Randomosity and Pics

So far, the side effects of chemo aren't ridiculously heinous BUT, nonetheless, I don't like it. Shocking, no? The one thing really creeping me out, at this early stage, is that, after taking my chemo pill, I need to go scrub my hands. What's it doing to my insides if I've got to detoxify my hands after handling the pill for just a few seconds?

Luckily, I have chocolates (from Jen's recent weekend in Maine) and gummies (courtesy of Ten) to ease my frenzied, worried bean.

Have you heard? Angela Lansbury has passed away. She was 96 years old (five days short of her 97th birthday)—that’s a truly excellent run. My favorite role of hers was in The Manchurian Candidate. She played the frozen-hearted, secret Communist agent and absolute horror show mother of the brainwashed by commies Laurence Harvey. He’s a Korean War vet, programmed to assassinate a favored presidential candidate.

Lansbury is BRILLIANT in this. She is utterly believable as the evil, Machiavellian matriarch. Who knew she could also play the retired English teacher and cozy mystery sleuth, Jessica Fletcher?

By the by, her first movie role was as a conniving cockney maid in Gaslight. That's another flick I've got to watch again.

Completely unrelated (to Angela Lansbury), I used too think ball caps were just horribly gauche—alright, I still do. What I’ve found though, in my feeble ancient years, is that they’re indispensable on sunny days. My nerve damaged eyes are ridiculously sensitive to light—bright, cloudless days practically blind me. So, if the sun’s out I’m in dark glasses with my out of chocolate, life is crap billed cap on.

I used to have oodles of these hats but, possibly when I went on an intense and extended decluttering binge (in the first months after TAB died), I may’ve donated most of them to Goodwill.

I'm reading a collection of David Sedaris's very short essays (diary entries) called A Carnival of Snackery Diaries (2003-2020)

If it’s navel-gazing you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong place; ditto treacly self-examination. Rather, his observations turn outward: a fight between two men on a bus, a fight between two men on the street, pedestrians being whacked over the head or gathering to watch as a man considers leap­ing to his death. There’s a dirty joke shared at a book signing, then a dirtier one told at a dinner party—lots of jokes here. Plenty of laughs.
 
These diaries remind you that you once really hated George W. Bush, and that not too long ago, Donald Trump was just a harm­less laughingstock, at least on French TV.  

This is just what I needed, book-wise. I don't want, at the mo, deeply trenchant thoughts, more news analysis or high art (versus art done while high—THAT would be welcome). What I need are at least a few counter agents to my endless health struggles, worries and unanswerable questions, the ongoing insanity of the Republi/Nazis and my plague thwarted desires to travel, eat in restaurants and go draw nude models at the sessions in Cambridge.

Sedaris is IT! Also walking at dawn when no one's about besides the gulls and cranes. Also too, Cake.