08.27.25: Saw the MDS today and made what felt like our 300th plan to improve sleep. We’ll see how it goes.
08.21.25: It’s been almost two weeks since my last check-in, so I’m popping in to say I’m fine and so are Crankenstein and Muriel. A Parkinson’s volunteer project has kept me busy this month and there are still plenty more tasks to complete. My sleep schedule is finally, after weeks of misery, as close to normal right now as it’ll get without adding another medication to the mix. The duration and quality of the sleep remains from adequate, and the strange dream-shouting continues, but something is better than nothing.
There’s a lot of sad stuff, and extremely annoying stuff — personal and political — that I could write about here if I currently had the time for it. But if I have to choose between this and jeopardizing my new sleep schedule, or that and the work I’ve been busy with lately, or my sanity and tending to Crankenstein and Muriel’s needs, it’s easiest to scupper this for now. We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of Joe’s death and I don’t really want to be alone with my thoughts on that, anyway.
08.09.25: This evening I spent nearly 90 minutes swapping out the paracord zipper pulls on my primary backpack, which is a sad testimony to my dexterity since this involved only eight zippered compartments. Crankenstein and I also watched Carl Reiner’s All of Me, a film I’ll probably sit through another 20 times before I die (assuming that occurs at a conventional age) just for its end credits dance scene. Though I’ve not been writing here lately, I’ve been busy around the house, busy with Parkinson’s outreach stuff, and have continued working to get back on a semi-normal schedule. Annoyingly, YOPD’s still kicking my ass, but the MDS might be able to help with some of that later this month.
08.03.25: As long-time readers probably know, I don’t believe in an afterlife. But let’s pretend otherwise, if only for a moment, so I can say with sincerity and sadness that heaven gained a peroxide angel today when TV movie (and tabloid) legend Loni Anderson died at the age of 79. May Lifetime hold a marathon in her honor, and may a lawyer greet her just past the pearly gates so she can spend all of eternity doing what she loved best: suing the shit out of Burt Reynolds.
07.24.25: I’m reporting live from the office — which, like myself, is still in moderate disarray — with news of… nothing. Today’s the first day this week that I haven’t been disturbingly tired, so I’m taking care of the easiest housework and setting up temporary storage in the basement for things that will go on bookshelves and in cabinets that still need to be dragged downstairs from other parts of the house.* The oppressive heat and humidity, maddening ‘Niles’ antics, and Muriel’s enduring seasonal obsession with eating as many crunchy cicadas (and their equally repulsive exoskeletons) as possible, no matter the gastric cost, are also wearing me down a little.
Since it isn’t currently feasible to pursue my lifelong dream of withdrawing from society and living in a cave, I find myself drifting further away from my parents to reduce stress. Besides the usual Tom stupidity, their pathological avoidance of confronting Felix’s problems has come to a head recently and the unnecessary angst surrounding that has driven me crazy. It’s very trite and I feel like an asshole saying it, but right now I have to temporarily disengage from those distractions and put myself first — which is also how I feel about ‘Niles.’ There’s only so much time in the average day when you’re at your physical and mental best with Parkinson’s, and I’m sick of mine being wasted on issues that aren’t likely to ever be resolved (since keeping them around fulfills other people’s emotional needs).
My focus remains getting back on a normal schedule (I was in bed by 11 pm last night), improving my sleep, and being more physically active. As those things improve I should be able to finish up work in the office and basement, at which time my divided attention can turned toward more ambitious writing projects than a couple paragraphs here and there. It’s taken me far longer than it should’ve to accept it, especially considering I’ve had this realization before, but failed attempts at multitasking have gotten me nowhere fast. If I’m going to complain about other people not changing approaches that aren’t working, I oughta be willing to swig my own medicine and stop doing the same shit myself.
* “Disturbing” is what Crankenstein and Muriel would call it, or so I’ve gleaned from their expressions when I wake up from so-called sleep attacks and catch them staring at me.
07.22.25: Terrorizing the populace will have to wait a bit longer; the week’s been off to an inauspicious start with excessive sleepiness. I’m also saddened to learn that a long-time reader has died, a lesbian more than twice my age whose moral support in demoralizing times was greatly appreciated. There’s no gay tougher than an old gay, and I’d feel a lot less anxious about the future of LGBT rights if younger gays and lesbians shared their mettle. If you meet Janis Paige in the afterlife, M.V., please ask where she got her Auntie V. wigs.
