iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 19h

I look at that GIF and now all I can think is “Of course I’m not deceiving you. Why would I deceive you?”

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Bombed out yesterday, but beat the bot this morning; maybe I’m over the jet lag. Wordle 1,930 3/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟨🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

After a very long day, I am, as my mother always used to say pulling into the driveway, “home again, home again, jiggety jig!” Travel these days isn’t for the faint of heart, that much I know.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

He looks like an eighth-rate 1930s bit player who’s been cultivating that expression because he wants to replace Arthur Lake as Dagwood in the Blondie series.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

In 1981 I was ushering at a venue with a lineup not unlike this one, and while she doesn’t appear on this bill, I cannot urge you strongly enough: do not miss Miss Mitzi Gaynor.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

…And there’s my earworm for the day. “Bluer than the red, white, and blue!”

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I’ve been wearing the same line of Skechers slip-ons since just before the pandemic. They’ve now discontinued it, and honestly, I may not be able to leave the house.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Is there such a thing in this low world anymore as a domestic flight in the United States that goes as planned, or has that kind of thing gone the way of affordable housing and the three-dollar vodka tonic? [We’ve just been informed that we’re now waiting on a maintenance team; pray for me.]

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

At the departure gate in PHL. It has about the oddest setup I’ve ever seen for such a place: rows of high/top tables lined with barstools, all bolted in place and so close together that even a moderately stout party such as myself cannot use them.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Boy, does this sound familiar. In the early ‘70s, my parents enrolled me in an experimental public school. For the better part of three years, my education consisted almost entirely of home ec, shop, a surprising amount of running around unsupervised, and working through boxes…

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

World Heart day? As a certified goddamn medical miracle, I’m in!

Miss Ann Miller bursts through an enormous Valentine heart, wearing pretty much only a tiny pair of satin tap pants and a big satin heart on top. Because of course she does.

I swear that for the better part of a decade that woman must’ve lived in the stills gallery.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The most infuriating thing about this—aside from its rightfully enraging message—is that individual candidates like Brown can be so very, very good at messaging, yet the national party remains so completely hopeless.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Travel day! My East Coast jaunt is coming to an end. It’s been lovely. My digs these past two weeks have been what in Philadelphia is called a trinity—more or less three cozy rooms stacked atop each other, connected by a vertiginous staircase more like a ladder. They’re part of what makes…

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

My weekend guests have left; it’s cool and rainy in Philadelphia, which makes for a change from both Palm Springs and Cairo. Friends for 40+ years, we had a lovely time—diner and pub meals and an immoderate amount of laughing. And I even got to see a Marie Laurencin; thank you, Dr. Barnes.

A painting by French artist Marie Laurencin—an intimate of the likes of Picasso and Stein—showing a rather dyspeptic woman in a gray coat or dress trimming at the neck with black fur; she hold a black fur muff. Her right hand lightly supports her head, and she regards the viewer with a kind of knowing languor.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

“Bring me my robe; put on my fucking crown—I have immortal longings in me…”

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Didn’t Nancy Reagan wear knickers to something once? Even so, I don’t think it was a State dinner…

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Every morning I woke up astonished that pretty much any single issue of Spy magazine in the 1980s could’ve predicted exactly where we are today.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My Pals Miss Rheba and The Celebrity Gardener are coming to spend the weekend with me in my tiny rental house, and because I am an excellent friend I’m sitting on a fine Friday morning in laundromat on Spruce Street, because the place only comes with one set of sheets and towels.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Philadelphia is passing a “for rent“ sign on a side street listing a broker called Keith Stallone and knowing that, yes, he most likely is a relative.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I sat for a bit in the museum garden. A group of lissome young students passed by, each more adorable than the last, and one said, “Well, I’m just concerned we won’t have enough champagne.“ Nice to know that some things never change.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Once upon a time this led to my office. Because all the senior staff who worked there were women (PR, Public Programs, Membership, the Women’s Committee, and the Archives), we were all, regardless of gender, referred to as “The Ladies of the Corridor,” after a forgotten Dorothy Parker play.

A nondescript-looking corridor leading off a museum gallery. Doors with glass panes on either side, and in the distance the wrought-iron gates of the archives.

There’s a handsome terrazzo floor under that tacky vinyl plank. Why they’d change it, I’ll never know.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Back in my old haunts. In the days when I was a docent at this museum, sometime in the late Pleistocene, we had an elaborate rigmarole about how this crystal ball was a prized possession of the last Dowager Empress and a treasure of the Forbidden City.

A rock-crystal orb (reputedly one of the largest in the world) sits on a silver stand in the shape of a cresting wave. The display is the centerpiece of a massive, high, domed gallery.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I made a mistake I’ve made before: Never, unless you’re prepared for a four-day earworm, watch a clip of “Three Little Maids from School Are We” just before bedtime.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Philadelphia is nothing if not a museum city, and I’ve been having a lovely time looking and looking and looking. Florine Stettheimer is one of those artists it’s possible to be delighted about all over again every single time you find one of her busy, ravishing works.

