Mom got a deal on some Day of the Dead hand towels at TJ Maxx, so she decided we'd be decorating in that style for Halloween this year.

This is the door hanger I made for her.

Cultural appropriation at its finest!

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I watch so many Hallmark Mystery movies these days, I should make them their own list. And I will.

148. (1587.) Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: A Game of Cat and Mouse (2019)
157. (1596.) Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: An Inheritance to Die For (2019)
167. (1606.) Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: A Very Foul Play (2019)
Miss Teagardern is the mystery detective I most enjoy hate watching. That nosy librarian has it coming. The worst of it is that her mystery stories tend to be some of the best put together. Grr!

171. (1610.) Mystery 101: Words Can Kill (2019)
177. (1616.) Mystery 101: Dead Talk (2019)
On the other hand, this series about a writing professor specializing in mystery fiction tends to have painfully bad resolutions. Solvable, yes, but the methods the protagonists use to prove their theories violate so many laws themselves. So frustrating.

176. (1615.) Death Al Dente: A Gourmet Detective Mystery (2016)
184. (1623.) Eat, Drink & Be Buried: A Gourmet Detective Mystery (2017)
Probably because the lead detective in this series is actually a police woman, these mysteries often feel a little more procedural than some of the rest of their kin. Comparatively, only the barest lip service is paid to the "gourmet" aspects. Food and the restaurant business are rarely more than set dressing.

180. (1619.) Ruby Herring Mysteries: Her Last Breath (2019)
The first Ruby Herring was boring and badly cast. They fixed both problems in this second installment by focusing on Ruby's family, friends, and love interests and recasting John Wesley Shipp as her father. I look forward to more.

181. (1620.) Deadly Deed: A Fixer Upper Mystery (2018)
Yeah, this is the series with Jewel playing a handywoman who also solves mysteries. And sings. Her beau is Maytag Man Colin Ferguson playing a true crime writer. (So many of these shows feature writers. Apparently mystery writers lead very exciting lives.) I don't know any of their character names, but that's not very important. The strength of these is based on the actors' charisma, and they have plenty.

170. (1609.) Witness to Murder: A Darrow Mystery (2019)
The Darrow and Darrow series is my favorite, mostly because I like the actors. Kimberly Williams has always been a favorite. More, please.

More to come.

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Do you love fantasy? Do you love playing mobile games on your smartphone? Do you love supporting programmers who need to pay expensive veterinarian bills for an aging poodle?

Then have I got something for you!

Cutthroat Canverns, the competitive cooperative multiplayer dungeon crawling card game is now a single player phone app coded by yours truly.

It's available for purchase for $4.99 via Google Play and Apple App Store.

Thanks for your support.

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As I type this, I have exactly 100,000 Xbox GamerScore.

You might think that's a pretty big number. It is.

You might ask what that's good for. Not a damn thing.

You might say no sane person would willfully spend so much time accruing meaningless statistics. That's a fair point.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go check Google Maps to see how many more miles I have to drive before I would have reached the moon. (Only 192,000 more to go!)

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The forecast was 57° and rain. I asked Mom, and she declined to attend. I asked seven more people, and they all had better things to do. I went alone. I should have listened to what they were trying to tell me.

As forecast, the game was very cold, and very wet. So wet, in fact, that the Athletic Department decided not to allow any bands on the field, which made for a very unusual pre-game with no band welcoming the players onto the field and an equally odd Homecoming halftime, where the homecoming court was seen only on the video board in still photographs (taken on a sunnier day).

The football was as bad as the weather. There were 10 punts in the first half alone. (Six of those drives were 3-and-outs.) Georgia's strategy appeared to be "wait until Kentucky makes a mistake." It did work eventually when Kentucky badly shanked a punt and allowed Georgia to score on the following play. Congratulations, Georgia, but don't expect that plan to work in two weeks against Florida.

I was not prepared for the amount of rain. I lasted only slightly longer than Kentucky did. I left in the fourth quarter after Georgia finally shut the door, making a goal line stand to break Kentucky's spirit. I paused on my way back to the car to take one last look back just as Georgia scored their third touchdown. Final score: Kentucky 0, UGA 21.

Like I said, cold and wet.

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Press Briefing by President George Washington, issued on April 8, 1793:

MR. WASHINGTON: Hey, guys. How are you all?

So we're going to talk about French Minister Genet. We're going to announce today that we're going to meet Citizen Genet on May Eighteenth at the Mount Vernon facility in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Now, let's talk about the site selection process because I know you folks will ask some questions about that. How do we go about doing this? First of all, we use a lot of the same criteria that have been used by presidents of the Confederation Congress. There's a long list of the accommodations on site: the ballrooms, bilateral rooms, the number of rooms, the portrait ops, the support lodgings that are there, the proximity to cities and seaports, carriage boarding zones, medical facilities, et cetera.

So we use the same set of criteria that previous administrations have used. We started with a list of about a dozen, just on parchment. And we sent an advance team out to actually visit ten locations in several states. We visited Connecticut, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts. Now, we got that list down to just under ten, and the advance team went out to visit those. And from there, we got down to four finalists that our senior team went out to look at. They looked at — I think it was one in Maryland, two in New Jersey, and then the Pennsylvania State House facility in Philadelphia.