07.20.25: It was a weekend of errands, naps, B-movies about giant mutant alligators (this, the first, was scripted by John Sayles; its sequel was not), and little writing. The relocation of books and furniture also continued, including this heap of lurid trash:
In fairness to the authors of Detour and You Must Be Dreaming, they aren’t trash. Additionally, Cheryl Crane’s an admirable figure as both a lesbian and someone who had a very difficult and unusual childhood. But they’re the anomalies of the stack, which joins more of its tawdry brethren in the basement.
07.18.25: The first part of this update has been expanded into a new post and removed from this page for brevity, leaving us with only this:
Oh, and we need to talk about Tess Gerritsen — not quite in the same way that Lionel Shriver characters needed to talk about Kevin, but not as far removed from it as one would prefer.*
* I’m currently reading a Gerritsen novel for the first time and was immediately perturbed by a scene set in a medical examiner’s office. The next day I looked her up and saw a biographical blurb that referred to her as a retired physician, but read no further to see what she specialized in. On the basis of a grotesquely inappropriate (professionally, not medically) uterus scene in the first or second chapter, I hope it wasn’t forensic pathology. Other than that, she seems to write a serviceable thriller.
07.13.25: Our Jaws in July series ended tonight and before hitting play on Jaws: The Revenge, its egregiously horrible final chapter, I used my best ultra-dramatic movie trailer narrator voice to share with Crankenstein its legendary tagline: “This time, it’s personal.”
She looked up in confusion, the first of many times that would happen over the next 90 minutes, and asked “It wasn’t personal already?”
But my favorite of her “WTF?!” moments came during an early kitchen scene, when Lorraine Gary kept going in and out of an accent. Crankenstein cracked a joke that gave me an opportunity to tell her, Papa-style, that Gary was born Lorraine Gottfried in Queens. She returned her wandering gaze to the screen and scrutinized Gary, perhaps wondering what her original nose looked like.
Jaws: The Revenge is my favorite of all three sequels, a production so emphatically terrible in every category that you’ll instantly forget the inanity and imbecility of Jaws 3-D. (Every time I review a Bess Armstrong movie, I’m gripped by the urge to Photoshop a 3-D dolphin into the screenshots.) Ellen’s inexplicable flashbacks to moments she never experienced, Lynn Whitfield’s Bahamian accent, the improbable survival of a character who was eaten by a shark — it’s irresistible chum, if you’ll forgiven the tasteless pun(s), for aficionados of awfulness.*
It was a lighthearted way to end a lazy weekend and it also supplied the title of an upcoming post about such disparate subjects as Dan Savage, Israel, an odd book-buying dilemma, Louis Gossett Jr., and my accidental discovery of a popular corner of YouTube called BookTube (where influencers seem to spend more time photographing books than reading them).
* And we haven’t even gotten to how poorly acted all the crying is when townspeople mourn a chomped fallen deputy, or Michael Caine’s cheerful eagerness to debase himself for cash, or the all-around hilarity of Gary’s role (and her husband’s role in producing such a turkey).
07.12.25: We’ll get to tennis in a minute, but first, another Tubi treasure: Robert Aldrich’s Autumn Leaves (1956), a mental illness melodrama starring Joan Crawford. Maybe it’s been there for ages, but I hadn’t noticed it before spotting it tonight while searching for my next old sitcom to survey.* It’s been a long time since my first (and only) viewing of Leaves, and I’m exponentially more experienced now in loving people who are mentally unwell, so rewatching it should be an interesting experience. Without endless hours of tennis coverage to choose from, that’ll probably happen this week, and there’s a good chance I’ll either enthuse about it — or mock it — here.
As for tennis: Holy mackerel! We witnessed an historic beatdown at Wimbledon today, the nature of which will keep stats junkies and tennis journalists busy for days to come. Amanda Anisimova had three things working against her, beginning with the invaluable psychological edge that usually goes to the player — Iga Świątek, in this case — who faces a first-time Grand Slam finalist like herself. Then there was the curse of the adrenaline high that follows breakthrough victories as charged as her semifinal ousting of Aryna Sabalenka; players who pull off huge upsets like hers are often too physically spent (and emotionally drained) to win their next match.
