Another Week: Number 119

Spring is taking its time getting here. Goldfinches are turning golder, but the days are primarily windy, cold, or rainy.  I spent most of Sunday watching the water dripping outside and inside my house.

A few years back, our neighbors Steve and Cory gave us a small parlor palm as a thank-you for retrieving their mail during a week they were away. Amy didn’t love it at first, but two summers ago, while she was out of town, I bought a purple, vase-shaped pot at Milaeger’s and repotted the plant using an all-purpose potting soil. Eventually, it grew to make her smile.

Now it’s even larger, and it’s dry and browning in places because (I think) it needs more moisture than all-purpose soil can hold. Temporarily, I had been waltzing the plant upstairs to the bathtub every night for watering and misting, then back downstairs in the morning — a potentially hazardous hassle.

I love the purple, and I found the perfect replacement pot at Menards — but it included no saucer, and I wasn’t about to spend 50 bucks for something suitable. For now, a blue one from the basement will have to do. I picked up some Tropical Potting Mix from Home Depot and some coconut coir from Target.

On Sunday, I hydrated the coir, mixed it into the new soil, repotted the plant in my kitchen sink, and watered it generously. Then I put the blue saucer under it and carried the heavy new assemblage to the living room plant stand — where it immediately overflowed and started pouring onto the floor.

I put a bucket under the dribble and kept an eye on it as I worked on my laptop. It dripped for hours as the rain lashed my windows and the thunder roared. On Monday, I trimmed the brown branches, making more room for the new, green shoots.

It’s startling how one simple chore can dominate an entire day or more, but there is satisfaction when it’s finished and order is restored. If you see an 11-inch ceramic plant saucer in eggplant somewhere for a reasonable price, let me know.

I walked 6.72 miles this week.

Wisconsin Spring Election

For weeks and weeks, the pace of the advertising kept ratcheting up until it amounted to psychological torture. Pounding noise and horrific headlines filled every commercial break: Danger! Crime! Pedophiles!

I voted early at City Hall last week, then watched as Election Day drew near. A paid canvasser for the other side littered freely as he unwrapped literature walking down my street, knocking on the doors of Republican voters. An earnest, liberal student rang my bell while I was preparing chicken, and I commended him for his effort. Elon Musk — the richest man in the world — visited Green Bay in person on Sunday night wearing a cheesehead and handing out giant million-dollar checks as enticements.

Tuesday itself was a swirl of humanity. Our intersection is naturally busy with Mitchell School’s students, parents, and teachers. Additionally, for the past year, renovations have turned the school’s grounds into a muddy compound full of construction equipment, delivery trucks, and workers constantly entering and leaving. But on Tuesday, the school also served as a polling place for the most expensive state supreme court race in American history.

Voters sought parking spaces on my street all day. Some wore pajama pants and slides. Others sported dyed mohawks. Older couples, moms and daughters, and millennials came and went all day. It was shocking to me to see how many people still smoke.

At 8 o’clock as the polls closed, I turned on the TV but stayed focussed on my computer screen because Milwaukee’s results never get delivered until nearly midnight.

The next time I looked up, sometime before 9 o’clock, it was all over and the good gals had won.

Whad’ya know? And now the Milwaukee market can go back to more even-tempered commercials — like the ones, say, from Abby Home.

Trump tariffs: ‘Liberation Day’

Last November, America decided to put the drunk driver back behind our national steering wheel. I guess respecting traffic lights and center lines and other drivers can get frustrating, and we just wanted to dispense with all that nonsense, so we brought back the guy who has no driving ability whatsoever to let him run riot. What’s the worst that could happen?

For the last two and a half months, Donald J. Trump has been signing executive orders like bartender Nick “givin‘ out wings” in It’s a Wonderful Life. Staff at numerous vital government departments have been fired, haphazard deportations are taking place, and our national forests are open for logging.

Nobody seems to care about bills passing Congress or any of those quaint old customs anymore. Every day brings a flurry of new fiats, and everyone accepts them.

Already, Trump has imposed and withdrawn and imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico to correct the grievous wrongs of our previous stupid trade deal with those neighbors — the very deal he himself made five years ago, calling it the “best and most important trade deal ever made by the USA.”

But Wednesday was heralded for weeks as the big unveiling of Trump’s global tariff regimen.

The buildup for Trump’s Rose Garden “Liberation Day” event even got me to tune into CNN. I watched him claim that the Great Depression lasted “far longer than even FDR” — then remembered that he can just stand there extruding horseshit from his puckered little mouth hole for hours and no one will correct him.

Anyway — surprise! — his new tariff menu is fucking nuts. It imposes harsh tariffs on uninhabited islands, among other things. But hey — he’s steering now, and he thinks he knows a secret shortcut.

On Thursday and Friday, the U.S. stock market lost $6.6 trillion dollars. Who could have guessed that an indisputably impaired imbecile would take the wheel and drive America straight into a ditch?

Oh, well — he’s only got the keys for another three years, nine and a half months.

A Complete Unknown (2024)

The publicity around Timothée Chalamet‘s portrayal of Bob Dylan almost got me out to a theater after Christmas — but instead I ended up watching it Friday evening on Hulu with my mom.

I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan since his appearance on The Johnny Cash Show in 1969. I first saw him live at Chicago Stadium during his Budokan period, and eventually at Carthage College in Kenosha in 2004. In between, I was up front at Alpine Valley for a show with Tom Petty at which Dylan tried to toss me his harmonica. I didn’t understand the gesture and the harp bounced under the seat next to mine, retrieved by someone else.

The man’s lyrics are famously enigmatic. Several Bob Dylan biographies as well as his own memoirs have not given me any real sense of who he is, and interviews are no help either.

But the publicity for A Complete Unknown stressed that Chalamet and his fellow actors did their own singing and guitar playing, and that struck me as an extraordinary level of dedication.

The movie’s story is as familiar as scripture. Bob hitchhikes to New York City from Minnesota (or else “the carnival,” in his telling). He visits his hospitalized, dying hero Woody Guthrie, and meets folk singer Pete Seger. He plays at Gerde’s Folk City, and meets Suze (“Sylvie” in this film) and Joan Baez, who both fall for him. Manager Albert Grossman takes charge of his career, John Hammond signs him to Columbia Records and fame quickly follows.

But then he detours from the approved folk music path by adding drums and keyboards and electric guitars. It all comes to a head at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

The movie beautifully visualizes all these events. Everything looks perfect and sounds very close to it. Monica Barbaro‘s singing as Joan Baez is phenomenal. Edward Norton‘s whole being as Pete Seeger is a pure, stunning incarnation.

Chalamet’s playing and singing are very good, but he lacks a certain sneering edge. The same goes for his portrayal of Dylan. He’s a skinny little cipher, sure — but he doesn’t convey the same puckish sense of delight Dylan took in confounding his inquisitors. Chalamet’s Dylan is more of an internal mystery than a sarcastic riddle.

My mom, completely unacquainted with Bob Dylan and his origin story, enjoyed the whole thing but was especially hooked by the love triangle. (Elle Fanning does an excellent job as “Sylvie,” and there’s one scene in the wings where the heartbreak on her face would bring anyone to tears.)

Mom also found all the cigarette smoking very irritating.

As for me, I was especially sad when, in his trembling, mute role as Woody Guthrie, Scoot McNairy offered young Bob his harmonica.