a prediction

Here's my prediction: in twenty years, movie theaters will be almost non-existent in the first world. The few that remain will be as rare as drive-in theaters are today.

In ten years, the number of movie theaters in the first world will be far less than half the number today.

Why do I make these predictions? A variety of reasons.

Overall ticket sales and the number of butts-in-seats per year has been declining for the last several years. At the same time, the number of streaming options has increased exponentially.

As well, more and more big-budget Hollywood films as well as littler films are being released the same day the movie starts playing in theaters. And, bigger and better and cheaper widescreen TVs keep coming on the market.

And then came the coronavirus. Herd immunity and an effective vaccine in widespread use will be several years away. People will be much more cautious about social distancing. And no place would that be harder for that than in a darkened theater.

I may turn out to be wrong. But I don't think so. Time will tell.

the singing bride

This is very sweet. The bride seems a bit nervous at the beginning and her voice is a tad faint as a result.

Once she gains her confidence, however, this really becomes something lovely. Her groom is quite stoic for a good while, but then he eventually begins to melt. It's all a bit saccharine, but in a harmless sort of way.

I like also how this is obviously a lower budget wedding. They're not bankrupting their families and themselves.

gilding the lily

Language idioms never cease to fascinate me, particularly their often obscure origins. I encountered the phrase "gilding the lily" yesterday in my offline reading and wondered how that ever came to be.

It turns out to be a bastardization of a line from Shakespeare's King John, which reads: "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet is wasteful and ridiculous excess."

I've also seen the idiom used incorrectly. People sometimes use it to describe exaggeration or an attempt to make something negative look positive. But that usage isn't correct. It simply means to over-embellish something that doesn't even need embellishing.

It is the opposite of that classic rule "less is more." Ergo, "more is less."

self-taught ventriloquism

At different times, my uncle, my brother, and I all taught ourselves ventriloquism from the same book. Given that my oldest son is now roughly the age we were when we started teaching ourselves — and he wanted to learn, too, having seen me do it many times — my uncle sent the book in question on a long-term loan.

The challenge for any aspiring ventriloquist is learning to do the labial letters. These are the letters/sounds formed with the lips — B, F, M, P, V, and sometimes Q, W, and Y.

There are various techniques you can use to substitute a similar sound for these. With practice, for instance, you can use N instead of M sounds, making it sound like an M but without moving your lips. Alternatively, you can force air out through your teeth in such a way for certain sounds without moving your lips but you still end up making nearly the same sound.

The trick with ventriloquism is that you have to practice, practice, practice to perfect your technique. Once you've done that, like learning how to ride a bicycle, it's pretty difficult to forget your training.

If you want to learn ventriloquism, there are a ton of videos on YouTube. Pick one that looks reputable and give it a try. It's a great way to amuse small children!

mask porn

In the Land of Porn, the pandemic barely seems to exist, so you don't really see any new virus porn. One can hardly be surprised, as a deadly epidemic sweeping the globe is not erotic stuff.

I was surprised, however, that mask porn took a while to take off and just seems to be appearing now. Unlike virus porn, mask porn can seem harmless. Indeed, it could even enhance solo masturbation porn. What seems safer than a woman fingering herself while wearing a mask?

I glommed the image below (enlargement) from a free porn aggregator. You can also find more at a commercial site called zishy.com if that floats your boat.

ralph and joseph fiennes

I saw a production still of Joseph Fiennes in a magazine I was flipping through the other day and noticed, now that he's older, he's finally starting to resemble his brother Ralph. Joseph turns fifty tomorrow whereas Ralph is almost sixty.

When they were younger men, I don't think they looked anything alike. Now that they're well into middle age, however, they're both aging the same way.

It's curious how, in youth, siblings can often look like strangers but, as they age, they grow into their resemblances. I never thought my brother looked anything like my father when he was younger, but now that he's in his forties, the resemblance can be seen clearly in the photos he's shared with me online.

In other families, however, a resemblance can be crystal clear. My three sons look so much alike, they all could have been cloned from the same source. The same could be said for my husband and some of his brothers and cousins.

story jeopardy

I'm currently reading a very good Robert Goddard mystery thriller. Part of what makes the book an enjoyable page-turner is that the author really knows how to use story jeopardy.

So many writers don't understand how to use this fundamental storytelling tool. Here's how:

Early in the story, a significant obstacle appears in the hero's path, often because of some flaw in that character. The hero manages to clear that obstacle, but in doing so, sets in motion a series of events that causes an even more formidable obstacle to appear in the hero's way.