Her third and biggest obstacle was Świątek herself, whose early-season frustrations (a doping ban for an infraction that wasn’t actually doping) and disappointing clay court swing paved a tidy path to the Venus Rosewater Dish. She’s mastered grass before, having won a junior’s Wimbledon title in 2018, but as a professional often lacked the downtime needed to prepare a grass campaign after Roland-Garros. (The two are held so close together that it’s a rare feat for players to win both in one calendar year; Carlos Alcaraz did it in 2024 and has a shot at a second ‘Channel Slam’ tomorrow.) This year she had the time and a new coach, Wim Fissette, whose Wimbledon success with other players includes several semifinals and a championship title.
Even for fans of utter dominance, Anisimova’s double-bagel loss was hard to watch, and her tearful runner-up tribute to her family further twisted the knife. The day’s only saving grace was that she hung in there long enough — the match lasted 57 minutes — for Natasha Zvereva’s 1988 French Open loss to Steffi Graf to remain the worst bloodbath of the Open Era. (Graf needed only 34 minutes to dispatch of her, two of which were rain delays.) As a fan of both players, my elation at Świątek’s win was tempered by devastation for Anisimova — and concerns about what a loss of this magnitude might mean for the depression and burnout that drove her away from the game not too long ago. If she can quickly move past it, as Świątek did with her disappointment in Paris, a world of opportunity awaits at the U.S. Open.
* The winner of that sweepstakes was Major Dad, now that I’ve belatedly discovered the joys of Gerald McRaney.
07.11.25: It was another of Crankenstein’s migraine nights, so I had a bigger chunk of free time than usual. Against my better judgment, I spent it socializing rather than reading or writing or watching an Irwin Allen movie. In order to be up for Breakfast at Wimbledon tomorrow, and awake enough to fend off any naps that try to sneak up on me, I must now retire to bed and go through the motions of trying to fall asleep, a process that can take several hours. But before doing that I’ll round up my lucky purple socks, as one does before important Świątek matches, so they’re ready to go in the morning.
07.09.25: Mentally and physically, I’m out of gas tonight and unable to finish what I’ve been working on. I’ll be back tomorrow, possibly with Muriel as my typist; she can’t make these posts any less intelligible than they already are. If you missed last night’s post about Carol Kane, my very fertile ancestors, and pushers not letting junkies go free, here it is, newly corrected because I’d sleepily assigned the wrong fake name to one of my great-great-grandparents’ children. It might sound like a trivial matter to others, but Ashkenazim are superstitious about naming children after living relatives — you’re not supposed to do it, lest Death or other dark forces get confused about who they were sent to collect. Yaakov and Jacob are the same name, so a father and son wouldn’t have shared it; I’d meant to write Joseph but didn’t catch the error until this morning.
07.07.25: Play at Wimbledon ended abruptly today under the lights of Center Court, with former semifinalist Grigor Dimitrov (and more than a few of his fans) in tears. The Bulgarian heartthrob once touted as ‘Baby Fed,’ the presumptive heir to Roger Federer’s throne, was dealt the most heartbreaking loss of the fortnight so far by the cruel hand of fate: a pec injury forced him to retire early in the third, while up two sets over Jannik Sinner.
Sinner, ranked #1 in the world and seeded first in the men’s draw, was nursing an elbow injury and seemed unlikely to stage a five-set comeback. Dimitrov would’ve beaten Ben Shelton in the quarters, in my opinion, before falling to Djokovic in the semifinal. He laughed quite a bit after dropping to the grass, clutching his pec in despair, and John McEnroe wondered if it wasn’t to keep from crying. What was greater, I wondered, his physical or emotional pain?
Physically, obviously, his injury was significant — try striking a ball with a racquet without moving your arm. Psychologically, it was much crueler: This was Dimitrov’s fifth retirement in his last five Slams. He’s 34 now and Wimbledon was his best shot at a major; given his overall health and the time it can take a tennis player to properly heal a pectoral injury (if they’re able to do it at all), it was possible we’d just witnessed the end of his career — right as he was poised to deliver one of the biggest upsets of the year.
