"Anomaly Detected" reports Google Analytics. It seems Google expected 9 visitors to Wriphe.com on Friday, and I got 38. Can I account for that difference? No. Maybe a whole bunch of people tuned in to read my take on What's New Pussycat? Come to think of it, maybe some 21st-century surveillance AI flagged me for putting the terms "student bodies," "having wonderful crime," and "murderers among us" in the same blog post. If so, whoops, I did it again.

I don't look at the site analytics often, and I would have thought that 38 was a huge aberration. (According to my phone, I literally only ever communicate with about a dozen people, and that includes my dogs' vet and "friend" Keith who said he was going to buy us tickets for today's Dolphins vs Falcons game in Atlanta then didn't and threw a party without inviting me instead. Not that I'm bitter. At least now I don't have to spend time and money on the Dolphins. So thanks, Keith! What a pal!) But looking at the year-to-date snapshots, 38 appears not quite so deviant. It looks very much like I commonly have over 20 visitors a day in 2025. I'm sure I have no idea who most of you are or why you would be interested in any of my pretentious whining about football or my so-called "friends," but you're welcome here

In fact, I had 345 visitors on August 17. I would assume that was the leading edge of a Denial of Service attack, although the day before I did post about my family's Scrabble history, so maybe that showed up in some Google News feeds, and I caught some stray boardgame fan lookie loos by accident. To those people I offer my sincerest apology (13 points).

Huh. Now that I really walk though the dashboard, I find I am getting a surprising amount of traffic (14% of all site hits) from China. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know anyone in China, so that does seem a bit weird. I don't think that I post a bunch about anything Chinese, but a quick search does reveal 32 posts matching the word "China." There are not quite 3000 posts in the history of this site, so that's a healthy 1%. Disproportionate to the number of hits, sure, but also more than I would have expected. In any case, ni hao to my China people!

The real question is whether any of these analytics serve any purpose. I think the answer is no, at least in regards to Wriphe.com. As you probably know if you're reading this, I don't tailor my blog posts to anyone's interests but my own, which is probably why Google thought I should have only 9 visitors. Seems to me that's still 9 more visitors than I deserve. More often than not, I wonder why I bother posting anything at all, and it's rewarding to know that at least 9 of you are paying attention. Or at least clicking through to see if I'm a murderer. Even if you're all just web crawling spiders, thanks for dropping by.

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91/2523. Dulcy (1940)
Your enjoyment of this comedy of errors will be directly proportional to how much you enjoy farcical stage comedies of manners. It's well put together and the actors seem to be having a good time, but the shenanigans felt too artificial for my tastes.

92/2524. Student Bodies (1981)
This loving parody of slasher films is exactly the style of comedy that would make Anna Faris a star two decades later. So I guess the reason it isn't wider known is the limited budget. I got a few chuckles out of it.

93/2525. Having Wonderful Crime (1945)
I couldn't escape the feeling that this film was trying a little too hard to recreate The Thin Man, placing undue emphasis on the detectives instead of the many crimes that seem to pass through their wake. (I'm still not sure the central whodunnit makes any sense.) It's not bad, exactly, so much as it never feels like the chemistry between the leads is quite right. (Miscast? I'd say yes.)

94/2526. Murderers Among Us (1946)
It's a dark story of Berliners in the days immediately after the close of the second World War coming to terms with their recent past, specifically a protagonist who feels compelled to kill his former senior officer he feels has gotten away with war crimes against civilians. Sure, war is hell, but so is its aftermath.

95/2527. What's New Pussycat (1965)
Nope, I couldn't do it. I've tried three times to watch this movie, and I just can't push through it. The acting is too broad; the characters, too unpalatable; the script, too silly. Peter Sellers is always terrible when given too much leeway, and I never care for Woody Allen's nebbish neurotic. Sorry, Paula Prentiss, you deserved to be in a better film. Blech.

More to come.

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I thought the Jeep was doing well. After its latest bottle of stop leak, I had finally stopped smelling burning oil whenever I took it for a spin. Turns out that was because it had run out of oil to burn. Oops. In hindsight, that does explain the stain on the garage floor.

