Respite.

When my friends and family members and I talk about all that's going on, we always come back to the fact that it's all so exhausting, so enervating. 

I take a walk every day, and most of the people I pass on my walk are wearing masks. (My estimate for compliance in Boston, at least where I live, is 95%-plus.) This is an exhausting reminder that COVID-19 hit my town hard, and that ain't nobody out of the woods quite yet.

I take a walk every day, and when I walk down Charles, the Main Street of my neighborhood, more than half the stores are boarded up. This is an exhausting reminder of our nation's seemingly intractable problems with racism and stark economic inequality. 

So when my sister Kath asked if I wanted to spend some time at their second home in Wellfleet, I was just delighted. Less delighted when my brother Rick, who I'm in a social bubble with, expressed no interest in going to the Cape when so much of it would be closed. Kath and her husband are mostly staying in town until July, so the house in Wellfleet was free, but I wasn't interested in rattling around in it by myself. They told me that they would be opening their bubble up a bit, and that once they were on the Cape, I could come down and spend some time with them. Which I, of course, will. But after three months sheltering in place, I was really wanting a getaway.

So I was delighted again when my sister Trish and her daughter Molly - who are both working from home these days -  decided to open their social distancing pod to include me. And off to Wellfleet we went.

It's so beautiful here. Even when it's overcast - and most of the days have been sunny -  it's so beautiful here...

We've taken walks each day, and since there are so few people around, you don't need to wear a mask. We hang them around our necks, and pull them up when we pass by someone, but on our walks, there's no need to walk masked.

A lot of the restaurants are open for takeout, and we've gone to a few of our old familiar places: PJ's for lobster rolls, Escape for ice cream. We're masked at the pickup window, but that's okay.

It's so beautiful here. Sure, it's lovely to walk in the Boston Public Garden, along the Esplanade that runs along the Charles River, down on the Greenway. But there's beautiful and then there's beautiful and relaxing, beautiful and restorative. And that's Wellfleet.

We sit out on the porch, looking out across the marsh, and an hour just sitting there, staring, is like a week's vacation.

There are a few signs of the times. A cottage along our usual walk has a Black Lives Matter sign out front. And on the beach down the road, this is posted:

There's a lot of oystering and clamming in these parts, and social distancing has come to shellfishing. Be advised: if someone comes to check out your permit and your haul, BACK AWAY 6' FROM YOUR CATCH. 

Leaving this beach, I saw on my path a pair of grandparents with two little guys - maybe 2 and 4 years old - and the kids were dawdling. I stepped out of the way to let them pass, and the grandmother apologized for how slow the kids were being. I assured her that it was heartening to see these two little goobers exploring.

It's so beautiful here.

I'm shipping up to Boston this evening, and as we cross the bridge, I'll be humming a few bars of Patti Page's "Old Cape Cod."

If you spend an evening, then you'll want to stay.

Yes, indeed.

Don't get me wrong. I'll be happy to get back into town, into my own bed, back to my old routine, etc. But this respite has been so wonderful. It's so beautiful here. Can't wait to get back. 

And you think your neighbors are bad

At one time or another, we've all had bad neighbors. One of the worst I ever experienced was a pair of brothers who, years ago, rented the unit upstairs from us. One went to Babson; one went to BU. One drove a Mercedes; one drove a Porsche. They were rich, entitled, spoiled brats who spent more time partying and tootling around in their pricey rides than they ever did in class.

They were only above us for a year, but during their time with us, they must have hosted a dozen parties for their equally entited rich, entitled, spoiled brat international student friends. Nothing like a bunch of drunk, smoking young folks tromping around outside your door, screaming at the top of their lungs, the girls destroying the marble hallway by clomping around in super-high heels. And you haven't heard loud until you've heard Europop blasted high enough to reverberate through a 160-year-old building. 

We would lodge a complaint, and one of the brothers, usually the older one, who was the more diplomatic, would fake apologize. Until the next episode. 

I haven't thought of the M Brothers in years, but they came to mind when I read about a group of young guys who'vemoved into a quiet LA neighborhood and begun raising havoc.

Neighbors originally speculated that they were a tech startup. Otherwise, how could they afford to rent in the tony neighborhood of Bel Air?

While I would argue that one look at these dudes would disabuse anyone of the notion that they were techies, it did, soon enough, become apparent to the neighbors that they were mistaken about the nerd factor.

Cuz yo! A round-the clock frat party was running - complete with chug-chug-chug chants, paintball games, vomiting and (it goes without saying) no attention paid to social distancing  - hosted by "members of the Sway House, a collective of TikTok and YouTube influencers."

The group, which has been called “the One Direction of TikTok,” is made up of several creators famous for their party-boy antics: Bryce Hall, 20; Jaden Hossler, 19; Josh Richards, 18; Quinton Griggs, 17; Anthony Reeves, 18; Kio Cyr, 19; and Griffin Johnson, 21. They are one of several collab houses that have cropped up all over Los Angeles in recent months. But while most of those groups are tucked away in secluded areas on the outskirts of the city, the Sway House is in the middle of a swank residential neighborhood and has made life for the people who share the block a nightmare. (Source: Boston Globe)

Seventeen? Eighteen? Don't these boys have parents? 

Maybe, maybe not. 

But they do have a manager. 

“To our knowledge there have been no formal noise complaints,” said Warren Lentz, CEO of TalentX, who manages the house’s members and provides them with the house in exchange for content. “We have been in frequent communication with both the LAPD and city counsel to ensure the safety of the neighborhood. In order to follow proper protocol, we hired security for our clients and the house.”

Ah, content.  

Back in olden times, when the word content was used, there was some weight to it. Content had to tick at least a couple of these boxes: important, meaningful, thoughtful, interesting, original...

I toook a quick look at the "content" provided by Kio Cyr and Quinton Griggs, who each have 1 million+ followers. It appears to be entirely made up of pics/vids of themselves (sometimes with a bikini'd blonde on the arm) looking playful, or soulful, or whatever they're trying to look. Apparently, it's never intelligent. Because if that's what they're shooting for, they're abject failures. 