Dimitrov spent several seasons recovering from lingering breathing problems after contracting Covid-19 during Djokovic’s idiotic lockdown stunt; he was briefly hospitalized during that infection. If he’s been fully healthy since then it’s never been for long, mostly due to injuries. I related to his bitter laughter today, regardless of whether it was meant to mask the tears he couldn’t hold back moments later, as he officially withdrew from the match. He’d just realized in real-time, before anyone else in the stadium knew, that his tournament was over; his body had once again betrayed him, costing him one of the biggest opportunities of his career.
Here’s hoping he’s back next year, even if it means skipping the next Slam or two to rehabilitate himself.
That’s all I’ve got tonight and it took quite an effort; my left arm hasn’t responded to levodopa today and typing hasn’t been easy.
07.06.25: “What is your favorite TV movie? What is your least favorite TV movie?” someone asked this weekend in a message sent through the Cranky contact form. These questions deserve some reflection before committing to answers, and in replying to him I’ll probably limit myself to titles I’ve reviewed. Without looking at the review index, and thinking purely of enjoyability, not artistry, Thin Ice immediately leaps to mind, with a randy bedridden Lillian Gish encouraging her caregiver granddaughter, Kate Jackson, to hook up with a hunky high school student even if it ends her teaching career. Loni Anderson’s My Mother’s Secret Life, about an escort relearning how to have normal relationships (both romantically, with Paul Sorvino, and maternally with the daughter she abandoned), was also a lot of fun, mostly because her performance was so awful.
Naming a least favorite is trickier: As much as I’d like to write a scathing indictment of Candace Cameron Bure as a person, she personified Hallmark holiday movies during her reign there. Fear Stalk with Jill Clayburgh was an atrocity and it requires a certain constitution to make it all the way through Valentine Magic on Island, but surely I’ve seen worse. This is something I’ll chew on while busy today with things that will keep me from writing anything more than this tonight; I’ve also made an effort to edit last night’s entry but it still needs a tweak or two. If you need something else to read tonight or Monday morning, check out this Texas Observer opinion piece that was published on July 3rd, the day before the state was hit with catastrophic flooding.* One day warnings like this will be remembered as “prescient,” but it’s only common sense.
* “Trump’s DOGE Cuts Are a Texas-Sized Disaster,” its headline reads, continuing, “Reckless agency layoffs and the dismantling of federal relief programs could leave the Lone Star State in peril.” My family, which is from another red state (albeit one that was purpler in my youth), has more personal experience with flooding than I care to recount, and Missouri sees its share of freak rainfalls similar to — but milder than — what just happened in Texas. Flash flooding has almost caused the permanent closure of my parents’ business more than once in recent years, and the water creeps closer to the bottom of their residential street with each new flood.
This could be one of those mythical transformative moments for Trump that cable newscasters who’ve watched too much West Wing like to pretend could still happen: He could throw Elon Musk under the bus (because he always has to assign blame elsewhere) and reverse the gutting of those agencies while strengthening our commitments to the NOAA and NWS — and to building better disaster warning and response systems. Instead this will be our meteorological Sandy Hook, a tragedy we could’ve learned from that becomes grist for empty platitudes and conspiracy theories when it’s acknowledged at all.
07.05.25: I fell asleep last night thinking about things I should’ve mentioned in that night’s entry and the one before it. The first is my favorite story about cake — a birthday cake for Jesus.* Crankenstein’s best friend from medical school shared it with us around the time of our wedding, which he’d traveled to attend as her man of honor. One of the non-academic, non-Arrested Development, and non-depression things they’d bonded over years earlier was their interest in theology (I believe her Marcus Borg books had once belonged to him) and their departures from the religions in which they were raised; Crankenstein’s for a much more liberal version of Christianity and Best Man’s for atheism.
