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captainsblogI got an email off to my college roommates this morning, recapping a number of things that appeared here over the past few months, including our news of the past couple of days. One thing reminding me to do that was our last-minute Christmas gift to the kids; I checked and they had not signed up for the HBO Max package that will premiere Wonder Woman '84 and other cool stuff the same day as in cinemas, so I took advantage of their holiday deal of 20 percent off if you prepay for six months. Amazingly, this now comes with access to it that we can use ourselves. It somehow reminded me of one of those roommates' then little brother, who back then famously got his mom and dad a Partridge Family record album one year. He grew up to be a supporter of Former President Trump (I'm now abbreviating that FPT), so I'd better be careful with the crafty gifting.
Since that was a year-in-review effort, I don't have much left in me for today, other than to lay out the order of things for the rest of the posts and make today's my "honorable non-mention" list, of things that didn't, couldn't or wouldn't happen this year:
* Travel. My last venture outside of the two westernmost area codes of this state came in February and March, when I barely made it twice to Syracuse for one case. By now, usually, you'd have read about me visiting family in the 607, going to a game or two in the 718, and maybe even making it for the first time to the kids' area code in Virginia I don't even know because they never changed their numbers. None of that; since that last Syracuse visit the day before the Friday the 13th when all the shit got real, I have not been east of Monroe County for even a minute and nowhere to the north, west or south at all. Usually, my car odometer accumulates close to 20,000 miles in a year; the 2020 summer tires, put on around the time of the shutdown, barely registered 4,000 when they came (not quite) off earlier this month. I've been taking Eleanor's car for many of the Rochester trips, but that added only a couple of thousand at most. And while I miss being in these places, I do not miss the getting there at all. Even with lower traffic volumes and the final end of backups at tollbooths on the 90, I still find even the 90 minute drives to be exhausting and boring. Air travel's an even less attractive option- we were last on an airplane in 2005- and other mass/intercity transit is useless in these parts. Just leaving the state by any means these days requires interrogations and often quarantines on one or both ends, and the nearby, sweeter, saner confines of Canada have been off limits all year and will continue be for the immediate future.
* Speshul occasions. We'd been to two weddings in the 2010s; one a "Christmas miracle" of bizarre, the other an outdoor summertime backyard gathering of a couple no longer speaking to me who had a band playing "Blurred Lines" at their reception. So, yeah, not our thing. This year, less so. Not that people weren't getting married; several friends, or kids of friends, did. They were just doing it responsibly in small gatherings with few in attendance. Most will have more public redos someday; I doubt we'll be at those, either. Our birthdays, anniversary and the big year-end food orgies? Just us, just here. No regrets.
* Sitting back, Relaxing, and Enjoying The Show And The Expensive Popcorn. Last year, the "big" present for the kids was getting them the Regal Cinema monthly All You Can Binge plan; you had to make a year's commitment, but once you did, Emily could see everything herself for no additional cost and bring guests for a reduced price, as many of them and as many times as she wanted. That lasted all of three months before they shut it down; it briefly came back for a month's charge on the credit card in the summertime, but they finally closed their cinemas nationwide and ended the program once realizing they basically had nothing to show. We were never regular enough cinemagoers for such a program; best as I can recall, the last film we saw on the big screen was Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) back in mid-February. Now studios are experimenting with premiering their blockbusters on streaming services at the same time they "open" in a limited number of live venues. Cinema chains tried their usual threats of boycotts, but since Warner is doing it with Wonder Woman tomorrow, I think those bullets are gonna bounce right off.
* Indoor Dining, other than These Indoors. Not entirely eliminated; in a few summer and early fall months, I scratched culinary urges for morning pancakes maybe twice, and did see two musical acts performing live, one on a patio and one on a strictly social-distanced bar balcony. On every occasion, I was by myself, stayed the requisite distance from other patrons, and kept my mask on except when the hangar was actually open to let the airplane in. My willingness to make this "sacrifice" for the sake of safety and spread-limiting makes me all the angrier when it seems that Talking Point Tuesday comes along and MAGAheads start their unison cry about the renewed indoor dining limits "killing small business." My rant about that from the other day:
It's the new talking point from the anti-maskers and the "Dictator DiBlasio" crowd. Why, they cry, when you can go to Walmart and "those stores" with more people but can't sit down in an indoor socially distanced restaurant?
