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Alex aka Muscato

@cafemuscato.bsky.social

1K followers 510 following 1.9K posts

Retired, but not particularly retiring; working on aging disgracefully. I split my time between deserts: Palm Springs and Cairo. Always up for champagne, good music, or gossip about the Lunts. Parlor pink; lapsed Presbyterian. He/Him.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 3d

I’m dubious about the wig.

I fear that like her pal Mary Martin, she was reluctant to stay far from her image, and a Maude who’s adorable but not much else seems unlikely to make the show work.

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 3d

She looks… roguish. And oddly like Olivia de Havilland.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 4d

I was a 10-year-old in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1973 who knew from week to week exactly who was playing where.

It wasn’t exactly _useful_ for me to know that Julie London was headlining at the Persian Room, but it certainly broadened my horizons.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 4d

I haven’t seen one, on paper, in years. Just the occasional article. I miss magazines.

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 4d

A surprising amount of my life, obviously.

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 4d

My grandparents took The New Yorker, and I vividly remember leafing through it, fascinated, and thinking “ I don’t understand this now, but someday I mean to,” which actually explains a surprising amount of supplement life.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

Indeed; sadly, at the moment I’m a little short on subservient, put-upon distant relations.

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

…if not pleasant, at least tolerable.

A glass of champagne on a table; in the background, indistinctly, is the usual anonymous setting of an airport lounge.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

The new departure gate, you see, it is less than 100 yards from where we arrived. And equidistant between them is the lounge to which I could easily have limped on arrival.

But now, at least, I’m ensconced in what I hope is my last lounge for the day and have achieved that which makes travel…

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

It was garbled, as they so often are, so I tottered up to the desk to find out what was what. My onward flight, it seems, had switched not only gates, but terminals.

Bother.

Shortly, someone arrived to spirit me back, via an even more Byzantine path, to where we started originally.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

…golf cart, minivan, and shuttle bus from building to building and through the darkest entrails of the airport.

The night flight from Cairo pulled in at 7:00 am, and by 8:30, I was sitting in the lounge for what was putatively my departure terminal.

Then that changed; there was an announcement.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

In transit.

I discovered flying out to Egypt in August that going from LAX to Cairo involves a walk totaling approximately 5 miles.

With my ankle still wonky, I’m therefore using assistance for my return.

At Charles de Gaulle, this involves being moved by variably patient staff by wheelchair…

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

Me, I’m thinking more of the Ceaușescus’ charming last Christmas card.

jondmaas.bsky.social @jondmaas.bsky.social · 5d

Stephen Miller after the midterms.

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

This trip to Egypt has been too short. I fly tonight, returning to the US, or what remains of it, and were it not for the prospect of eventually seeing The Mister, I‘d be tempted just to stay right here.

Downtown Cairo, seen from the roof of the Novotel Hotel on the island, where the café provides splendid views but, alas, no alcohol.

A bridge spans the Nile, with, from left to right, landmarks including the Egyptian Museum, the Ritz-Carton (formerly the Nile Hilton), the Arab League, and the Semiramis Hotel.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

It took me a moment to realize that our hero must be on or near the top of the Great Pyramid; that heap in the background is the second-largest one.

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

Seems awfully quaint now, doesn’t it?

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

As always, love the train posts.

I’ll be an Amtraker next week, but only for a few hours…

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

Let’s just say I know how to throw a first-rate post-concert reception.

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 5d

Every time I see this wonderful picture I feel obliged to note that it happened because the Armstrongs were on a tour sponsored by the US Information Agency, doing the kind of cultural diplomacy that was once an important part of our work overseas.

Alas, no more.

welcometoyourdoom.bsky.social @welcometoyourdoom.bsky.social · 6d

Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet for his wife Lucille.

#vintagephoto #louisarmstrong #egypt #sphinx

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 6d

As happens all too often, this photograph forces one to play the game “What on Earth has Joan [C.] Got on Her Head?”

Also, for that matter, why she’s chosen a cocktail outfit when the other ladies are in daywear.

Do you suppose this was a benefit at which they were celebrity usherettes?

jondmaas.bsky.social @jondmaas.bsky.social · 6d

That time in 1960 when Rita Gam realized she would never survive daring to stand between the Joans, while mob boss Irene Dunne played innocent.

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 6d

I found this when it came out, at the end of the first plague year, a time when Myarvelous Pyarties seemed very far away indeed. It was just what I needed then, and it fills the bill today.

RIP, Dame Patricia, and Godspeed to Fabulon.

(Official) Dame Patricia Routledge - "I Went to a Marvellous Party" by Noël Coward

YouTube video by Noël Coward

youtu.be

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 7d

I’m not sure “The President Jefferson Sunday Luncheon Party March” is truly excellent, but by God it’s an earworm.

On the other hand, I feel as if “Take Care of This House” get less effective the more often you hear it.

[1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 7 misbegotten performances]

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 8d

“The Generals? They were of course supposedly the only hope, but their values were the old values, they lived in an era that had passed…”

Christabel Bielenberg, autumn 1941.

In the end, the generals were no hope then; will they be any more so today?

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Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 9d

Junket made regular (and welcome) appearances as an everyday dessert—“Well,” my mother would say, “it can’t always be Charlotte Russe, you know.”

Alex aka Muscato @cafemuscato.bsky.social · 9d

What with being a masochist and all, I’m rereading Christabel Bielenberg‘s brilliant memoir of her life as an Englishwoman stranded in Berlin before, during, and after the Second War.

Let’s just say that, looking back at the US from my comfortable perch in Cairo, far too much of it seems familiar.

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