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Wilfrid

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Posts posted by Wilfrid

  1. Wednesday afternoon in a packed English pub, exiting to drown in an unexpected rainstorm, traveling home soaked with rain and perspiration in the rush hour... And none of my sacrifice was enough for England to win.

    Post-match expert opinion is that Tuchel was wrong to give Messi thirty minutes to figure out ways through England's defense. That was also the opinion in the pub while it was happening.

    Entertainment: Unanimous booing from everyone present each time Infantino popped up on the screen.

  2. I am going to jump ahead to some smaller volumes after Faustus. I am looking forward to (some of) Les Thibaults, but any way I cut it up it's huge.

    36. Martin du Gard, TheThibaults

    37. Henry Miller, Sexus

    38. Yukio Mishima, Decay of the Angel

    39. Moorcock, Mother London

    40. Moravia, but which one?

    41.   Musset, A Child of the Century

    42.  Philippe, Bubu of Montparnasse

    The Mishima or either of the last two above would be good to move up the list.

     

  3. I had definitely not read Dr Faustus. About halfway through and it's a grind. I was even driven to look at a bio of Mann to try and figure out why he wrote it this way (explicitly boring narrator) and discovered he actually wrote a book about writing it (Story of a Novel). My library had it, so I now know Mann's excuses.

    I guess I pity the translator. In the novel's big scene, the main character apparently expresses himself in archaic German. The translation is agonizing ("I wot not, forsooth"). This is the worst experience in this re-reading so far (and The Magic Mountain is so good).

  4. Happiest memory in recent years, a hotel buffet in Prague. You could go continental, cooked breakfast, or mix it up. And the quality was fabulous.

    I think the hotel was about $50 a night (and I wasn't paying). In fact, when I told my conference hosts I was planning to stay a couple of extra nights at my own expense they told me they'd cover it.

  5. On 6/4/2026 at 11:27 AM, Wilfrid said:

    And I started watching what I thought was a movie featuring my favorite Chinese actress Zhou Dongyu, only to find that it's a very long TV serial (which would be great if there was nothing else to watch). 

    Hm, that was more than a month ago. I just finished watching last night. 40 episodes, and the relationship between the two main characters was unresolved. Maybe they were hoping for season 2.

    But it was fun to watch it on the road. I stayed somewhere cheap in Chicago -- no breakfast buffet and no TV in my room -- so I watched it on my phone. Then I stayed at Vrbo in Cleveland with a vast Roku TV. As the show was on YouTube I was able to watch Zhou Dongyu, probably larger than she is in real life.

  6. Bedroom A/C has been off the last few nights. About 3am on Monday I had to get up and find a comforter, I was so cold.

    Today looks like...normal weather. Not everything is normal, of course; I had to plan a new route to my doctor appointment to avoid the falling-building-exclusion-zone in midtown.

  7. My daughter is a crazed England fan, running to Brit-themed bars for the games in her England jersey. I was surprised at first (she supports the US womens team) but she has dual citizenship and has backed the better horse.

     

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  8. 1. I saw the Tall Ships event too late. Looked great.

    2. Mostly lucky with subway AC but had to jump cars once.

    3. Cheese dog, no defense. Random choice but I squirted mustard, not ketchup.

    Also a beer in Ruby's.

    I checked into MoMA today which was cold as a freezer. Good. Then walked down to Times Square where I thought the Naked Cowboy was better dressed than the poor people in like rabbit suits.

  9. I made it to Coney Island, which gave me around 2 and a half hours of free MTA AC. There was a sea breeze, but it couldn't beat the temperature. Pretty quiet, tomorrow maybe crazy.

    Always hard to imagine eating countless hot dogs at speed, but in this weather tomorrow?

    IMG_2626.jpeg

    IMG_2627.jpeg

  10. Possibly worthy of comment. Here are my observations from yesterday.

    - The heat made my skin feel prickly.

    - I could sense the heat of the pavement through the sturdy soles of my shoes.

    And this really is a first:

    - I walked six minutes from the Met to my library. At some point I went to adjust my glasses and the metal frames were burning hot. (Of course, the parts that touch my face are plastic; I guess another ten degrees and they would have started melting.)

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