Boswords 2022 Winter Wondersolve – February 6, 2022

I went into my first (and last?) online crossword puzzle tournament with very low expectations, which I lived down to. I don’t consider myself to be a good pressure player (see basketball, high school), so it came as no surprise, but, if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that my sweaty palms and rapid heartbeat were signs of Covid. Just to be safe, I took an at-home test after each of the four puzzles, which confirmed that I had no medical excuse for my performance.

To be fair to myself, I don’t think there were a lot of casual players, and I didn’t finish last, beating 10% of the individual entrants (unfortunately there was no senior division), not to mention some pairs, which I just did, but pretend I didn’t.

I could have scored a little better had I cheated, but still wouldn’t have approached the best players, who were finishing the puzzles in under three minutes. Seriously!? I couldn’t have filled all the answers in that fast if they were written on a piece of paper in front of me.

One unexpected joy from participating was getting to see the well-done, humorous videos that were shown between puzzles. Who knew that crossword comedy was a thing?

Robert Chen – Fourth Presbyterian Church Noonday Concert – January 21, 2022

The last time I saw Chicago Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Robert Chen perform solo was in January 2019. And the last time I was this awestruck was when I saw how good my multiflex, cordless, stick vacuum cleaner was at picking up all the dust on the floor under my bed.

Chen played some Bach and Paganini, but the one piece I want to mention is Ysäye’s Danse Rustique, Allegro giocoso molto moderato, which I believe is translated as a barn dance, played while quickly eating a chocolate lava cake in a library containing virtual files.

Chen’s interpretation was clearly different than mine, and admittedly better, but the most notable part of the performance was his ability to maintain his concentration when an unmasked man (clearly not The Lone Ranger) walked through the sanctuary shouting (probably about nothing, but possibly about the recent decision to keep the Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight rather than advance it forward).

Chen, looked up, but never missed a beat, unlike me, as when I think I may have heard someone in Nepal sneeze and am then forced to stop in the middle of the piece I’m playing and start over.

Belated New Year’s Predictions

After millions of people order free Covid test kits on the new government website, a night janitor with a PhD in computer science will discover a glitch in the software caused by the host computer’s proximity to a 5G tower, which caused all the kits to be delivered to a cave in New Mexico inhabited by a disgraced poet who writes only in A-A-A-A rhyme scheme. The site will be made a National Park.

Novak Djokovic will wind up dating someone he met in detention, ala The Breakfast Club.

Doctors will perform the first brain transplant from a tree shrew, the mammal with the highest brain-to-body ratio, 1:10. Humans are 1:40, but remember, if this seems too good to be true, this is size only, not functionality.

The new James Webb Space Telescope will fully deploy, and, immediately thereafter, spot, not the alien spaceship headed for a crash landing on earth due to interference from a 5G tower, but rather a helium balloon that was released during a child’s birthday party in 1973.

Undetected, the alien spaceship will land on earth, and its crew will score a fortune in tree shrew brains by peddling NFTs of black holes and cryptocurrency that can only be exchanged on Proxima b in the Alpha Centauri system.

5G technology will become obsolete within 6 months, replaced by 6G, a day before the U.S. Supreme Court sets everything back to the age of innocence by deciding that the Constitution does not explicitly permit any number of Gs.

 

Don’t Tell Me I’ve Nothin’ To Do

I’m not saying that I’m desperate for entertainment, but today I watched a GoPro video of the inside of a dishwasher while in use. Admit it, you’re curious too. Next, refrigerator lights.

The problem with wearing mittens in cold weather is that when some bleeping, not beeping, driver guns it, cutting you off and almost killing you as you cross the street, he can’t tell when you then give him the finger.

All the headlines about Omicron rising made me think of Jupiter Ascending, another science fiction tale that was bad news, though it only cost about 200 million and disappeared faster than the latest variant.

In accordance with the latest, ever-changing, safety guidelines, as I understand them, I am now requiring proof of vaccination on all my Zoom calls and asking that participants sit at least six feet away from their screens.

I tried to search online for a videotape on proper masking procedures but wound up with a video on how to use masking tape, which in case you are wondering, really hurts when you rip it off your face after going to the store.

“My Fingers Always Seem Busier Than My Mind” – Alexander Calder

I just noticed that it’s been two years since anybody new has subscribed to my blog. Given that, according to WordPress, over 409 million people view blog pages every month, I seem to be falling short.

I wonder why that is. Perhaps, in part, it’s because I haven’t had any contact with the outside world in that time.

That’s not true of course. I have looked out the window on occasion. Actually, at least twice a day, to make sure there’s still something there. (So far so good, in case you were wondering.)

And I’ve learned some valuable new skills. I’m now a wiz at self-checkout at the grocery. No prima donna here. Or should I say primo uomo? I guess not, according to the dictionary, which doesn’t attach the same unflattering, secondary meaning to the principal male singer in an opera that it does to the female lead.

I also have improved my ability to bend the last knuckle of my pinky on my right hand, though there’s still room for improvement, not to mention attention to the left. Pinky, by the way, comes from the Dutch for little finger, but, according to a site on Dutch genealogy I found, one finger, shockingly, wouldn’t be enough to hold back the water. I wonder how many subscribers that page has.

