In our house, we have embraced streaming video. It’s convenient and mostly reliable.

So, as part of our downsizing, I took a lazy Saturday to sort our DVD collection into three piles:

• Yes (keep)
• No (discard)
• Maybe

I thought, with so much content available via streaming, I would be able to discard a good number of those DVD titles. This shows my naiveté, I expect. I was surprised at how many of our favorite and precious movies and shows are not easily accessed via the streaming services.

We live in the future, where you can watch a movie from a small plate of glass in your hand, but the future is not evenly streamed.

As I pondered whether or not to keep a title, I used the JustWatch site/app. Enter a title and JustWatch tells me which services offer the title for subscription, rent, or purchase. ¹

For example

Mrs. Dalloway and Topsy-Turvy are two movies that we like trotting out every few years to enjoy the stories’ now-familiar contours and textures.

Mrs. Dalloway is viewable only on odd platforms like Hoopla ², Tubi, PlutoTV, and Filmrise, or on Amazon Prime Video via its IMDb TV channel (ad-supported, which for me is a hard no).

Topsy-Turvy cannot be streamed at all, on any platform.

And there other favorites from our – ahem – curated collection that are not easily available online:

• The BBC’s 1967 series The Forsyte Saga, which is cozy wintertime viewing, at least up till Old Jolyon’s death. Only the 2002 BCC update is available on BritBox.
• 1978’s The Norman Conquests plays with Tom Conti. Available on Amazon via a subscription to something called BroadwayHD. I could sign up for the free 7-day trial, but, no.
• John Cleese and Connie Booth’s 1975 comic and touching short film Romance with a Double Bass. The DVD is long out of print.
• The charming Canadian TV series Slings & Arrows is available via Acorn TV, a service available via our public library. That’s OK, but there is a bit of overhead involved to log in to Acorn TV. Slipping the DVD into the drive is more convenient in this case.
• BritBox does not even carry the classic Leonard Rossiter series “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin,” though there are fugitive episodes on YouTube. I have a Region 2 DVD of the series that I ripped to my Mac long ago (the Superdrive will let you play a non-Region 1 DVD up to five times, I think, and then no more).

And so on. I have some DVDs I’m keeping because they are really good, out of print, and available nowhere else. Others I’m keeping because they have special features that cannot be accessed via streaming, like the Criterion Collection’s edition of F for Fake and Richard Linklater’s Waking Life.

It’s not a large list of DVD titles – about 25 or so – but still, I was surprised that they aren’t ALL online in a more easily accessible way. Their absence from the streaming services means I will be holding them close for some time yet.

The Maybe pile

The Maybe pile is for the 20 or so DVDs I’ve either never seen and want to see at least once, or they have some interviews or behind-the-scenes feature I’m curious about, or I want just one more look before making a final decision.

Some of those DVDs are the very arty or obscure foreign movies I picked up for cheap when the late lamented Visart Video chain went out of business over a decade ago. I always think I have a more refined taste for the esoteric than I really do.

Still, before I decide whether to keep or discard, I’d like to see Chekhovian Motifs and Decasia: The State of Decay. But right alongside those worthies I also want to see the dance numbers from Follow the Fleet and The Barkleys of Broadway ³, plus the featurettes for Top Hat and Batman: The Movie (Adam West is my Batman).

The future comes with a price tag

I remember one of Ramit Sethi’s rules being to pay as you go rather than subscribe to services you pay for and don’t use. Most streaming movies are rentable for $4 or $5 from the major platforms, and not much more to purchase. So if I have a hankering to see The Dark Knight Rises again (um, doubt it), then I don’t mind paying a few dollars to see it. And so The Dark Knight Rises Blu-Ray goes into the discard pile.

Despite Ramit’s advice, though, I subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and AppleTV ⁴. We also have access to PBS Video, Hoopla, and Acorn TV. The chances of finding a streamable movie from one of those platforms is pretty good. So I’m not worried about meeting our entertainment and distraction needs.

I remember once reading through descriptions of MBTI personality types. For each type, they included a short catchphrase characteristic of that personality. I identify as INTJ, and the catchphrase for that type was “Well…what did you think would happen?”

I shared this with a friend, also an INTJ, and we both marveled at how this expressed our often unspoken reactions when we would hear other people complain or wonder about this or that event happening to them. For us, what happened to them sounded extremely logical based on the starting point, and why couldn’t you have worked that out for yourself beforehand??

Since discovering this catchphrase, I try to notice when I think it and stop myself saying it out loud. There’s such an “I told you so” superiority vibe to it; even if I don’t say it, I’m sure people can feel it.

