He doesn't really approve of you dropping by the lab, but as long as you're here, it's time for some news that's . . .

It's a trailer for a movie about an Invisible Kid. Sci-fi. As you can imagine, kids, actual visible ones, were probably the target market. Few grown-ups who liked science fiction wanted to see a movie about a kid, let alone one who can't be seen.

I just love the idea that there were satellite headlines.

Worst weekend ever, and I expected that, so I filled the reservoirs of resignation and reset some ideas about the future.

The weekend was occupied by two questions:

Would she or wouldn’t she

Also, would she, or wouldn’t she

Friday was good enough, I suppose. Had the Bellatoria pizza, the lowest-priced acceptable frozen. (Next week is the takeout from Red’s Savoy, when I’m flush with that SS money.) Birch and I took a good long walk, going the opposite direction this time to shake things up. Startling discovery:

It was all I could do to hold him back. I feared the leash would snap, and that would be the second dog lost to deer frenzy. (Scout, at the off-leash dog park, went after a deer and was never seen again, except in the form of his remains, discovered by a municipal worker cutting the grass by the highway. I never liked the idea of the off-leash park, because Scout was a runner; he’d run away from home several times, although we always found him. I regarded taking him there as madness. Didn’t blame her for losing our dog, but, well, in my heart, I did.)

There were many other sights and peculiar flora.

In the evening I watched an unnerving Star Trek and chatted with Astrid about something that happened on the podcast that morning. On my wall I have a fabric poster - I don’t know what else to call it, really - a tablecloth? Too small. A napkin? Too big - and it commemorates the inclusive battle of Sotheby off the Suffolk shore. Adnam’s brewery made it and I traded in a gift certificate for it. We had a guest from England, and I noted the poster, and mentioned I got it at Southwold. Whereupon he said he knew Southwold. Really! I try to get there at least once a year, and actually I stay across the river to the south, at Walberswick. Whereupon he said he knew people in Walbers. My mind skittered around the people I knew, wondering if he meant the former Beeb presenters and Times columnist - but he said “he’s a television composer.”

All I could say was “what”

“Yes, Black Beauty, Lovejoy. His name is Denis King.”

“THAT’S WHERE I STAY,” I said. “WITH THE KINGS.”

What are the chances? Remarkable. We made tentative plans to meet at the Anchor some day soon, so I can stand him a pint.

The Kings know him through his musician father, Benny Green. A serious jazz man AND a writer, he was also a member of a TV house band that had a novelty hit:

I rang Astrid around 2 AM to tell her the details, and she told me about once and future Anchor meetings: they’d had drinks with Alex Cox, the son of Brian - you know, Hannibal Lecter - and that afternoon Michael was popping up for lunch. That would be my good friend Michael Palin.

I guarantee the next time I go to Walbers absolutely no one famous will drop by.

So that was Friday. Saturday I woke with a stone in my heart and decided that the weekend was just going to be a total disappointment, and if I leaned into that and some good things happened I would be gratified and delighted. Spent the morning on the website and the afternoon on some other useless projects that I regretted as soon as I was finished.

Took a dog walk and checked the mail for the second time. I never check the mail because there’s never anything useful, most day. It’s all political mailers these days. Speaking of which: a candidate sent someone out to stick fliers under everyone’s door, and this peeved me greatly, because I am retired and such petty things acquire outsized importance. Not really, but I was curious. I talked to my guy at the office about it, and he said they’d given someone permission to do this.

“Really! Now, I don’t care, I’m not bothered, this is the smallest thing, but someone comes by with a stack of fliers and they get total access to the building?”

He winced a bit and say yeah, but, well, they have a policy that you can’t do that for advertising.

I held up the flier and gave him that Walter-Matthau-end-of-Pelham-123 look and said “this is advertising.”

I assured him I was just curious if there was a process to get access, or whether someone who lived in the building had taken it upon themselves to boost their favorite candidate. What I wanted to say was “you should not do this at all because the minute someone shows up and someone in the office doesn’t like one of the positions stated on the mailer, you have a problem. Let one in, you have to let them all in.” Which is something that will probably never happen.

Checked the mail.

Nnnnnnope.

It’s Karma, really. I forgot my Dad’s birthday a few times too. I fully admit it. I fully deserve this.

But, I thought, I’ll probably get something from Daughter tomorrow. The days of the cute hand-drawn elaborate cards have elapsed, but who knows. Something more than a text would be nice.

Did I actually expect a card from Her? Did I? Of course I got one last year, and piece of cake, a little something, and all the while the contempt was festering and the discontent multiplying, because I didn’t want to sell the house. It was somewhere around late August - early September that I made the fatal move, and insisted that we stay, and that every penny of my severance lump sums from work be spent to do whatever she wanted to do to the house, including that fancy driveway she wanted, and we would use the leftover money to hire people to do the yard work and hire a cleaner and all that, but we’re staying. In paradise. WE ARE STAYING IN PARADISE.