Spring Sale at Bendels, 1921, by Florine Stettheimer. A prime example of the artist’s diffuse but surprisingly rigorous sense of composition, as well as her love of vivid, even violent, splashes of color (here, scarlet and gold) on nearly neutral backgrounds. Few artists have made the fashionable world seem more alluring…

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Reminded of Nick at Nite’s old line “Eva is the good Gabor; she will not harm you…”

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I have no memory of taking this, but coming unexpectedly upon it on a chilly, wet night, I’m awfully glad I did.

A brilliantly colored photograph of a vivid yellow daisy, its petals tipped in red and its center a green ball of seeds waiting to be released. Other yellow and purple flowers are in the background, which is otherwise green and dark and mysterious.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I want to go to Wanamaker’s; also Strawbridge & Clothier. I want to go to The Gallery and pretend I’m in Logan’s Run. I want to go to Bookbinder’s and have snapper soup for dinner, or to the Venture Inn for Chicken Livermore. Why must things change?

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Oh—almost forgot to mention: Philadelphia, I am in you.

Photograph of the skyline of Philadelphia on a cloudy evening. In the foreground a treetop, left, and an assemblage of older brick houses; behind, a jumble of towers, their lights twinkling, against the dramatic sky.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

An immediate Sunday-night ritual that led directly to me taking four years of high-school Latin (an immense boon to anyone who wants to understand English on a deeper level). Also: Siân Phillips. A performance for the ages.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

“God! God! Whose hand was I holding?”

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This is Cicero—Shakespeare, even. Maybe there is a ray of hope.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

For your Wednesday… Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?

Color photograph of a white rose well past its prime, the petals withering and brown at the edges. The background is the leaves of a suburban garden, with just a hint of siding behind.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It’s hardly original at this point, but even so it can never be said too often: Eve Fartlow

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I decided to be a cliché and buy a red convertible and thought about quitting my job. The car was a fabulous idea, and I kept my senses enough to stay employed (I’m making up for that now by reveling in retirement).

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Greetings from the Chautauqua Institution, where My Dear Sister and I are spending the night. The Athenaeum Hotel is a stately pile after my own heart; as a child, I thought it the most elegant place on earth. If nothing else, its veranda remains a lovely place to watch an end-of-summer rain…

A view of the Athenaeum Hotel at Chautauqua, New York. Across a broad green lawn we see an Italianate clapboard building with a spreading veranda that overlooks Lake Chautauqua. The sky today is gray and stormy.

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Reposted by Alex aka Muscato

caroline cash @cashbrowns.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Nancy 9/7/26 … Happy Labor Day 🛠️

8 Hours for Work, 8 Hours for Rest, 8 Hours for What We Will. Based on a screenprint by Ricardo Levins Morales after the organizing work done by Robert Owen.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The only thing I want to know about the Elizabeth Holmes documentary is what voice she uses.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

It seems fitting that the great poet Dame Edith Sitwell and the great Queen Elizabeth I share a birthday; at times it can be hard to tell them apart.

Portrait of a pale woman with ascetic features and an austere expression. She is dressed in elaborate brocades and exotic jewels. She may be the great Tudor queen, but she might as well be Our Lady of 14 Moscow Road, Dame Edith.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

A very proper Boston dahlia for your Sunday evening.

Photograph of a vividly orange dahlia in full bloom, each of its petals tipped in paler colors, against a background of deep green and mysterious darkness.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Nice to visit old favorites at the Museum of Fine Arts. I’ve always thought this hand a lesson in languid elegance, one from which we could all benefit.

An exquisite relief of a hand, from a larger scene showing the family of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, Eighteenth Dynasty, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The dialect quiz was off by about 100 miles too far west, and I’ve decided to blame seven years of living in California.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I regret to inform you that American Airlines’s pre-departure sparkling wine is not vile precisely, but it’s quite definitely vile-adjacent.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I’ve decided that “Bayesian Priors” have something to do with clergy who are fans of Norah Bayes’s rendition of “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and I dont care to learn anything else about them.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

No police action, although the (unseen by me) woman shrieking “Comp me! Comp me! Comp me!” at her waitress seemed like a likely possibility for a bit.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

My shameful hobby is watching bodycam arrest videos; there’s ian entire sub-genre of them devoted to airport arrests. I’m now sitting at a bar in Concourse A of the Phoenix airport, looking for likely subjects—of which there is no paucity.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

So the good-ish news is that my second flight is delayed as well; the bad news is that I won’t get there now until 1:30 a.m. I’ll be spending the night at an airport hotel, as it seems unreasonable to ask My Dear Sister to come fetch me at that hour. In a civilized country, I’d be on a train.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

It’s the birthday of the wonderful Miss Kitty Carlisle, a joy-bringer of the first water. I had the great pleasure of knowing her, a little, and she was everything you’d hope and more.

youtu.be

Kitty Carlisle: Underdressed For the Occasion As Usual

YouTube video by mtmste

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The joy of travel: my first flight today is delayed; my connection has now been cut to an optimistic 15 minutes before the doors of the onward flight close. There are no later flights today. I wasn’t going to take a carry-on, but it seems prudent to have a change of clothes. Damn Miss Rose.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I was listening to our local Great American Songbook station and was reminded how much I dislike swingin’, upbeat, “fun” versions of Mack the Knife (sorry, Bobby). I did, however, realize that, were I ever to take up that form of amusement again, my new drag name would have to be Scarlett Billows.

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