visit Nanny pretty much every day and took care of a lot of things for her.

The house I grew up in - at least until I was six-and-a-half (technically six-years-seven-months) - looked a lot different from the one in the Google Maps picture. 

For one thing, it was a dark chocolately brown with creamy yellow trim. The iron pipe railing going down the front steps looks the same, but that wrought iron design on the front porch is "new." As is the pachysandra or myrtle or whatever it is on the front lawn. We had grass tuffets, like the one that Little Miss Muffet sat on.

Whoever bought the house when my grandmother moved in with my aunt in 1974 made some "improvements" over the years. (The house, by then falling down around their ears - no surprise given that my father was dead and had been ill for many years before he died - was sold after Charlie died and Nanny no longer had his stellar companionship. Other than doing Nanny's grocery shopping - with her money - Charlie was pretty much useless. A freeloader. A low-end con man. A handsome, charming, sweet-talking rogue. But Nanny's golden boy to the end.)

For one thing, they painted the house white and pretty much dumped the trim. They replaced the retaining wall - which, in my memory was at least three feet high - with what looks like a one-footer. They closed in the two side porches (first and second floor), which were wondrous places to sit and watch the world go by. (These porches were known in Worcester parlance as "piazzas." As if.)

Somewhere along the line, we learned that, rather than do upkeep on plaster, the new owners dropped the ceilings. I suppose they replaced the toilets with new-fangled ones that didn't have the raised tank and the pull-chain flusher. I suppose they replaced that iron stove/oven, the size of a VW Beetle.

I hope they kept the pantries, the pocket doors, the hardwood floors. I hope they didn't paint over the magnificent mahogany banister in the front hallway - a hallway used once a year, on Christmas Day, when we walked down to Nanny's for dinner. Other than that, we were back entry/back stairs folks. 

I loved that house, and it holds pride of place in my Worcester memories.

But was it a true triple decker? Like this one? There were, in fact, plenty of triple deckers in my neighborhood. If you jigger with the Google Map, you can see a few of them just across Main Street from Nanny's. (As a side note: some claim that the triple decker was "invented" in Worcester by one Francis Gallagher. The claim has been disputed, but it certainly could be that some enterprising Irishman came up with the idea as a way to house his fellow Irishmen and women who were coming to Worcester in droves.)

I had friends who lived in triple deckers. I had more friends who, like me, had started out in triple deckers before their families graduated to single-family homes. I had a lot more friends whose parents had grown up in triple deckers, and whose grandparents still lived there.

My closest high school friend, Marie, live in a very nice but very small house, not all that far from the decker where her mother had grown up and where her grandfather still lived. Her mother's sister and her family lived above him. When she finished school, Marie's sister lived in a flat there.

This post on triple deckers was prompted by a recent article I saw in The Harvard Crimson. 

I don't regularly read The Crimson, although it's an excellent college paper and I do stumble across articles there every once in a while. This was one of those once in a whiles. 

The article focuses a bit on the iconic status of three deckers. Seriously, is there a movie made about working class, often criminal, Irish boyos that doesn't have triple deckers as a co-star. (C.f., as the Crimson story notes, “The Departed,” “Good Will Hunting,” and “Gone Baby Gone.”

And a bit on the history of deckers:

Historically, triple-deckers were built to house factory workers. Over time, they became a crucial form of upward mobility for working class families, especially immigrants who came to call Massachusetts home. But, as nativist sentiment in Boston grew between 1910 and 1930, the triple-decker became maligned for its association with these groups and it was slowly banned from zoning codes. (Source: The Crimson)

One of the issues wasn't just "nativist sentiment." A lot of those deckers were built quite flimsily and were fire traps. Anyway:

Today, many areas of Boston...are zoned for no more than two and a half stories. Building higher than that requires the same expensive special permission as an apartment building, making apartments a better investment for developers. 

Most of the Crimson story is about the role deckers can/will play in helping alleviate the housing crisis. They are, in fact, "poised for a comeback in many municipalities."

In 2024, the ex-urb city of Somerville okayed construction of three-unit buildings. Last year, Cambridge made four-story housing legal. Boston is debating whether to start permitting triple-deckers "— or even taller buildings —."

Will triple deckers solve the housing crisis? No, but sentimental old me welcomes their revival. There's just something about them...

But I'll end with this, the Crimson writer is named Jack Reardon. On a hunch, I gave him a google and found out that he grew up in the Boston area, and graduated from a well-known local boys Catholic high school. Now, for all I know, Jack Reardon's antecedents were lace-curtain grandees from the moment they arrived. But I'm a pretty good guesser, and I'm guessing that there's a triple decker or two in his background. 

Just sayin'.

By the way, good, well-written article, Jack.

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Image 1 Source: Google Maps
Image 2 Source: Wikipedia 

Dashing to the door...

When I worked full time, and my husband wast still among the living, we ate out regularly. As in at least 3-5 nights a week. I'd get home from work, we'd head out for a walk, and stop somewhere for dinner and drinks. If we didn't go out, we'd fend for ourselves, often with whatever was in the prior night's doggy bag. Sometimes we ordered a pizza, Chinese, or Thai, walking over to the restaurant to pick it up. I typically cooked on Saturday night. So there'd be leftovers on Sunday.

