hi! List five things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers <3
1. I've just set up my queue for a few days, as next week HubbyTMC will be going to New York. He's singing with choirs in a concert at Carneige Hall, and I'm over the moon about it.
2. I'm doing laundry in my new laundry machine...WHICH BALANCES ITSELF!!
3. I'm getting healthier than I have been in a long time because of a biologic(al warfare drug against my immune system).
4. I have good books to read as soon as I finish planning my curriculum for next year.
5. As I peruse my general news & education podcasts, I keep finding more inspiration for said curriculum.
Thank you, @potential-fate for the message! I hope you have a blessed day!
HubbyTMC sent me this yesterday. It's good to start your new year with remembering the dead and living for them? Anyway, happy "Tumblr is dead. Long live Tumblr!" reading!
The mainstream narrative has declared Tumblr dead for years. Last week, a leaked memo finally revealed the site’s plans to scale down its op
Tumblr is obsessed with the mafia film “Goncharov.” The problem is it isn’t real.
HubbyTMC sent me a text with this link today.
In case you have used all your free articles, I've copied it below. You're welcome.
The Fake Scorsese Film You Haven’t Seen. Or Have You?
Tumblr is obsessed with the mafia film “Goncharov.” The problem is it isn’t real.
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Credit...Alex Korotchuk
By Madison Malone Kircher
Nov. 22, 2022
Tumblr cinephiles have a new favorite movie this week. It’s decades old, so maybe you’ve already seen it. It is called “Goncharov” and stars Robert DeNiro in the titular role as a Russian hit man and former discothèque owner. It takes place in Naples, Italy. Cybill Shepherd plays his wife, Katya, and rounding out the cast are Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Harvey Keitel.
The 1973 film, billed as “Martin Scorsese presents,” has everything: murder, a love triangle, homoerotic undertones, a striking original score and a dramatic final scene that film buffs have been debating for years.
There’s only one other thing to know about “Goncharov.” It does not exist.
The story of Tumblr’s beloved fake film began with a shoe. Several years ago, a Tumblr user posted a photo of a pair of “knockoff boots” they ordered online that arrived with a strange tag. “The greatest mafia movie ever made,” read the top line. “Martin Scorsese presents GONCHAROV.” “Domenico Proccacci production,” it continued. “A film by Matteo JWHJ0715.” “About the Naples Mafia,” read the final line. (The user’s Tumblr is no longer active and attempts to reach the user were unsuccessful.)
In August 2020, Aveline McEntire, a college student in Missouri, reblogged the image on her personal Tumblr after seeing it on a friend’s page.
Ms. McEntire added an additional image to her reblog, a screenshot of a comment from a third Tumblr user, reading, “this idiot hasn’t seen goncharov.” Ms. McEntire, 20, had not thought much about the post until recently when it suddenly started gaining popularity, with tens of thousands of people beginning to reblog it earlier in November.
As of Monday evening “Goncharov” was the No. 1 trending topic on the platform, with Mr. Scorsese taking the second spot. Pokémon was in third.
Even Tumblr has gotten in on the act. “Goncharov” was ahead of its time “and it’s contribution to cinema is remarkable,” the platform tweeted on Sunday from its official account. “Rarely does a film tell as many diverse-yet-interconnected stories. Hard to imagine so few ppl have seen it.”
On Tumblr, users have created an entire universe to support the idea that “Goncharov” is real. A poster for the film, riddled with bullet holes and crediting Matteo JWHJ0715 as the director of the “greatest mafia movie (n)ever made,” was created by Alex Korotchuk, a 20-year-old-artist in Prague, who said 50 people have placed orders to buy a print version of the poster. Alix Latta, a 25-year-old music teacher in Indiana, composed a theme song — a waltz inspired by the theme from “The Godfather.”
Elena Asofsky, 23, has been making fan art inspired by the imaginary movie, focusing on the alleged subtle sexual tension between Goncharov and Mr. Keitel’s character, Andrey “The Banker” Daddano.Credit...Elena Asofsky
There are Tumblr posts full of lore about the film and vivid details about the plot, including stills and GIFs pulled from other films and TV shows being repurposed as scenes from “Goncharov.”
