Pray with me.

boolean root beer float

Smile for the hidden camera, you have been pranked! You thought it was indica, but in fact it was the mythical, elusive cannabis rutica!

You know, cannabis rutica, the one which Harrison Ford allegedly brought to the production of Star Wars in 1976, and which Carrie Fisher later blamed for being unable to recall most of her time on set during that period, under the spell and fog of that ol’ rutica magic.

Gotta hand it to Harrison Ford and his California carpentry buddies, with all their logging and crazy strong weed contacts up north in Humboldt County!

Like a guy said to me in college:
“Man… if you lived during the Flintstones, you’d be driving a sportscar.”
Yeah, that was one I’d never heard before, I had to shake the guy’s hand and congratulate him for originality.

In so much of this cookie-cutter “hip” newer housing, it’s either this or a dangerously steep angle, sometimes even both at the same time.

Enshittified architects building enshittified spaces thinking only of how it looks, not how it’s supposed to be lived in with safety and comfort from Day Two onward, the novelty wears off very quickly and you’re stuck with an unnecessarily, potentially deadly space.

What’s the name of that station?
I’ve only been to NYC once, about ten years ago, but I did pass through this stop and if memory serves, it’s called Mets-Willits Point… I think? It’s the last or next to last stop before the Flushing terminus, that I do remember.

Yeah, thank god I’m nowhere near that damned thing, and never will be.

Tonight! On this week’s episode of Famous Last Words…!

Back when we had to rotate the TV dial to channel 3, just to play Rocket Command and Space Intruders.
Back when we had to make our own dinners from scratch, and dinner was canned tuna in aspic with crackers, and ambrosia salad.
Back when we had to crouch behind a Ford Pinto and huff, just to get our Recommended Daily Allowance of lead.
Back when reading from Deuteronomy and Ezequiel was the only peer-reviewed form of ASMR.
Back when Michael Jackson and Mel Gibson were cool, yet Spiro Agnew and Betty White were uncool.

Nostalgia… the pang of an old wound.

Hey… that looks eerily similar to my own microwave.

Yep, this is the one I was scrolling down to find.

Godfather.
Godfather 2.
The Conversation.
Dog Day Afternoon.
The Deer Hunter.

All five Best Picture Oscar nominees, three winners.

Would you say that kid’s wearing an Op or a Lightning Bolt shirt?
I’m going with Lightning Bolt, because I don’t remember such huge collar on Op shirts. Of course, my memory could be glitching.

Remember how Op shirts were everywhere? Conversely, Lightning Bolt shirts were harder to come by, therefore cooler.
Meanwhile, with pants it was the opposite. Lightning Bolt was everywhere, Op was scarcer.

But zooming in on the texture of some background buildings, I’d bring it back to L.A.

That’s Paulie, his first cousin Sal owns a meat-packing business.
“LPT for ya, Paulie: steer clear of the capicola until further notice, capisce?”

Ah yes… the good ol’ days!
Exactly like the type of picture that would have been part of an Internet K-hole massive photo-dump a couple of decades ago.

“I am at the center of god’s universe!”
From your narcissistic, myopic perspective with no depth, sure, that’s what you see. But from where we’re standing, you’re just another idiot, and you’re dead.

He’s got that ol’ New York City Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Blues again, momma!

Fiennes does seem to come from a posh background, doesn’t he?

Then maybe a commoner trained in Shakespeare can and does develop that poshness, the ability to deliver it effortlessly.
Was, for example, Peter O’Toole a noble or a hoodlum? Because there seems to be a bit of both in him at the same time.

But then I take a look at the full Fiennes family name and oof… there’s some olde stubbornly blue roots in there, in plain sight. The kind of thing you would spy on the guestlist for the weekly Saxe-Coburg canasta evening.

So is Rafe like the black sheep of his family, because he went prancing off to theater school and the bohemian lifestyle instead of a sturdy and dignified profession, like banking?

Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw, I am flabbergasted and illustrated, simultaneously at the same place and from a distance at the same time.