Notes From All Over -- Part 1 -- Procrastinating On A Saturday Morning -- September 25, 2021

First things first: new hot spot in hometown -- Ft Worth, TX -- yes, this is the stockyards

• this is beyond amazing;
• Hotel Drover: newest hotel in the Stockyards
• Mule Alley: a public/private partnership with the City of Fort Worth and Tarrant County
• for the politically obsessed: 
• Houston is blue
• Dallas is purple, leaning blue
• Ft Worth: red, getting so red, we may start seeing heat signatures; link here;
• is redder than red, madder? asking for a friend; link here. But, no.
  

Covid-19: first western country to publicly announce it's time to move on -- NORWAY

• Norway to end coronavirus-related restrictions today, Saturday, September 25, 2021; link here;
• Norway: "we need to learn to live with the virus"; link here;
  
• looks like US college football fans already have
  
• some will push back; tell me it was Sweden, but there's a slightly different nuance going on here;
• direct to Reuters;

Dividends: announced earlier in the week, didn't see them until today:

• Lockheed Martin: raises dividend about 8%; says a lot about the impact of leaving Afghanistan;
• McDonald's: raise dividend about 7%; press release; says a lot about the impact of Covid-19;

UK: after one day of wind, it's back to ...  no wind. Trouble in paradise. 

Could be US-Costco after four years of "green" agenda: link here.

India: peak demand / peak supply -- nope!

• oil exploration acreage and production in India's northeast will be doubled b 2025;
• state-owned refinery capacity will be expanded
  

India: peak demand / peak supply -- nope! This is quite interesting. Years ago I suggested the big story would not be China but India ... maybe ...

• India state refiners to buy more light crude to boost gasoline output;
• Indian refiners are gearing up to alter their crude oil import mix in favor of lighter grades that yield more gasoline to meet a surge in demand for motor fuel
• will buy more crude oil from the US, Africa; less from the Middle East
• link here, or go direct to Reuters;

Super-cycle:

• they talk about Apple's super-cycle when it comes to the release of their new iPhones;
• I'm beginning to "feel" a super-cycle for light, low sulfur crude oil

Hulu: outstanding, again as usual

• Amazon fire stick: amazing
• AI suggestion: NBC, NBCS, and NBCGolf have a nasty habit of moving live event from network to network. I was enjoying the Ryder Cup on NBCGolf, when at the top of the hour, NBCGolf switched to the LPGA, and I had to switch to NBC to find the Ryder Cup again. Without question, AI should be able to automatically make the change for me. Google knows what I'm doing and can target ads to me; certainly that same AI can keep tracking of shows I'm watching and move accordingly.
• now it appears I'm back on NBCGolf; not sure what's going on but at least I'm able to watch the Ryder Cup.
• I said yesterday: I hate the format. Maybe not; I'm getting used to it. A lot of interesting team strategy. Three "formats." Two versions of team playing Friday and Saturday; every man for himself on Sunday.
• twelve players on each team; everyone recognizes every US player; my hunch, only diehard golf fans recognize more than for of the non-US players on the European team.
• and, do we need three teams going forward? US, European, Asian. I guess we prefer even numbers: we could add a fourth, the BLM team.
  

Ryder Cup:

• it's a three-day competition
• it will require the full three days, but the US is so overwhelming that they will come close to putting this tournament away in two days
• [I may have spoken too soon; mid-morning, it looks like the Europeans could turn this thing around; at the close of Friday, it was 6 -2 (USA in the lead); now, by noon, it's possible it could move to 7 - 5 (USA barely in the lead)
  

TCM: Mankiewicz keeps making it better and better. Last night, guest John Mellencamp shared stories about Marlon Brando and director Sidney Lumet. I had not seen Mellencamp in a long, long time. I was surprised to learn that Mellancamp calls Bloomington, Indiana, home. I would have thought Hollywood. Wow, that tells you how little I know about the industry. LOL. Link here.

Mellencamp has several homes in his real estate portfolio, primarily around Bloomington, Indiana, including an 8,000-square-foot mansion and several buildings on 35 acres of wooded land on the shore of Lake Monroe. The singer also has a recording studio just outside of Nashville, Indiana, tucked away from the bustle of the city, as well as an oceanfront residence on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, that he’s owned since 1994.

Last night: the TCM prime time feature was based on a Tennessee Williams play. 

“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick[ly] you hardly catch it going?”― Tennessee Williams..... as I was getting ready to write our college granddaughter a note, I spied that on social media ...

A musical interlude: Tele Novella, Austin, TX, 2013 -- a Halloween getaway

Trouble in Paradise, Tele Novella

Poker: I can't recall if I've mentioned this on the blog before but my son-in-law made more money at the blackjack table in Las Vegas in one night than I earned in my full first year with the US Air Force. Both were decades ago. I think he lived on the edge of being dis-invited to the Las Vegas casinos but I don't know the full story. There's probably some hyperbole there. I do know that he abruptly quit going to Las Vegas; no explanation. But it's not hard to connect the dots.

I don't know how much his daughters know about that; that was all well before he was married and had children. 

Hold that thought. 

Last night his middle daughter -- the soccer player -- said her dad was playing poker with the other dads of daughters on her soccer team (Texas - poker - soccer dads, one gets the picture). Olivia said her dad needs to let the other dads win once in awhile. LOL.

One hour, link here. A great movie if one likes that genre -- a bit wacky but beautiful cinematography; vibrant greens.

l'Amelie, Soundtrack