worseonpurpose interesting website tracking famous brands that haven't kept up their standards... epecially relevant for cookware, outdoor gear, and bedding.

---

Man, Trump really is a hope for Western Democracy... I mean Putin can score 5-8 hockey goals against NHL players, and Kim Jong-il could shoot 5-11 holes-in-one on his first time out, (depending on who you asked) but at least our guy can golf, shooting 10 below his age (For comparison, Arnold Palmer was just barely able to pull that off at 71)

I know I'll sleep more soundly at night.

---

I read Moss Hart's famous autobiography "Act One" after hearing it mentioned in the This American Life podcast episode The Book That Changed Your Life.

His passion and love of theater, his graciousness in talking about others, his own times of poverty and wealth and how despised the former and unapologetically leaned into enjoying the latter... a very good read.

---

Children are not creatures of justice--they lay blame and praise about them as their needs demand.

---

Yet life often imitates very bad plays or movies with a minimum of effort and a disquieting ease.

---

It is hard to describe or to explain concisely the overwhelming and suffocating boredom that is the essence of being poor. A great deal has been written about the barren drudgery of poverty; but I do not recall that the numbing effect of its boredom has been much written or talked about. Yet boredom is the keynote of poverty--of all its indignities, it is perhaps the hardest of all to live with--for where there is no money there is no change of any kind, not of scene or of routine.

---

I think there is such a moment--a moment when we see our parents plain, not when they are grown old and are a symbol of ancestry to be honored or tolerated and when we can no longer know what they were like, but a moment when we see them suddenly for the first time as people. It is a fleeting moment and it passes, to be quickly replaced with the usual façade of filial devotion--that coin of the realm that passes for affection between the generations--but when this moment occurs, it seems to cut through a lifelong incrustation of love and hate, and for however brief a time it lasts, we see our parents as the fallible human beings they are and for a little while we hold them blameless.

---

I looked back at the lighted canyon [of Times Square], its daytime ugliness softened into something approaching beauty by the magic of the October twilight deepening around it. The knowledge that I was going to be part of it at last brought me perilously close to that wonderful mixture of emotions that makes one want to laugh and to cry at the same time. It is a mistake to dismiss such a moment as maudlin. To do so is to rob oneself of one of the few innocent pleasures the theatre offers. I enjoyed that last lingering look unabashed by its sentimentality and unashamed of its bathos. I deserved that moment, it seemed to me, and I allowed myself to enjoy it to the full.

---

There were even times when I grew hungry enough to forget about the heat and to see mirages of food heaped in front of me, for Mr. Kaufman's delicate appetite, slim enough in the winter, seemed to all but disappear with the first robin. With warm weather, long before the first heat wave enveloped the city, a salad and a not too lavish plate of thinly sliced cold meat became the unvarying menu of each day's main meal, and when on a coolish day lamb chops occasionally appeared, my old struggle not to grab and stuff was like a man wrestling with his faith.

---

Max Siegel had apparently emerged from the womb liking the world and everything in it, and he liked everything we had done to the play.

---

Some of the world's pleasantest reading is contained in a good hotel menu.

---

A play can be blackmailed by its scenery more often than anyone connected with it is likely to realize.

---

---

Blumineck, aka David the Arrow Bard, is amazing.

He has a series of videos where he does the craziest archery stunts and acrobatics, and explores the use of real and fantasy historical weapons. I just love that he's not a snob about the fake stuff - he might says "ok, so this probably wouldn't actually work so well", but it looks cool, so it's ok.

A puddle is just a mirror you can drink.

---

Trump offers a new technology platform, insider trading as a service. New to me music playlist.

4 star:
* Put Your Records On (Corinne Bailey Rae)
via one of Lynette's chill playlists
* Mad World (Jasmine Thompson)
Lynette was watching "Ladies First" while cooking.
* Naked In Manhattan (Chappell Roan)
via Lynette's NYC playlist she puts on when we spy the city (always starting with Sinatra's New York, New York)
* bad idea right? (Olivia Rodrigo)
Heard in a CVS. Dig the attitude... "Seein' you tonight, it's a bad idea, right? /
Seein' you tonight, f*** it, it's fine"

3 star:
* Bottle Rocket Astronaut (Bug Hunter)
Wren introduced me to it... I don't love it as a song but watching it as a video was fun.
* Otis (PZB NOLA Remix) (PZB)
A chaotic remix via a random FB reel
* Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) [feat. Sweet Megg] (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox)
from a random restaurant in Brooklyn. Myles really hates it, and it's not great, but I had forgotten he was annoyed because the original is so important in "Stranger Things"
* I'm Confessin' (Fabienne Delsol)
via the movie "The Invite"
* Native North American Child (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
via "The Heart of New England" movie they play at the Museum of Science IMAX
* Take Me Back To Piauí (Juca Chaves)
from the movie "How To Make a Killing"

---

It's not the end of the world, but I can see it from here.

---

Also:

toys.alienbill.com/sherbert - I don't make as many virtual toys as I used. And I admit I let an LLM do the heavy lifting - I got one of those cheap LCD boards and was wondering if a virtual version could be even more colorful and dynamic.

---

I feel like I touched so many penises in the shopper's world movie theater.