“It’s essentially a Russian gangster coming to Naples, and it’s a long story about his eventual downfall and betrayal by everyone in his life,” said Erika Paulson, 27. “To quote one of the posts that’s been going around, it’s him coming to Naples to try and escape his life of violence.”
A frequent Tumblr user, Mx. Paulson, who lives in Philadelphia, remembered seeing the “Goncharov” boots years ago and was excited to contribute to the story, posting several pictures of a cat, now known by some on Tumblr as Patchka, with the caption, “anyway i think we all know who the true best character in Goncharov (1973) is.” People have pointed out the cat could be another nod to “The Godfather,” but Mx. Paulson was inspired by street cats spotted on a trip to Rome. “What’s a gangster movie without a cat?”
Lynda Carter got in on it too on her Tumblr. The “Wonder Woman” star posted two black-and-white photos of herself and Henry Winkler captioned, “Me and ‘The Fonz’ at premiere of Goncharov(1973) at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.” The image is actually a photo of the two actors at the 1977 Golden Globe Awards. A representative for the movie reviewing platform Letterboxd said it had removed multiple user reviews of the fake flick.
Elena Asofsky, 23, initially fell for the mythmaking. “I start asking my roommates. I’m like, ‘Hey, have you heard about this ‘Goncharov’ thing? What is this? Can we get in on it?’ And my roommate’s like, ‘I know, it’s fake. It’s all not real.’” Since then, Ms. Asofsky, a substitute teacher and illustrator in Columbus, Ohio, has been making fan art inspired by the imaginary movie.
Mx. Paulson pointed out Tumblr users have a rich history of this very particular brand of creativity, recalling how users several years ago created a similarly real fandom for “Squiddles,” a fictional TV show within the universe of the web comic “Homestuck.” But for some Tumblr users, it can be frustrating to be on the outside of inside jokes when other users refuse to cave and admit the thing they are talking about isn’t real.
That’s not what’s happening with “Goncharov” though, according to Dani Mays, an illustration student in Kansas City, Mo. “When that happens, it feels like they’re laughing at your expense, watching you get increasingly frustrated at the dissonance and taking that frustration as part of the bit, turning you into part of the punchline,” Ms. Mays, 24, wrote in a popular post on Tumblr. “I’m not seeing any of that with Goncharov, at least as far as the more popular users participating in it.”
“The fact that people are so willing to break the joke long enough to tell people what’s going on and then bring people into the fold, so to speak, is nice,” Ms. Mays added in a phone interview with The Times.
How the title “Goncharov” came to be on the boot’s tag in the first place continues to be a mystery. Michael Littrell, a musician from Minneapolis, has a theory. After seeing the boots floating around Tumblr for years, Mr. Littrell, who studied journalism in college, started investigating in October and eventually came across an Italian producer named Domenico Procacci. (The same producer named by the boots.) From there, he connected the dots to a 2008 film called “Gomorrah,” about Italian organized crime.
Mr. Scorsese was not the director, but according to Mr. Littrell, 24, and a years-old story from The Hollywood Reporter, “Gomorrah” had a presentation credit from the famed director when it arrived in the United States.
A poster Mr. Littrell found in his search reads “Martin Scorsese Presents” at the top and is stylized much the same as the boots’ label, with Mr. Scorsese’s name in red and the title of the film in capitalized black letters. The director of “Gomorrah” is Matteo Garrone. Who shares a first name with Matteo JWHJ0715.
A tagline proclaims “Gomorrah” to be “BASED ON THE BEST SELLING EXPOSÉ BY ROBERTO SAVIANO ABOUT THE NAPLES MAFIA.” Details that bear a striking similarity to the boots that started this whole saga.
“I really want Scorsese to see this and maybe make Goncharov,” reads a reply on Mr. Littrell’s Tumblr post documenting his findings.
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I just sent this long missive as an email to coworkers, friends, and family. A few of you have asked me to keep you updated, so I’m editing it for privacy and posting it here.I hope to get back to the Sims this weekend. Today and tomorrow I’m working extra hours to make up for what I missed earlier in the week. The joys of not earning sick leave! If you’re only here for the Round Robin Legacy Updates, just stopping reading here, and know that I’ll get them up as soon as I can. Perhaps next week, sometime.
Happy Feast of Our Lady of Loreto!
My surgery of the 8th was deferred. Not canceled, per se, just...didn't happen.
