FLATULENTLY FLAGRANT FAILURE

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil      India   South Africa

June      9     1093    4732        1185      246         82

July       5       251    3572          535       421       173

             7       993    5504        1312       479       192

           12       380    4118          659       500       108

           15     1001    5760        1261       614       107

           19       412    4606          715       675         85

           22     1205    7128        1293     1120        572

           26       450    4307         556       715        114
Aug      1    1462     6429       1191       765        193
            3       467     4430         514       514        213

            5     1362     6292       1394       849        345

          10       534     4813         593     1013        198
          12     1504     6556       1242       835        130
          16       522     4525         582       961        162
          18     1358     6312        1365    1089        282
          21     1170     6062        1031      953        225
          22       974     5349          823      918        144
          23       430     4247          495      846          72

          24       510     4356          679      854        100

          25     1290     5856        1215    1066        149

          26     1289     6341        1090    1017        194
          27     1143     6057          970    1065        126

Summary:  still terrible.

Yesterday, the major TV news channels were showing the mingling and large crowd on The White House lawn waiting for Donald Trump's RNC final speech.  Maybe 5% were wearing masks.  In two weeks we will learn how many caught this sometimes lethal coronavirus.  But my nap got in the way, and I went to sleep.

An hour and a half later my doorbell range because dinner was being served.  So, after a few minutes, I opened the door to pick it up and lay aside.  Turned on the TV, and of all the poor timing, the Donald's talk had just began.  Half an hour into his mishmash of more lies and exaggerations, what stuck in my mind was:  HOW TALL IS BARON?

To the left father, mother and son Baron on inauguration day,  There is nothing official from authorities about today, but that he is getting to  be as tall as his parents.  Melania is 5'11 and Donald 6'2".  Why the White House would want to be evasive can only have something to do with The Donald's ego.  Here is a photo of 12-year old Barron with them from earlier photos:

However, this source says that Trump is now only just over 6 feet, as he has lost about an inch and a half because of old age.  Same for me, although I think I have gained back 3/8 of an inch through my morning exercise regimen.  So I took a photo of the RNC after Trump's talk.  Baron is on the right:

Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson were 6'4" as the two tallest presidents.  James Madison was the shortest at 5'4".    Joe Biden, 6'0".

You saw Barack Obama playing basketball.  Aside from golf, have you ever seen Donald Trump do anything strenuous.  Turns out he once swilled a dozen Diet Cokes/day and argued exercise may kill you quicker.  He is borderline obese with elevated cholesterol and high blood pressure.  Never listened to his doctors.  See a pattern?  

On a 100-point scale, Obama ranked #2 to Rutherford Hayes as #1, with Trump #26, just ahead of Bill Clinton.  Grover Cleveland held the bottom, a POTUS who was a heavy drinker, smoker and eater, with sleep apnea, and detested exercising.

Some other bits of info:

• John F. Kennedy used sleeping pills and took regular naps.
• William Taft usually downed a 12 oz steak for breakfast, with a lot of trimmings.
• Abraham Lincoln is a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, believed to have lost only of one of 300 matches.  Wait a minute, I thought wrestling was fake?  Maybe in his day, they wrestled for real.

• Ronald Reagan binged on jelly beans to quit smoking.
• Calvin Coolidge subsisted mostly on roast beef, Vermont pickles and corn muffins.  He also slept 13 to 15 hours per day.  He was depressed, mostly because of his son's death.

• George H.W. Bush slept from 2AM to 4am and was not known to take naps.
• Abraham Lincoln was an insomniac
• Dinner for John Quincy Adams was 5 or 6 crackers.  He also walked 6 miles every morning.

• George W. Bush completed the marathon in 3 hours 45 minutes when he was 46.
• Woodrow Wilson played more than 1,000 rounds of golf while in office.  He did serve two terms.

• Theodore Roosevelt earned a brown belt in judo.  Ah, but Vladimir Putin has a black belt and trained with the Russian Olympics judo team.
• James Garfield enjoyed a hot cup of squirrel soup.
• Thomas Jefferson slept sitting upright in bed.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt served hot dogs to King George IV, although this was more Eleanor's idea.
• Bill Clinton regularly stopped by McDonald's during a jog.
• Half of presidents were either overweight or obese, and only one underweight.  Some sources reported Madison was less than a hundred pounds, but others said up to 122 pounds.  Andrew Jackson was 6'1" and weighed 140 lb.  It would be a toss-up to say who was the skinniest president.
• Half used tobacco.