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I had hoped to wake up yesterday to find Stephen Ross had fired the head coach of his Miami Dolphins today. Ross likes to fire coaches on Mondays.

Ross bought majority ownership in the Dolphins in 2009, and even he doesn't like his own choices to lead the team. He fired Tony Sparano with three games remaining in the season (after a 26-10 loss to the Eagles) on December 12, 2011. He fired Joe Philbin with twelve games remaining on the season (after a 27-14 loss to the Jets) on Monday, October 5, 2015. He fired Adam Gase the day after the season ended (with a 42-17 loss to Buffalo) on Monday, December 31, 2018. He fired Brian Flores the day after the season ended (with a 33-24 win over New England) on Monday, January 10, 2022.

Side note: Sparano's mid-season replacement was Todd Bowles, who has gone on to have some success with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Philbin's mid-season replacement was Dan Campbell, who has gone on to have some success the Detroit Lions. I have to wonder who on the current staff, given a chance to be interim head coach, would go on to win elsewhere once they finally get out of Miami?

Side side note: I still think current head coach Mike McDaniel will make someone else a great offensive coordinator, and I wish him well in his future endeavors. He's just amply demonstrated that his skills are not a good fit for a head coach position, especially with the personnel he's been given in Miami.

Back to the matter at hand, the Dolphins disappointed me again. Despite being beaten Sunday 31-6 by Browns, who had managed only one win and never more than 17 points in previous games, the now 1-6 Dolphins did not announce a coach firing today. In fact, the first line of today's ESPN article reads "Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa will remain the team's starter, coach Mike McDaniel confirmed Monday, despite the worst statistical two-game stretch of his career." This despite the fact that the Dolphins are currently projected to have the second overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. Sadly, that's the point.

You may have noticed that the only coach Ross has fired after a win was Brian Flores. That was no accident. After Flores was fired, he accused Ross of trying to bribe him to lose games, an accusation the NFL upheld (among other proven charges including that Ross had tried to tamper with other teams to steal their quarterbacks and coaches). As punishment the Dolphins were forced to forfeit draft picks in 2023 and 2024.

So Ross has learned his lesson and will now just leave a bad coach in place to secure the pick. Too bad for us fans. If history is any guide, Ross will ruin that, too.

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In the 23 years I've had season tickets, today's football game was a truly unique experience. And I don't mean because #5 Ole Miss scored touchdowns on their first five possessions and #9 Georgia only won because they scored on every possession until they knelt on the ball to run out the clock at the end of a 43-35 game. (What happened to defense?!?) No, I mean it was unique because we didn't make it to the stadium to watch it.

We tried. Mom and I left the house on schedule (rare for us) at 11:30 with the intention of making it to Athens two hours before the 3:30 kickoff. After almost 40 minutes of travel, on I-285 just past the exit for I-75, traffic stopped. Despite Google continuing to insist that we'd be out of the traffic jam in just "15 minutes," the next 4 miles took 2 hours. Eventually we learned that the source of the trouble was that somehow a box truck had overturned on a straight road and blocked three of four lanes of traffic not more than a half mile before the next exit, Jonesboro Road.

By the time we were finally past the accident, I calculated that even if everything went perfectly for the rest of the route to Athens, there was no way we could arrive, park, and make out way to our seats in Sanford Stadium until very near the end of the first quarter. So we made the decision to cut our losses and turn the car around and watch the whole game at home on TV instead. Somehow, it took almost 40 minutes to get home.

I was disappointed. Mom was disappointed. We were looking forward to the big game environment, where someone hatched a hairbrained plan to "stripe" the stadium in black, white, and red, requiring me to wear white instead of my typical red to a home game for the first time. That's probably why there was an accident. I didn't wear red and it broke the universe. Sorry, universe. (And if you saw the game on TV, you may have noticed the white end zones, but deciding to put the black stripe on the sunny side of an afternoon game? Are you trying to kill those people? Good on them for refusing the assignment.)

Sure, you can't always get what you want, but if you try, you might get what you need, so we made the best of a bad situation with some soft pretzels, Mexican Coke, and Culver's custard (Mom's idea for cushioning the blow) as we watched the Dawgs scratch out a win from our sofa with poodles and a havanese. That's my kind of unique.