I didn't particularly enjoy cooking, but had about a dozen recipes on my menu. A couple of chicken dishes. A few pasta meals. Chili. Meatloaf. Stuffed peppers. Hot and spicy greebeans with pork. Quiche. A few of my dishes were sufficiently interesting that someone might actually think I was a cook. The curried chicken with currants, almonds, and peppers, served with couscous. The pasta with black olives, roasted red peppers, parsley, and walnuts, which I picked up while casually watching Julia Childs one day back in the early 1970s. 

So I could cook. While I always loved baking, I just wasn't wild about cooking. And was in no mood to cook when I got home from work. I was just as happy to get a little walk in and plunk myself down in a restaurant and start reading the menu.

I still don't cook every night, but I'm more of a cook now, and my repertoire is vastly expanded. In the past couple of weeks, I've made spicy lemon shrimp with lemon'd basmati rice. A shepherd's pie (which I left on the counter overnight, so only go one meal rather than four out of it). Scallops with orzo and cherry tomatoes. Peppered chicken breast with mashed potatoes and broccoli. An omelet with grilled asparagus. 

Other than the omelet, I cook in volume so there'll be something for at least two nights plus extras for the freezer. My brother comes over once a week for dinner and I'll send him home with Rubbermaid containers full of meals for his freezer, as his idea of cooking is opening a can of soup.

Not that mine isn't.

It's not as if I've never made a dinner out of a can of Italian Wedding Soup. (Or some instant oatmeal doctored up with apples, nuts, and raisins.)

These days, once in a very blue moon, I'll order a legit (non-pizza, non-Chinese) meal from a local restaurant and walk over to fetch it.

Never say never, but I have only had food delivered a couple of times in my life. And that was before DoorDash and Uber Eats. Never say never, but I have never had a meal delivered by either of the above.

Not that there's anything wrong with it.

Other than that a lot of the local deliveey drivers are on unlicensed ebikes, and are a menace to pedestrians. They ignore stop signs, red lights, one way streets. They weave along sidewalks, scattering walkers as they speed by. They drive pell-mell through the leafy (other than in winter) pathways of the Boston Public Garden. They make an awful lot of noise revving around. I live in fear that I'll die in fear being hit by one of them.

Yes, I know they're all just trying to make a living. But I really don't like having them around.

Yet I know that there are a lot of folks who rely on them. 

Some even live in my building, where three young women share a flat and where some mornings I walk out and find on the mail table in the foyer a bag containing what looks like an Egg McMuffin that's just been dropped off. Is the nearest McDonald's even a 10 minute walk away? And how hard is it to pop an English muffin in the toaster, scramble up and egg, and microwave a slice of Jimmy Dean sausage patty?

But as someone who has eaten out an awful lot during my life, who am I to judge?

Yet judge I do.

The NYTimes ran a recent article on the meal delivery business. Turns out that:

In 2024, almost three of every four restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant, according to data from the National Restaurant Association. The number of households using delivery had roughly doubled from 2019, just before the pandemic, the group said. And in a survey last year, about one-third of American adults told the association that they ordered food for delivery at least once a week. (Source: NY Times)

Some are ordering in a lot more than that.

Like at young woman in San Diego who spends $200-300 a week (on a salary of $50K!) dining in on meals like spaghetti with marina from a spot just down the street. When she could cook up some pasta and open a jar of Rao's for a fraction of the cost. 

And all that delivery isn't making her happy:

Ordering in has eaten away at her savings, she said, and led her to socialize less. She tips generously, but worries that the delivery drivers are poorly paid.

Then there's the Atlanta-based marketing exec with two kids..."he and his husband spend about $700 a week to order in."

“I am so burned out and tired, I would rather just throw my credit card at the problem and delay that unhappiness until the bill comes,” he said.

I understand perfectly. Cooking after you've put in a solid workday plus commute is a colossal drag. 

My favorite sitch in the article was that of a young data analyst in LA who moonlights for Uber Eats "to pay off his debt from ordering too much food delivery." 

What a world we live in...

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Image Source: Built In

Tis another reason to love Ireland

Well, it's St. Patrick's Day, and I have all those loaves of soda bread to prove it.

As anyone who knows me knows, I love Ireland. I have been there many times, and over the decades have found that there's so much to love about this beautiful country. Starting with that beauty. Sure, there are slummy areas in the big cities and mildewly little villages that the world has passed by, but the countryside is gorgeous, the cliffs breathtaking, the views stunning. 

And, no, I'm not forgetting the people. Like anyplace else, Ireland has plenty of a-holes, bores, droogs, snobs, jerks, and misanthropes. But for the most part, I've found the Irish welcoming and friendly, intelligent and good-humored, interesting and aware of the world beyond Ireland, and generous in spirit. 

Amazingly, the food in Ireland is very good, which I wouldn't have guessed ahead of time based on my Irish grandmother's culinary skill, nor based on my first roots trip in 1973 when a) the pre-Celtic tiger country was still very poor; and b) I had little money to spend on food - if there'd been any decent meals to be had. 

