The Information Super-Frog

I dreamed I was at an out-of town conference at some university. I was in the very nice conference center, half-an-hour before the keynote presentation, to be given by Gwen Iffil (former tv journalist/writer) and Gwen Thompkins (New Orleans music reporter/writer). It was billed on promotional posters "Special Double Gwen Event!" I realized I didn't have my camera nor smart-phone with me, so I couldn't take photos, but fortunately my room was in a hotel just across the street so I had time to go get them. I crossed the street and went up in an elevator to my room, got my camera and phone, then decided to lie down on the bed for a minute. Then I realized I'd fallen asleep and was unable to wake back up and would miss the key event of the conference! Oh no! I finally succeed in waking myself up in my dream, and found out to my relief that missing the event had just been a dream, and actually it was first thing in the morning and I had hours to spare.
I exited the hotel bedroom through another room in our small hotel suite, sort of a breakfast nook, where Ms H. and a good trumpeter who I used to play in a band with were chatting. They'd gone to the nook room to talk so as not to wake me, which I found very considerate. Apparently our band was to play for the conference in the evening.
I noticed some ants eating a dead termite on the floor of the nook room. I knew that these termite-eating black ants didn't bother humans, and if you had to have ants indoors these were the best kind of ants to have, so I decided not to complain since the hotel accommodations were otherwise very good, so I could put up with those ants for a couple of days.

I went down to the hotel lobby, where there was a cafe and a row of small shops. I spotted my father sitting at a cafe table flirting with a woman who I was pretty sure was a hooker. I knew this was after my mother died and before my father got remarried, so I thought that was his business and none of mine. He spotted me and seemed embarrassed, but I pretended not to notice him. I decided to walk the long way around to keep distance, even though I found that to do so I had to climb up a ladder on a tower supporting photography equipment then climb back down the other side.

Then I found that I was in a multi-level shopping mall in Tokyo. Floors, ceilings, and walls were all white with a plethora of multi-colored neon signs, all in Japanese, which I couldn't read. I could only recognize a couple of symbols, and there were a very few words in Western Roman script, but not enough for me to get any useful information from. I had memorized the layout of the place the previous day, but over-night they had completely redecorated and rearranged everything, so I had no idea how to get back to my room.

I took out my phone to call Ms H - If she didn't know the answer off hand, she could use her business manager talents to get the needed information. However I found that instead of a telephone keypad, I would have to dial the number using a book of colorful postage stamps, pressing on an individual stamp of a certain value to enter a number. This took me a while to figure out, and after a few unsuccessful tries succeeded in dialing H's number. However it gave me a message that I had to add a country code, which turned out to be a long text phrase I had to input using the awkward postage stamp input.

There was also an incident, it might have been somewhere in this dream or a different one, involving a type of hot chocolate mix we recently got from a Latino grocery, except in the dream the hot chocolate had letters like alphabet soup made of chocolate. I and some other fellow were quite sure that there was some sort of message in the letters, but we couldn't figure it out before the letters dissolved.

The phrase "No Kings" is trending, so here's some historical context.

The USA was founded in rebellion from and in opposition to monarchy. The Constitution's framers made our head of state an elected position of limited and checked authority. When George Washington was first elected President, someone asked if he should be addressed as "Your Majesty" (in the style of European monarchs); Washington replied certainly not, he should be addressed simply as "Mister President".
For reasons such as these, critics, satirists, and cartoonists have long known that one of the greatest insults they can throw at a US President is to compare him to a king. Depicting them with a crown on their head concisely conveys that they are abusing their power, are unfit for office, have delusions of grandeur, and are inherently un-American.

A few of many historic examples of US Presidents insultingly caricatured as king.



King Andrew the First - Andrew Jackson caricatured as a king, 1833, artist unidentified.




1868 caricature of Andrew Johnson as King Richard III, by Thomas Nast.
King Andy Johnson - "My Kingdom for a Horse!"

(Love Thomas Nast's work here - look at that face; talented artistry leaving no doubt as to Nast's opinion of Johnson!)


The Coronation of William McKinley.
1896 caricature of William McKinley crowning himself, by Louis Dalrymple.


1972 caricature of Richard Nixon as King Canute, by Paul Francis Conrad.
Note the co-conspirators hiding under the train of Nixon's royal robe.

In a dream, I was tasked with helping The Diva get ready and bring her to an awards event. This was an important assignment for me.

The Diva was a soul/r&b star of an older generation, part Donna Summer and part Irma Thomas (the latter of whom I’d met at the radio station), though neither of them specifically. She lived in a Metro New Orleans post-WWII suburb which I was mostly unfamiliar with, somewhere around Harvey or Westwego.

