iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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

I’ve heard worse ideas than Susan Tyrrell as a wacky sitcom wife, but not many.

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 20h

Forcibly reminded of how I knew twins in West Africa whose first names were Benito and Adolf. Pretty clear where their parents stood back in the 40s.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Well. I didn’t expect to be crying a little at 6:50 on a Wednesday morning, but here I am. What a beautiful essay, with so much to ponder. It takes me back, as sad, beautiful things often do, to that line (a different kind of line) of Hopkins: in the end, it’s Margaret we mourn for.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Out at a local indie coffee shop so the cleaners can do their thing. The barista is a darling little pocket Hercules who greets one by gazing up from under his curly fringe of hair with a jaunty “Hey, you!” It’s sufficiently effective to make me tip immoderately, which I suppose is the point.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I spent July with the Countess at her grandfather’s place just outside Monte Carlo; the telegrams were concerning, but the champagne was exquisite.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

If we really have to have yet another Götterdämmerung, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we get a few weeks of fine, clear weather, white linen dresses, straw boaters, and a little genteel ragtime from a pavilion by the lake first…

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

And we didn’t even get a particularly beautiful summer, as they did in 1914.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

What’s this? Brent smiling? Maybe it was payday…

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

In that mysterious room on the second floor of the east wing, where the late Mrs. Hait’s extensive collection of lingerie, furs,, and accessories are also stored.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I have genuine respect for Joan for treating that as professionally as she did. She comes as close as anyone possibly could to actually making the damn thing work.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

My obsession with later Joan is the times when her pre-MGM diction breaks through; sometimes it’s clearly on purpose, in the service of characterization, and sometimes… less so (I’m thinking the likes of her memorable, guttural “Now get OUTTA here!” in I Saw What You DId).

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The extent to which even in those photos those are all people existing in completely different worlds makes one wonder just how much of a train wreck (or utterly glorious) it might have been.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

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 · 02/10/2026

My primary memory of my last screening is of the surprise I felt on reading that it takes place in the South—it all looks so much like New Rochelle in the Dick Van Dyke Show, but with evening wear.

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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 · 30/09/2026

He was _dreamy_. It was a theater in the round; he came straight down the aisle right next to me, so close I could smell his last pre-show cigarette.

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

I did enjoy watching him and the Missus tour around, her with her extensive wardrobe that appeared to be drawn directly from a low-budget touring production of Evita.

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

I’m a Kenley baby, too—Ann Blyth and Andy Devine in Show Boat, 1970. I had no idea what it was, but I knew that I loved it fiercely and I wanted more.

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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 my experience, the solo acts and variety nights were a better bet than the low-budget tours with “name“ stars. That said, I’m very glad I got to see Rock Hudson in Camelot.

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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

You look at those three girls and realize that in those days there was nothing that a strong stage mother couldn’t accomplish. She got two of them to the top of the heap and married the third one off, and even if things didn’t end in their favor, they made bank.

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

Just realized that that should’ve been “blue-oo-oo!” at the end there.

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

Good luck with that… At least you had the coffee.

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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

Ha! At the moment I’ve had two glasses of a middling white and a surprisingly good plate of paneer makhani,* so i’m feeling a tad more benevolent. __________ * Who knew that American Airlines has better Indian food than any place in the Coachella Valley?

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

He has showed us the future, and it is moronic beyond belief.

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

Sudden vision of people wandering the streets, unfortunates who don’t know their address or their phone number, who’ve discovered that the flight they thought leaves today flew last week, whose phones keep booking them rooms in Rome, NY, rather than Rome, Italy, and who on top of that are at 2%.

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

Well, we’re now in the air, for what that’s worth, but even in the front of the plane, our flight crew have the slow-moving, bemused air of people who have perhaps read about air travel but never experienced it, yet find themselves even so in uniform, carrying out actions they only half understand.

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

Fortunately, I’m heading to a tiny little airport where it’s probably not 100 yards from planeside to the sidewalk.

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

Yeah, I can see why people hate this airport.

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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

With an hour to wait, I’m glad that a standard low chair has at last freed up.

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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

It was a lot less antic than it sounds; the people in charge took it all Very Seriously.

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

… Getting the home ec or the shop, let alone all the running around. There are a million reasons that The Next Big Thing is all too often last year’s Incredibly Bad Idea.

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

… at the college level, I had learned virtually nothing about science, math, or anything about social studies that didn’t immediately interest me. Let’s just say it made for an interesting subsequent year. If anything, this is worse, because I’m guessing these AI-taught kids aren’t even…

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

… full of cards, about which I would occasionally be expected to take a (mostly ungraded) quiz. It was touted as the next big thing, especially for “gifted” kids. When they finally transferred me out, back to a comparatively traditional school, it was quickly apparent that, while I was reading…

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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

My grandmother, horrified by curriculum changes of the early ‘70s, put me on a steady diet of memorization, and I’m grateful for it every day. Much has vanished, but I still have swathes of Tennyson, Longfellow, Shakespeare, and the Bible, to which I’ve added Sitwell, Auden, Mark Strand…

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

Beyond the whole verticality thing, it’s been very comfortable, but even so I’m looking forward to my own bed and a shower that hasn’t been made to fit into what was once I suspect a colonial closet of some sort. Oh, and the Mister, too, of course.

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

…the city so distinctive and historic, and I’m sure if you’re a sprightly young thing, they’re glorious. As for me, well, I (and my knees) have survived. But at the moment, the good news is that the suitcases are not only packed but down the stairs. It was quite a feat, but it’s accomplished.

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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 · 29/09/2026

Sadly, heading out—but that looks like fun!

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