I love Irish music, Irish literature, Irish art, Irish fillums. 

The Irish do, too.

And they've got a new scheme to prove it. (That, by the way, is "scheme" in the Irish and British sense: a program or a plan, not in the usual American sense of a sneaky, underhanded, often illegal idea.)

Artists based in the Republic of Ireland could be paid €325 (£283) [$384] a week by the Irish government as part of a scheme to support them in their work. 

The Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) project is believed to be the first permanent one of its kind in the world and Ireland's Culture Minister Patrick O'Donovan says it makes Ireland a "global leader in the area of artist support".

Some 2,000 eligible artists will be selected after applications open in May and will receive the weekly payment for three years. (Source: BBC)

The country ran a pilot scheme a few years ago and found that for every Euro they put into the pocket of an artist, a value of 1.39 Euros was generated "while allowing artists to devote more time to their work and improving their quality of life."

No one's going to get rich on the equivalent of $384 a week, but for artists living on the edge of precarity, it's a good foundation on which to build a life and devote more time to their work, unburdened by having to spend every other minue fretting about where their next meal was coming from. With the modest basic boost the Irish government's putting in their pocket, an artist could supplement their income with proceeds from their art and/or part time paid work.

I can't wait to see how many end up applying for those 2,000 grants. I'm guessing an order of magnitude beyond 2,000. Maybe more. 

Applicants must live in Ireland and have a "professional creative practice which is primarily based in Ireland." Beyond that, there's a pretty broad definition of the arts.

The Visual Arts includes not just all media, but curators and art writers. The Theatre grouping goes beyond actor and director to include theater techs, designers, puppeteers, and mimes. Now, I wouldn't be too crazy to see my tax money going to support mimes, but maybe that's just me. 

Architects are also on the list. 

All sorts of writers - fiction, non-ficiton, poets and beyond - are eligible. Singers, musicians, composers, conductors of all stripes. Dancers, choreographers, and dance tutors/coaches. (Learned a new word: repetiteur.) Opera everythings, including repetiteurs. 

Everything that you can think of that pertains to films, including voice over artists.

Circus artists are also wecome to apply. Clowns aren't specified, but I'm guessing they're included under "circus artists." (If it were me running the scheme, it would be NCNA - No Clowns Need Apply. But as with mimes, that's maybe just me.)

Overall, I think that scheme is a terrific idea. 

Tis yet another reason to love Ireland. Makes me look even more forward to my as-yet-in-the-scheming-stages next trip across the pond.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all who celebrate!

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Image Source: ABC News

As Hollywood's Big Night Nears...

The Academy Awards are on Sunday night. As is my long-time custom, I won't be watching. But as is my short-time  custom,(this is my third year observing it), I've watched from the comfort of the love seat in my den all ten of the films nominated for Best Picture.

From bottom to top, from least favorite to most, here are my quick thoughts on each of them. (These are not plot summaries, so if you don't know anything about these movies, my comments may not mean all that much.)

10. Frankenstein - Dark and turgid throughout, I really disliked this one. Definitely took a nap-een during it, and didn't miss a thing. Other than, presumably, some dark and turgid whatever. Give me Boris Karloff in the 1930's horror flick. Or Peter Boyle in Mel Brook's madcap Young Frankenstein any old day

09. F1 - This is a perfectly entertaining old-fashioned movie. Brad Pitt can still bring plenty of good looks-ness and charm. But F1 could have been made 50 years ago. It's not that I disliked it. There was one movie the nominee list that I actually hated. (Looking at you, Marty Supreme.) It's just that F1 didn't seem, to me, to have enough of anything distinctive to merit a nomination.

08. Marty Supreme - I like Timothée Chalomet. I really do. Liked him in Little Women. Loved him as Bob Dylan. But I found Marty Supreme one chaotic mess, with Chalomet frenetically ping-ponging around for two long hours+. It was all just a bit too much. The fifties atmospherics were interesting, and I suppose it was inspired to cast a-hole businessman Kevin O'Leary (he of Shark Tank fame) as an a-hole businessman. But a supremely hard pass on Marty Supreme. 

07. Hamnet - This is one beautiful film. Just gorgeous. The acting was fine. But it left me cold. My one takeaway is that the kid who played Hamnet looked a lot like Prince George.

06. One Battle After Another - There was some great acting, and some wonderful bits. I loved the white nationalist rich guy cabal. And Sean Penn as Colonel Lockjaw (a character highly reminiscent of now-demoted ICE honcho Greg Bovino) was deleriosly hilarious. But I found OBAA pretty confusing. And, as I find almost every movie that runs over 2 hours, way too long. But I liked it well enough. 

05. Sinners - There's lots to admire about Sinners, especially the acting (e.g., Michael B. Jordan) and the setting in Depression-era Mississippi. I also liked the look into Black life (however surreal many elements were). But magical realism is not now and has never been my jam, so there were parts that lost me. 