I was at The Diva’s house, which was nice but not ostentatious outside. Inside, the living room was very 1970s, with wood-paneled walls, plush couches in plastic covers, and hardwood furniture including a large television set in a wooden cabinet. There were shelves of golden award trophies, and the walls had framed gold records, album covers, and posters of her. She invited me to sit down and she’d show me her scrapbooks, which I said I’d be very interested in some other time but we had to get ready and go the ceremony. Throughout the whole I was worried about the time - there was always just enough time to get things done but no extra. The Diva was changeable, generally pleasant but sometimes focused and sometimes distracted, sometimes flirty, demanding, or nostalgic, but never concerned about the time which was constantly on my mind.

She insisted we had to pick up some Chinese takeout food. We got in my car and drove off; she offered to give me a guided tour of the area but again I begged off - I’d love to do that another day when we had more time. She navigated us to a shopping mall complex I’d been unaware existed, called “The Palace”. It was built about 1960 in a combination of mid-century modern and novelty architecture, with a series of decorative onion domes like a Russian cathedral. The whole was somewhat scruffy and decayed, with rusting Googie signage. I had to admit it was interesting, and I pulled my camera out of my pocket and took a couple of snapshots.
We picked up the Chinese takeout at a place that looked to serve unremarkable standard American Chinese, none of the staff at the counter were Asian and were slightly surly with strong “Yat” New Orleans area white working class accents. The architecture the Chinese restaurant was housed in was more impressive, as it was a replica of the Taj Mahal. Even as a scuffed concrete and styrofoam replica half-occupied by downscale suburban retail, it was still quite grand.

Back to The Diva’s house, for her to change into her awards ceremony gown. First, however, she said she had to find her special needle. I was unsure if this needle was to fix her gown, wear as an accessory, or what, just that she said she needed it. We went up into her cluttered attic, where she looked around uncertainly. I almost despaired of finding a needle there. I asked if she remembered where she put the needle. She said “In the big red sponge in the big red bucket”. I spotted a large red plastic bucket behind some piled junk in a corner and brought it to her. Sure enough inside was a big red sponge with the special needle stuck in it. It looked like an oversized common sewing needle. We were both pleased to find it.

That task completed, she wanted me to go pick up a pizza. But we’d just had Chinese food - I knew I shouldn’t argue with her but we really didn’t have time for this…

That’s all.

I dreamed I was hired to play trombone for a concert with the New Leviathan (despite that they're a mostly reading band and I'm a mostly ear player - but I know the repertory). However it was apparently a last minute thing - I needed to wear a tailcoat, which I didn't have, and my trombone was across town and I didn't have time to go get it. So I went into a big cluttered maze-like used goods/antique/pawn shop to get a tailcoat and workable trombone. One of the workers there was leading me to where there was a tailcoat in my size when I lost him, then I woke up.

Recent films on DVD from the library:

Young Frankenstein. Ms H just wanted to see this again, sounded like fun and it was. Comedy classic! Satire of the 1930s era horror films - which I wasn't familiar with when I first saw this in my youth, but I still enjoyed it much. Having some familiarity with the old films adds but isn't essential.

Godzilla Minus One. Hell of a good film, set in Japan at the end of WWII through a few years in the aftermath. Pretty much the only suspension of disbelief required is that the Godzilla monster somehow exists (with no explanation). Well done all around.

Miller's Crossing. Another film I'd seen decades ago, I don't recall if in the theater or on VHS, and found I remembered almost none of it other than the recognizable street scenes filmed in New Orleans and a friend appearing as an extra. Ms H had never seen it. The cinematography is beautifully done. Great use of locations in New Orleans for a late 1920s urban setting. The story? Well, various gangsters scheme and double-cross each other and sometimes shoot each other. It was gorier than we expected. Other than the camera work and local scenes we mostly thought it meh.

Louisiana Snowman, photo by me earlier today.
Northerners, don't shame New Orleans snowman skills - the last time we had any practice was 1 day back in 2008.

-----
It looks like New Orleans not only beat the 1963 snowfall total, but the all time record from 1895 as well.

----

New Orleans local: I remember a snowfall when I was little. My grandfather put out glasses to catch the snow. He brought them in, put some chocolate syrup on one for me, and bourbon on one for himself.

Me: Haha! How fun. I think I'll try that.

I set out a pair of glasses as it snows. I go back to check on them 2 hours later, to find them buried deep in a snow drift. "Well, I guess I'll get those glasses back whenever this stuff melts."

Ms H & I borrowed some films to watch from the library, from little list of ones we'd heard were good or interesting but hadn't seen.

* Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961. Rom-com in jet age Manhattan. Above average, but I was expecting better. Badly dated in parts, including crigey performance by Mickey Rooney as a Japanese supporting character in "yellowface" and fake buck-teeth (!). Fortunately most of it wasn't so bad, and many fun scenes.