And repeat. And repeat again and several times more, each time with the obstacle becoming more difficult and the consequences more dire if the hero fails to clear an obstacle. Only after clearing the final and most difficult obstacle will the hero prevail.

This is not a difficult concept. Many successful writers use it skillfully albeit invisibly time after time. Yet, equally, many writers seem clueless how to use it effectively. Or even to use it at all. Or that it even exists.

the $2 million whiskey

I was reading something offline about a single bottle of whiskey that sold a few months ago at auction for several hundred thousand dollars. There was no mention of it being a record-setting price, so that told me a single bottle of whiskey has sold for even more.

A quick check on Google told me way more. The record price for a single bottle of whiskey is almost $2 million, set last year.

I'm sorry, but that's just fucked up.

Yes, you should have the right to spend your own money however you see fit. But that doesn't mean you can't be called out for having obscenely warped priorities in life or for spending an outrageous amount of money on something so frivolous and ephemeral.

If you can spend $2 million on a single bottle of booze, you have a seriously huge net worth with lots of digits and several commas. Maybe instead of blowing money on something so outrageous, you could blow that money on buying medicines for critically ill children.

Yeah, maybe the buyer already gives a lot of money to charity. But he or she could forego this ridiculous purchase and give $2 million more to charity.

two greats

Legend meets legend: Stephane Grappelli on jazz violin and Bill Coleman on jazz piano. Both of them make playing seem so easy and effortless, as if any one of us could pick up either instrument and play just the same way. As if.

bidets on the rise

Smithsonian magazine is currently running a shorter article about the history of bidets and how they're on the rise in the United States.

Like I expect many or even most Americans who have had occasion to use them, I don't like bidets. I much prefer plain old toilet paper. I expect that's a factor of what you were raised with, like how Americans much prefer coffee to tea because of conditioning.

I was surprised by this factoid in the article: Italian law mandates a bidet in every home. Why? What governmental interest would there be in such a mandate?

And I was amused to learn that a bidet is so named because of stocky horse of the same name. Why? Because one squats over a bidet much the same way one squats over a horse.

1918 all over again

NPR's Fresh Air featured an excellent program last week on the 1918 flu pandemic and some lessons for the current crisis. The segment can be downloaded without charge indefinitely.

The piece features an interview with the author of a 2004 book on the flu pandemic in the waning days of World War I. Part of that includes a very interesting discussion about how, after President Woodrow Wilson became seriously ill with influenza, he was AWOL from the peace negotiation process.

Because of his absence, other allied powers pushed for much harsher measures against Germany than would have happened had Wilson been present. Those measures ultimately seeded the ground which allowed Adolph Hitler to rise to power.

In short, had Wilson not gotten seriously sick, there would have been no Hitler and no Nazi Germany and its many horrendous excesses.

History is like a gigantic game of Jenga.

abe lincoln speaks

My grandfather was born in 1919. His grandfather was born in 1843 in Philadelphia, where he was raised.

When my grandfather was a boy, at some point his grandfather told him about how he had seen Abraham Lincoln speak in Philadelphia.

The photo below (enlargement) was taken on February 22, 1861, and shows Lincoln speaking outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The shot appeared in this past weekend's Wall Street Journal.

I wonder if this is where my great great grandfather saw Lincoln speaking. He could very well be one of the young men in the trees seen in the foreground. (How times have changed — the Secret Service would never allow that today.)

Hence the reason why I love old photos like this. They hold secrets that will never be told but they nonetheless are a window into history that no painting could provide.

the genetics of humor

Many geneticists believe a sense of humor is genetically linked. But can it be more specific than that? Can a type of sense of humor be genetic?

My grandfather had the same kind of sense of humor that both my brother and I share. It wasn't so much that we loved laugh-out-loud situations but amusing or absurd things that would cause you to do a double take.

My grandfather has been dead for more than ten years, but even today when I encounter something ironic or absurd that I know would make him react, I think of him. I imagine telling him and then seeing his face, with a raised eyebrow and a "come again" expression.

I'm glad that this memory mechanism works the way it does for me. It's like he's still in the present tense even though he is no longer with us. I don't think about missing him but, instead, think about him reacting in the here and now and that makes me smile.

He is gone but he still lives on in my funnybone.

disturbing

There is no shortage of videos like this on YouTube. And I always feel the same after watching them — I find them somewhat disturbing.

I find it disquieting that an adult choreographer feels the need to sexualize little girls. The butt wagging and the pelvis thrusting moves are a bad look in children that age.