04. Bugonia - If a little magic realism goes a long way, well, so does a little science fiction, a little fantasy, and little horror. And Bugonia had some of all of the above. But it also had a ton going for it. Like Emma Stone. And the on-point portrayal of richy-rich CEO life, the horrors of big pharma, and the left-behind working class. So the good outweighed the bad, and I much enjoyed Bugonia. 

03. Secret Agent - I even mucher enjoyed Secret Agent. Okay, there was too much violence to my liking. And although Secret Agent didn't drag, does any movie need to run 2 hours and 40 minutes? They could have saved a good slug of time by cutting out the hairy leg stuff, which did nothing to advance the plot of how harrowing it is to like in a violent, repressive, thug-ridden, poor, authoritarian country, as was Brazil in the late 1970's. (I shudder to think that our country may just be a few degrees of separation away from this state...) 

02. Train Dreams - What was it that drew me right into this low key movie? The low key-ness. The simplicity. The generosity. The quiet (even when noisy). The humanity at its core. The incredible natural beautiful of the Pacific Northwest setting. This is a very sad movie, but it's devoid of gimmicks, special effects, magical realism, and surreality. And I loved it. Contributing to my loving it, Train Dreams clocks in at 102 minutes. Yes!

01. Sentimental Values - Although I pretty much saw all of Imgmar Bergman during my prime movie going days, I was never a huge fan. The movies were almost always a slog, heavy going, moody, depressing. But I pretty much love anything in a Scandinavian settin, so Sentimental Values was right up my cinematic alley. Plus Skellen Skarsgard who plays the no longer relevant, aging acto paterfamilias of an artsy/acting Norwegian family. The movie deals with memory, resentment, intimacy, war, parents, children, rage, and the house you grow up in. What I loved about this - other than the Scando setting, the acting, and the house to die for (before they modernized it) was that it was intensely real. No tricks up its sleeve that I could see. My favorite movie of the Big Ten, but not all that much farovite-y than Train Dreams or Secret Agent.  

I will check on Monday to see which movie won. Unlikely to be one of my faves. (I'm thinking Sinners for the win.) 

Meanwhile, I haven't checked on the contents of the swagbag yet, so I don't know what goodies the illustrious nominees for Actor/Actress/Director/Picture et al. get for showing up. And after watching 30 movies over the past three years, the majority of which I didn't particularly care for, I think I deserve a swagbag for myself.

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Image Source: LA Lifestyle

At the movies

Tomorrow's post will be my overall take on the ten movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Although I seldom go to the movies, and never watch the Academy Awards, I've been doing this the last couple of years. Which means I've been sitting through a bunch of movies I wouldn't necessarily see if they weren't nominated.

What's different this year is that I didn't actually see any of these movies at a theater, but watched from the comfy-cozy of my very own home.

Which got me thinking of some of the odder experiences I've had in movie theaters over the years.

One of my first movie-going experiences was seeing Disney's Cinderella at Worcester's Park Theatre. My father took me, my sister Kath, and my brother Tom, and once we'd gotten settled in, he gave us each a dime to get a drink from the flat soda machine. Kath got Tom's, no problem. Put the dime in the slot, grabbed a paper cone cup,  and the Kool-aid-ish sweet drink was dispensed. She then took care of her own. Again, no

problem. I, of course, wanted to DIY the experience. I put my dime in, but, alas, there were no more paper cone cups. And I stood there and watched the orange fake Kool-Aid go down the drain. 

Why I didn't tell my father, as he surely would have gone out to the lobby and demanded justice in the form of a paper cone cup and some sticky-sweet orange gluck. Guess I had already embraced the motto of my time and place: oh, just suck it up. 

Fast forward a couple of years. I can't remember what the movie was - no doubt something Disney - but I wasn't there with my father. I was with Kath and our friends. I believe we were in downtown Worcester at the Plymouth Theater, which was well known for the sticky cement floors they never seemed to wash. Anyway, for some reason - it was during my peak religo years - I had brought with me the "crystal" rosary beads I'd been given for my First Communion. And somehow managed to lose them. We all searched high and low under the seats, spotting discarded paper cone cups and assorted detritus, but not, alas, my rosary beads. Did I ask an usher to come look with his flashlight? Of course not. As noted above, I had already embraced the motto of my time and place: oh, just suck it up. 

I didn't go to the movies all that often, but often engough. And during the remainder of my grade school years, and on through high school, college and grad school, my theater going was without incident. 

And then, in 1974, I went with my sister and brother-in-law to Cambridge's Orson Welles Cinema to see a late night duo of The Harder They Come and Gimme Shelter, both of which are pretty loud and noisy. A young, hippie-ish couple had taken an infant in with them and, not surprisingly, the baby was disturbed by the noise and, no doubt, the fact that it was closing in on midnight. The baby started crying - make that screaming. And screaming. And screaming. 

I thought for sure my sister Kath, who is pretty outspoken, was going to say something. I sensed her agitation and reached out to pat her arm a couple of times as we sat there hoping that the new parents would come to what few senses they had. (Seriously, who takes a baby to the midnight showing of Gimme Shelter?) 

As it turned out, it wasn't Kath who blew her stack. It was me of the notoriously long fuse and placid disposition.

