My father would have turned 103 yesterday. In honor of his birthday falling on the same weekend as the new Spider-Man movie, here’s a photo of the family with me wearing a Spider-Man shirt.
Speaking of the new Spider-Man movie, I watched it again since one of my awesome children wanted to watch it together. The first time I watched it, it was on a standard screen at the local Cinemark. This time, I watched it at an AMC in a Laser at AMC theater. I was surprised by how much more enjoyable the experience was, even if I had to suffer through that damn soul-draining Nicole Kidman intro. The picture quality, richer colors, increased brightness, sharper contrast, larger screen format, and sound were much more noticeable than I expected. I’ve watched other movies on the Laser at AMC format, but this was the first time I was able to compare it using one specific movie. And yes, I know that Cinemark offers laser projection, as well as Cinemark XD.
Other non-spoiler thoughts on the movie:
- I felt they went out of their way to show Tom Holland shirtless. Yes, the dude is ripped, but I felt all his shirtless scenes were a bit excessive.
- Marissa Tomei appeared at the London premiere and looks phenomenal at 61. I will forever have a crush on her.
That’s her on the left. - I heard at least one Bad Bunny song. I’m sure that’s going to unnecessarily infuriate some folks.
Google Chrome used to be my default browser on both my computer and phone, but since it no longer supports uBlock Origin, my experience visiting any news websites has stunk, with pop-up or flash ads appearing and videos playing in the background. It’s been over a decade, but I’ve made the switch back to Firefox, which supports uBlock Origin. However, I hear a lot of great things about the Zen web browser, and that it’s a completely different experience surfing the web, even a bit unconventional, but in a good way.
Here’s a review on Zen: I stopped organizing tabs the old way once Zen showed me what browsers could actually do. – Zen Browser rethinks the entire experience:
Vertical tabs, workspaces, and a layout designed for modern browsing habits
And another: Firefox is better than Chrome, but this third option is miles ahead
There’s a new women’s baseball league. Right now, I think there are only four teams.
It’s well known that President Franklin Roosevelt used a wheelchair, though he and his staff did their darndest to hide it from the public. However, I recently learned that his cousin Teddy was almost confined to a wheelchair. Wouldn’t that have been the strangest coincidence if that had happened, to have two wheelchair bound presidents from the same family?
The story goes, while president, TR was riding in a carriage when a trolley car slammed into it. A Secret Service agent was killed, and Roosevelt was thrown from the carriage, badly bruising his leg. He downplayed the injury to the press and kept up a grueling speaking tour through the Midwest, but the leg wound got infected, and by September 23, in intense pain, he had to have his infected leg lanced and drained in Indianapolis. He spent a short time in a wheelchair afterward, and legend has it, when told he might be confined to it, said, “All right! I can work that way too!”
Here’s another interesting fact. Again, let’s start with something well known: this famous diary entry.
On that day, in his New York City home, TR lost both his 22-year-old wife, Alice Hathaway Lee (from Bright’s disease following childbirth), and his 50-year-old mother, Martha “Mittie” Bulloch Roosevelt (from typhoid fever). He later remarried and had five children.
But here’s the interesting part, his firstborn, Alice, the daughter and only child from his first wife, lived to the age of 96, dying on February 20, 1980. She was the last surviving child of Theodore Roosevelt and the longest-lived child of any United States president. Other fascinating parts of her life:
- As a leading Washington, D.C. socialite for most of her life, she met with sixteen sitting presidents of the United States[a] and is widely thought to be the person who met the most sitting presidents in history.
- Her marriage to House Speaker Nicholas Longworth was tense, and her only child, Paulina, was born from an affair with Idaho Senator William Borah. She privately joked that she should have named her “Deborah,” as in “of Borah.” Sadly, Paulina died from an overdose of sleeping pills. Nixon was a pallbearer at her funeral.
- As with TR’s other children, she wasn’t a fan of FDR.
- Perhaps her best quote regarding her father was, “He wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.“
- Her wedding was at the White House.
This story reminds me of an old Simpsons bit.
- When the bride spoke with law enforcement, the officer wrote, she provided a different first and last name than her legal name and a different birthday than the day on her Wyoming-issued license.
- The groom told police that he and the bride-to-be had gone to an Ace Hardware store earlier that day. In the probable cause statement, a Kaysville police officer wrote that he reviewed security camera footage from that store and saw the woman steal two BIC lighters, then hide them in her shoes.
- “The bride,” he wrote, “did not obtain a marriage license for her own wedding that was to occur the following day after the fire but had lied stating she had.”