Best Man’s mother was as devastated by his lack of belief as Crankenstein’s family had been when she rejected the very fundamentalism that had first rejected her. During his last holiday visit back home she had registered her disapproval in the most Midwestern Mom way possible: She made a birthday cake for Jesus and only allowed believers to partake in it. Despite being a former linebacker with a commensurate appetite, he stood by his convictions and refused to bear false witness in exchange for dessert. (My Midwestern mom was never quite as mercenary about cake, but she eventually stopped honoring my requests for white or yellow birthday cake with vanilla frosting and made marble cake with chocolate frosting instead because she preferred chocolate.**)
Moving on to what I should’ve mentioned when recommending My Mom Jayne (which features an unusual birthday party of its own): I’m not, nor have I ever been, one of Mariska Hargitay’s innumerable lesbian groupies. In fact, I was going to say that I’ve seen exactly one Law & Order: SVU episode in my life, a very creepy one with Burt Young as a serial rapist, but a Google search just revealed that it was actually a 1997 installment of the original Law & Order. I only say this to establish my neutral-as-Switzerland bonafides to readers familiar with her Sapphic fangirls, some of whom were deeply invested in conspiracy theories about her sexuality at the peak of SVU’s popularity.
It’s a wonder I struggle to fall asleep, isn’t it, when those are my final thoughts of the night? And aren’t you glad I chose to inflict this borefest on you tonight rather than share the story of Youngest Sister’s neighbor accidentally setting his trailer ablaze, allegedly by absentmindedly flicking a cigarette at the porch where he’d stashed a big box of fireworks?^
* Incidentally, this is a good place to note that our mini cake was patriotic in spirit, not appearance; it was a generic grocery store 5″ cake with white frosting, rainbow confetti sprinkles and no message. In my heart, I wanted a tacky bald eagle cake and “Happy Birthday, America!” in flowing script, but Crankenstein’s probably attending my annual neurology checkup next month and I’d rather she not slip the doctor a note suggesting it’s time for another cognitive exam.
** She didn’t make the decision unilaterally; it was sneakier than that. I believe her ploy was to tell me that not everyone in the family liked vanilla cake, which was technically true, though in retrospect she was the only one in our immediate or extended families who hated vanilla cake. From there she proposed marble cake as a compromise that I readily accepted. (She’s also spent the past three decades shuddering and saying “No child of mine would choose vanilla!” when any of her kids have vanilla ice cream in front of her.)
^ His family got out safely and the fire was contained before spreading to other trailers, which is a big concern in parks as cramped as theirs.
07.04.25: If you didn’t feel too celebratory today, you aren’t alone. Between a Big Ugly Bill that will hurt countless more people than it helps and horrifying headlines out of Texas, Crankenstein and I weren’t in a jovial cookout sort of mood; she threw herself into naps and artwork and I stayed busy with Wimbledon and writing. This evening we stuck close to home for Muriel’s sake, even though fireworks aren’t too common here on the 4th, and watched Jaws with slices of the birthday cake I’d purchased to honor a country we love even when it doesn’t live up to its ideals. I hope it was an uneventful evening for your dogs and that at least one of you was moved to add Stanley & Iris to your Tubi queue as a result of last night’s entry; if any of you laugh at the big library scene, I’ll feel slightly less alone in my terribleness.
07.03.25: I have a shot at falling asleep by a normal time tonight and all it took was three days of copious yard work (if we didn’t reach our city’s generous weekly yard waste pickup allotment, we were within a bag of it), sloppy writing, and the emptying of old bookshelves and assembly of new ones. The biggest chore of all was trying not to nod off during any of those things, even as I was so tired that the concrete driveway looked like an inviting place to nap. Now it’s not yet midnight and I can barely keep my eyes open but I have two movies to quickly recommend, both of which I watched while toiling on a never-ending office makeover that’s still tantalizingly close to completion.
The first is an old favorite that’s on Tubi and Prime Video: Martin Ritt’s Stanley & Iris, a critical and commercial flop that was already dated by the time of its 1990 release. Costarring Jane Fonda as a hilariously selfless working-class widow (I’ve been on a Fonda kick since rewatching The China Syndrome a couple months ago) and Robert De Niro as her illiterate love interest, it’s a misguided social message film that understands little of the hardscrabble existences it attempts to depict. In one of its silliest subplots, for example, much is made of Stanley’s inability to drive, as if it’s a skill entirely dependent on literacy.**
You needn’t glimpse the credits to know the screenplay was credited to Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch; it has their ink-stained fingerprints all over it and that’s one of the reasons I love it as unreservedly as I love Murphy’s Romance, another of their collaborations with Ritt. They’re 1980s comfort food viewing: Quaint liberal fantasies of the Reagan era in which masculine screen icons like James Garner and Robert De Niro espouse live-and-let-live values about a small rural outpost’s resident homosexual (and its token straight male crossdresser) and earnestly deliver clunky Afterschool Special soliloquies about illiteracy.