"Take that baby out of here!" I yelled.

The couple left in a huff, the father yelling back at me, "You care more about this fucking movie than you do about my baby."

Not quite the burn he hoped it was, as I had the perfect followup: "You obviously do."

Anyway, I got a nice ovation from the theatergoers. 

Also in 1974, as a foreign movie aficionado (that is to say, snob), I went to see Lina Wertmüller's Swept Away at the now long gone Exeter Theatre (a somewhat "high culture" venue) with my friend Mary Beth. If Swept Away wasn't the worst movie I ever saw, I can't think of another one. (Okay, I can: A Walk with Love and Death which I saw in college, with Mary Beth, among others. Assaf Dayan was hot. Other than that...) We were sitting there deciding how much longer we were going to endure the show when they announced that the theater was being evacuated because of a bomb scare. This was well pre-cellphone, so it was't one of the patrons who was calling in a bomb scare. But most of us sure were hoping for it. And, miraculously, it happened! Yay! We kept our stubs as rainchecks, which we got to use at a later date. (What for, I can't remember.)

(A few years later, I was with Mary Beth when we had a fairly amusing experience when we went to see Unmarried Woman at the Cheri. The Cheri was a multiplex, and the ticket seller needed to know which movie the two elderly women in line in front of us wanted to see. Unmarried Women? she asked. The two woman gave each other a somewhat questioning look, shrugged, and one of them told the ticket seller, "Yes. We're both widows."Honestly, the ticket seller should have comped the Golden Girls the tickets.)

Movie-ing on, somewhere in the mid-late 1970's, I was with my husband watching Barbet Schroeder's documentary, Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait. We were enjoying this chilling and weirdly comic film when we heard an unmistakable noise a few rows behind us and, blessedly, a few seats over. Yes, someone had whipped it out and was peeing. We looked over and saw an exceedingly large stream of pee coursing down the floor underneath the seats. Fortunately not our seats. But we decamped to a safer space in what was a nearly empty theater.

In 1981, at the Charles Cinema, my sister Trish and I were watching Mommy Dearest when a man ran into the theater. Chased by another man pointing a gun at him. Remarkably, Trish and I were the only ones in the audience who fled. I can't remember whether the police were called, but after hanging in the lobby for a few, we were assured that things were now safe, and we did end up seeing the rest of the movie. But it was all very odd. 

I can't remember the theater or the movie, but somewhere in the late 80's or early 90's, I was at the movies with Trish and our friend Peter. I was sitting on the aisle and was passed the large popcorn bucket we were sharing when it literally flew away. I have no idea what happened, but my bucket-holding arm flung out and most of the popcorn ended up in the aisle. Oops! Peter and Trish gave me "what just happened?" looks, but damned if I knew. My inner poltergeist took over? Who knows.

As time went by, I went less and less to movies in person. Instead of going to the movies, we rented videos and played them at home. And now I stream, as I did with all of the Best Picture nominees.  

Anyway, nothing else all that memorable has happened in a movie theater. No bomb scares. No screaming babies. No bad hombres chasing each other with guns. But is it any wonder I'm just as happy to watch from the comfort of my own home, knowing that, if I want a soda, it won't be flat and I won't have to drink it out of a flimsy paper cone.  

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Image source: Amazon

"Thou shalt not have strange gods before me..."

In the Catholic version of the ten commandments the first commandment is "I am the lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me."

Other than when, say, a state like Texas tries to force them onto the walls of public schools, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the ten commandments. But a few weeks ago, when I read about "Don Colossus," that "strange gods" one sure popped into mind.

"Don Colossus" is a 15 foot tall bronze statue of Trump that's "finished with a thick layer of gold leaf." Gold leaf? But of course! When astride its pedestal, the statue will be "about the height of a two-story building." Unfortunately, since it will be erected at Trump's Doral golf course in Florida, I will never be able to scorn it in person. Nor, since it's going to be on private property, will I be able to join the gleeful mob toppling it once the the too-long reign of Mad President Donald finally and blessedly comes to a halt. (Sigh.)

In case you're worrying, the taxpayers aren't (yet or directly) footing the bill for Don Colossus. No, the tab - $300K - is being picked up by a bunch of crypto bros who want to honor Trump for his suport of cryptocurrency. (Whatever you have to say about Trump, he sure has an eye for the flim-flam, the grift, doesn't he?) Anyway, the statue is also being used "to promote a memecoin called $PATRIOT."

Virtually nearly everyone in the crypto world has tried to profit from the Trump presidency, striking business deals with his family or seeking regulatory relief from his administration. But few have attempted it as boldly as the backers of $PATRIOT.

A memecoin is a type of cryptocurrency with hardly any function beyond speculation. It’s usually based on a viral joke or celebrity mascot, and worth only as much as online fans are willing to pay. The crucial ingredient is internet hype, enough to convince potential buyers that the price will keep going up. (Source: NY Times)

The crypto bros have been banging away at the grift for over a year, having started selling their memecoin after the ignominious 2024 election. During the inaguration festivities, they gave Trump's pal Steve Bannon a bronze miniature version.