Let me count the ways.
"Those stores" don't encourage you to stick around their premises and drink alcohol, their highest-margin product, to make you less aware of your surroundings and hygiene.
"Those stores" don't involve you necessarily taking your mask off repeatedly to consume their product (remember when "those stores" had demo stands and sitdown counters inside? They don't anymore).
"Those stores" are based on the same model that successful restaurants have adapted to over the past year-TAKEOUT. We order more restaurant food now than we ever did before; we just eat it in the warmth and safety of our own home.
"Those stores" have also had to adapt- to Amazon and Instacart and other pre-COVID changes of How We've Always Done It. The ones with inferior products or customer service didn't make it. Locally, just look: Tops went bankrupt BEFORE COVID. Wegmans never will. It's capitalism. I thought these whiners were all in favor of that.
Know who's really behind the whining? Not the "small business" restaurants, who adapted, and got PPP money to help in adapting. I represented one of them from March through November; profit margins went up- because they had a good history, a unique product and a fiercely loyal customer base AND staff base.
No, the ones who really should be worried are the one-percenter commercial landlords- whose restaurant tenants are waking up and realizing they don't need 3000 square feet of space- a kitchen and takeout counter will do fine. They're gonna have to face lowering rents and subdividing spaces- which will, when this is over, bring new blood into the business and new forms of businesses into the spaces. Or maybe a strip mall or six will sit empty and we won't keep tearing down historic buildings to put more of them up. Womp womp.
I encouraged people to try to change my mind. Nobody did.
----
Now we've got THAT plenty of nuthin' out of the way, here's what to expect over the coming week:
* Sports and music/radio- what we had and what we changed or lost;
* All the other entertainment things we found time for, from movies at home to television to poetry and trivia;
* Improvements, repairs and technology, new or new to us or sameold;
* Our worklives and the beginning of Eleanor's retirement; and
* Health issues before and beyond COVID, and the animals that stayed, came and sadly just went.
That should keep ya.
Since that was a year-in-review effort, I don't have much left in me for today, other than to lay out the order of things for the rest of the posts and make today's my "honorable non-mention" list, of things that didn't, couldn't or wouldn't happen this year:
* Travel. My last venture outside of the two westernmost area codes of this state came in February and March, when I barely made it twice to Syracuse for one case. By now, usually, you'd have read about me visiting family in the 607, going to a game or two in the 718, and maybe even making it for the first time to the kids' area code in Virginia I don't even know because they never changed their numbers. None of that; since that last Syracuse visit the day before the Friday the 13th when all the shit got real, I have not been east of Monroe County for even a minute and nowhere to the north, west or south at all. Usually, my car odometer accumulates close to 20,000 miles in a year; the 2020 summer tires, put on around the time of the shutdown, barely registered 4,000 when they came (not quite) off earlier this month. I've been taking Eleanor's car for many of the Rochester trips, but that added only a couple of thousand at most. And while I miss being in these places, I do not miss the getting there at all. Even with lower traffic volumes and the final end of backups at tollbooths on the 90, I still find even the 90 minute drives to be exhausting and boring. Air travel's an even less attractive option- we were last on an airplane in 2005- and other mass/intercity transit is useless in these parts. Just leaving the state by any means these days requires interrogations and often quarantines on one or both ends, and the nearby, sweeter, saner confines of Canada have been off limits all year and will continue be for the immediate future.
* Speshul occasions. We'd been to two weddings in the 2010s; one a "Christmas miracle" of bizarre, the other an outdoor summertime backyard gathering of a couple no longer speaking to me who had a band playing "Blurred Lines" at their reception. So, yeah, not our thing. This year, less so. Not that people weren't getting married; several friends, or kids of friends, did. They were just doing it responsibly in small gatherings with few in attendance. Most will have more public redos someday; I doubt we'll be at those, either. Our birthdays, anniversary and the big year-end food orgies? Just us, just here. No regrets.