Vapid is the word that springs to mind.

To say that I find their look completely unappealing is to state the obvious. To further state the obvious, of course, they could give a flying fuck whether they appealed to someone 70 years old. 

But even back in the day when I was part of the demographic they're broadly aimed at, I wouldn't have liked them. 

I crushed on Adam, the brainy son on Bonanza, rather than Little Joe, the cute one. Needless to say, my favorite Beatle was iconoclast John Lennon, rather than cutie-pie Paul McCartney. (If I had a do-over, I might go with George Harrison.)

But that was back before we had influencers...

What Sway House boys are influencing, I'm not quite certain, but they're influencers nonetheless. And making a lot of money at it.

Meanwhile, their neighbors live in fear and loathing.

“There’s an undercurrent of fear and intimidation both from all the stories in the media about people getting doxxed, swatted, harassed, especially if you’re a woman, which many of these neighbors are who are dealing with this stuff are,” [neighbor Amit] Runchal said. “With fans and actual people mistakenly showing up to our houses, there’s a virtual and a physical threat.”

At least we never had to worry about the M Brothers having a million followers harrassing us.

Anyway, Sway House and other nincompoop influencers have done one thing for me. They've given me the will to live long enough to see what these dopes do with their adult lives, if they make it that far. 

Apparently 74 is the new 90

The headline read something along the lines of "Jaclyn Smith is nearly 90", and not that I'm an expert on Jaclyn Smith, but I knew that couldn't be true.

Nonetheless, I clicked through because my clicking through is the entire purpose of clickbait. But once I saw that it was one of those long series of "news" bits you had to keep "NEXT"-ing on, I gave up. I didn't even read the bit on Diane Keaton Then! Diane Keaton Now! I just glanced at the pictures and saw that she's gone gray, has a few wrinkles, but, at 74, she's still pretty damned cute. But I wasn't going to scroll through 50 or so "articles" on actresses my age and their before and after shots until I got to the payoff on Jaclyn Smith.

Fortunately, while the Internet is an endless source of nonsense "information" and outright lies, it's also the home of Wikipedia, which tends to be pretty reliable on celebrity dates of birth. Jaclyn Smith, it turns out, is 74. She'll be 75 in October. And, like Diane Keaton, this former Charlie's Angel, who in her prime was stunningly beautiful, is still attractive.

But how does 74 compute to 90?

Was it just to grab attention, as it did mine? Or is there some twenty-something ninny out there, writing headlines, who doesn't perceive any difference between 74 and 90?

Personally, while I know there will be, I hope there isn't. I'm 70 and, if I hit the big 9-0, I hope I look as good as I do now.

And I do look pretty good, thanks to the combo of having inherited the great, unwrinkled skin of my mother's side of the family and, as someone with go-up-in-flames skin (and as someone who always had a summer job and scant time to loll around on the beach), I never spent a ton of time in the sun.

But most people I know look pretty good, because this is what 70 looks like if you have good genes and the fortune to have had a relatively cushy life. None of my friends had to flee the Dust Bowl in a jalopy full of kids. If we were toiling from dusk to dawn, it was sitting at a desk in an air conditioned office. We've all had good dental care from the jump, so we've all still got our teeth. We have cool clothing and great hairdressers.

I know that 90, if I make it that far, will look and feel different, both for me and for Jaclyn Smith.

My hair will be gray, something I'm working on now, taking the opportunity of the lockdown to let whatever I've been covering up under there come out. So far, so good. My hair is on the lightish-side to begin with (both my original hair, and the dye job), so the gray isn't all that apparent. Yet.

By 90, I'll likely have lost an inch or two, a process that has already begun. At the height of my height (hah!), I was 5'7 & 3/4". Which I, of course, rounded to 5'8". Now I'm under 5'7", but last time I was at the doctor's they generously rounded up to 5'7".

I don't remember my mother shrinking all that much, but I suppose she did. My Aunt Margaret, who'd been relatively tall for her era - I think she was 5'6" - shrunk appreciably as she aged. Towards the end of her life, Peg fainted (while out to lunch with friends at the Pillar House, a defunct restaurant that specialized in old lady lunches; I so wish it were still there so I could have a schrod lunch with friends!) and ended up hospitalized for a couple of days.

When I visited her, she told me she was annoyed that the doctor had contradicted her when she told him she was 5'6". She was about 5'2", tops, by that point.

Anyway, if I make it to 90, I'll likely be shorter, too. And I suspect I'll be sporting a few more wrinkles.

My hearing will be a little harder, something that I'm already noticing. My nickname as a kid was "radar ears", but I notice that I need the TV turned up louder, and I find myself missing bits of converation here and there.

My vision will not be improving any, either. I have slow moving cataracts that at some point will have to go. Cataracts aside, as you age you just need a whole lot more light to read by and so you can perform certain tasks. Like threading a needle. Like telling the difference between navy blue and black, which now requires a nearly high-noon on a cloudless day level of sun for me to distinguish between.

At 90, I'll be moving a bit more slowly, and all those little pockets of arthritis and bursitis - shoulder, knees, hip - will likely flare up more often.

But all this decline won't happen overnight. It'll gradually sneak up, as it does on all of us, and one day, I'll look in the mirror and realize, 'hey, I'm old.' But I'm not there quite yet, and my 70 and Jaclyn Smith's 74, are a far piece from 90.

Until then, I'll add "Got a Lot of Livin' to Do", a song from Bye-Bey, Birdie, to my shower singing list.

As for the person who wrote that daft headline: just you wait!

Thanks for the visit, Mr. "President"

When the pandemic was still young, I wrote about a company in Maine that's one of the leading manufacturers of nasal swabs in the company. Puritan Medical Products stepped right up and in, and began churning out a product that was essential to coronavirus testing. 