I arrived at the hospital at six in the morning, checked in, gave a urine sample, got into my fancy gown and socks, got my IVs, gave a blood sample which was sent to the lab, had a pregnancy test (negative, which is a heartbreak story for another time), had a dose of pre-op versed, and then waited.
With a parathyroidectomy, the surgeon removes the parathyroid that's already been determined to be abnormal by previous tests. (Mine's the lower right, according to my endocrinologist.) After removing one gland, the surgeon tests the parathyroid hormone levels in the body. If the other parathyroids are normal, the levels will almost instantly shoot into the normal range. If not, the surgeon will find and test the other glands and remove another abnormal one. That's why it's an exploratory surgery. Each gland is somewhere between size of a grain of rice and a pencil eraser, depending on how engorged it is, and each is mashed in with all the other neck tissues and glands (and spine and throat and...). So, not a surgery for fun and games, either.
At nine, my surgeon came into the room. All the levels that have been too high since April were within the normal range. Still at the upper range, but normal nonetheless. My surgeon couldn't operate because he had no measure of when to stop removing glands. He checked with my endocrinologist, and she agrees. For now, we will check my levels every two weeks and see what happens.
I'm not better. With hyperparathyroidism and the hypercalcemia it has caused, it isn't a matter of "normal levels=normal ElfPuddle". It isn't the height of the levels that determines health, as much as a matter of how long they've been higher than they should be. But if they aren't higher than the normal range at the time of surgery, we've no measure for removing them.
More than one person has said that we should be grateful for the deferment. Who knows but that something could have gone horribly wrong, and skipping surgery saved my life. I believe that. We say we walk by Faith, and not by Sight. I have no idea why this is all happening the way it is, but I know I don't have to have the ideas. It isn't my plan or my timing.
My team of doctors has said from the beginning that everything about this seems abnormal. It's not usual for hyperparathyroidism that my levels would jump so high so quickly, or that the pain would go from 0 to 11 overnight (which sounds like an exaggeration, but is literally how this started last Spring). They have thought that there is something in addition to the parathyroids that is going wrong, and we just can't place what it is. We've been concentrating on those little glands as a first course of action, looking to determine the rest after the glands are fixed. God only knows what it is that's really wrong with me. Perhaps this deferment is giving us a chance to figure it out. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it's yet another auto-immune disorder to add to the list I already knew I had. Perhaps not. Again, I don't know.
HubbyTMC and I are tired of my illness, and frustrated by the lack of answers, yes. So, we give it up to God. We've been praying to St. Roch (disease of unknown/mysterious origin and arthritis), St. Servatius (foot pain), and St. Blaise (the throat, and so everything going on in my neck). We've also been praying the Rosary, because obviously Our Lady knows what's going on and, even more, knows what it's like to suffer. We will continue to do so, and continue to hang on to each other, our Faith, and all of you, for as long as we need to.
This is a rather long and rambling missive, and I apologize for that. Thank you for your love, your notes, your prayers, the Masses...for everything. More than anything else, this illness has brought me to my knees (metaphorically) not by the pain and frustration, which are both extreme, but by being humbled and forced to ask others for help. I've never been any good at that, and I'm so very grateful that you've all stepped up and offered even before I asked. Thank you. For everything.
I'll continue to keep you updated as we wait and learn.
And I'll keep you in my prayers, in thanksgiving for your love and friendship.
Love,
Elfie
A personal rambling in place of your Robin River Update...
This is the last queued post for a little while.
I’m having surgery on Tuesday, Dec. 8th, and it may take me a few days to get new posts loaded.
If you’ve been skipping everything tagged “nonsims”, this is the spot where you want to stop reading. (I didn’t tag this post because I wanted to make sure you knew why there was a break in the queue.)
So, a bit of rambling about what’s wrong and what the surgery’s for. (I’d do this under a cut, but I don’t know how.)
Last April, I strained a back muscle by reading on the floor too long. (I know. That’s both very lame and very #HornedSerpent and #EnglishTeacher of me.)