Now, when it’s appropriate, I will lay out my expectations for something (a movie, a project, a meeting) before the event starts. Because, anyway, who’s to say I’m right? But at least I’ve said out loud what my personal and emotional logic is laying out before me, imaginary though it may be.

I also try to notice when I am starting a sentence with “At least…” and stop it from passing my lips.

I have been listening to the Sherlock Holmes stories read by Stephen Fry.

As one would expect, Fry does a marvelous job of it. He’s a lifelong Sherlockian and his love for the series comes out in some of the personal essays he wrote to accompany each book, and also in his narration.

I’ve long been acquainted with the Holmes stories – I’m sure I read the Adventures and Memoirs volumes in my pre-teen years – but they never quite stuck in my mind and I never progressed much farther. I depended on other media (TV, movies, comics) to fill in the gaps.

The whole realm of Sherlockiana on the other hand – the annotated volumes, the encyclopedias, the books about Sherlock – seemed a bit more fun. And, in fact, I think I absorbed most of what I know about the Sherlock Holmes universe that way.

So it’s interesting to hear the stories as an adult. As a kid, I remember really trudging through the long other story inside A Study in Scarlet and wondering why it was there. I can stand those digressions a little better nowadays.

So far, I’ve heard A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, Adventures, and am about halfway through Memoirs. Here are some stray thoughts I’ve had listening to them:

• The most interesting bits of a Holmes story happen before the plot gets started. The description of Sherlock’s world, his habits, his table-talk, and so on, are what I find most interesting because Sherlock is typically the most interesting character. Example: the first few pages of “The Greek Interpreter” where Watson meets Mycroft and learns more of Sherlock’s family history. They do not contribute to the story’s plot or theme, but they color in more of Sherlock’s universe, and that’s fascinating.
• Which underlines that it’s Sherlock we’re really interested in, not the stories.
• Good lord, but so many of these stories are resolutely undramatic. All tell and no show. This makes the stories feel quite inert despite their sometimes lurid content. “The Engineer’s Thumb,” for example, is a thrilling bit of pulp melodrama as Victor Hatherley finds himself isolated, escapes being killed by a metallic press, and attempts the rescue of a young lady. But we’re not there with him as the action is happening, only being told about it afterward. So I finish the stories feeling rather cool toward them.
• The Ian Richardson version of “The Sign of Four” actually improves on the original story in a few respects, particularly the boat-chasing climax and the capture of Jonathan Small. Doyle painted himself a rich canvas but did not take advantage of some of the details to make the stories a little tighter and more thrilling.
• The stories typically bring one-off characters onto the stage where they recount long monologues and deep background information on the characters’ life histories, Sherlock is involved to a minimal degree, and then – poof – story’s done. I’m thinking here of “The Yellow Face” and “The Copper Beeches”: intriguing setups, but Holmes is a secondary player on those stages. Also, these monologues stop the story’s momentum stone dead.
• Which leads me to wonder whether Doyle really was more interested in telling those stories of thwarted passion and conflict rather than neatly trimmed and tidy mystery stories.
• There are a few stories where we travel along with Holmes the bloodhound as he investigates the case in real-time, as it were: “The Red-Headed League,” “The Speckled Band,” “Silver Blaze,” and “The Resident Patient,” for example. Those are fun. But there aren’t as many of those as I remembered.
• There is the wizardry of Holmes’ deductions, of course, but since the reader is rarely given the clues, the reveal is always a bit of a cheat. The hardest thing about writing a detective story is finding a good clue (the creators of both “Sherlock!” and “Columbo” have said as much). So as I listen to the stories, I listen for the clues that Doyle deploys so Holmes can characterize, say, the owner of a hat (“The Blue Carbuncle”):

…That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.

He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect … He is a man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely improbable that he has gas laid on in his house.

• How did Doyle devise such rich and wonderful names for his characters? Jabez Wilson, Hosmer Angel, Enoch Drebber, Joseph Stangerson, Thaddeus Sholto, Fitzroy Simpson, Hall Pycroft, Neville St. Clair, Jephro Rucastle, and – my favorite – Dr. Grimesby Roylott.
• Doyle’s vocabulary amps up the thrills because they aren’t really there in the stories. Characters feel forebodings of horror, dread, unease, monstrous, hideous, etc. Doyle was really writing some potboiler stuff: the colorful, lurid, melodramatic, and pulpish back stories of the characters or the culprits are tamed and made presentable in the genteel sitting room of 221B Baker Street.

Many years ago, we had a work friend who was a member of a community chorus; they usually performed popular or light programs of songs.

One year, the director really wanted to flex his muscles so they studied, practiced, and performed Carmina Burana, with key soloists and some instrumentalists hired for the performance.