This was a precipitating event, in retrospect. For me, I remember talking about where we would live after we sold, and whether I would be able to have an office, and she said “I don’t know!”

Now I am thinking about the next move, the House, and making all sorts of plans, and also thinking “I’m old and I haven’t been to the doctor and I’ll probably just fall over soon and that’s okay, BUT, it would be nice to have a year with a back yard for Birch, and a house, because Daughter viewed the loss of her childhood home as the loss of a safe place if she lost her job and couldn’t find anything else and had no where to go. I want her to know there’s a room for her somewhere. I want a little three-bedroom and there will be a room for her decorated sparely but consistent with her aesthetic and she will know it’s there.”

On Saturday evening at the grocery store I got texts from brother-in-law in Boston: he was having dinner with Natalie and Her, who is in MA for a fortnight to do some charity camp with her sister. So they all went out to dinner. He said “Natalie and Sara are coordinating where we will have dinner” and it was the most normal text in the world to see except it tore me up because, well, I was here, and all is sundered.

After a good hamburger - it did not fall apart like last week - we went for the evening walk. No turkeys this time. Past the playground and picnic area: 100% burkhas. No deer. On the way inside Birch got tangled in the leash and the door closed on his back leg - yipes - GAH - I worry about this every time and the one time I don’t make sure, he gets nailed. He’s limping. I’m sorry so sorry - palpate the leg, nothing broken. There are pain meds upstairs. He’s trotting fast by the time we get back up to the 7th floor. Weed smell in the hall; the yippy angry dog two doors down is back, yelling - I close the door quickly, listening for barks, thinking, if I don’t hear him then no one else hears Birch.

In the evening I work on a website and watch a movie. I take out the frozen sourdough bread so I can make pain perdu in the morning. On Sunday.

Birthday treat.

It’s Midnight now and I hear a train whistle. It’s the old Mystery Train, the one I used to hear in the distance at night when I sat out in the gazebo. This is all a dream, right? I’m going home soon, right? And there’ll be cake and candles?

Right?

SUNDAY NIGHT Well, I was not wrong. We can put this one in the bank and work for a better day next year. I got a delightful card from Astrid and Denis, with William Shatner personally singing a greeting!!! Really it was him!!! AI, or shall we say AI assisted, and there's always that amusing momenty where the camera cuts away from a medium Shat-shot to close up as he says your name. The Crazy Uke and the Giant Swede serenated me in Ukrainian. Daughter is supposed to call tonight.

Text from S. saying she'd reminded daughter to text me Happy Birthday, and that she hoped I had a good day. No "Happy Birthday."

Wise, that.

Oh: I bought myself a piece of cheesecake with the Lundsnbyerly's gift card.So technically, someone got me cake.

In keeping with our Monday tradition, which became a "tradition" for reasons I can't recall and probably don't matter, we continue with our Monday trademark. For this year we'll do 1936.

Apparently this was a difficult act requiring a helpful implement:

		I'm not sure it filled an ill-met need.

Oh, that one

I wonder if Russ Bender looked at the credits and stood up in the theater and yelled OH FER CHRISSAKES

It starts with narration, cheap animation, and stock film, all describing how space is man’s last frontier. Utterly inessential. Then. A guy returns to his ship from a walkabout, and we note, as ever, that the future has signage they ordered from the trophy-maker shop:

The bridge has a nice recliner from the director’s rumpus room

When we see our astronaut, he’s pretty sick. Turns out the planet was full of radioactive gas - who knew? And everyone’s dead. He can’t muster the strength to blow up the ship, which he needs to do to spare himself the radiation sickness, I guess, and begs Earth Control . . .

. . .to do it for him. Good thing they have a button right there just for moments like this!

This doesn’t follow at all:

“Earth’s universe.”

In the year 2000, when this is set, another probe is launched. Everything that has gone on so farin this movie doesn’t matter at all.

Nifty little bridge:

I should note that the individual rooms of the spaceship are “Gyro-stabilized,” and rotate independently. They all align in a stack when the ship is in landing mode. Also, the ship has artificial gravity. Also, the gyro-stabilized rotating room idea makes no sense at all. It’s space. You don’t have to be sitting parallel to the bottom of the movie screen.

They get about five minutes out, and they run into another spacecraft. I mean, they’re not even past the moon. Or that was skipped for budget reasons.

Anyway, it's a first contact situation.

Let’s meet our new friends!

It doesn’t go well.

AND THAT’S THE LAST WE SEE OF THOSE GUYS. Really: they blow up the ship and move along. Meteor shower, off course, crash landing, space crab attack - it’s all the cliches of the 50s sci-fi space operas.

Except it wasn't made in the 50s.

When this movie was released, principal photography had already begun for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

That will do. Substack column up between 11 and 12. Matchbooks, of course. See you around!