Perhaps he saw it on Pink Slip, perhaps not. But the current occupant of the Oval Office learned of the little company, in a little town, in a Trump-ist corner of the little ol' State of Maine. And, jonesing for the things he joneses for - adulation, the perception that he's a man of action, a few precious hours away from the protestors in Lafayette Park - he couldn't resist a trip up to Guilford, Maine, so he could parade by his fans - all decked out in Trump paraphernalia and (some) showing their true stripes by displaying the flag of the Confederacy (apparently unaware that their ancestors were killed while fighting on the winning/correct side of the Civil War) - and do a factory tour.

Alas, alack, and a lack of common sense:

...the swabs manufactured in the background during his visit will ultimately be thrown in the trash, the company said. 

Puritan Medical Products said it will have to discard the swabs, a company spokeswoman told USA TODAY in response to questions about the visit. 

It is not clear why the swabs will be scrapped, or how many. The company described its manufacturing plans for Friday as "limited" – but the disruption comes as public health officials in Maine and other states have complained that a shortage of swabs has hampered their ability to massively scale up coronavirus testing. (Source: USA Today)

There is some speculation that the swabs of the day had to be junked because Trump refused to wear a mask. More likely there were just too many people - Secret Service, press, the standard presidential retinue (I almost wrote residue there; hmmmm...).

In any case, although the company (and by all accounts most of the workers) was happy to host Trump, a day's production went out the window. This at a time when there's still a shortage of swabs and PPE. And at a time when:

Nearly a third of Maine nursing homes reported last month they had no nasal swabs to collect specimens, the Portland Press Herald reported. Nearly 61% of those that responded to a Maine Medical Directors Association survey said they had seven or fewer at their disposal.

Does the morale boost (mostly to Trump, but admittedly to the Guilford employees and the townies who support him) outweigh the loss of a day's production?

In the long run, it probably matters little. 

But, seriously, does this guy ever think of anyone other than himself? 

I'm delighted that Puritan Medical Products is doing well. They providean important product and much-needed employment in a poor town in the middle of nowhere. And they're expanding. So props to them. 

As for Trump's visit, all I can say is that when he's swanning around their facility, at least he isn't tweeting out his venomous lies and nastiness, or figuring out new ways to wreck the country.

Can't wait until he gets swabbed out of office.

There's working from home (and then there's working from home)

I'm mostlly retired - mostly, but not 100% quite yet - but since 2004, when I bid a fond/not fond adieu to "corporate", I've been working from home. Given what I do/did for a living - marketing writing for tech companies - WFH is pretty easy to get set up. Laptop, router, Internet connection, phone, printer...  What's changed since COVID is that my clients are all working from home now, too. So I'm getting to know their home offices, dogs, cats, kids and an occasional walk-by spouse. And to see what they look like when they're going completely casual.

For other professions, WFM is less straightforward.

Case in point: automotive engineers, some of who need the auto as well as their computer gear.

This I saw in a recent article on CNN about Aleyna Kapur, who's working on Ford's new Mustang Mach-E, an electric SUV.

A Mustang SUV? 

Sounds a bit like heresy.

When I was in high school, the Mustang was pretty much the "it" car. 

One of the girls in my high school had one. When she pulled into the parking lot, those of us slogging to school on Worcester buses were left slack-jawed.

 

My Mustang-driving classmate was one of the wealthier girls in my class. Like several others who ranked among the school's top econonmic echelon, her father owned a funeral parlor. (I went to an all-girls Catholic school that catered to Worcester's Irish Catholic elite: doctors, lawyers, funeral parlor owners... I was there on scholarship.)

I never got a ride in MB's Mustang - we were friendly enough, but didn't run in the same circles. It was an object of wonder from afar.

None of my friends had cars, other than when we got the use of the family's Ford, Chevy or Dodge. The father of one of my friend's was the County of Worcester's mental health officer, charged with transporting patients to the state hospital. His "company car" was a blue and white Checker. (The only other Checkers I've ever seen in my life were cabs.) Anyway, K occasionally had her father's car and we'd pile into it for some mild adventure, and if K was feeling especially frisky, she'd blast the car's siren. 

The other interesting car that occasionally made its way into our school's parking lot was that of another K friend. Her father was in the Air Force, and before finding themselves in Worcester, the family had been stationed in England. They came back to The States with a wrong-side-driving Austin Mini. Although you could pack fewer people into it than you could into the Checker, you could fit more than a few high school girls (and an occasional nun) in there for a trip to a basketball game. 

But MB's Mustang? Her very own Mustang? Wow! 

Somehow, there's now going to be a Mustang SUV, which somehow does not compute with my idea of a Mustang. But if a Porsche can be an SUV, I suppose I have to give it a 'why not.' In any case, Aleyna Kapur is working on it. From home.

When Aleyna Kapur started working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, she had to take a few things from the office: her laptop, some cables and a Ford Mustang Mach-E electric SUV...

Kapur is a calibrator. Her job is to make sure all the computer software controlling the Mach-E's electric motors responds as it's supposed to, under every conceivable circumstance. If done incorrectly, the vehicle might not start and stop smoothly, struggle over different types of terrain, or some parts might overheat or malfunction in extreme weather. (Source: CNN)

Kapur isn't the only Ford engineer that got to bring home a pre-production version of the car when they packed up their desks so they could work from home. There are another dozen or so tootling around their neighborhoods when they need to check things out. 

At some point, they'll need to get those Mach-E's into a real test environment, the kind that invovles crash test dummies. But until then, they're working from home. Just not stuck staring at the same four walls all day.

The Mustang Mach-E was supposed to be available this coming fall. It's not clear yet how coronavirus will impact that date. But it's good to know that, despite the pandemic, it's in the works. Even if I'm not sure I'm down with the idea of a Mustang SUV. 

Meanwhile, Mustang Aleyna is working from home. Ride, Aleyna, Ride!

Don't look down, Phil Falcone. Don't look down!

Until the other day, I'd never heard of Philip Falcone. Which is probably just as well, because there's really no room on my dance card for yet another ahole.

Who is Philip Falcone? Why, he's a former hedge fund manager and erstwhile billionaire who's refusing to pay off the relatively meager settlement ($60K) he agreed to with his one-time private chef. 

