3 min read

Friday, November 14, 2025

You’d think it would be easy to come up with something to say here every week. There’s no word count minimum (or maximum), no required topic, all I have to say is something like ”Good morning and welcome back to Wolmania”. Yet I feel some self-imposed pressure to mix it up, keep things interesting, be creative, etc. I guess this must be what it’s like to be in charge of a long-running yet mediocre sitcom. Except those people get paid for their mediocre output.

Anyway, I’m doing fine, thanks. Welcome back to Wolmania.

I don’t really feel like writing a whole big description here so I’ll just say that this article was very enjoyable:

It was 4:30 p.m., just three hours before the curtain would rise on a revival of Puccini’s “La Bohème” at the Metropolitan Opera last week. For Rex Marquez — a tie-dye bucket hat pulled over his head, a red shopping cart that once belonged to his grandmother at his side — the grocery store’s lack of croissants was a bit of a crisis.
Marquez is a member of the small-props department of the Met. Before every performance of “La Bohème” — the company’s most frequently presented opera, sung over 1,400 times and counting — he sets out through the underground tunnels of Lincoln Center, emerges onto West 62nd Street and pushes his way through crowded sidewalks for a shopping expedition that will take him to four stops in about 90 minutes.

I appreciate his excellent taste in fried chicken.

Item 2: a list

Components of the Human Eye, Ranked:

  1. Iris
  2. Retina
  3. Cornea
  4. Lens
  5. Optic Nerve
  6. Macula

Item 3: a media recommendation

BBC Archive, 1978: The Ancient Sport of Road Bowling

Item 4: word of the week

Overweening

How much do you have to boast to be overweening? Like, is it enough to tell you I’m great? Or do I have to compare myself, objectively a nobody of middling accomplishments, favorably to someone who’s generally considered to be great? I just want to understand this before I start strutting around. If I’m going to ween at all, I want to make sure I get my money’s worth.

Item 5: an image

A squirrel monkey, Able, is being ready for placement into a capsule for a preflight test of Jupiter, AM-18 mission. AM-18 was launched on May 28, 1959 and also carried a rhesus monkey, Baker, into suborbit. Photo credit: NASA
On May 28, 1959, a Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile provided by a U.S. Army team in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, launched a nose cone carrying Baker, A South American squirrel monkey and Able, An American-born rhesus monkey. This photograph shows Able after recovery of the nose cone of the Jupiter rocket by U.S.S. Kiowa. Photo credit: NASA
Monkey Baker, payload of Jupiter (AM-18), poses on a model of the Jupiter vehicle, May 29, 1959. Photo credit: NASA

See ya!

Thanks for reading. Come back next week to see how I manage to turn writer’s block into stultifying metacommentary.

Published by:

Jacob Wolman

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