I realized in retrospect that a gal I'd dated more than 30 years ago seems to have based part of her persona on Holly Golightly. Quelle Surprise!


* Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil, 1997. Murder trial making the most of Savannah Georgia setting with eccentric characters. Excellent enjoyable film.

That film also has a personal early '90s callback for me, as my only visit to Savannah was in 1992 during Hurricane evacuation. Arriving in the evening, a couple hours in Savannah looked very interesting and I booked the hotel for 2 more nights. However by a day later I felt I'd already seen the highlights as a casual visitor.

Quiet New Years here at Villa Ranocchio, intending to stay in. I plan to make risotto this evening, and Ms H plans pancakes for tomorrow. We have bubbly & oj for mimosas, and some tasty cheeses.

Less pleasantly, a distinctive bad smell manifested the other day. I recognized it from a similar about 5 years ago - dead mouse. I looked and raked under our raised house, but soon became quite sure it's in the narrow space between the roof & ceiling towards the back of the house, too narrow for attic space but room enough for a rodent. Yesterday I went to the hardware store to get some heavy duty stink fighter - activated charcoal, gonzo, etc - but the hardware store had none. They directed me to the large pet supply shop down the street. Fellow at the pet supply shop said they used to have some stuff that worked great, but they haven't been able to get it for months. I phoned a large hardware store in suburbs - nope they don't have anything. So I got a few regular anti-odor supplies at the drugstore - which help some but aren't up to the task. So it will be a couple days before the heavy duty stuff ordered is delivered.
About 90% of the stink is in the back bathroom, and most of the last 10% the alcove on the other side of a wall from the bathroom that connects to the master bedroom. Ms H adjourned to the daybed/guest bed in her office on the other side of the house. I stayed in the main bedroom, which wasn't bad with the windows open, since fortunately the weather is mild.

Colonial era buildings in New Orleans sometimes had an extra story called an "entresol". The ground floor of buildings in the old town was often given to commerce, with living space upstairs. The entresol was between the two, serving as warehouse space - sort of an attic in the middle rather than top of a building. They were often short in height, sometimes with ceilings too low for taller people to fully stand up in.

Some old buildings constructed with entresols have been modified to raise the ground floor ceilings or otherwise rearrange the interior to effectively eliminate them. Other enteresols have been long blocked off, but some others have continued still in use.

The Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street is an example; the entresol story here has the half-circle windows made to look like fan lights over the ground floor doorways.



I dreamed that a friend had opened a bar in the entresol of an old building - a speakeasy, since it couldn't be up to code, as it was a particularly low ceiling only about 4 feet tall, and people had to be hunched over in there, had no windows, and it was only accessible via twisty dark corridors and old narrow staircases.

My friend tried to encourage me to patronize his place. I begged off, pointing out that it would be too difficult for me since I hobble around with a cane. (Sometimes in dreams I walk with a cane, other dreams I'm more mobile and lythe like yesteryear.) Really that was in part an excuse, because even in nimble youth I might have gone once just to look at it and never went back. There are fans of dimly-lit spooky bars in New Orleans, but I was never one of them. Indeed I've never been much for bars in general except when one happened to be the place where good live music was happening.

Back to my dream - I expressed skepticism at my friend's business model of a hard-to-get-to and hard-to-be-in bar, but he argued that in Venice there are bars that can only be reached by boat that have flourished for 200 years. I thought that analogy unconvincing but decided not to argue and wished him well.

I noticed that I posted about a dream I had back in October 2020 elsewhere on line, but not here, so I'm belatedly fixing that. The dream was likely in part inspired by seeing a news story on Jimmy Carter's 96th birthday on tv before going to bed.


I had a dream that I escaped to an alternative reality that was on the whole better.
Key point of divergence seemed to have been President Jimmy Carter winning a second term.
On the plus side, Womens, LGBTQ, and POC rights, ecological issues, drugs and healthcare had been resolved or seriously addressed since the early 1980s.

There was also a down side: the fashion was a combination of the worst of the 1970s and 1930s sci-fi. Paramecium-print crotch-display jump-suits with random Saturn-ring double-cuffs. Strange orange and green color combinations. Also middle-aged women were going out doing their shopping a la Wendy O Williams; boobs out with clothes-pins on nipples.

So some friends and I decided to go see a movie. One of them suggested a movie they thought would be fun they’d heard of called “Clowns Run”. When we got to the theater it turned out to be a remake of “Logan’s Run” scripted by cartoonist Daniel Clowes (“Ghost World” etc), and the actual title was “Clowes Run”. I thought that was very funny, and I woke up giggling.