And it became apparent at the end of that process that Mount Vernon was, by far and away — far and away — the best physical facility for this meeting. In fact, I was talking to one of the advance teams when they came back, and I said, "What was it like?" And they said, "George, you're not going to believe this, but it's almost like your father built this facility to host this type of event." If any of you have been there, you know that there's separate buildings with their own rooms, separate and apart from each building, so that one country can have a building, another country can have another, you folks could have your building for the press. And obviously, the common areas are going to be perfect for our needs down there.

Anticipating your questions: How is this not an emoluments violation? Am I going to profit from this? I think I have pretty much made it very clear since I arrived here that I don't profit from being here. I have no interest in profiting from being here. It's one of the reasons that I took no salary as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. Will not be profiting here.

I had considered the possibility of whether or not I could actually do it at no cost, to understand there's difficulties with doing it that way. But we'll also have difficulties, obviously, if I charge market rates. So I'm doing this at cost. As a result, it's actually going to be dramatically cheaper for us to do it at Mount Vernon compared to other final sites that we had.

Now, my guess is, with that official part of the briefing finished, there's going to be some questions about a variety of things that are going on in the world.

Q: Yeah, thank you. So, how is this not just an enormous conflict of interest for you to host the French government at your own plantation?

MR. WASHINGTON: Okay, a couple different things. First off, I'm not making any profit. I think we've already established that. I think some —

Q: There's marketing and branding opportunities.

MR. WASHINGTON: It's a huge — I've heard — you know, I've heard that — I've heard that before. You know, I guess I've been the Chief Executive now for about three or four years, and I always hear: Whenever we go to the District of Columbia, it's a huge branding opportunity; whenever I go sleeping anywhere in New England. And everybody asks the question: Is it not a huge marketing opportunity?

I would simply ask you all to consider the possibility that George Washington's brand is probably strong enough as it is, and I don't need any more help on that. This is not like it's the most recognizable name in the English language and probably around the world right now. So, no, that has nothing to do with it.

That's why — listen, I was skeptical. I was. I was aware of the political, sort of, criticism that I'd come under for doing it at Mount Vernon, which is why I was so surprised when the advance team called back and said that this is the perfect physical location to do this.

So, I get the criticisms. Face it: I'd be criticized regardless of what I chose to do. But, no, there's no issue here on me profiting from this in any way, shape, or form.

Q: You said it's going to be done at cost. Do you have any idea of the cost estimate, how much money you're looking at?

MR. WASHINGTON: Yeah, I don't have the numbers in terms of the cost. I do know that it was — it was — one of the ones I saw was, it was almost half as much here. I don't want to butcher the numbers, but it was thousands of dollars cheaper by doing it at Mount Vernon than it was at another facility. And that was roughly fifty percent savings.

Q: Foreign Ministers have been visiting for decades, so how can you make the argument that this is the best place to hold it? Surely there were other places that this could be held. And you can't make the argument that you are not going to profit because we can't know how much you might profit in the future, right?

MR. WASHINGTON: Yeah. To your first point, again, I think the profit one. Again, I'm not making any money off of this, just like I'm not making any money from working here. And if you think it's going to help my brand, that's great. But I would suggest that I probably don't need much help promoting my brand, so we'll put the profit one aside and deal with a perfect place.

Q: I understand that you're trying to put it in a place that you think is the best.

MR. WASHINGTON: Yeah.

Q: And maybe save the taxpayers some money, which is important for all of us. But sometimes you — because of the appearance of impropriety, you don't make that call. Can you at least understand and acknowledge that just the appearance of impropriety makes this wince-inducing and maybe this is something that you want to reconsider?

MR. WASHINGTON: Yeah. I know that. Listen, I — I know the environment we live in. You all know the environment that we live in. And I know exactly that I'm going to get these questions and exactly get that reaction from a lot of people.

And I'm simply saying, "Okay, that's fine. I'm willing to take that." The same way I take it when I go to Valley Forge. The same when I go play at Washington, D.C. I got over that a long time ago. I absolutely believe this is the best place to have it. We're going to have it there. And there's going to be folks who will never get over the fact that it's a Washington property. I get that. But we're still going to go there.

Q: Aside from what your advance team did to look for the perfect place, what role did you play in selecting Mount Vernon, including getting it on the initial list of ten places in the first place?

MR. WASHINGTON: Yeah. I think we — that's a fair question. We sat around one night. We were back in the dining room and I was going over it with a couple of our advance team. We had the list, and I go, "What about Mount Vernon?" And everyone was like, "That's not the craziest idea. It makes perfect sense."

Q: About the Mount Vernon property: Why has no other Foreign Minister meeting ever been held there before?

MR. WASHINGTON: Because they didn't go look at it. So —

I don't know, why did they have it at Federal Hall? I mean, seriously. I mean, for those of you who were there, I'm a little bit familiar with it; I've talked with the folks up at Federal Hall because I was up there recently and asked. I said, "Didn't you guys go up..." — I think it was Lafayette back then. Seventeen Eighty-Three, something like that. And they said it was a complete disaster. I'm like, "Okay, I wonder how that happened. How did that decision get made?"

