This is sadness

Generally, when we get calls about our mother -- whether from the care facility or her medical providers -- they call the landline. They all have my cell, but I don't always hear that. When I am home, I definitely hear the landline, and my heart jumps.

As often as it is reminders about prescriptions, live people trying to interest me in solar, or recordings about updating my Google business page (I do not have one), it could be something about Mom. If my sisters are also home, our hearts jump together.

The last two calls were telling us that she appears to have entered end of life and asking about admitting her to hospice.

The heart jump was right that time.

And then it wasn't as bad as it seemed.

Entering "end of life" is not at all precise.

I have known that part, I guess since my aunt died. 

That is one of the hard absurdities of life: someone can appear fine and then be gone in an instant, and someone can seem to be at death's door and spend weeks without going inside.

Mom does not seem to be at death's door.

There were indicators that she is losing her ability to swallow, which is the end stage of Alzheimer's disease. A lot of people don't get there because something else takes them first, but not being able to swallow does get you there.

She can still swallow for now. She is on oxygen and they have her head raised when she is in bed, which seems like a good precaution.

She is less alert than she has been, but that has been progressing for a while.

If you will recall, I wrote in August that I did not expect her to survive this holiday season, because of the annual COVID outbreaks between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Then the facility had its first outbreak in September. That was a heart-stopping e-mail.

We've been dealing with this a long time, but it never gets better. 

This hurts. Even though we still aren't there, and nothing that much has changed, it hurts.

Even though there is a level at which we believe it will be better for her, and we don't really have her with us, we don't want her to go. 

It's not that we are despondent, but we do feel it.

Something we do to make each other laugh is quote lines from movies and television shows; we were doing it more aggressively after that call. We were laughing a lot, but we still knew.

We are going about our lives and getting things done, including fun things, but we know.

I see it most in my selfies. It is harder to smile now. I don't want to frown and I don't think that accurately conveys how I am feeling, but the smile that usually springs up really easily isn't now. 

That's happened before, so I know it's temporary, and it will probably happen temporarily again before we are done. 

Shortly after the call I sent out a message to my siblings. There was a reply with a typo. I know it was meant to say "This is sad news," but the "w" was missing. 

Add another "s" and that sounds about right. 

1953 through 1946 -- Daily Songs

This section went a little longer than most, but I really wanted to be done with it.

I'd said that before the advent of rock songs were a lot cornier and it was harder to find ones I liked. I had also mentioned there being more repetition.

For 1946, the first year of the Billboard Hot 35, there were two versions each of "Symphony" and "Rumors Are Flying", three versions of "The Gypsy", four versions of "Oh What It Seemed To Be", five versions of "To Each His Own". "The Old Lamplighter" was less obvious, but that's because it spread its charting across 1946 and 1947.

There was one point in my understanding of music where I was beginning to realize that a lot of the old "standards" were from musicals. That's not untrue, but it was not the whole truth.

Anyway, it's kind of a relief to be done with that and move on to other things.

This does not mean that I will not go musically back in time anymore, but it can't be through the same methods.

I might try looking up Hit Parade or other things -- there are books about music too -- but the immediate future is some Halloween-themed music that will segue into an early start to Native American Heritage month.

For these oldies, some of my thoughts were more with songs that I did not use. For example, one of the songs that came up was "I Believe", with multiple versions including by Frankie Laine in 1953. This and "High Hopes" was sometimes referenced on Laverne & Shirley. 

We watched it in the 70s, but it was set... well, there was an episode of Happy Days that was about Hawai'ian statehood, so around 1959. Okay, I guess that's about right. ("Jamaica Farewell" was in one of the Schott's talent show episodes, and that was from 1956.)

Another song that came up was "Oh My Papa", an old song but with a version by Eddie Fisher in 1954. It would have been completely unfamiliar, except that Krusty the Clown sang it to has rabbi father when they were reconciled on The Simpsons. It was unfamiliar to me, someone born in the 70s, but Matt Groening and James L. Brooks and even Conan O'Brien are older (by various amounts of years). That means they have memories of different things from what was contemporary for them, but also for what their parents hung on to from their own youths. 

What is familiar to us, and what a "standard" is and if that still exists and if someday people are going to have great nostalgia for Taylor Swift... those are all things that interest me.   

Again, I don't regret any of this. It is still a relief to do something else for a while. 

For now, put another dime in the jukebox, baby. 