Additionally, Stanley and Romance are both “stupid goy” movies, a joking reference to stories my dad tells about Papa treating him like a moron when he first started dating my mom. (In Murphy’s Romance, Brian Kerwin’s the goy and Garner’s learned gentile is a Jewish stand-in.) All three of them — Ritt and the Ravetches — were the children or grandchildren of immigrants and likely familiar with financial struggle, but their inability to conceive of a life without literacy reveals a cultural blind spot that’s almost as entertaining to me as the rest of Stanley & Iris.^
Director Mariska Hargitay shines a harsh light on old blind spots of a different sort in my second recommendation, the new HBO documentary My Mom Jayne, while reclaiming her mother’s complicated legacy from everyone — Jack Parr included — whose interest in Jayne Mansfield started and ended with her eye-popping (and sometimes eyeroll-inducing) figure. You’ve probably seen the interviews and articles about the film’s paternity revelation, but there’s nothing lurid about any of it; it’s wholesome through and through. I expect this openhearted exploration of the woman behind the cleavage will garner Hargitay a well-deserved award or two that she’ll tearfully share with her mom; even its stagier moments feel genuine, which makes it the ultimate Hollywood family portrait.
* She supports not only her two kids — including a pregnant teenage daughter — but her underemployed sister (played by Swoosie ‘Wig Fur’ Kurtz) and an unemployed, occasionally violent brother-in-law (the film’s chief stupid goy).
** In the days before GPS, almost every local courier who stepped foot in my family’s business was illiterate. It was easy to tell because, among other reasons, they needed help identifying the correct outgoing packages each time they walked in, even though they were clearly labeled and we’d made corresponding entries in the delivery logs. Sometimes there was only one option to choose from and they remained uncertain. (Some were forthcoming about their deficiencies, as were their bosses.) The ones who made a career of it knew the city like the back of their hands, even if they weren’t always sure they’d just entered the right building. Traffic lights, road signs, and familiar landmarks are things most of us recognize from early ages; I’m not sure why Ritt and his writers believed an almost 50-year-old man was exempt from such knowledge.
^ Despite its “stupid goy” elements, Stanley & Iris mostly reminds me of the WASPs at Crankenstein’s church who traffic heavily — and painfully earnestly — in the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations.’
07.01.25: After five months of being cooped up in the mayor’s office, a change of scenery is long overdue. This, the first day of July, with a holiday weekend fast approaching, seemed like the perfect time to head to the beach — or, if you prefer smaller hyperlocal bodies of water, the nearest bathtub or kitchen sink — and begin our Hot Girl Middle-Aged Woman Summer. (In this case the heat’s coming from autonomic dysfunction, but perimenopause would make a better joke.) Mine was off to an inauspicious start this morning: a routine visit to the gastroenterologist, another Lyft driver whose Honda reeked of weed, and an ill-timed fall in the street outside my house that happened just as (a) the Lyft driver inattentively peeled off and (b) two white-haired men in their sixties rounded the corner while staring right at me.
“I meant to do that,” I might have joked if they hadn’t been so engrossed in conversation and I hadn’t been so lightheaded. That was why I’d fallen to begin with: I’d leaned down to pick something up and my blood pressure plunged as I rose. It was another elegant feature of Parkinson’s, just like the profuse sweating that soaked through my new moisture-wicking shirt as I worked on the yard later. All of this requires more explanation than I can currently provide since it’s past my bedtime and I’m trying to get back on the (sleep) straight and narrow. But my schedule is wide open tomorrow so we’ll get to it then if I don’t finish a longer post in progress. Learn from my father’s mistakes (something he usually opts against himself, which is more an observation than a criticism since I’m equally committed to making the same stupid mistakes, albeit ones that carry no risk of melanoma, over and over again) and don’t forget to bring your sunscreen.