Brian Villanueva, who was making $100K a year to feed the Falcone family:

...sued Falcone and his wife in federal court in New York last year, claiming they created a hostile work environment in which he was mocked for his Asian heritage with stereotypical accents and jokes about eating dogs. Villanueva is a Filipino. (Source: Bloomberg)

If I didn't like dogs so much, it would be cool if Villanueva had revenge-slipped a bit of pooch into the boeuf bourgignon. Or a scoop or two of Alpo. In any case, the Falcones are now claiming that they don't have the $60K they need to make good the settlement with Villanueva. 

To Villanueva, this sounds like nonsense. He's filing a new suit against Falcone -  and I suspect is looking for more than $60K at this point, as $60K minus contingency lawyers' fees won't amount to all that much. He calls BS on Falcone's assertion that he's broke, pointing to the sale of an $80M townhouse last year. 

Of course, he could well be broke and owing, say $80M on the $80M townhouse. 

Falcone "earned" his way to billionaire status "betting against the U.S. housing market." Which, back in ought-eight was certainly a smarty-pants move.

But then, as so often happens with sketchy individuals, he ran into some problems:

Falcone was barred from the securities industry for at least five years as part of a 2013 settlement. U.S. regulators had accused him of improperly borrowing money from the fund to pay personal taxes and giving preferential treatment to some investors. Under the deal, he admitted no wrongdoing.

And as so often happens with sketchy individuals, he's bounced back:

His current firm, HC2 [presumably named after his earlier firm, the well-named Harbinger Capital], owns companies in construction, energy, the life sciences, telecommunications and other industries, according to its website.

But the bounce back may not be as bouncy as Falcone might have hoped, as I found when I saw an article on him that appeared in April in Institutional Investor, the People magazine of the financial services biz. 

Falcone, it seems, has done a lot of borrowing from a firm, Melody Capital Partners, that makes loans that are backed by your tangible assets. Like your homes, your jewelry, your works of art. Of which Falcone had aplenty. And because Falcone had so many things, Melody thought he was a sure bet. 

Melody went to court after learning last fall that Falcone had sold two paintings (including a Warhol) that were part of the collateral backing the loans. Instead of delivering the proceeds from the sale to Melody as promised, the money went into a Connecticut bank account held by Falcone. (Source: Institutional Investor)

Falcone sings a different tune, claiming that he's working things out with Melody

“It’s not like I’m not doing things. It’s not like I haven’t taken measures. You can only do so much, and looking at the things that I need to do and continue to do, there’s no question I think I will solve them all,” he tells Institutional Investor in a 75-minute interview from his $30 million dollar Hamptons home — one of two backing the Melody loan — where he and his family are hunkered down during the coronavirus pandemic.

And, sure, he owes Melody a lot of money. But he owes a lot of entitities a lot of money: former lawyers, the City of New York, a jet servicing company. The claims outstanding against him, which may or may not include the $60K he owes Chef Villanueva, rack up to a whopping $80M plus. (Whopping by my standards, anyway. Perhaps not by the standards of an ex-billionaire. But even though $80M seems whopping, he's owed more in the past...)

He's also got shareholder activists (who've fingered Falcone as "a primary source of value destruction", accusing him of mismanagement and self-dealing) crawling up his back, and government regulators. 

To hear Falcone talk, he’s simply had a string of undeserved bad luck. “There’s a whole sequence of events here that, quite frankly, was really unfortunate for me personally,” he says.

He likes to point out his modest beginnings: the youngest of nine, growing up in a 3-bedroom house in the Minnesota Iron Range, with a father who never made more than $15K a year. His ticket out: a hockey scholarship to Harvard. 

He's the first to admit that, when he had money, he went with it.

In 2008, fresh off his big year, the hedge fund manager paid $49 million for the Upper East Side limestone mansion formerly owned by Penthouse founder Bob Guccione; he spent millions to renovate it, adding a swimming pool, a spa, and a movie theater. Falcone later built his Hamptons home in the tony village of Sagaponack at a cost of what he says was $25 million to $30 million. He also paid $39 million for a villa compound on St Bart’s, where his wife redecorated and renamed its bedrooms after such famous designers as Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Christian Dior.

I wouldn't have wanted to be the guest stuck in the brown and gold Vuitton bedroom. Or a Hermès room that was one giant silk scarf with a stirrup theme. 

 As is de rigueur for moguls, Falcone also amassed an art collection with works by such artists as Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Camille Pissarro, and Edgar Degas. Lisa Marie, a former model, still attends New York society’s biggest event — the annual Met Gala — decked out in pricey designer gowns. At one point she was on the board of the New York City Ballet.

Spend often and early! 

“As they say, you never see a U-Haul following a hearse,” he quips.

Whether he's been doing any belt-tightening, Falcone drew a paltry salary of $600K last year, down from $11M+ the prior year. That's certainly a goodly amount, but it doesn't get you to the Met Gala.

Falcone says the problem isn't lack or money, it's lack of liquidity. Looks like he tried to grab a bit of liquidity by selling off art work that was supposed to be a collateral. Smooth move!

I doubt that Falcone will end up in a three-bedroom ranch in the wilds of Minnesota. But it looks like this mighty may well end up fallen. Think Wile E. Coyote running off the edge of the cliff. Don't look down, Phil!

Let's take our minds off of things for a bit, why don't we?

There gets to a point where your head and your heart just can't take it anymore. For me, it happened this past weekend. For once in my life, I had no words. Just an acronym: WTF.

So I thought I'd take my mind off of all of the awful things that are happening - and, let's face it, when the worst thing happening is NOT a pandemic, things are pretty damned awful - and share with you a real estate listing.

I'm not in the market. And if I were in the market, I wouldn't be looking for a place in Potomac, MD. And if I were in the market, I wouldn't be looking for a place that's going for $4.5M. Still, it's fun to poke around.

Other than that, at 12,089 square feet, it's a pretty big-arse house, it's not bad looking. If I were looking for a big-arse estate, mock colonial style wouldn't be a deal breaker. 