1953

9/1 “The Song from Moulin Rouge” by Percy Faith feat. Felicia Sanders
9/2 “April In Portugal” by Les Baxter
9/3 “Dragnet” by Ray Anthony
9/4 “Rags to Riches” by Tony Bennett with Percy Faith
9/5 “C’est si bon” by Eartha Kitt

1952

9/6 “You Belong To Me” by Jo Stafford with Paul Weston
9/7 “The Glo-worm” by The Mills Brothers and Hal McIntyre
9/8 “Meet Mister Callaghan” by Les Paul
9/9 “I’m Yours” by Don Cornell with Norman Leyden
9/10 “Tell Me Why” by The Four Aces feat. Al Alberts

1951

9/11 “Undecided” by The Ames Brothers with The Les Brown Orchestra
9/12 “Down Yonder” by Del Wood
9/13 “Too Young” by Nat King Cole with Les Baxter
9/14 “Would I Love You (Love You, Love You)” by Patti Page
9/15 “I Get Ideas” by Tony Martin with Henri René

1950

9/16 “Third Man Theme” by Anton Karas
9/17 “I Can Dream, Can’t I” by The Andrews Sisters & Gordon Jenkins
9/18 “Rag Mop” by The Ames Brothers
9/19 “If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a Cake” by Eileen Barton with Morty Craft
9/20 “My Foolish Heart” by Billy Eckstine

1949

9/21 “You’re Breaking My Heart” by Vic Damone
9/22 “Cruising Down the River” by Russ Morgan Orchestra
9/23 “So Tired” by Russ Morgan
9/24 “The Hucklebuck” by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra

-- vacation --

9/29 “Careless Hands” by Sammy Kaye Orchestra

1948

9/30 “Twelfth Street Rag” by Peewee Hunt
10/1 “Little White Lies” by Dick Haymes and Gordon Jenkins
10/2 “My Happiness” by Ella Fitzgerald with The Song Spinners
10/3 “St. Louis Blues March” by Tex Beneke
10/5“Beg Your Pardon” by Francis Craig

1947

10/4 “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)” by Tex Williams
10/6 “Mam’selle” by Dick Haymes
10/7 “The Anniversary Song” by Guy Lombardo
10/8 “You Do” by Margaret Whiting with Frank De Vol
10/9 “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons” by Eddy Howard

1946

10/10 “Personality” by Johnny Mercer & The Pied Pipers
10/11 “To Each His Own” by The Ink Spots
10/12 “Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop” by Tex Beneke with the Glenn Miller Orchestra
10/13 “Surrender” by Perry Como
10/14 “Symphony” by Freddy Martin

 

Fly on the wall

On the last day of our trip we went to Warner Brothers Studios for the Turner Classic Movies tour.

I knew my sisters were going to spend time in the gift shop after, especially since they discovered Warner Brothers and Hanna Barbara plush.  

I went to the cafe area and found a place to sit from where I could easily see when they were done.

I was also easily able to see two women who were sitting nearby.

They were both wearing badges, though I was not close enough or familiar enough with WB protocols to identify what type of badges.

One of the women had a pad and things for taking notes, making it look like an interview. 

The other woman looked like Quinta Brunson. 

Now, on the tour of the lot we had seen both the sound stage and exterior sets for Abbott Elementary; maybe my mind was primed. There was some pretty compelling circumstantial evidence, including her radiance. That has been commented on many times by people who see her. I believe it's a combination of good skin and inner light, but yes, she glows.

I certainly did not want to interrupt. I mean, I walked by an interview of Robin Wilson of the Gin Blossoms five times before I gave up. 

I also thought it would be very rude to stare or take pictures and did not do either of those.

I was not quite as successful at not eavesdropping. (I never am. That's the dark side of my being a good listener.)

Where I did start wondering if it was actually an interview is that the other woman (tall, kind of looked like a cross between Jamie Lee Curtis and a manager I had a few years ago) was talking a lot more than I would expect of an interviewer.

Then I heard her admit that she shouldn't be talking so much. The woman whom I believe was Quinta Brunson was very gracious about it, but that was interesting.

It is very easy to want to talk and share your thoughts on something, especially on topics you care about. Once you get me started, well, it's a good thing I have this blog. However, if your job is interviewing people, one would expect that you would manage to suppress that.

It is very easy for a white woman to talk over a Black woman.

It wasn't in any way hostile or mean, like you would expect racism to look. It seemed more like really liking her and wanting to confide and be admired, which is a kind of emotional labor that does not only fall along gender lines (though that happens too).

