No office, no nowhere, just the studio and the gazebo, back and forth. Work for a while, go outside, drink water, read bad news, get steamed, go back up to studio, work on project that stands outside of our times, get lost in said project, then go outside, read news, scowl. More about that tomorrow in the Wednesday Review of Modern Thought.

Day Three of Quarantine went fine. Feel normal, except for the part where I’m wondering if I really do feel normal. Uh oh: I sneezed. Is that a symptom? Huh: the sudden, harsh sneeze made my throat slightly irritated. Could I be worsening? No, sneezes are not a symptom.

Then I looked in the mirror and saw what appears to be a strange bruise on my mug, or pan as they called it in the 40s. You know the song “Hooray for Hollywood”? They use the word.

Where any office boy or young mechanic can be a panic
With just a good looking pan

It seems as if the double-use of “pan” is supposed to get you to the “fan” rhyme, and the assonance of mechanic can panic is nice, but it requires the mind to shift quickly - you hear “panic,” filter it through the slang for “popular craze,” then perform the mental gymnastics required to equate a pan with with a face. It helps if you know the slang ahead of time, of course, BUT WHAT THE HELL IS THIS BRUISE?

Ehhhhh gahhhhh we’re going to have to doom-google, aren’t we

Everything comes back as rashes. I do not have a rash. This appears to be a subcutaneous event. Plug that word in . . . oh, here’s a search result that recommends IMMEDIATE HOSPITALIZATION - no, I’m not going to read that. Okay, I am. Okay, that doesn’t seem like what I have, it’s not “branching.” Everything else in the rash-related pages is either pesky bumps or an oldie-but-goody, like the Kim Carnes song: of all the symptoms, this really blows / she’s got Covid-19 toes

I think it highly unlikely I have manifested a Code Red aspect of COVID when I am completely asymptomatic, but on the other hand just reading these things makes me a bit disconcerted, and . . . is that tightness in the chest? Is it . . . a bit more difficult to breathe?

NO

I’m really invested in sailing through this without time in the trough. I really want to be one of those guys who just walked it off.

By the way, yes, I was vaccinated. I am a breakthrough case, one of 7,000 in Minnesota. That’s the official number. I’m sure it’s 3X, at least, because people don’t get tested. Why would they? They got the poke, they feel fine, on with normal life. I wouldn’t have thought I had it.

The happy prospect: when I was tested, I was at the end portion! Seems unlikely I was starting fresh on Saturday, after all.

This was not how I expected the summer to conclude, to say the least.

Last summer, yes. This summer, no.

Being housebound, podcasts help. I was enjoying an account of the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr., and as ever was keen to see what nitpickery the reviewers would bring up. Well:

NEVER. We Will never pay. HOLD THE LINE, PEOPLE. 

The episodes are released weekly. If you want the entire series at once, you have to subscribe to Wondery for $4.99. It seems about thirty percent of the reviewers do not understand this concept.

What's interesting to me is the furious insistence that Wondery is violating some age-old rule, sullying the innocent perfection of the podcast genre with rapacious, crass demands for money.

As if these things spring from the earth unbidden, and cost nothing to make. As if it is greed to give something away for free, but offer an option for paying if the customer wants more, sooner.

Charging for special access: pushing an agenda.

Ever see a movie on your streaming recommendation panel and think, I must have seen this before. I don't mean the favorites tyou know you've seen siz times. I mean you saw it at the time, possibly in the theater, and never since. It was big, wasn’t it? Shocking!

Twilight’s Last Gleaming, 1977: you know it has to be about something deeply cynical that betrays a rotten truth about America. Wikipedia:

It tells the story of Lawrence Dell, a renegade USAF general who escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo in Montana, threatening to launch the missiles and start World War III unless the President reveals a top secret document to the American people about the Vietnam War.

You’d be surprised how easy it is to take over an ICBM silo. You’d be even more surprised to see Paulie, aka Burt Young, as one of the terrorists. It stars Burt Lancaster in full James Mattoon Scott mode, a steely patriot who is doing the worst possible things.

The premise is idiotic. There’s no way they could launch the missiles and start WWIII. Just get some tanks on the base and blow a hole in the things as they rise. As a novel, it was a page-turner without any particular politics, but apparently the director insisted it turn into an Anti-Establishment movie, because, you know, Watergate, maan. What's in that secret document?

The document, which is unknown to the current president but not to certain members of his cabinet, contains conclusive proof that the US government knew there was no realistic hope of winning the Vietnam War but continued fighting for the sole purpose of demonstrating to the Soviet Union their unwavering commitment to defeating Communism.

When did they conclude this? When Walter Cronkite said the Germans had bombed Pearl Harbor?

Spoiler: the President gets shot at the end, and we’re left to wonder if his dying request to release the document will be honored. Probably not, because - well, you saw the last scene of “Last Day of the Condor.” We were meant to feel impotent and hopeless, pawns of a dark all-powerful malevolent government.

Anyway, that dark and malevolent all-powerful government with a shadowy cabal of brilliant and ruthless men dedicated to national security sure seems like a relic of another time, doesn’t it?

Also: unless you sat through a long string of movies in those days that ended with their version of the President Shot to Death, you have no idea why Star Wars felt so bright and clean at the end.

It’s 1955. Seems a bit excessive to do this when the Fifties ad site is going on, but, well, tradition, I guess.

Who are they looking at, these fine fresh well-scrubbed American youths?

The person who isn’t appreciating Coke, perhaps. That guy who’s drinking the clam juice. He looks Italian.

Honey, let's go sit in the car, and I'll pretend to drive

Perhaps that’s not his wife, but his wife’s friend, and it’s all he can do not to look?

Did you know that in the past, when you hit the gas to pass someone, your windshield-cleaning system faltered?

WHAT ARE YOU DOING PASSING ON A TWO-LANE IN A RAIN STORM ANYWAY

		He’d know, because . . . reasons He never knew that one of the roles he might have thought beneath him would put him in a strange pantheon that assured he would be discussed, if only in passing, decades into the 21st century.

Make your home a gay, bright place of excitement and gracious leisure living - with asbestos!

OH GOSH CAN WE HAVE A TV IN THE WALL DAD

LIKE ON A ROCKET SHIP

Previously, it was wood-fired?

Always been wary of these things, I have. Seemed liable to explode. But they were quite popular, and one of the things that pushed Presto into the forefront of appliance design and innovation. They made submersible electronics, which meant they were easier to clean. No small thing.

BARF-TASTIC

How we hated those tuna-bake things. Slimy elbow Mac, fishy taste, overall weirdness.

With a little ketchup, you could get some of it down.

That'll do; see you around.