And when you flip through the pictures of its innards, the interior is what I might call rich-folks-using-a-boring-designer style. Yawn.

And take a look at this playroom. Does this look like an actual, flesh-and-blood kid ever played in it? Sure, I would have murdered a sib for that doll house, but mostly this looks like a grownup's conception of what a kid might like. A grownup who was never a child. I know, I know, it's staged. Still, it looks so perfectly, perfectly fake. All it's missing is a couple of those ultra-realistic baby dolls that some poor, cracked women adopt and treat as if they're real.

But the playroom is nothing compared to the basement. Or as they would point out on HG-TV, the finished basement.

What the owners decided to do is create a Disney-esque, early 20th century little town, complete with cobbled streets and cutsefy storefronts. 

Early 20th century. Sorta. Kinda. Not really. 

Yes, there's a Post Office with a World War I recruitment poster. But what's playing at the theater are Platoon and a double feature: Mary Poppins and The Exorcist. Well, you have to give some credit to whoever paired those two. The mind reels. Does someone exorcise Mary Poppins herself? Or Jane and Michael Banks? Frankly, I'd love to see Mary Poppins' head spinning while pea soup spewed out of her mouth. 

And when you layer on Platoon... Well, Mary Poppins was quite the favorite in my house growing up. My sister Trish was the perfect age for it. I took her to see the movie, and she had the album. Which she played incessantly. I can guarantee that, if someone put the needle down on the first song, my sibs and I could automatically sing along through the album's entirety, without missing a lyric. From "Sister Suffragette" on through to "Let's Go Fly a Kite." 

It's not the music that's awful. It's not. The songs are pretty good. What's insufferable is the movie, which I learned when my husband and I tried watching it with Trish's daughter Molly when she was 5 or 6. Yikes! It could definitely use an exorcism. Or have some parts taken out by the gang in Platoon. 

Maybe the movie playing should have been Nightmare on Elm Street. 

The little basement town also comes with a couple of working cars, so you can drive around and fully enjoy the place.

As hobbies go, setting up a little fake town isn't as bad as Jeffrey Dahmer's. But I just can't imagine what the point is. Obviously giving yourself the ability to live out a fantasy. My very own Westworld. But what do you do with it, exactly? Walk around in a middy-blouse and high-button shoes, pretending it's 1912? Could it be the setting for some weird type of porn filming? 

Certainly, people are entitled to spend their money however they want. And if you've got the scratch to set up your own private Enchanted Village - a fake town that Jordan Marsh, the late and occasionally lamented Boston department store put on display every Christmas season - have at it. 

That's my attitude on one hand. On the other hand, it's just plain weirdo weird.

And I'm guessing that a potential buyer might use it's existence to skinny more than a few bucks off the asking price to get rid of it. Talk about needs work. 

Still, I'm delighted to have seen it. It gave me the opportunity to get my mind off of all the horror that's out there. Thank the Twitter gods - where I first saw a mention of this place - for small blessings. 

Mostly I can live without the mascots, but maybe this year...

I love and miss my Red Sox. But I don't so much miss - and definitely do not love - Wally the Green Monster, their mascot. Mascots for professional sports teams? I pretty much put them in the same category as clowns. Just say no.

Back in the day, of course, there was no such nonsense. You went to a baseball game to enjoy (or not) the baseball game. The only entertainment, other than what was going on on the field, was provided by the organist. And I don't think the organists played as much as they do now. Maybe they played a bit between innings or when there was a pause for a call to the bullpen, but in my memory, the only songs the organist played were "The Star Spangled Banner," "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," and some non-specific organ music that ushered fans out of the park at game's end. Today at Fenway, there's more organ music, augmented by bits of recorders of pop tunes. I don't recall that ballplayers having "their" song played when they came to bat. Not that I mind it, but when was that invented?

At Fenway, there's also the "Sweet Caroline" sing-along to a recording of Neil Diamond. And the blasting (if the Sox win) of "Love that Dirty Water" and "Tessie" when the game's over.

Anyway, I'd be fine if that was it for entertainment. Who needs more than the double-barreled combo of baseball and (some) music?

I'm really not all that much of a purist. There are plenty of old timey fans who despise "Sweet Caroline", which has been played regularly as we wait for the bottom of the eighth to start for nearly 20 years now.

But I could live without the dance offs, the videos of bloopers, the engagement scenes (awwwww....). I absolutely loathe the wave. And if I never saw another mascot at a game, I'd be just as happy. (There's little that I like about the New York Yankees, but they are one of the few major league teams that refuses to have a mascot.)

If baseball resumes this season - and it's a mighty big IF, given the general uncertainty and the certainty of greed on the part of both the teams and the players in terms of compensation - it looks like teams will be be playing before empty stadiums. And it looks like the mascots won't be there.

No sprinting Sausage in Milwaukee. No racing Presidents in DC. No Mr. Met. No Philly Phanatic.  No Swinging Friar in San Diego. (But, when you think about it for a nanosec, the idea of a swinging friar is pretty unsavory to begin with.)

And no Wally the Green Monster, no Tessie, Wally's kid sister.

There's really no reason to keep the mascots away. The costumes they wear look like they make for a lot better PPE than the players will have. And if it will make things seem a bit more normal, if some kiddos will get a kick out of them, if their presence will give us anti-mascot types something to bitch about that isn't directly COVID or Trump related, for godssake, let the mascots perform.

There’s already a blueprint MLB could follow that explains why mascots fit in barren ballparks.
Take a look across the globe. Mascots remained a staple of baseball games in Taiwan and the KBO League in South Korea. American fans who stayed up late (or is it, woke up early?) to watch KBO games on ESPN were mesmerized by mascots gone wild in empty stadiums.

The LG Twins mascots -- twin robot boys named Lucky and Star -- wore masks. So did cheerleaders and a drum section that provided the soundtrack for an otherwise dreary atmosphere.

The Chinese Professional Baseball League barred spectators over concerns of spreading the new coronavirus in a crowded space, but the league decided it was safe to let in cheerleaders and costumed mascots.