I don't want to be too mean about it. I am sure she meant well, and she did kind of catch herself, and my sisters finally got done buying plush so I did not see the end of this interaction that was totally none of my business.

It was just interesting to see, especially in the aftermath of so many people refusing to listen to the very accomplished and absolutely correct Black women, where they are now protesting her events in some futile attempt to prove that they were right all along. 

These patterns go way back, and we are paying the price for not facing them. 

Do I think he's sexy!?! (Probably not what you think)

This will be the most embarrassing post of this week.

When we left Amoeba we went straight to Universal Hollywood (if by straight we mean being dropped off at the City Walk and getting lunch and looking around there for a bit).

We were going to stay for the Halloween Horror party, which was our main reason for going (along with using up some airline credits that were going to expire).

Again, most of this trip will go up on the travel blog, but there is this aspect that is not really travel-related.

Universal had a lot of Fallout posters and banners up. Not only is it a popular game and television show, but also one of the haunted houses had a Fallout theme.

This meant that I passed many images of The Ghoul.

The Ghoul is a bounty hunter who was originally actor Cooper Howard, spokesman for Vault-Tec. There are many "ghouls" (people changed by the radioactive fallout, I presume), but only one The Ghoul. 

Ghoulishness does not do great things for your skin. One of the most noticeable things about The Ghoul is that he does not have a nose, some bridge and the cavity there.

At some point after passing all of these posters, I started finding The Ghoul attractive.

He doesn't have a nose!

I have never played the game or watched the show, so anything I know about it now, I know because I looked it up later. 

I had seen some things about women finding The Ghoul attractive.

This was coming up mainly in discussions about men going on about how shallow women are and we are only attracted to top tier men, so these poor betas or mids or whatevers don't have a chance. No, we can even be attracted to a man without a nose.

I hadn't reflected on it that much previously. I had figured that The Ghoul was a compelling character and I know that Walton Goggins is very charismatic. In fact, though I have never spent a lot of time on him, he has been mentioned in this blog three times, all of which noted his charisma. I never actually called him attractive, though, until now.

And he doesn't have a nose!

I don't mean to be shallow, but if we are talking physical attraction as opposed to getting to know a person, it just doesn't sound plausible.  

Though I do remember people using the term "Goggins-sexual" after his Venus Van Dam character on Sons of Anarchy.

Also, my research has uncovered that one of the goals in the character design was to make him kind of sexy. 

I guess there are levels where it does make sense, but I still find it a little embarrassing to be reduced to "Where is my fainting couch? I believe I have the vapors," for someone who does not have a nose. I'm too old for this crap!

Maybe I'm too hung up on looks. 

For the record, I have previously seen Goggins in Cowboys & Aliens (not a good movie, but he made a strong impression), Ant-Man and the Wasp (a fun movie, and his role wasn't big, but it added to it), Big Bang Theory (not one of their best episodes, but okay), and The Unicorn (where he starred and was very likable, and I watched it because of him, but did not have this reaction).  

I do not plan on watching Fallout. That's mainly because it seems very violent, and even if the violence is comic I don't really care for it. 

But also, if I did watch it how would I keep my thoughts pure? 

Related posts: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/01/it-boys-and-girls.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/10/thoughts-on-ant-man-and-wasp.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2019/09/fall-television-thoughts.html 

Serendipity

I was recently out of town briefly. While most of that will eventually be covered in the travel blog, there are some things that don't really fit into a review that I would still like to write about. 

There were events one could not expect.

First of all, let me say that the traffic in the Los Angeles area deserves its reputation; getting through and from LAX to our hotel took far longer than it should have.

Our initial plan had been that we would go from the hotel to the Griffith Observatory, then down to Hollywood Boulevard to see Grauman's, bits of the Walk of Fame, and Funko Pop and Amoeba Music. The Walk of Fame stretches out a long way, but we didn't have any specific stars we wanted to see, so the .9 miles between the theater and the shops would be sufficient. Then we could walk back to our hotel.

By the time we got to the hotel we were all hungry, so we decided to reverse that. The observatory is open pretty late, and we didn't think any of it would take too long.

We found the theater, which connects to a mall with a food court. We ate lunch and started toward the two stores.

We kept walking and walking like pioneer children.

I have seen mapping applications be clearly wrong on distance before -- most notably once in Sacramento -- but there was also this sense that we were no longer on such a touristy stretch of road. Realizing the plan wasn't working, we requested a ride to the observatory from where we gave up.

