"Anthony sitting here looking like he's dressed up as Anthony for Halloween."

The most up-voted comment for this:

I've got 6 TikTok selections today. Let me know which ones you like.

1. Making "breakfast coffee" — from the 1950s — involves egg whites.

2. What meaning can a 3-year-old find in the song "Under the Bridge"?

3. A fly breaking up with a fly.

4. Peter Doocy saying goodbye to Jen Psaki.

5. A lesson in awful restaurant conversation.

5. What are the guys in the office getting their mother for Mother's Day? (There's a clear winner.)

6. A mother remembers.

"I was an older woman and I couldn’t get hired. I always wanted to travel the world, write and take photographs. I thought why not take 10 years and go?"

"If I run out of money and I’m not a famous writer, I’ll come back and be a Starbucks barista or a Walmart greeter." 

Said Heidi Dezell, 57, quoted in "Want to Retire in Portugal? Here’s What to Know, as Americans Move There in Droves. Retirees are drawn by a low cost of living, healthcare, a sunny climate and tax incentives" (Wall Street Journal). 

For some, Portugal’s newfound popularity comes with a cost. “Americans are challenging the loudness scale,” says Susan Korthase, 71, founder of the Americans & Friends in Portugal Facebook group. She moved to Portugal from Milwaukee in 2010 and says she now sees the “Californiacation” of Portugal. “You hear them in restaurants,” she adds. “Americans laugh with an open mouth and they laugh out loud. Other nationalities have a quiet chuckle.”...

We're being updated on trends by a newspaper that can't spell "Californication." They're writing about laughing while not perceiving the contents of the portmanteau. Maybe the Americans who laugh too much for Milwaukeean taste are getting more of the jokes. 

I think every person in this article is female. It ends with the story of Linda Correll, 52, an Ohioan who found a small apartment in Porto where "When it rains heavily, all the water comes into my apartment."

“I don’t know if I have met any men over 50 who came here by themselves,” says Ms. Correll. “You get a lot of couples, but single women are much more common for some reason.... It’s a safe country, and the people are friendly,” she says. “The healthcare, the food, the whole vibe is the reason I’m here. I don’t have any desire to go back to the States to live.”

She says "for some reason," and then she, unwittingly, gives the reason. You're leaving your home country for some very bland comforts and no excitement. But maybe this article will prompt some older male Wall Street Journal readers to quit their job now and retire to Portugal. There are lots of health-and-safety-loving Midwestern ladies there longing — in their leaky apartments — for a man maybe something like you.

ADDED: For those who think the Red Hot Chili Peppers coined the word "Californication," here's the Wikipedia article, "Californication":

25 years ago today: 2 incredibly great albums came out — "Nevermind" (Nirvana) and "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" (The Red Hot Chili Peppers).

My son John puts together a blog post that's so much better than anything I'd be able to say... and I love these albums primarily because he played them and we watched the videos on MTV:

These albums came out a little too early for me to pay attention to them at the time, when I was just 10. But when I started getting into music and playing guitar a few years later, these were two of the very first albums I got, and they both shaped my approach to music.

They're both the kind of album you listen to straight through, over and over, not skipping over any tracks, because each one feels essential, from the hits to the songs you might have forgotten about but are happy to hear when they come on (Nirvana's "Lounge Act," RHCP's "My Lovely Man").

When I made a list of "the 40 greatest grunge songs," I ranked "Lithium," from Nevermind, #1....

Meanwhile — that same day! — the Red Hot Chili Peppers were putting out a 17-song funk masterpiece, Blood Sugar Sex Magik. "Give It Away" captures the essence of the band: gleefully sexual, deceptively simple, rhythmically infectious....

It's hard to imagine a better song-with-video than "Give It Away" — still completely enjoyable after a quarter century...



... the height of cosmic glee hitting the market the same day as that quintessence of dramatic gloom, Nevermind.

"A song like 'Under the Bridge,' really loud, on a loop, is torturous... Maybe some people think our music's annoying. I don't care, but you know...."

The Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith was confronted in a parking lot and pushed to opine on a news report (which you can read here) that the CIA used Red Hot Chili Peppers music — looped and loud — to torment the Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah.

This is my own transcription from the video at the first link. Smith starts out slow and inarticulate:

"I heard that they they they like used like more you know like industr- like hard rock like metal you know like like or just you know that's that's I'm mean that whole thing just..." 

The reporter gets him to talk straight with the question "Do you approve?"

"No! Of course not! Our music's positive, man, it's supposed to make people feel good and that's that's that's it's very upsetting to me. I don't like that at all."

The reporter pushes him to go on the offense against the government, perhaps in a copyright infringement mode, with "You guys should have to sign off on something like that." Smith is merely resigned:

"It's the government."

The reporter tries another angle: "What song could they have possibly used?"

"A song like 'Under the Bridge,' really loud, on a loop, is torturous... Maybe some people think our music's annoying. I don't care, but you know, it's a poor use of..."

Smith stops in the middle of his thought, nods his head about 5 or 6 times, and concludes:

"They shouldn't do that, they shouldn't be doing any of that shit. It's horrible. Ugh. I just ate. I don't wanna like throw up."