7/23: Pool days
We're having some nice pool weather with decent night temps for sleeping. Buddy always joins us, either lounging on the chairs or deck:
The damn deer have been nipping the tops of the smallest Rose of Sharon and the sunflowers:
Speaking of pests, we haven't seen much of MamaC and her kids. I think just the runt is left and it is getting big. I saw her the other day come up on the deck, looking at the tomatoes (the cherries are starting to come in) and decided to chow down on the heliotrope. I banged on the kitchen window and drove her off.
Still few butterfly and dragonfly sightings. The annual cicadas have started up with their songs. No rain-we've barely had an inch for the month. Today I watered all the Sharons, East Garden, the last of the Japanese willows and gave Grandfather Birch a long drink. Poor old guy. I was reading about the wormy skeletonizers that are still plaguing him. Seems the outbreaks are cyclical: every 8-10 years, lasting 2-3 years. Hang in there, buddy!
7/28: Rain! This morning I was out and about at the markets. By 10.30 am, there were cumulus piles off to the South and the atmosphere felt "juicy". Radar showed the beginnings of pop-ups around noon to the SW. They expanded and arrived here around 1.15 pm with heavy, sheeting rain. It rained on the way to pick up C at the U and finally had dropped to a drizzle by the time we got home. Rain gauge showed nearly 1"! Everyone in the neighborhood is relieved despite the mugginess. The temps only got back to the lo-80's-a bit chilly for a swim. Bud hung out with me on the couch:
Buddy in post-session bliss:
July 14 I had reprised a post from 2022 concerning a daylily couple in All of Summer in a Day (or two). Here they are this year:
Biz at the Diner was steady but leisurely. M/M Redbird were having supper together:
The tomatoes are coming in but it has been a struggle with the watering. They are just divas: not enough, their leaves curl, get wilt and die, too much and they get another kind of wilt and bottom-end rot on the fruit. Ahhh, but the payoff of tasting a ripe tomato...that we wait all year for.
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Unlike the Avians, other vocal species such as the cicadas, crickets, frogs do not have a schedule for their performance. Since their song is more of a background sound, they just do their thing. No competition, no regs and folks seem to get along-it is the way of things.
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Well, I got my hormone shot this week, which promises to push me into male menopause for the next 6 months. The hot flashes have not arrived yet, though. I was reminded by an old friend from the Lansing Art Gallery days of a female co-worker who was going through this at the time. I seem to remember there was a card like this making the rounds at the time:
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In Fellini's film Amarcord, there is a continuing character of a mad motorcyclist who roars through town on his bike. We have our own version: a small unidentified black bird who loves to fly from Grandfather birch, over the pool, under Lil' Birch to Benny's, whipping over our heads at high speed at very low altitude. He is just a black blur. I wonder if he is a teen bird daredevil that gives his folks grey hair?
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Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window is one of my favorite films. My folks introduced me to it-they were fans as well. I already was acquainted the Raymond Burr, Perry Mason was another fav of my family. As a heavy!! Whipsharp dialogue along with examination of moral, ethical and rather addictive nature of watching your neighbors. Thelma Ritter, the practical, plain-speaking insurance nurse who tends to Jimmy Stewart who is in a leg cast is a hoot. Several storylines of the people across the way-the dancer, Miss Torso, dealing with male wolves, in contrast with Miss Lonely Heart who has bitter luck with men; the frustrated pianist hoping for a melody that might make him a star; the sculptress; the hilarious newlyweds who spend a good chunk of their time making whoopee; the couple with a little doggie who sleep on their balcony during steamy summer in the city nights (the husband played by Frank Cady who in the 60's had roles as a shopkeeper in The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres and Petticoat Junction.
There are fun time-capsule things-it's 1954:
-Kelly's character, who is from a wealthy family, shows Stewart a dress that retails for $1100! Gawd, a chunk of change back then. Google sez in today's money that dress would go for over $13,000!
-She has a meal from the famous 21 restaurant delivered to the apartment. The eatery closed during the pandemic after 90 years of operation. It began as a speakeasy.
-curious sexual things: practically a moneyshot of Miss Torso who bends over a lot towards the camera while doing her exercises wearing tights; in an era where couples aren't depicted together in the same bed, the couple who slept on their balcony were head to toe on their balcony on the same mattress; the honeymooner's gag where the shade is always drawn except for when the husband is taking a smoke break only to have wifey call out unseen: "Haaarrryyyy" and the audience knows she wants more nookie.
And of course, the build-up to the final confrontation between the wife-murdering Burr and Stewart. Yikes!
There's three Hitchcocks I like the best, this one, North By Northwest and The Birds.
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Fun vids:
Blue Martian Sunset:
Glowing sharks:
Drone going down jungle waterfall in Java:
Sandpipers running from waves:
A Beluga whale with an unusual fetish: seagull feet
Pebble Picasso:
Aerial view of a full circle rainbow:
More rainbows and a bit of science from Pecos Hank:
Odd cover of The Doors' Riders On the Storm:
Weirder yet: AI Redneck Star Trek with a tatted up Spock sporting a mullet!:
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Ahhh, the serendipity of the algorithms: C said this show turned up in her feed: The Twisted Tales of Felix The Cat which ran for 2 seasons beginning in 1995. It's fabulous and we highly recommend it. This came during the 1990's decade renaissance of adult animated series which produced The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead, Duckman Private Dick/Family Man), Ren & Stimpy and Futurama. Like the Simpsons, Felix is full of quick references to culture stuff, movies, music which are fun to catch. The imagery is trippy with strong whiffs pointing back to earlier eras: the 60's with Rocky and Bullwinkle and the 70's: pioneer animator Sally Cruikshank and cartoonist Robert Crumb. Great fun-check it out on YouTube.
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We were watching The Great British Bake Off, Season 12. One of the contestants used a NW English colloquialism neither of us had heard before: "giddy kipper", a term often used about children who are full of joy and energy.
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C recounted life-lessons for young girls: in the late 19th C, girls were taught to be quiet and a ray of sunshine in a room; when she was a Brownie, they were advised to be quiet and brighten a corner.
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The Indian-head test pattern: well, this is going to date me but way back in the days of (gasp) Black and White television, a familiar image from the end of the programming day was this:
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| WIKI |
First used in 1939 to help calibrate TV equipment. Here's the working parts:
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| WIKI |
This became obsolete in the 1960's with the advent of color TV.
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I was watching 20 Strange US Restaurants on YT. There was a hilarious glitch in the narration and it presents a perfect example of problems that go with using AI to do the work: one resto featured was the famous Tony Packos from Toledo, OH, beloved by Klinger from the TV series MASH, which we all pronounce as MASH but AI, seeing how it was written pronounced it as M*A*S*H. (It didn't say M asterisk...).
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FUBARland:
Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid must be turning in their graves.
Meanwhile, Roachie journeys to Scotland to visit his golf courses and hide from the Epstein inquiry. The Scots are about as thrilled to see him as they were to see English Monarch Edward I-here was their greeting at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, in 1297 (at least according to the film Braveheart):