• When George Washington took office, he was sterile, half deaf and with only a single tooth.
• At least eight presidents had malaria because until the early 1900's Washington DC had many swamps.  However, JFK contracted malaria during WWII in the Solomon Islands.

About the RNC, Trump's windbag finale was not putrid enough to attain Flatulantly Flagrant Failure (FFF) status, for that is yet to come.  The Republicans showed off a better fireworks display than the Democrats.  In short, no home run, but at least not a strikeout.

A final political aside, here are the Economist's (they're neutral) projections for the November 3 election, as of today, August 28:

• Chance of winning electoral college
• Joe Biden  89%
• Donald Trump  11%
• Predicted range of electoral college votes (270 for victory)
• Joe Biden  219-425
• Donald Trump  113-319 (so Trump can still win)
• Popular vote today
• Joe Biden  54.8%
• Donald Trump  45.2%
• Key toss-up states:  Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina and Georgia
• If in early results on November 3:
• Trump wins Pennsylvania and Florida, looks bad for Biden
• Biden wins Texas, it's over for Trump

The local Star Advertiser yesterday touted All Together Now  with a local star, 19-year old Aulii Carvalho.  So I went to Rotten Tomatoes reviewers, and saw the they gave it a 75% rating.  Then to Netflix, to learn that it premieres today.  So if you want to be among the first to watch a rising star, tune in.

Also tonight, Cobra Kai, the series, appears on Netflix.  There have been three seasons, with S1 rated at 100% and S2 88%.  This is a follow-up of The Karate Kid films--can you believe that was 34 years ago?--where Ralph Macchio and William Zabka reprise their original roles.  No Mr. Miyagi because Pat Morita passed away 15 years ago.

So, while I was searching for yet another 100% offering, I stumbled into Drunk Parents, rated 0% by reviewers and 15% by the audience.  I thought back and remembered a few years back something called Movie 43, given 5%/24% ratings by Rotten Tomatoes.  Coincidentally, I was planning to see two movies with a Buca di Beppo lunch, and the timing for DP was right.

Here is what I said:

Reviewers used terms such as scatological,  humiliating and turkey.  I also noticed that there were only three people in the entire theater and the film ended up #7 for the weekend, garnering revenues of a measly $5 million.  You've got to wonder if the producers had strong blackmail evidence to force these actors to appear.

What actors?

...Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler, Dennis Quaid, Halle Berry, Richard Gere, Emma Stone, Terrance Howard, Liev Schreiber, Uma Thurman, Jason Sudeikis, Gregg Kinnear, Seth MacFarlane, Naomi Watts Kate Winslet, three real NBA stars...

Frankly, the movie was an experience I have not forgotten.  A year later, Movie 43 (this is the green band trailer) earned three Razzies.  So I thought, let me give Drunk Parents a chance.  I could easily move on to something else if it got to a certain unwatchable state.  Well, it was terrible, and like Movie 43, (this is the red band trailer, meaning X-rated), deserved my triple F, or FFF, score, although I hung on till the end.

Both must have begun by jailing a small group of wacko people in a stuffy room, with as much alcohol and drugs as possible, to produce a script testing the limits of rationality and legality.  They are about as different as possible, for DP is "only" a collection of worst social nightmares possible in a story that has a kind of plot.  M43 was a series of snippets.  Must have stimulated my major dream last night, which was a pale version of both films.

Nothing worth saying about DP except that it stars Alec Baldwin (which reminded me of Trump), Salma Hayek (who overtly overacted) and Jim Gaffigan (as a stable pedophile), with the occasional cameo by people like Treat Williams, Will Ferrel and Colin Quinn, for loopy reasons.  After all that happened, suddenly at the end there was a happy ending.

Shifting to my life, this was a good week for cuisine.  My neighbor John and I went golfing just the day before all municipal golf courses were closed.  Almost walked 18 holes.  Played well enough.  Treated my body to the usual steak/sashimi meal that night, with kimchi:

I also had a luau:

Then one of my favorites:  artichoke, foie gras, blue cheese, endive, radicchio, sea asparagus, jalapeno pesto and mayonnaise.  That brown plate, salami.

About water lilies, only one at a time blooms.  Then, it goes to sleep, and blossoms again when the sun shines on it.  A second one is awaiting its turn:

Have a great weekend:

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