(I took a picture of us in in our "Stripe the Stadium" whites in front of the TV showing Sanford Stadium pregame, but Mom looks better in this one in our back yard, so it's the one you get.)

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"I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn’t know that cats could grin."

"They all can," said the Duchess; "and most of 'em do."

—excerpted from Alice, Kpop Demon Hunter, 1865

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86/2518. Hi, Nellie! (1934)
This movie has a weird structure. It's mostly a light comedy, with a haughty newspaper editor supposedly being taught a lesson by being busted down to the lonely hearts desk. There's less misogyny on display than you might expect (unusual for the era), and there's also a big story to break. I enjoyed it.

87/2519. Blondes at Work (1938)
Fourth (of nine) Torchy Blane movies. Hard-nosed newspaper reporter Torchy breaks a lot of rules (and laws) in this one as she races her detective fiance to break the story of a dead department store magnate. Enjoyable as all the ones that came before it (in no small part because of Torchy's mischievous irresponsibility in determined pursuit of a headline).

88/2520. The 400 Blows (1959)
This French film is much lauded, and I get it. It's incredibly modern in its sympathetic presentation of a much disturbed adolescent who is treated very poorly by the self-absorbed adults in his life. I wish I'd seen it at 14.

89/2521. Torchy Gets Her Man (1938)
Sixth (of nine) Torchy Blane movies. (I skipped 5 because Torchy isn't played by Glenda Farrell in that one.) Here the dramatic tension comes from the audience knowing more than Torchy or her fiance about the counterfeit ring they're chasing. Plus there's a police dog that only answers to German commands. Who doesn't love dogs?

90/2522. Torchy Blane in Chinatown (1939)
Seventh (of nine) Torchy Blane movies. New York's Chinatown doesn't have as much to do with the story as the title would suggest. Instead, Torchy (and her fiance) are on the hunt for a Chinese gang that implies supernatural force to extort money from a family of art collectors in possession of ancient Chinese family jewels. It's all a bit far-fetched, and the mystery is incredibly easy to crack. Still fun.

And since we've already covered three Torchy Blane movies, let's just skip ahead a bit and get to

96/2528. Torchy Blane Runs for Mayor (1939)
Eighth (of nine) Torchy Blane movies, and the last one to star Glenda Farrell. To tackle a corrupt political racket, Torchy does, indeed, run for mayor of New York on a campaign platform that would probably still work today. Not my favorite, but still worth the watch as Farrell's last Torchy.

More to come.

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I know I probably shouldn't freak out about it, I'm an old man now, but I'm growing increasingly absent-minded. It is becoming increasingly common for me to walk into a room and completely forget why I did that. I am well aware that this is not a unique-to-me problem. It even has a cute name: The Doorway Effect (which really should be the name of a romcom paring a star-crossed Fuller Brush Man and Avon Lady).

The popular theory is that memory storage is tied to the mental picture of your surroundings, and the change of environment cleans the slate for new memory. Studies seem to indicate that the natural aging process does not correlate to an increase in incidence, so what gives? Why am I experiencing it more often now?

Of course, it could be a perception bias. At the very least, I might be paying more attention for when it happens. If A) I know I'm getting older, and B) I believe older people have more memory problems, then C) I believe I have more memory problems. We're all trapped in a hell of our own making, but I don't think that my memory will get better if I just shrug off why I'm standing in the den holding a toilet plunger.

Science suggests the most common detriments to memory function are drugs, sleep, diet/exercise, and stress. Yeah, I could sleep more and eat better, but what am I supposed to do about stress? The sky falls a little more each day, and the only viable solution appears to be to drink more. That might not help much, as A) alcohol is a drug, and B) the most famous off-label use of alcohol is as an anti-memory aid. It's a feature, not a bug!

I'll have to continue paying attention to this memory situation and see how it goes. I could start recording notes to myself on my phone before I change rooms. Or maybe I should just stop leaving my den altogether. In any event, I've got to figure out where this plunger goes.

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