Sales of the $PATRIOT took off. 

But delays and infighting have marred the venture, offering a window into the volatile world of memecoins, which are plagued by scams that often end up costing investors money. The $PATRIOT coin’s price cratered last year, losing nearly all its value. As the coin’s backers rushed to finish the statue and boost coin sales, they clashed with their Ohio-based sculptor, Alan Cottrill.

There's a couple of problems floating around here. One is that the cryptos owe $75K for the IP rights to the statue. Despite not paying for those rights, it will come as a surprise to exactly no one, they've been using the copyrighted image in their marketing efforts. But the bigger problem - which will, once again, come as a surprise to exactly no one - is that Trump went ahead an launched his own competing memecoin, $TRUMP, which took off and cut into $PATRIOT sales. 

By the way, I have no idea what his politics are, but Alan Cottrill is not some right wing nutter artist  doing Trump-glorifying "art" like that produced by Jon McNaughton. "Art," e.g., like "MAGA Symphony," or as I like to think of it, "Sympathy for the Devil."

No, Cottrill is the real deal, and has created larger-than-life statues of the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Jesse Owens, and George Marshall. Of course, the largest monuments he's made have only been 10-feet tall. Trump's, of course, had to be even larger than larger than life. And, of course, had to portray an idealized version of the man:

“I had him very lifelike,” Mr. Cottrill said in an interview last month. “The crypto guys said I had to get rid of some of the turkey neck. I had to thin him down.”

Because the statue is a) larger than life; b) flatters Tump; and is c) is gold covered, Trump likes what he's seen so far, and will likely be at the Doral unveiling whenever it happens. The crypto bros just need to pay what they owe Cottrill (which is the $75K for the intellectual property rights and another $15K worth of incidentals). Which they'll no doubt pony up if they want to see $PATRIOT get a boost.

If it's not toppled by a frothing crowd, I hope that Don Colossus is struck by lightning, blown over in a hurricane, swept away in a flood, sucked into one of those famous Florida sinkholes. It's colossally ridiculous, and a colossal embarrassment to our country.

Seriously, even among the most ardent of Trump cultists, there can't be many remaining who don't find this sort of glorification of Trump somewhat disturbing, creepy, unsettling. And let's not get into the banners of Trump now flowing near the flag at the Deparment of Justice, the renaming of the Kennedy Center, the proposal to add Trump to Mt. Rushmore, etc.  

Donald J. Trump. Gotta be one of the all time strangest of strange gods.

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Image source: Don Colossus - Charisma

Image source: MAGA Symphony - Jon McNaughton

I can think of worse crimes

Kinston, NC, doesn't get a lot of snow. But in February, they got 15", breaking a record that has stood since 1927. 

One thing about living in a place that's not a stranger to snowfall, people pretty much know how to get through it. There are snowplows. Mounds of sand and rocksalt. Although I am always surprised when there's a first-storm-of-the-season rush on hardware stores for shovels, most folks do have a shovel around. And if they're smart, a 40 pound balt of ice melt. Or at least an 8 pound shaker. 

Yes, people get into a pre-storm panic and quickly strip the grocery store shelves of bread, the coolers of milk. But those of us in Snow Country have useful skills, like knowing how to drive in the white stuff. And mostly, we know enough that, when "they" suggest that we stay home, we stay the f home. Curfews are only for insane blizzard conditions. Not your average 15" dump o' snow.

Snowy weather skills are honed over generations, and even when we haven't been having bad winters for a stretch, when they do happen race memory kicks in and we know how to cope. (We've had pretty lousy winter in these parts. Most snow in the last five years, and the coldest winter since 1977. Heating bills are sky high, but at least bitter cold helps tamp down rat reproduction. So there's that.)

But Kinston, NC - while it gets bad hurricane season rotten weather - doesn't get a lot of bad snowy weather. So the mayor of this small city (population roughly 20,000) set a curfew. Unless you were working, you were supposed to stay in. Which means that you couldn't be out and about.

Apparently, the problem for Jonathan Hackett was that he didn't have a place to stay, so he couldn't help but be out and about.

But he found his way to the Little Caesars where he used to work. They hadn't changed the key code from his time there so, push a few buttons and - voila - Hackett was in. (He claimed that the manager gave him permission to spend the night. Not clear whether that was in fact the case.)

With time on his hands, and the storm raging, Hackett did what any old pizza shop worker might do: He started making pizzas. (Give a man the ability to make a pizza, and he'll have work for life...) What do you do with a pizza? Why you can always give it away for free. Or so the message started spreading via Facebook. 

So, figuring that Little Caesars was making a goodwill gesture to the snowbound community, a few folks decided curfew-smurfew and showed up for their free pizza. 

But the enterprising Hackett decided he could make a buck. He started selling pizzas for $5 a pie, which even though Little Caesars in Kinston, NC is pretty inexpensive, was at least a slight bargain. (Some buyers said they were charged $10, which is closer to the standard price for a pizza.)

All in all, Hackett claims to have sold 10 pizzas, so he pocketed maybe $50 bucks.