It was bad enough that I had a video conference with a doctor, who recommended a few things like anti-inflammatories and gave me a list of “if this happens, see a doctor in person.” That was on a Wednesday. The next evening, my feet ballooned to a shocking size, and HubbyTMC took me to an Urgent Care on Friday morning. It was so painful to walk that I was crying, nearly screaming, just walking from the car to the front door of the Urgent Care. The doctor there couldn’t find anything wrong outside of the swelling and the sore back, so gave me a steroid shot to reduce the swelling and gave me a list of “if this happens, get to the ER.”
By Sunday evening, the swelling was worse. My toes had practically disappeared into the balloons that were my feet. Even lightly touching my feet with the bed sheet had me screaming in pain. I went to the ER early Monday morning.
I spent the rest of April and May in and out of my doctor’s office and the ER, and being sent to various specialists for a myriad of tests. When I wasn’t doing that, I was commanded to stay in bed with my feet elevated above my heart.
I’ll spare you the long list of tests and pains and whatnots and jump to the exciting conclusion.
It turns out that at least one of my parathyroid glands had just up and decided to kill me. I’m on some pretty high-powered meds now, which is the only reason that I can sit at the computer at all. My feet are still pretty swollen, even though I wear compression socks whenever I’m awake.
Hyperparathyroidism is my current nemesis and diagnosis. At least one of the four little parathyroid glands has gone rogue. By which I mean that it’s leeching calcium and other minerals out of my bones *and* causing my body to overproduce calcium and potassium. Instead of leaving it in my bones and filtering out the rest, my body (thank you, parathyroid) is depositing the excess on the tendons and ligaments of my feet, and in a clump in the back of my left breast near the rib cage. There’s so much extra mineral going on in my body that my urine is full of crystals...like bitty shards of kidney stones in every drop. The deposits in my feet are causing gout-like constant pain. The parathyroid is also causing depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, and hair loss. I haven’t been this mentally unstable since my miscarriage. I’ve lost half my hair.
I had surgery lined up for the beginning of November, but the surgeon’s office didn’t notice what all meds I’m on, and the surgery had to be rescheduled. It’s now Tuesday the 8th, which happens to be the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, so I’m hoping that bodes well for her intercession for me. It’s also the anniversary of the Baptism of two of my Godchildren. It’s a good day for Elves.
So, Tuesday, my surgeon will do an exploration of my neck, take out one offending parathyroid, test the hormone levels of the other three, and take out any other offenders. I’ll stay in the hospital overnight, and, God Willing, come home on Wednesday with healing already begun.
If you’re the praying kind, I’d appreciate whatever prayers you have to offer. If you aren’t, I appreciate whatever kindness you have to offer.
Thank you for reading this long post, and for being my friend.
God Bless you. Be well until I see you again.
St. Blaise, St. Roch, and St. Servatius, pray for us.
Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, hold us under your mantle.
I was tagged by @phoebe-twiddle, for which I’m very grateful!
Favorite color? Blues. Any shade or hue. Or jewel tones. What can I say? I went to high school in the 80s.
Last song I listened to? The last full song I listened to was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5JjH2OOoNY, which HubbyTMC posted on his Facebook. It’s silly and stupid, and yet, seems to sum up 2020 so far.
Last film I watched? Pre-quarantine, “Bad Boys For Life”. And I missed part of it because I had to find management to get a lady to shut off her phone.
SHUT YOUR PHONES COMPLETELY OFF IN THE THEATER, PEOPLE!!!!
Last TV show I watched? HubbyTMC are working our way through Season 1 of “Halt and Catch Fire” and Season 5 of “Marvel’s Agents of Shield”. I think the former was last night’s choice.
Sweet, savory or spicy? All of the above. For dinner tonight, I have a white-and-brown salty vinegary rice prepped, a savory turmeric and spicy oniony swedish meatball in the crockpot, and a Reese’s crunchy peanut butter pie chilling in the fridge. It’s the first time I’ve been able to cook since I got sick in April, and I wanted all the things.
Bubbly water, tea or coffee? Usually I’m a hot tea or cocoa kind of girl, but thanks to my medical team, I’m now all about the bubbly water.
Pets? I’m currently enjoying my pet-free lifestyle, but I’ve had cats, dogs, birds, and geckos. If I were to get another, it’d be parakeets. I sometimes miss mine.
I don’t know who hasn’t been tagged yet so forgive me for any repeats, and of course feel free to ignore! @katatty, @midgethetree, @shastakiss, and @alwaysabeautifullife
