December 2020
This newsletter is a collection of things I have found in the last month that I enjoyed, found interesting, or simply wanted to share.
You can follow me more closely at my personal website or if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home, you can point them to my real estate website.
Colorado’s 697 Sides
Colorado is a rectangle? Think again.
Accordingly, the state has not just four sides, but a total of 697 sides. So if Colorado is not a rectangle, what is it? Well, not a pentagon, (Greek for 5-sider), hexagon (6-sider) or a heptagon (7-sider), but a — hold on to something — hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon (697-sider).
James Bond Shooting
Casino Royale’s poker scene was as elaborate as a James Bond stunt
The script for Casino Royale worried director Martin Campbell. This was his second reboot of the James Bond franchise, and on the cusp of production, he realized the movie’s centerpiece — a showdown between 007 and the blood-eyed villain Le Chiffre — took place around a quiet poker table. Loosely adapting Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel of the same name, screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis had replaced the author’s original game of baccarat with three big rounds of Texas hold’em. The card game, they believed, made for better drama — it was known more widely, required more skill and delivered higher stakes. But for Campbell, who had never picked up a deck, it looked like a snooze. […] Ultimately, only three hands matter in Casino Royale, and they all feature showdowns between Bond and LeChiffre, providing a three-act structure to the heart of the movie. The first watches Bond muck his cards and intentionally lose to discover LeChiffre’s tell; the second watches LeChiffre dupe Bond and eliminate him from the table with quad jacks; and the third watches Bond return to the tournament to redeem himself with a straight flush. In between, Bond spends a drink break by suffocating two assassins in a stairwell and, at a later intermission, survives a poisoned drink after Vesper (Eva Green), his British accomplice, defibrillates him with his life hanging in the balance.
Yak Bak
Yak Shaving is the last step of a series of steps that occurs when you find something you need to do.
“I want to wax the car today.”
“Oops, the hose is still broken from the winter. I’ll need to buy a new one at Home Depot.”
“But Home Depot is on the other side of the Tappan Zee bridge and getting there without my EZPass is miserable because of the tolls.”
“But, wait! I could borrow my neighbor’s EZPass…”
“Bob won’t lend me his EZPass until I return the mooshi pillow my son borrowed, though.”
“And we haven’t returned it because some of the stuffing fell out and we need to get some yak hair to restuff it.”
And the next thing you know, you’re at the zoo, shaving a yak, all so you can wax your car.
Links
- Scented candles: An unexpected victim of the COVID-19 pandemic
- Vermont publishes all candidates receiving write-in votes (Remarkably uninteresting until you click to reveal “Total Write-ins”.)
- Oh my God, my life is perfect!
- Scientists Find the Secret to the Holes in Swiss Cheese: Hay Dust
- The Vintage Beauty Of Soviet Control Rooms
- Augusta’s Green Jackets: For Winners, Members (and Buyers) Only
- 25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites
- Dud To Stud: How Dutch Plant Breeders Built Our Brussels Sprouts Boom
Sign Off
Do not hesitate to reply to this months email to share links, wisdom, or thoughts.
Thanks for reading. Have a great month,
Clay
How kind of you to make your way down here.
A bit about me: I can be interested in anything, for better or worse. I love photography, travel, golf, and baseball. My latest pursuit is learning the guitar. I write a rad newsletter that I publish monthly.