My First Retraction (Post #349)

Thank you to everyone who inquired as to my condition. I’m fine. I didn’t slip and fall on the ice. I’m a little upset by the fact that no one seemed to care whether or not the pets of the cast of The Play That Goes Wrong had become infected and a little surprised that no one believed that I’d gone to the theater on the wrong night, given my history in that regard.

The correct answer to the quiz in the last blog was Other. When I got to the theater I couldn’t find my CDC proof of vaccination, so, instead, I offered, and, after hours of negotiation, had rejected, a letter of exemption provided by Novak Djokovic’s doctor, whereupon I was put in a taxi and asked to leave the neighborhood.

I’m kidding.  There was no taxi.

The Plans [sic] That Go Wrong – Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place – January 4, 2022

A little over three years ago I wrote glowingly about The Play That Goes Wrong, a rib-tickler that leaves you with the kind of joy that everyone needs these days.

Given the latest onslaught by those nefarious people behind the Greek alphabet, I was more than ready for another dose of The Play’s theatrical hijinks, which I might describe as a Noel Coward version of Waiting for Guffman meets the Marx Brothers.

So I packed up my KN95, one approved by the Korean government and Amazon, along with proof of a lifetime worth of vaccinations, including those for shingles, just in case.

But, alas, The Play That Goes Wrong went even further wrong than originally scripted. Was the show cancelled due to an outbreak of Covid among the cast’s pets? Did I slip and fall on the icy sidewalk, tearing whatever cartilage might be left in my body, and get taken to the emergency room, where I waited for x-rays for 15 hours, writing this blog, while the staff tended to several hundred people with the sniffles? Did I go to the theater on the wrong night like I did for Ragtime in 2018? Or other, the answer most often correct on online AARP quizzes?

Just like it was every night of the 17-year-run of Shear Madness at the Blackstone Hotel, I’m going to let the viewer, in this case the reader, decide the outcome. I will only add that The Play That Goes Wrong will be here through February 13, so you may yet see a review from me that is only slightly more about the production itself.

Happy Groundhog Year Number 3

Today, on the first work day of 2022, I cleaned the apartment. So now I don’t have to worry about doing that again until 2023, or 2024, whichever comes first.

I’m not sure if my inability to make that determination is evidence of a specific erosion of arithmetic skills, a general cognitive decline, or a rift in the space-time continuum (which seems to take the blame for almost everything else), but, in any case, it’s a clear demonstration of cerebral atrophy in the age of Covid, confirming the adage, use it or . . . , something.

What I am sure about is that I’m a valued Amazon customer. Why else would they, having seen all the bamboo products I’ve been buying (towels, sheets, serving trays, waste baskets, scaffolding) send me a complimentary, complementary, red panda (giant pandas being out of stock, again)?

Okay, I haven’t yet purchased bamboo scaffolding, though it is available in the world and might come in handy as a sort of jungle gym for Ralph (the panda).

It also occurred to me that I could teach Ralph to type (after someone first teaches me), so that someday, perhaps, he could relieve me of the arduous task of transcribing these blogs from the audio cues I leave on my recorder while talking in my sleep.

Sock It to Me

Another victim of the ongoing pandemic. My longstanding dream to open a sock puppet theatre.

The Holidays, not the Australian indie pop/soul band, but rather the term used as an excuse for overeating, overspending, oversleeping, and underperforming at the end of the year, have never been a period of delight for me, at least not since 1875, when a Prussian immigrant created the first Christmas card originated in the United States. But I digress.

Looking for a way to make my time more productive, I started going through drawers, when, lo (or actually low, as I was looking down), and behold, I discovered one full of socks, socks that I hadn’t worn since I retired five years ago, socks that might come in handy for some out-of-work actor who had been wearing his thin by pounding the pavement the last two years in search of gainful employment.

So I gathered them up (the socks, not the actors), two by two, as if preparing for entry on Noah’s Ark, and delivered them to a local charity, as an initial public offering, without regard to the effect on the sock market, in the hope that someone might, with their help, kill an audition, and that, someday, I might find myself in an audience noticing them on that dancer’s jazz feet.

Pillow Talk

Following the lead of the NFL and NBA, I have decided to upgrade my health and safety protocols. Fortunately, I was able to do this unilaterally because I represented both sides of the negotiation, which was not a conflict, though perhaps a potential psychiatric case study.

First, I initiated periodic self-testing. Every half hour I ask myself how I feel.

Next, I cancelled all international travel. Well, not all (though I might if I could), just my own.

And, though it wasn’t part of my original plan, I beta-tested the even stricter precaution of not leaving my home at all, the inspiration for this being brought about, not by any CDC guidelines, but by the fact that I couldn’t find my keys.

A couple hours later, having crawled through six rooms on my hands and knees, with flashlight in hand, and suffered through a humiliating investigation of my garbage, which fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, had been piling up since well before the keys disappeared, I was about to abandon all hope, as if I were entering the gates of an even worse hell, when, in a moment of sheer desperation, I peeked underneath the pillow on my bed, the last place I would have, and had, thought to look, much like when the police searched the rocker panels used to hide the drugs in The French Connection, and practically fainted from disbelief upon discovering that that was, in fact, were the elusive objects had chosen to hide from me, causing me to consider the possibility that I had put them there, while asleep, in an unconscious effort to restrict my movements in the Age of Omicron (not to be confused with that other supervillain sequel, Age of Ultron).