Q: Just to show the American people that this is above board, are you going to share documents that show how you arrived at this decision with the Congress?

MR. WASHINGTON: No. But I would imagine we would share dollar figures with you afterwards. I mean, that's — that's ordinary course of business.

By the way, you're going to get this answer a lot, okay? I don't talk about how this place runs on the inside. So, if you ask if we — if you want to see our parchment on how we did this, the answer is: Absolutely not.

Q: There will almost certainly be a House Judiciary Committee hearing about this site selection.

MR. WASHINGTON: You think so?

Q: I really think so. Yeah. Will the administration participate, cooperate, with that?

MR. WASHINGTON: You know, that's a — by the way, that's a fascinating question. I had not thought that — that this would prompt a Judiciary Committee investigation. On one hand, I'm thinking to myself, "They don't have time to do it because they're too busy doing the two-party system." Right. And then I think to myself, "No, this is entirely consistent with how they've spent the first twenty-four months in office." Right? Or thirty-six months — however long they've been here. I guess it's been a few years, right?

That, yeah, they'd rather do that than talk about tax policy, than talk about tariffs, than talk about the Whiskey Rebellion; talk about the Jay Treaty. So, that's a fascinating question. I don't know if there will be a Judiciary Committee inquiry into this. My guess is there probably will be. And I look forward to participating in it.

Look, I know we can do this all night. No, I'm not going to take any more. But it's nice — it's nice to see everybody. Thanks again.

END

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Here's your housewarming present, Keith.

Now I have to get to work on a present for Coop's new baby. I wonder what a baby wants on its phone lock screen.

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Most of the movies I've watched lately are reruns, by which I mean movies I've seen before. For example, TCM ran a month of Thursdays of James Bond movies, and I watched all of them. That's nearly two dozen movies I don't need to track here. However, I assure you that the following were indeed new to me.

160. (1599.) Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)
Not counting Zombieland 2 (opening next weekend), I'm now just 2 movies away from seeing everything that Emma Stone has done. Not that I'm stalking her. That would be creepy. No. This is the opposite of that. Not creepy.

(How was the movie? Oh, fine enough, I guess. I didn't buy Matthew McConaughey as the lead love interest, but that's par for the course. I've never been a big McConaughey fan. Oh, the things I do for you, Miss Stone. Not creepy!)

161. (1600.) Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)
I remember the trailers for this from back in the day, especially the stained-glass knight. An offspring of its era — anyone else remember Young Indiana Jones and Young James Bond? — It's a fan-service movie for Sherlock Holmes lovers to show their kids. Not great.

162. (1601.) Shakes the Clown (1991)
Also not great, though mostly because of a lack of focus befitting the settings and characters. There is some genuine funny in this parody of a crime thriller, but not enough to justify sitting through the whole thing.

163. (1602.) A Scanner Darkly (2006)
I always say that there's no point to making an animated movie if you're not going to push the boundaries of "reality," and this film certainly does that. Too long, too much talking, too ambiguous in plot and point. I'm not disappointed that I finally saw it, but I wouldn't watch it again.

164. (1603.) The Happiest Millionaire (1967)
Walt Disney's last movie. The old man must have been slipping near the end, because this is terrible. It's like a remake of Mary Poppins with all the magic sucked out and replaced with the drudgery of wedding planning. Blech.

165. (1604.) Night People (1954)
A Cold War spy drama starring Gregory Peck. I found it engaging, but it's no James Bond. "Dry" might be the most generous description.

166. (1605.) Highly Dangerous (1950)
The unusual twist in this spy pulp fiction is that the newly recruited spy is *gasp* a woman. That's about all it has going for it. I'd say avoid if possible.

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The first evidence I saw that things were going to go poorly was at the start of the game when the three guys sitting behind me correctly predicted Georgia's playcalling on the first three downs. And they didn't just call runs and passes. They accurately predicted blocking assignments and routes. If the guys in the stands can do it, it should come as no surprise that the opposing coaches can do it, too. And they did. (Although, how hard is it to predict "run up the middle, run up the middle, pass to the outside" when it is repeated for 4 quarters and two overtimes of play?)

The picture above is of the South Carolina players celebrating at midfield and tearing branches off the famed hedges after their win. Some Georgia fans were up and arms about this, but that's what underdog visiting teams do when they beat #3 ranked Georgia. Or, as in this case, #3 ranked Georgia beat itself.

There was a lot of blame to go around in this 20-17 loss in double overtime, but quarterback Jake Fromm does deserve special mention in no small part because he's typically been so good. He played so badly today — missing open receivers, throwing three interceptions, and fumbling once — I have to wonder what recently went wrong in his life. Dumped by his girlfriend? Dead dog? Payoff? Did no one tell Jake the cautionary tale of Quincy Carter? Bad games against South Carolina can ruin promising careers, Jake.

Oh well. Better luck next week, Dawgs.

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