It turned out we were going in the wrong direction. I would say we should have been able to figure it out, but it took me several more looks at the map before I did... we were already back home. 

I do remember talking with the driver and she said "You should have just been able to keep going straight." I said that we did and she looked at me like that wasn't right.

The issue was the way that the street our hotel was on intersects with the boulevard. I was not familiar enough with the area to have a sense of direction there. Maybe we would have realized it sooner if we were only looking for those landmarks and not for lunch when we first got on to the boulevard. 

Regardless, we turned right for the theater when Funko and Amoeba would have been to the left, and that made all the difference.

Because we had a lot of time on the next day, we decided we could work in a trip to what we had not seen yet. As we had not worked out what the navigational issue had been, we just took a rideshare there, even though it was not a long distance. 

We had been told there was always a line at Funko; there was. They hadn't opened yet, we weren't worried; we just got in line.

There seemed to be more crowd control than we were expecting and people were getting wrist bands. That did not appear to be normal.

It turns out that Funko Pop had just sold their one billionth figure. We were in line for their Thanks a Billion! party.

We were also among the first 100, so we got gift bags and tickets. There were raffle tickets and tickets for the counters they had set up in there for Pink's Hot Dogs and Trejo's Donuts.

(When they said "Trejo's" was in there, for a moment I thought maybe there was an awesome celebrity guest, but it was just the doughnuts. That was still very generous.)

We just wanted to look around the store. Wow!

In fact, we gave away most of our loot. 

We had just eaten breakfast and visited the Dunkin in the same building, because we don't have Dunkin here anymore. We were too full for Pink's and Trejo's. 

Also, we had places to be, so we couldn't stay around for a lot of the raffles. They were every fifteen minutes, so I did get to listen for some, but it was time to move on. We found the couple we had been talking with in line and gave them our tickets, then went over to Amoeba.

Looking in the bag, we each had some stickers and pins, a free Bigfoot figure, a $10 Amoeba gift certificate, and then coupons and certificates for Pink's, Trejo's, and a sushi place.

The gift certificates could not be combined or used on something for less than $10. (Getting gift certificates to a place that sells records and books when I have so thoroughly moved away from buying things is its own topic.)

Maria did find something she wanted, and then gave one certificate to the guy in line ahead of her. I was having a hard time locating the third one, but found it in time to give it to someone on our way out. One person was thrilled, the other confused, but I hope she was able to use it or give it to someone else.

We weren't going to be around long enough to use the food coupons, so we gave those to the hotel staff. There was at least one person there who had a use for it.

One Bigfoot has been a gift now, and there are some plans for the other things.

There is totally a way in which just going the right direction would have been faster and would not have changed that much about accomplishing our goals.

What happened instead allowed us to spread some good will, and was also way more interesting. 

Spotlight on José Carlos Andrés

Do you remember when I announced that I was going to go through all of the ghost picture books that the library had?

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/04/spooky-season-hodgepodge-and-hereafter.html 

I have pretty much done that now.

I say "pretty much" because I have some hold requests in for books that have not been released yet. They didn't come up in my original search, by those terms I am done, but there are always new books coming out, especially with children's picture books.

In this case, one of the earliest ones I read was El Fantasma de las Bragas Rotas, written by José Carlos Andrés and illustrated by Gómez.

I liked it, but also there are some things that reminded me of luchadores, which had come up related to some other supernatural things in work by Yuyi Morales. 

Wondering if I were missing something, I explored a little bit more. I didn't necessarily find anything about that, but I did see that Andrés also had books about a vampire and a mummy, and maybe it made sense to spend more time on him.   

You see, there was the ghost story picture books thing that I was doing. In addition, after reading Celebrating Cuentos, I had decided that my next round of Hispanic Heritage reading would be going over the various awards for children's books that celebrated said heritage: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/12/cuentos-hispanic-heritage-month.html 

I thought Andrés could be the bridge, except that he is actually Spanish; to the extent that the month focuses on Spanish-speaking or descended people in the Americas, he does not apply.

I still read some books; I am just not counting him toward any particular month.

That is possibly also because I ended up not liking some of his other books so much. I could have read more than I did, but I stopped wanting to.

The big exception was Quiero jugar antes de dormir, illustrated by Alessandro Montagnana. It was delightful, and I believe it would translate well. 

I read a mix of Spanish versions and English translations, based on what was available. Sometimes I was surprised by how the titles came through. So, I can't vouch for the translations; most of the time I have no idea.