He took off at some point, but when he arrived back at the shop, he encountered the manager and her family there. They had been at work, prepping the business for the next day, and decided to camp out there on a snowy night.

Everyone was asleep, when someone heard a noise. It was Hackett in the room. The [manager's] husband was awakened by a figure in the room: Hackett. That’s when the fight ensused. The husband told police that he was “about to do my thing” when Hackett swung at him and ran, so he chased Hackett down, confessing to police that he was “whooping his ass.” His son came outside, saw his dad holding Hackett, and “did what he had to do.”

The manager called the police, and told them that they’d detained a trespasser. When two officers showed up around 9:30, Hackett was being held down outside, bleeding from his face. For his part, Hackett told the police that he didn’t know why he’d been chased and beaten up. Again, even though he was a former employee, he said that the manager had given him permission to come into the Little Caesars to sleep. He did admit to selling pizzas, though. (Source: Jeremy Markovich, NC Rabbithole)

Hackett is facing a few felony charges - including B&E, larceny - and a couple of misdemeanor counts, including violating the Kinston curfew. In addition to getting his "ass whooped," Hackett could end up serving a prison sentence for his troubles. 

If this is all they have on him, I hope that Jonathan Hackett doesn't end up in the hoosegow for a couple of years. I can think of a lot worse crimes than breaking and entering a pizza shop and selling a few crappy pizzas to folks just looking for some comfort food on a snowy night. 

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Image Source: Little Caesars Peoria Facebook

One potato chip factory...

I am an absolute sucker for local products that make it big, especially food products. Some of my favorites - but of course! - are from Worcester: Near East Rice Pilaf. Polar Soda. Table Talk Pies.

I always have a couple of boxes of Near East rice/pilaf/couscous in my kichen cabinets. In my fridge, there'll always be some Polar Soda. (I especially like the diet orange and the diet cranberry. Mixed together, it's a wonderful combo.) I don't have any Table Talk Pies around, but when I go to a Woo Sox (Red Sox AAA team in Worcester) game - which I do a couple of times a season - I always get me a pie-let, even though they rarely if ever have my favorite, which is cherry.

A local food favorite that broke out of local availability into nationwide presence doesn't have to be from Worcester. I like Brigham's ice cream. And since I first had one, decades ago, Cape Code Potato Chips, has been my chip o' choice. 

As I write this post, there are no bags of Cape Codders in my kitchen, but there is an empty bag in my kitchen wastebasket. 

So I was sad to read the news that those chips, as of April, will not longer be made in Massachusetts. The OG plant in Hyannis is closing down, and 49 employees will be losing their jobs.

In a statement, the company said the Hyannis plant produces just 4 percent of the Cape Cod and Kettle brand chips, while newer plants in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania produce the majority. The move will end production of Cape Cod chips in Massachusetts. (Source: Boston Globe)

The company, by the way, is not Cape Cod Potato Chips. It's Campbell's, as in soups in red and white cans. They acquired Cape Cod back in 2018. I can't say I remember this acquisition, but I'm sure I was aware of it at the time. As I'm sure I would have feared that, post acquisition, chip quality would go down, and those yummy Cape Codders would no longer be so Mm! Mm! Good!

Purists may notice a difference, but I can't say that I have. Cape Cod Potato Chips remain my brand. (I favor the sea-salt originals, but also like the russets.)

Still, sorry to see the chip production leave Hyannis, even though it's unlikely that the chips in the bag I just consumed were actually made locally. I fished the bag out of the trash, but there was no indication of where the chips were produced. All I learned was that the chips were distributed by Cape Cod in Hyannis.

Probably not for long.

The Hyannis site “no longer makes economic sense for the business,” the company said. “Production will be transferred to more modern and efficient plants, enabling a more agile and flexible manufacturing network” while maintaining quality. 

Blah, blah, blah-di-blah blah.  And, for the employees who are about to be pink-slipped, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on.

Campbell’s said it will provide “impacted employees with separation benefits, job placement support and guidance on how to access state assistance programs.”

The company said it plans to connect with Cape Cod organizations that “offer culinary entrepreneur programs, workforce development, and career pathways” in the hospitality industry. It will also allow nonprofits to apply for grants from the Campbell Foundation, which targets communities where the company has operations.

Good luck to the laid-off employees. I can't quite figure out how working on a manufacturing line can translate into culinary entrepreneurship, but, then again, I am singularly lacking in careerish imagination. Good luck to them all!

And I do have to say that there was something a bit romantic about Cape Cod Potato Chips actually being made on Cape Cod as opposed to, say, Wisconsin. The sea salt from Wisconsin won't exactly be local. And while I know that Wisconsin has a titanic lake next door. And dunes. It's not the same. No one ever wrote a song about Wisconsin that holds a candle to Old Cape Cod. 

If you spend an evening, then you'll want to stay.
Watching the moonlight on Cape Cod Bay.
You're sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod.

Sentimental me. (Oh, boo-hoo.) 

Makes me want to go out and get a Party Size bag of Cape Cod Originals. (And while I'm in a pro local mood, a quart of Brigham's Mocha Almond ice cream. I'll hold off on the Table Talk Pie until I get to Worcester for a Woo Sox game.)