The kids are having great fun. They're too young to see that some people will find a routine like this somewhat creepy. It's not their fault.

But didn't their parents ever have a moment of doubt? Did they not realize that their children performing like this in public will be catnip to very disturbed individuals who will get quite turned on by all that wiggling and thrusting?

Does this make me sound like a prude? I don't care if it does. When it comes to children, I think we always need to err on the side of caution. Children must never be exploited, even if unintentionally.

where danger lurks

You might find this article helpful: "Where to Worry About Catching Covid-19, and Where Not To."

Which is more dangerous: a supermarket or a city bus? Read the linked piece and find out.

That doesn't mean, however, that you can't contract the illness in a low risk environment. It does mean, however, that it's less likely.

Be safe and be healthy.

digital games bore me

I've never seen the attraction of computer games, phone games, games you can play on your TV. You bomb things or kill things or smush things and get points. And then what?

I guess my brain isn't intrigued with playing by itself. I'd much rather read or watch a movie or engaging TV show.

I know people love these things. If they do, good for them. It's just not my thing. And I suspect it says something about my psychologically that they don't interest me, except I can't figure out what.

Before the lockdown, our oldest son played some on a friend's Wii device but hasn't asked for one. For now, it's a fun game at his friend's to play with him. When the boys are a little older, they might ask.

I would have no objection to buying one for them but would rather they play the real game like tennis than a version where you just wave your arms at the TV. Still, if they ask, I wouldn't oppose it but it would be limited to a certain time limit per day like TV. And they would still be expected to play outside and enrich their brains by reading.

little richard

Music legend Little Richard died over the weekend at the age of 87. He was truly one of a kind, a music trailblazer in more ways than one.

I once rode in an elevator with him in Beverly Hills in the building where my modeling agent had an office. I entered the building where an elderly African-American gentleman with several others was waiting for the elevator to arrive.

When it did and we all walked into the empty car, I realized the man was Little Richard. He was soberly dressed but also wearing a considerable amount of makeup. I smiled slightly, he smiled slightly in return, and that was that. I got off before he had reached his floor. On some other day several months later, I also rode in that same elevator car with Dionne Warwick. Presumably there was an office in that building that had something to do with the music business.

I wished I had the presence of mind to say something smart and memorable to Little Richard when I sort-of met him, but nothing came to mind. Now, thinking back, I should've just burst out singing the song Little Richard is heard performing below.

the waco siege

I've been listening to the American Scandal podcast's seven episode arc dealing with the Branch Dividian siege outside Waco, Texas, in early 1993. The event itself occurred when I was seven-and-a-half, so I have little direct memory of the crisis.

What struck me most from the approximate six hours of content was how the cult leader David Koresh demanded total submission from his followers and how they so willingly gave it, particularly the men. They willingly turned over their wives to him as concubines while they lived in the total chastity that he demanded.

And, of course, Koresh had them believing he was divine and the new messiah.

The unsolved mystery to all this is whether Koresh believed everything he said. Or did he know it was all bogus and got off on having people submit to him completely?

homemade foaming soap

While foaming liquid soap isn't the best way to wash your hands if you've been doing something like cutting up raw chicken because it's not as good an antibiotic, it's okay for ordinary uses. And it's particularly good for child hands that haven't yet learned how to really lather vigorously.

But there's no point in paying retail price for foaming soap when it is essentially very watered down liquid soap. It's much easier to make your own.

Start with an empty foaming soap dispenser. It must be the sort made for foaming soap or it won't work.

Fill the dispenser bottle with about 20 percent liquid soap. Then slowly add the same amount of warm water so the bottle is about 40 percent full. Put the top on, swirl it around (but don't shake) so that it mixes.

Then remove the lid and add more warm water until the dispenser bottle is about 80 percent full. Replace the top. You're finished mixing because you want to leave about 20 percent of the bottle for air. Swirl the water/soap mixture again to blend thoroughly but do not shake.

Congratulations, you've now made foaming hand soap and at a fraction of the cost of the manufactured kind.

another blessing

Picking up my theme from two previous posts where I discussed looking for blessings in my life as a counterbalance to these dark, uncertain times, my latest realization is this:

I am supremely thankful that my three boys, notwithstanding their age differences, are completely fine playing with each other. The oldest, at seven and a half, is perfectly content playing with the one-year-old and the four-year-old.

Guaranteed, amusements that will entertain a one-year-old are fairly simple, but the two older boys participate without complaint. And the oldest one is perfectly content dumbing down a game to accommodate his middle brother, particularly with board games.