“This is the most important time to leverage fun, when people are sick and dying and dealing with the brutality of life,” [Dave] Raymond [former Philly Phanatic and current mascot consultant] said. “That is the time that you find a way to distract people and entertain them.” (Source: ABC News)

Mascot consultant. Now there's a gig...

As for the current mascot-ing mascots, most of them remain working for their respective organizations, where they already had other jobs. And they're doing some gigs:

Mr. Met cleans windows. D. Baxter the Bobcat [Arizona Diamondbacks] taught crosswalk safety. Wally the Green Monster records virtual messages for charity.

Still, their real job is entertaining the fans - even if they'll be doing it virtually. 

Look, when I'm at Fenway, the last thing I want is Wally and/or Tessie anywhere near me. (Fortunately, they're pretty good at reading body language and figuring out who might not welcome their presence.) But it's not the worst idea in the world to have them around.

“I’m just imploring them to value the character brands,” Raymond said. “There is a safe way for you to have fun, and frankly, fun is the most important thing you can invest in right now.”

I don't give a hoot about "character brands." And I really don't think that fun is "the most important thing you can invest in right now." 

Seriously, Dave? Ahead of better COVID testing, treatment and vaccine? Ahead of fairly run elections, ones that aren't characterized by voter suppression? Ahead of better training for police forces - and weeding out the white nationalists among them?

Still, when and if baseball comes back this season - and I hope it does - I wouldn't mind seeing Wally out there. 

Mostly I can live without the mascots, but this season I'm making an exception. 

Getting close to home

Sunday was a gorgeous late spring day. Not a cloud in the blue, blue sky. Temps in the upper 60's. Just lovely.

My sister and niece were going to come into Boston for a socially distanced, masked walk, but with the demonstrations on tap, they decided not to. So I just walked around solo, and did what Trish, Molly and I were planning on, which was buying myself a lobster roll at James Hook. 

On my way to Hook, I walked through Downtown Crossing and saw that Macy's was all boarded up. Prudent move or overkill? Who knew, at that point. 

It was early, but I decided to cut through City Hall Plaza, where a rally was planned for later in the afternoon. All was peaceful. No sign of anything, other than a couple getting married next to the Government Center T-Stop. (After the vows were said, they played the Beatles' All You Need Is Love. To which I might add, Ob la di, ob-la-da, life goes on.)

Once home, I kept tabs on the multiple demonstrations and walks that were taking place. All was calm. The protestors were making their point, which is real and valid. But I wasn't yet ready to breathe a sigh of relief.

Late in the evening, with the choppers whirring overhead and the sirens blaring down the street, I put the news on and started channel cruising. 

All had been calm. And then some jackass decided that calm wasn't exciting enough. So one thing led to another, and too many people - although, of course, a minute proportion of those who had come to peacefully protest - who hadn't really planned on rioting got caught up with the handful who'd come hell bent on mayhem.

And so we got a burning police car. Projectiles thrown. Tags sprayed. Windows smashed. Looting. Looting. More looting. 

I watched until about 1 a.m., when things seemed to be quieting down, and then went to bed. 

In the morning, I texted my friend K, who lives in Downtown Crossing, and we decided to take a walk and see what damage had been done.

Things were closer to home than I had realized. This is the window of the Santander branch that's three doors down from where I live. All smashed in, as were the windows of the offices of The Friends of the Public Garden. Raging against a bank is one thing. But raging against the kindly folks who maintain the flowerbeds in the Public Garden. What???

Downtown Crossing was pretty well cleaned up. No broken glass. The stores that had been vandalized - Men's Wearhouse, a couple of shoe stores, a couple of jewelers - were all boarded up. Turns out Macy's was wise to have boarded their windows up in advance. Oddly, some stores were spared. Like the Army-Navy Surplus store next to the Men's Wearhouse. 

One of the brilliant protestors vandals spray painted this on the front of Home Goods:

Apparently no student of history if they think that life under Stalin et al. was any great shakes. 

We passed the spot where the police cruiser had been torched, but there were no signs of it. At the Park Street T-stop, people - just regular civilians, young people, volunteers - were cleaning the grafitti that was defacing the station entrances. 

The area around St. Francis House - Boston's largest day shelter for the poor and homeless - was completely trashed. The convenience store across the street, the Walgreen's on the corner. Devastated. St. Francis House itself was spared, but it was closed yesterday. St. Francis House is NEVER closed. 

K and I walked through the Public Garden, where some protestor vandal had told George Washington to fuck off. Volunteers were cleaning it up.

The two main shopping drags in Boston's Back Bay are Newbury Street (fancy shopping) and Boylston Street (plain). Then there's the Copley Place Mall (mostly fancy).

On Newbury Street, the Ugg's store was stripped clean, but stores around it were untouched - or barely touched: a smashed window or two. Brooks Brothers had one broken window, but the twenty-something protestors vandals weren't really interested in button down shirts and chinos.

Boylston Street was also hit or miss as far as vandalism went. There wasn't a stitch of clothing, or a box of shoes, left in Concept, which sells Nike's and athletic ware. But the Paper Source (greeting cards) and Talbot's were fine. The twenty-something protestors vandals were, from what I could see on TV, largely young and largely male. Not the target demographic for Talbot's, that's for sure. (K and I. Now, we're the target demo...) Across the street, half the shelves in the liquor store were empty.

Copley Place is the home to both Saks and Neiman Marcus.

I had watched some of the sacking of Saks, and more of the strip mining of Neiman's. People were running out with arms full of clothing which seemed to still have the security tags on them. Good luck getting those suckers off!

Walking back, K & I stopped for a peace and quiet sit in the peaceful and quiet Public Garden. Other than the FU to George, it was serene and lovely to just sit there.

Later in the day, I walked out to mail a letter and saw that there had been some damage on my block.

These places are a couple of doors up. I'm happy that my building was spared, as were the buildings on either side of me. There was no damage to the Hampshire House (home of the Cheers bar) which is at the end of my block. What's the rhyme or reason to any of this, beyond impulse and the madness of crowds.

Word was that there were more demonstrations in the works. 