It was challenging for her – different from the normal “pops” style of concert programming and difficult musically, especially such an odd piece that she was not familiar with before. By the end of it, she was enjoying the musical and theatrical challenge of the piece.

We met with her after the concert and asked what the next concert would be.

“It’ll be a concert of Gershwin music. It’ll be good,” she said. She paused, and added, a little wistfully, “But it won’t be Carmina Burana.”

For Orange Crate Art’s pencils tag: Discoveries made in the back of an old filing cabinet. Ten pencils were still in the box.

Loose verse written sitting in an outdoor chair, under an awning of the car repair place, during a warm all-day rain

When did I become my grandfather,

an old man whose only pastime is

sitting in a chair on a sidewalk

watching the weather

looking at people passing by

looking at his thoughts passing by

not distracting himself with a book,

a phone, a game, a podcast,

food, not even coffee (well, apart

from my thermos sitting on the ground beside me)

Sitting waiting on my car to be worked on,

I’m content not feeding my mind with

others’ ideas or imaginations

Just sitting quiet and still

part of the landscape

part of the weather

Liz just finished weeding a section of the front yard; we’ll see if Home Depot has mulch later.

On today’s agenda: I’ll vacuum the house, we’ll get groceries, order a pizza, watch a movie.

I always thought being an adult would give me a ticket to a glamorous life of non-stop excitement and stimulation. But I find much so pleasure in the day-to-day ordinariness of life that I never noticed how my dreams and vision changed.

Not a good or bad thing, just a thing to notice and wonder at.

Liz just came in to tell me today’s Cryptoquote (she does the crypto and Jumble puzzles daily). Something from Mark Twain about how fiction is obliged to be plausible, whereas reality has no such restriction. I’ve used that quote a lot in the last four years.

These are the highlighted Kindle passages sent to me today by Readwise.

How to Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric

The second question threading its way through this book is: how do we go about changing career and making the best possible decisions along the way? Although I offer no blueprint strategy that will work for everyone, there are three steps we ought to take. A starting point is to understand the sources of our confusions and fears about leaving our old jobs behind us and embarking on a new career. The next step is to reject the myth that there is a single, perfect job out there waiting for us to discover it, and instead identify our ‘multiple selves’ – a range of potential careers that might suit the different sides of our character. Finally, we have to turn the standard model of career change on its head: rather than meticulously planning then taking action, we should act first and reflect later, doing experimental projects that test-run our various selves in the real world. Ever thought of treating yourself to a ‘radical sabbatical’? (Location 142)

Greg Waldmann Reviews the Musical Career of Anthony Burgess (couldn’t find a link!)

One my favorite passages from his writings is at the beginning of Little Wilson and Big God, where he sits in New York’s Plaza Hotel in 1985, watching people go about their lives and thinking back on his own. “One goes on writing,” he says, “partly because it is the only available way of earning a living. It is a hard way and highly competitive… But one pushes on because one has to pay bills. There is also a privier reason for pushing on, and that is the hopeless hope that some day that intractable enemy language will yield to the struggle to control it… When I hear a journalist like Malcolm Muggeridge praising God because he has mastered the craft of writing, I feel a powerful nausea. It is not a thing to be said. Mastery never comes, and one serves a lifelong apprenticeship. The writer cannot retire from the battle; he dies fighting.” (Location 184)

Nuggets of Wisdom by Elsie Spittle

CONTINUE TO “MANUFACTURE” a healthy environment and appreciate the results, without hoping for more. Hoping for more gets in the way of appreciating what you have now. (Location 703)

The Arnold Bennett Calendar by Arnold Bennett

In the cultivation of the mind one of the most important factors is precisely the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of a task which one part of you is anxious to achieve and another part of you is anxious to shirk. (Location 963)

The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

Ultimately, if you protect yourself perfectly, you will never grow. All your habits and idiosyncrasies will stay the same. Life becomes stagnant when people protect their stored issues. (Location 889)

Reinvent Yourself by James Altucher

Habits. It’s the 5x5 rule. You are not just the average of the five people around you. You’re the average of the five habits you do, the things you eat, the ideas you have, the content you consume, etc.

Used the new silicone muffin pan Liz bought me for Xmas to make some quiche muffins (although we’re trying out different names – “protein pucks”?). I used my standard spinach mushroom bacon recipe, which made two pans of “puckelets” (no).

The nice bit about the silicon muffin tin – no greasing of the cups needed nor paper cups.

Froze most of them. We have found the best way to reheat them is to let them thaw at room temperature, microwave for 40 seconds, and they taste great.