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Image Source: Cape Cod Chips. 

Guilty until proven innocent

Hard to believe it's been over a month now since Nancy Guthrie went missing. Hard to believe they haven't found something: Nancy (dead or alive), the kidnappers. 

I cannot begin to imagine what this poor woman is going through/went through. Nancy Guthrie is/was eight years older than I am, and she sure looks like she could be someone I know. Part of the alumni commitee I'm a member of. A fellow volunteer. A neighbor. Someone cruising the same shelves at the library looking for a bunch of good reads. A nice, pleasant "older lady" who looks like she doesn't have a mean bone in her body.

I cannot begin to imagine what her poor family is going through. There's the act of the kidnapping. But even worse is the not knowing. It's god-awful to sit through a death watch. It's god-awful to lose someone you love. But not knowing what your loved one is enduring/has endured? Not knowing if they're alive or dead? Not knowing if you'll ever know? Unimaginable.

It's also unimaginable to be an innocent bystander, someone who had less than zero to do with this heinous crime, yet find yourself a prime suspect, plastered all over social media and having civilian vigilante crime-stoppers stalking you (and your family) online and up close and personal.

As has happened to Dominic Evans, a Tucson grade-school teacher who had the ill luck to have been the drummer for Early Black, a band for which Nancy Guthrie's son in law Tommaso Cioni is the bassist. Early on, Cioni was named (by someone, somewhere) as the prime suspect in Guthrie's disappearance. ("The authorities" - and they've been none too authoritative here - have since announce that all the family members, including Cioni, have been cleared.)

Evans, who is 48, also became a prime target because of his criminal past. I.e., Internet sleuthers, in their zest to solve a crime, unearthed the fact that 27 years ago, when Evans was 21, he was arrested "for drunkenly swiping a calculator and watch while out at a bar." Crime of the century, that. 

Anyway, as things do, speculation about Evans' culpability went viral.

The accusations were levied online, but they have become a real-life nightmare for Mr. Evans and his wife. They hid in their bedroom with the lights off that night, too frightened to pick up their son from his grandmother’s house, for fear of being followed. Days later, another swarm of journalists, livestreamers and gawkers photographed the family’s home and knocked on their neighbors’ doors. (Source: NY Times)

When the speculation hit the fan, the Evans' asked their parents to keep their two youngest overnight. They told their teenage son not to come home. Evans had spoken with investigators (legit ones) and, while he hasn't yet been cleared, they haven't reached out to him in the weeks following the first interview. Looks to me like no one suspects Evans of anything. 

Yet when the doorbell camera pictures of the ski-masked man on Nancy Guthrie's doorstep were released, online "crime solvers" decided that yep, the guy was Evans. 

The lives of Evans, his wife, his children have been turned upside down. No, it's not the same degree as what the Guthrie family's experiencing, but it ain't nothing, either. 

“I feel like someone’s taken my name,” Mr. Evans said. But for what reasons? “I don’t know — monetary, clickbait, to be relevant, entertainment — but there are innocent people that get hurt.”

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos (who, regretably, has come across as something of a Barney Fife throughout the investigation) recently said that, while no one other than Guthrie's family (inclding Tommaso Cioni) has been ruled out as a suspect, he feels bad for Dominic Evans. 

“He’s going through hell, and it is horrible,” Sheriff Nanos said. “And I don’t know what to tell him except he probably should be speaking with some attorneys and sue some of these people for libel...I wish I could jump out and defend every single one of them that’s been falsely accused,” he added.

Good luck to Evans if he does decide to sue. I'm sure the defense will be some combination of First Amendment, we were just thinking out loud, we meant no harm, we were just trying to help. Not to mention that most of the social media Sherlocks probably don't have two nickels to rub together. 

The "accusatory onslaught against" Evans has been dying down, and life is getting back to the new normal.

But the lasting effects are clear. The other day, Mr. Evans worried that a man was following him at a department store. Ms. Evans can’t help pulling out her phone and searching her husband’s name — she wants to know in advance if people might mob their neighborhood.

“None of this is real, but there’s so much of it,” Ms. Evans said of the speculation. “How can anyone decipher or catch all of it?”

Problem is, you can't.

I feel plenty bad for Nancy Guthrie, and for her family. They're going through hell. But I'm also feeling plenty bad for Dominic Evans and his family, collateral damage in the hunt for Nancy Guthrie and her abductor(s). And in the eyes and limited little minds of the nothing-better-to-do-brigade of amateur crime solvers, guilty until proven innocent.

Look, I understand just how entertaining it is to poke around the web googling "stuff." Way back in 2013, when the Boston Marathon Bombing occurred, I spent hours haunting the web. And when they released the names of the bombing brothers, I found info on Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev - where he was a student, what he was studying - before it hit any of the news sites. 

But finding "stuff" out is one thing, keyboard and phone vid rampaging around accusing innocent people of crimes they didn't commit is quite another. Get a life, folks. And if you can't get a life, why not STFU rather than keep hurting the lives of others.

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Image Source: Screen Daily