One thing that was kind of interesting was Un Vampiro Peligrozo, illustrated by Gómez again. The vampire has a lisp, so the word meaning "dangerous" is spelled with a "z" instead of "s". (You would think "th" would make more sense, but then readers would just think the vampire was from Barcelona.)

That particular title is translated as I'm a Zcary Vampire, and that one probably works okay.

I was surprised that they would use a misspelling, even with an understandable comic intent, because most of these books are in a program for readers, apparently in the 8-year old age group. What I realized was that I don't know how phonics or other programs work in other languages and other countries. Then, as I would read more books, I would pick up on things, where I could kind of see what they were going for. That was interesting (and generally answer is lots of repetition).

So, I don't regret my diversion with Andrés, and I will probably check out his most recent collaboration with Gómez, Franky Frankenstein, when it comes out later this month.

Other books by Andrés and read by me (with illustrators):

Un avestruz con mucha luz (Bea Enríquez)

My Dad is a Clown/ Mi Papá es un payaso (Natalia Hernández)

Carlota Wouldn't Say Boo (Emilio Urberuaga)

Mommy Crumbs (also with Paula González and illustrated by Anna Font)

El pirata de la pata de pato (Myriam Cameros Sierra)

Un ninja poco silencioso (Myriam Cameros Sierra)

Adopting a Dinosaur (Ana Sanfelippo)

The Very Hungry Mummy (Gómez)

Clearly Gómez gets all the scary work. 

Superhero movies: Thunderbolts*

I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but all of these posts have major spoilers. The movies have been out long enough that it shouldn't matter, but anyway, spoilers are here.

I was very tense while viewing Thunderbolts*; I had expected it to be more fun.  

I based that largely on the participation of David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov (Red Guardian). 

I know Red Guardian is not Ursa Major, but he is probably as close as we are going to get. (Though with DC actually putting King Shark in a live-action movie... what do I know?) 

He was fun, a little, and when Bucky is riding a motorcycle across the desert (rather than trying to be a competent member of Congress) things pick up, but there was this dread and worry all throughout for me.

I thought that maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for action movies anymore, with their constant new complications and danger. 

Maybe I needed to stick to comedies, though that made it a shame that the trailers for comedies all looked so dreadfully unappealing and unfunny. 

If you will recall, the other movies I had seen were Clue and This is Spinal Tap, now joined by This is Spinal Tap: The End Continues. So, either comedies or movies with Michael McKean, and really only old comedies unless they had Michael McKean.

That made me a little nervous going into Superman, but then I really enjoyed it. There was lots of danger in Fantastic Four: Final Steps but it was also fine, so what was my problem with Thunderbolts*?

A lot of my dread had centered around Bob. He seemed so fragile, and so certain to die. It seemed like he had died a couple of times, and then it looked like while there was something left, it was not the part of Bob that I had cared about.

Combined with that, Yelena is in a funk. There is grief over the death of Natasha and guilt over her origins and she is in a pretty functional depression. Alexei has some of the same issues, though he is processing them differently. When they actually talk about it, it's not really dramatic, but it does help.

Putting it together, the stress that I was experiencing during Thunderbolts* was the emotional weight. It does have a different tone than the other movies, and fulfills a different need.

I've been carrying around some grief and problems too. 

There wasn't catharsis during the movie, much like there wasn't really catharsis for Yelena, just help. Maybe catharsis wouldn't even be realistic.

Regardless, it ended up being very affirming to see that these very isolated people with lots of problems who could easily be sent to pick each other off (and anyone left standing after that gets incinerated) could work together and help each other.

Yelena entered the void, not knowing what was there, but caring and believing there was some purpose. (And how brilliant is it that when you give a manic-depressive person godlike powers that they can create a shame spiral around your formative pain?)   

Then the others followed her. It's not that surprising that Alexei did, because he loved her and in many ways acting without overthinking suits him. 

It's maybe not even surprising that Bucky would go in. He is the more traditionally heroic, though he had his own path to get there.

It is pretty amazing that John and Ava went in. 

It turns out that if you don't let the darkness hold you back and hold on to each other tight, even the most apparently doomed people can be saved.

So while Thunderbolts* was the movie that I enjoyed watching the least, it was the one that had the greatest impact, and was perhaps the most important.

That weight was not only something to bring me down. 

Anyway, the next movie I am looking forward to is Coyote vs. Acme (James Gunn is one of the writers), but maybe I do need to see One Battle After Another. 

I don't know; I'll figure it out.