* Sitting back, Relaxing, and Enjoying The Show And The Expensive Popcorn. Last year, the "big" present for the kids was getting them the Regal Cinema monthly All You Can Binge plan; you had to make a year's commitment, but once you did, Emily could see everything herself for no additional cost and bring guests for a reduced price, as many of them and as many times as she wanted. That lasted all of three months before they shut it down; it briefly came back for a month's charge on the credit card in the summertime, but they finally closed their cinemas nationwide and ended the program once realizing they basically had nothing to show. We were never regular enough cinemagoers for such a program; best as I can recall, the last film we saw on the big screen was Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) back in mid-February. Now studios are experimenting with premiering their blockbusters on streaming services at the same time they "open" in a limited number of live venues. Cinema chains tried their usual threats of boycotts, but since Warner is doing it with Wonder Woman tomorrow, I think those bullets are gonna bounce right off.
* Indoor Dining, other than These Indoors. Not entirely eliminated; in a few summer and early fall months, I scratched culinary urges for morning pancakes maybe twice, and did see two musical acts performing live, one on a patio and one on a strictly social-distanced bar balcony. On every occasion, I was by myself, stayed the requisite distance from other patrons, and kept my mask on except when the hangar was actually open to let the airplane in. My willingness to make this "sacrifice" for the sake of safety and spread-limiting makes me all the angrier when it seems that Talking Point Tuesday comes along and MAGAheads start their unison cry about the renewed indoor dining limits "killing small business." My rant about that from the other day:
It's the new talking point from the anti-maskers and the "Dictator DiBlasio" crowd. Why, they cry, when you can go to Walmart and "those stores" with more people but can't sit down in an indoor socially distanced restaurant?
Let me count the ways.
"Those stores" don't encourage you to stick around their premises and drink alcohol, their highest-margin product, to make you less aware of your surroundings and hygiene.
"Those stores" don't involve you necessarily taking your mask off repeatedly to consume their product (remember when "those stores" had demo stands and sitdown counters inside? They don't anymore).
"Those stores" are based on the same model that successful restaurants have adapted to over the past year-TAKEOUT. We order more restaurant food now than we ever did before; we just eat it in the warmth and safety of our own home.
"Those stores" have also had to adapt- to Amazon and Instacart and other pre-COVID changes of How We've Always Done It. The ones with inferior products or customer service didn't make it. Locally, just look: Tops went bankrupt BEFORE COVID. Wegmans never will. It's capitalism. I thought these whiners were all in favor of that.
Know who's really behind the whining? Not the "small business" restaurants, who adapted, and got PPP money to help in adapting. I represented one of them from March through November; profit margins went up- because they had a good history, a unique product and a fiercely loyal customer base AND staff base.
No, the ones who really should be worried are the one-percenter commercial landlords- whose restaurant tenants are waking up and realizing they don't need 3000 square feet of space- a kitchen and takeout counter will do fine. They're gonna have to face lowering rents and subdividing spaces- which will, when this is over, bring new blood into the business and new forms of businesses into the spaces. Or maybe a strip mall or six will sit empty and we won't keep tearing down historic buildings to put more of them up. Womp womp.
I encouraged people to try to change my mind. Nobody did.
----
Now we've got THAT plenty of nuthin' out of the way, here's what to expect over the coming week:
* Sports and music/radio- what we had and what we changed or lost;
* All the other entertainment things we found time for, from movies at home to television to poetry and trivia;
* Improvements, repairs and technology, new or new to us or sameold;
* Our worklives and the beginning of Eleanor's retirement; and
* Health issues before and beyond COVID, and the animals that stayed, came and sadly just went.
That should keep ya.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-25 01:08 am (UTC)We've did two "Christmas" take out specials from good restaurants here in town. One was a disappointment, one was superb. I hope restos are making enough on take out, especially small community ones.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-25 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-25 04:45 pm (UTC)Not sure if pictures will attach in this format, but:
Worse is that my wife’s extended family can’t go out for bad Chinese or Vietnamese food for Christmas.