They could be at each other's throats but, instead, they are the opposite way. And for that, I am thankful.

obscenely priced accessories

I was flipping through a 2018 issue of a fashion magazine, checking to see if there was anything I wanted to cut out before tossing it into the recycle bin.

I happened to notice an Hermes ballcap pictured on one page and thought to myself, "I'll bet that's $150 if it's a dollar." So I checked the "where to buy" column at the end of the magazine that listed pricing details.

Ha. Me of little faith. The cap was $770.

Now guaranteed the cap was probably very well made and would last. So it might outlast my $3 cap I've had for at least ten years. But it would never pay for itself.

Why would someone even consider for a fraction of a second spending $770 on a ballcap? Would I be impressed if I saw someone wearing one?

I don't think so. I suspect I'd think the person was a fool, wasting so much money on a designer cap when a perfectly ordinary one, which could be had for a few dollars, would do.

an anvil on his chest

Last week, the New York Times published an article told in the first person by eleven people who have survived the coronavirus. In short, it is grim reading.

Some of the people interviewed are in their seventies. And some are in their twenties and thirties.

Reading this piece really drives home that the young are not immune from this virus. Our chances of dying may be less than for senior citizens, but a younger person still can end up very, very sick, in the ICU, on a ventilator, in a medically induced coma. That is not fun.

Just reading this piece made me short of breath. I think I'll stick my head out of the window now.

porn and the coronavirus

The medical news journal Stat is now running an interesting article called "Why the porn industry has a lot to teach us about safety in the Covid-19 era."

As the MD director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute says in the piece about the need for a massive coronavirus testing effort: "the adult film industry teaches us that, as a proof of concept, this can work. We just have to scale it up."

Porn performers are tested every two weeks for STDs. If any one of them comes up positive for HIV, the whole industry is shut down until the history of that particular infection is traced.

The only truly effective way to curb coronavirus until a viable vaccine is widely available will be rigorous testing and retesting. Unfortunately, in most places on earth, that's not anywhere near to happening yet.

Ramping up the testing process has to be an international priority. Hopefully, soon, the world will be pointed in that direction, but it's not there yet. An easy-to-administer on-the-spot test with near-instant results would be perfect. That's not available yet, either, although it might be.

And as an interesting coda to this piece — I've read elsewhere that most porn production has been shut down until further notice. The reason why is simple — they can test for HIV but not for coronavirus.

the American accent

Our oldest son is now seven and a half and now fully understands I speak differently than most of the other people he knows. Both my husband and I tend to mimic the way other people speak, so this is a genetic trait our son seems to be manifesting, too.

Our son been casually working on his American accent so I taught him a secret I once picked up from an actor in Los Angeles.

The distinction between the British, American, and Australian accents isn't just that certain letters and combinations are spoken differently by moving your lips or forming the sound in your mouth, depending on the accent. The secret is that the sound starts in a different part of the mouth, depending on the accent.

American accent sounds are started primarily in the top of the throat and the very back of the mouth. If you're American, say a sentence now and you'll see what I mean.

But if you're British, your accent sounds are started much further forward in the mouth, away from the back of the throat entirely.

The Australian accent begins about half way between the two — towards the back of the mouth but not fully into the throat, with a few exceptions.

Of course, that's not all. The R sound in American is much different than Britain or Australia. Still, where that R sound begins is important. If you're trying to speak like an American, you need to begin it further back in your mouth and into your throat than sounds in British or Australian accents.

Of course, there are wide variations in American speak. New Englanders, for instance, don't use so-called rhotic Rs. My American accent seems more pronounced to Aussies because it's the Midwestern version, which curiously in America is considered a "non accent."

Mimicry is fun and accents are a big part of it. My brother and I were always doing them and now I can do it with both my husband and, increasingly, my son.

wrenched back

After I turn thirty-five in four months, I will be closer to fifty than twenty. That's a chilling thought. I still feel young. I don't feel any different than I did when I was twenty.

My body is not that of a twenty-year-old, however. I was reminded of that fact when I pulled a lower back muscle yesterday. I was kneeling on the kitchen floor, cleaning under the kickboard. When I stood, I felt my back tighten and have been in pain since then.

Back pains like this become more frequent with age, a health website cheerily informs me, even if you're otherwise in good shape. I'm not overweight and still work out regularly, but I always stretch to warm up beforehand.