Hopefully, they'll stay peaceful. 

Anyway, the stuff you sit and watch on TV? Sometimes it gets pretty close to home...

And the worst of it is, it distracts from the important message of the protests, that black lives matter, that there is systemic racism, that there's personal racism that exists on a broad continuum but is there to some degree in almost all of us, and that we can't survive as a nation unless we start addressing our original sin.

That's me in the corner, losing my religion

Today is an anniversary, of sorts. Sixty-three years ago, I made my First Holy Communion. 

I was a pretty religious child, but in a lazy sort of way. I never enjoyed praying, and always found saying the rosary torture. I wasn't one of those kids who'd get up early during Lent to make it to pre-school Mass. When I did go to Mass (Sundays and holy days), I spent most of my time daydreaming and staring at the (fabulous) stained glass windows of my church. I hated memorizing questions and answers from the Baltimore Catechism. 

Still, I lapped up books about the saints. My family "subscribed" to a monthly delivery of Vision Books, Catholic books for kids. Most of them were lives of the saints, but others were about non-saint Catholics, like Lydia Longley, The First American Nun. (Lydia was a little, late 17th century Protestant girl from Groton, Massachusetts. She was kidnapped by Indians and brought to Quebec where she found religion, Catholic-style.) Books like More Champions in Sports and Spirit, which chronicled the exploits of Catholic athletes like Stan Musial and Herb Score. (As a child, I was disappointed that Ted Williams wasn't a Catholic, while Babe Ruth was.)

I fantasized that, if Communists came to Worcester threatening to kill all the Catholics, I would put my hand up, knowing that the Commie was going to plug me right through the eyes with his Kalishnikov.

I liked the songs, and can still belt out a mean "Hail Holy Queen." And, if you ever come up short on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy ("they number seven, practice the corporal/spiritual works of mercy, and go to heaven"), I can sing you a tune listing them all. (It's earworming me right now. Looks like practicing the corporal works of mercy is the only thing about Catholicism that took. Hmmmm.)

On occasion, I entertained thoughts of becoming a nun, even though I would rather have been a priest, like Fighting Father Duffy who got to go to war. 

When JFK was killed, a week or so before I turned 14, I had a flash thought that, having been killed on Friday, he would rise from the dead on Sunday. Just like a certain someone.

But, in truth, I was never fully with the program.

The First Holy Communion ceremony in our diocese was traditionally held during May, but "my" year, they had to push it off until June 1st. This was because there was a mini-pandemic that hit the second grade at Our Lady of the Angels, and tonsilitis swept through the class. We had about 50 kids per class, and I remember one day when only four kids were present. 

Like everyone else in my class, I came down with tonsilitis, which caused me to miss my grandmother's birthday party. Since the party was held at our house, I didn't miss it entirely, as our house was small and crowded with extended family members celebrating Nanny's 75th. I remember a parade of relatives I kinda-sorta knew - my father had a ton of first cousins - sticking their heads in my bedroom door to say hello. 

Although I couldn't swallow very well, I was served a piece of birthday cake. It was a whipped cream and fruit concoction, which was very disappointing. If I've held true to one belief during my life, it's the birthday cake should be chocolate and frosted with frosting, not whipped cream.

This was the weekend before my First Communion, and I fortunately bounced back for that event.

In fact, I even won the month-of-May calendar that Sister Aloise St. James had used to count down towards the blessed event. Each day, she put a different sticker - flower, bird, or - best of all - an angel - on each day as we ticked in off. A thing of beauty. I hung onto it for years, but it's now lost to the ages. But at the time: lucky me!

I remember little about the First Confession that preceded First Communion, other than that we had to rehearse our sins out loud, in our classrooms, while kneeling before Sister Aloise. I'm sure I faked up a couple of sins: talked back to my mother, fought with my sister, and got my "penance" - a couple of Hail Marys.

And then there was First Communion Day. Which was warm, just lovely. 

I loved my dress, which was a non-frilly, white organdy sailor-style dress. (My practical mother died it mauve and it became my good, Sunday dress for a year.) The veil was borrowed from a friend of my mother's whose daughter was older. White patent leather shoes, white anklets, white wrist-length gloves. I was a little splendor. 

In the lead up to First Holy Communion, the reception of the host was described as something that would yield a near orgasmic experience. Once that host was placed on your tongue, you would experience joy, peace, fulfillment, ecstasy...If you were truly worthy, there'd be a big old swoon.

I was going to be there for it!

Turns out the being worthy was something of a barrier to entry.

This should have come as no surprise. 

After all, it was drilled into us that, when he came up to us with the host, the priest would say:

Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum:Sed tantum dic verbo et sanabitur anima mea.

Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof. Say but the word, and my soul shall be healed.

I guess there was no one putting in the word for me, because once that host hit my little pink tongue, I came up way short on the ecstasy.

I mean, I tried. Walking back to the pew, I kept my gloved hands in the appropriate fingers pointed straight up position. I worked my face into a what I imagined was an ultra-pious look - a look if not worthy of a full-blown saint, at least up to the standards of Lydia Longley. I bowed my head to give thanks, just the way they'd drilled into us.

But no magic. Nada, zero, zip.

I felt cheated.

There was, of course, a non-catechism explanation for my lack of First Holy Communion oomph. You get out of it what you put into it. Apparently well-pointed fingers and a pious visage were not enough.

Obviously, I clung to belief long enough to think that JFK was going a resurrect himself. But the seeds of doubt were there, beginning on June 1, 1957. Even at the age of seven, I had a problem with it being my fault that I wasn't carried off into an ecstasy when the priest put that host on my tongue. 

So, June 1, 1957.

That's me in the corner, losing my religion...

Spenser for Hire

I've been asking around for book, movie, and TV binge recommendations.

Don't know why I'm bothering for books, because I'm good. I still haven't tackled the latest Hillary Mantel, and I've got a Don Winslow right behind it. Then there's ColsonWhitehead's Nickel Boys and a bunch of other books piled up on the armchair in my bedroom. (I always wanted an armchair in my bedroom. So convenient for piling books on and draping clothing over.)

