August 12, 2026: Driving south on Highway H in Somers, Wisconsin behind a cement mixer.
Another Week: Number 190
Last year, Milwaukee suffered record flooding. This year, we haven’t had a single event that dramatic, but instead an unsettling series of rainstorms demonstrating the extreme precipitation increase that global warming has brought us.
There were monsoon rains on Sunday afternoon, then Zeus was bowling again at midnight, and another typhoon blew through on Monday afternoon.
In the tropical breaks between storms, the hummingbirds in my yard — two, at least — have been dogfighting each other over nectar, challenging their imitators the goldfinches, and checking me out up close.
On Tuesday, news broke that back on July 8, Donald J. Trump had to leave Turkey by sneaking via catering truck onto a smaller military plane.
Tuesday was also Primary Election Day in Wisconsin. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley re-entered the race to come from behind and win against Assemblymember Francesca Hong, who ran a strong campaign but was painted as a communist.
I voted for Joel Brennan, who amassed a whopping 4.7% of the vote.
Waiting at a light on Wednesday, I squinted to read the text of the odd bumpersticker on the car in front of me. It said:
I'm in the middle of reading the Iliad and, also on Wednesday, Cubs field reporter Taylor McGregor informed us that infielder Pedro Ramírez is such a fan that he has tattoos of Zeus, Achilles, and the Trojan Horse.
I’ve also been making a Jungian attempt to recall my dreams. Early Friday morning, there was a young man living in a tenement on Diversey in Chicago who was down on his luck, and I was trying to come up with a career path for him. Saturday morning, Steve Dahl and Barack Obama were together in the broadcast booth to call a White Sox game.
I walked zero miles this week.
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The Fortune Cookie (1966)
On Friday night at my mom’s, we watched The Fortune Cookie via TCM and her cloud DVR. It’s a Billy Wilder black (and white) comedy starring Jack Lemmon as a TV cameraman knocked over on the sidelines by a Cleveland Browns player during a game.
Walter Matthau plays his brother-in-law, scheming attorney William H. "Whiplash Willie" Gingrich. The cameraman also has an estranged girlfriend with an interest in money, played by Judi West.
The movie spends two hours and five minutes watching Lemmon morally vacillating and spinning around willy-nilly in a motorized wheelchair, while Matthau turns in a masterfully droll study in deceit as he tries to manipulate the situation.
It had some amusing moments, but I don’t think we genuinely laughed.
The Charismatic Voice: “Blue Bayou”
My mother is a wonderful singer, locally famous in Kenosha for performing standards and show tunes while washing dishes at her open kitchen window. She even recorded a demo record of the song “Bimbo” in her youth.
On Friday night, I showed her a couple of episodes of The Charismatic Voice, a YouTube series in which voice coach and former opera singer Elizabeth Zharoff analyzes popular vocal performances.
Mom paid close attention as Zharoff analyzed Linda Ronstadt singing “Blue Bayou” — but she started drifting when I followed that one with Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
Stephen Fry Tells The Real Story Behind The Trojan War
Saturday on YouTube, I stumbled upon a 45-minute conversation with British polymath Sir Stephen Fry discussing the Iliad and the Odyssey, Greek mythology, the Bronze Age, and so on.
The whole discussion was fascinating — but the part that made my hair stand on end came 28 and a half minutes in, when Fry brought up up Linear B, the earliest form of the Greek language going back to around 1450 BC.
This sends me to Wikipedia, and before I knew it, I was reading about Linear B being standardized at a 1961 meeting right here in Racine, Wisconsin — at Wingspread, where my late wife used to work!
Amy loved that place.
Don't Say Good Luck (2026)
Saturday night, my mom and I watched Don't Say Good Luck, which is just released on Netflix with good reviews. It stars Adam’s daughter Sunny Sandler as a 16-year-old who lands the lead in her high school’s musical, Waitress. Meanwhile, though, her mother (Melanie Lynskey)’s cancer has returned.
This film is about the tension between hopeful expectations and brutal circumstances. Sandler and Lynskey are both very good. I always love Steve Buscemi. He plays the grandfather here alongside grandma Bebe Neuwirth, but her role is written too harshly.
I even like the Katy Perry song “Firework” — but maybe it doesn’t exactly fit this context.
This wasn’t a perfect movie, but it was touching and had many more authentic moments than clinkers.
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