But I don't warm up before I do housework. This is not the first time I've pulled something while cleaning. I've now resolved to always warm up and stretch before beginning a housework regimen. It can't hurt and it might help prevent this from happening again.

a coming prudish era?

I was half paying attention as I was flipping through a magazine the other day, searching for an article. A passed a full page ad with some people clustered close together, having a good time.

Part of my brain muttered "don't those people realize they shouldn't be standing so close together."

And then my brain went "oh wait." The magazine was from last summer, a blissful season when people weren't obsessed with social distancing.

That led me to wondering if we're now heading into a more prudish, hands-off era as an overreaction to coronavirus once it has abated. I remember reading somewhere that Victorian prudishness was a delayed reaction to the marked increase in tuberculosis in the early nineteenth century.

I saw a headline not too long ago about how prolonged social distancing will become somewhat permanent even after the coronavirus crisis passes, whenever that is. People will be condition to be more proactive of their personal space and won't quickly give that up.

Hopefully this won't lead to a prudish overreaction. I don't think the world needs another Victorian era.

sanitizing groceries

I've seen heated arguments online recently between a faction insisting you must sanitize all groceries bought at the supermarket the moment you bring them home versus those who think it's a waste of time and cleaning supplies.

The scientific consensus is largely that it's a waste of time because the chances are extremely low that a infectious coronavirus pathogen would be found on groceries.

I've adopted a sort of middle ground — don't sanitize and just let your groceries sit in the car trunk or garage or wherever in their bags for several days. This obviously will only work with non-perishable items, but that makes up at least 75 to 85 percent of my shopping on any given trip.

Perishables must be put away promptly, of course, in the refrigerator. Those can be wiped down with alcohol and a damp cotton cloth, which you then put into the wash. Fortunately, virus pathogens cannot survive long on soft and pliable surfaces like grocery perishables.

In the end, I suppose those who insist on sanitizing feel better that they can control some aspect of their lives in this chaotic year. So it's more about soothing their psyche than any actual sanitation.

a hypothetical dilemma

Consider this hypothetical: you are diagnosed with a very rare condition that, at present, is untreatable and always fatal. However, doctors and scientists believe that in a few decades, a cure for your condition will be available. Until that time, you could be kept in cryogenic stasis and treated forty years from now.

What would you do?

On one hand, you'd have a cure but potentially be separated generationally from loved ones and friends. On the other hand, you'd die a premature death.

I think I would opt for cryogenic stasis and survival. Yes, I would miss seeing my children grow up, but that would be true if I chose death instead. At least I could still be with them for a period of time, even if they suddenly were older than me.

There would be the danger my husband would not survive. But, again, if I chose death now, separation would be a certainty.

pull up your drawers

Yesterday, a kitchen table mishap ended with juice spilling on my four-year-old's pants. I said something like "hold on sweetie, I'll get you some clean drawers from the dryer."

My two older sons and husband looked at each other as if wondering why the hell I was talking about drawers.

It's not a word I normally use for pants. But at a moment when I wasn't paying much attention to what I was saying, it slipped in there. It's a word that my grandfather used regularly.

I explained how some older Americans refer to pants as "drawers" and underwear as "underdrawers." It was my grandfather's word that just popped into my head.

I thought perhaps pants were called drawers because they were kept in the latter. It turns out that's not the case.

It's because you would draw on your pants. It has nothing to do with furniture.

Today I learned.

something's not right

Seen below is a 1938 advertisement for maternity dresses (enlargement). Something should be immediately apparent.

Not a single woman looks like she's actually pregnant. Sure, she might be in her third week, but you don't need maternity clothes at such an absurdly early date.

If I was pregnant in 1938, I would want to see how the dress looked on an actual pregnant woman, particularly the belted ones. But, oh no, putting actually pregnant women's photos in a magazine would shock the children!

banning gatsby

A school district in Alaska has voted to remove a number of modern classics from its curriculum, including The Great Gatsby, Catch-22, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The reasons are what you'd expect — language and sex.

What year is this? 1950? Apparently the community puritans don't realize that high schoolers are regularly seeing all kinds of explicit stuff on the internet that Gatsby will seem very tame in comparison. After all, the book was written nearly a century ago.

The prudishness issue aside, I would think a college freshman who has not read most or all of the books on the banned list would be at a distinct disadvantage. Why deliberately handicap children?

Fortunately, a parent has organized a read-a-thon for all the banned books and that apparently is quite popular. So this attempt at censorship may backfire, as they often do — more students may end up reading the books than had the school district not said boo. Good. Censorship sucks.