Movies I'm okay on, too. I'm backlogged. I still haven't seen Manchester by the Sea...

But series I've really needed help with. Succession, The Queen, My Brilliant Friend, Bosch. All done until next season. I've tried to get into Ozark, Schitt's Creek, Catastrophe, Call the Midwife, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, and a bunch others, but nothing seems to stick. I'll watch a few and then lose interest.

Then a friend told me that the reruns of Spenser for Hire are on Amazon Prime, and that the Boston locations made it worth watching.

So I found me way there and have been doing a modest amount of binging - a couple episodes here, a couple there - and watching the Boston of 35 years ago is something I'm finding wildly entertaining.

Some things haven't changed.

Much of the show's location shooting took place in my neighborhood, and the residential areas, the Boston Common, the Public Garden, all look pretty much the same. Oh, they take some liberties. Spenser, his girlfriend Suze, and Suze's ex meet for drinks in an outdoor restaurant at the foot of the statue of Washington in the Public Garden. NO. SUCH. THING. Not then. Not now.

Spenser lives in an old firehouse, now the community center where I vote, and just around the corner from where I lived when the show was in production, seconds (45 seconds from where I lived, to be exact. I walked by the other day and timed it.).

I have only vague recollections of seeing Spenser being filmed. (And I'm pretty sure that if I'd seen someone as fine looking as Robert Urich, I'd remember. So I'm saying I never actually spotted him.) But there were two ways into the alley off the alley where we lived, and the one we took 99% of the time went right by the Spenser firehouse. So I'm sure I tripped over cables and got ordered around by cameramen every now and then.

A lot of the location spots take place in my hood, and it's fun seeing what's changed and what hasn't. Walter's Lock and Hardware! I'd forgotten when that was a storefront on Charle Street. And there's Spenser and Suze having lunch in the window at Toscano. I would have bet $100 that Toscano's only been around for about 20 years, but there it was, in 1985. (Tempus sure does fugit.)

I love seeing Spenser buzz around Cambridge - hey, that's MIT's Sloan, my business school!; that's Passim's!). Around the Haymarket/Quincy Market area, with its great old sign for the now defunct Durgin Park, where I worked as a waitress in the early 1970's.

The strangest thing is when he's chasing bad guys around the Boston waterfront.

Back in the 1980's, that area was largely a bunch of decaying, derelict warehouses, a few restaurants (Anthony's, Jimmy's Harborside, No Name - all now gone), and some dirt parking lots.

Now the area is completely developed: office buildings (often occupied by tech companies that moved from the 'burbs to downtown because it's cooler and downtown is where techies want to live), pricey condos and rentals, nice restaurants, shops. A lovely harborside walk. It will be interesting to see how all of this survives the pandemic, but every time I walk down there, I'm in awe of how it's gotten so built up in the last decade or so.

Ditto for Kendall Square in Cambridge.

There wasn't much there when I was in grad school (a few years before Spenser went on the air), but of late it's full of stuff. Lots of tech and biotech and all that brings with it.

One of the biggest changes in the Boston scene is thanks to the Big Dig, which took the monstrous overhanging Central Artery that separated downtown Boston from the North End and put it underground. Vast improvement, but still fun to see the old artery. And the old Boston Garden. And a lot of the old other stuff.

Love seeing Urich in all his Red Sox gear, too. Although having read the backstory that says that Spenser went to Holy Cross, I'm a bit surprised to see him in a Boston College sweatshirt. Unless they've lost a bet, HC folks don't wear BC gear, and vice versa.

The show itself is ridiculous, the plots completely absurd, even by TV standards.

Boston is not an especially violent city, but if you watched Spenser, you'd certainly come away with the impression that, in the mid-1980's, Boston was wilder than the Wild West.

Spenser comes out gunning. In most of the shows I've seen so far - maybe half a dozen - he's managed to kill a couple of bad guys in the first couple of minutes of the show.

He's bodyguarding someone who's running the Marathon. Bad guys kidnap his protectee, but Spenser takes chase and manages to blow 3 - or was it 4 - of the kidnappers away.

He's bodyguarding a high school girl but - and Spenser must be a mighty poor protector - she gets kidnapped before his very eyes. But he did manage to kill one of the kidnappers.

He's shopping for watermelon in the North End and a guy on roller blade tries to knife him, but gets the watermelon instead. Spenser goes after him, breaking up an Italian festa religious parade in the process, and guns the bad guy down.

I don't think I've seen any episode where Spenser hasn't shot and killed at least 3 people.

Then there's his wingman, Hawk, who was/is a contract killer. So if Spenser's not doing the killing, Hawk is.

I know I read some of the Robert Parker Spenser novels in the wayback, and I'm sure I enjoyed the fact that Spenser quotes Shakespeare, Plato, the poet Spenser (relation? no relation?). But in the TV show it comes off as wooden and completely non-charming.

As does his relationship with Susan Silverman, at least to me.

They're supposed to be this ultra hot, lovey-dovey, sexy couple, but the chemistry between the two makes the byplay between Rock Hudson and Susan St. James on MacMillan & Wife seem torrid.

There's one scene where I cringed.

Shortly after Spenser moves into the firehouse, Suze surprisees him there in a pair of red silk PJs and a plastic kid's fireman's hat - and shimmies down the station's firepole to greet him. Only she doesn't wheeeeeee! down it with abandon. She kind of scuds along, hanging on for dear life. Which is how I would have come down that pole. So maybe it's realistic, but it sure wasn't sexy.

Will I keep watching? Hell, yeah!

Can't wait to spot more errors. Hey, that mansion's not in Louisburg Square, it's on Mt. Vernon Street!

Can't wait to spot more places that aren't around any longer. More places that still are. Can't wait to listen to more bad Boston accents. And a few good ones. Can't wait to see more of Robert Urich. (He really is cute.) And less of Suze. Can't wait to see how the body count mounts.

There are three seasons, and I'm only a few episodes into season one, so I've got a lot to go.

Recommendations for my next binge welcome.