THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

When I was a kid, I was captivated by the field of acting, but especially the voice actors in animation. Don Smart as Tennessee Tuxedo, June Foray as Rocky, Casey Kasem as both Shaggy AND Robin...I tried imitating them all as a kid, with little to no success. But my absolute hero was Mel Blanc, the Warner Bros. staple who could seemingly do anything with his voice, even imitate his own imitations: Of the many failures in my life, the fact that I have neither the talent nor drive to be a paid voice actor stings the most, because I'm constantly attempting to do voices, to the consternation of my friends and family and students and passers-by, and I can delude myself into thinking I'm not horrible at a few of them. Like many kids, I briefly did acting in high school in a Theater class, where the failed voice actor temporarily became the failed actor. In my two years in Theater, at least the gamut of failure was wide (from what I can remember), as I played Sherlock Holmes, F...

In a year not half-finished replete with change and loss -- a year that will feature prominently in history books, should those things remain in the future -- it seems churlish and childish to bitch about having Scrabble for iPad taken away, but here I am regardless. I started playing Scrabble for iPad on 16 November 2011 -- on my first iPad, living in the first home I ever bought just outside of Petoskey -- and played until 5 June 2020, at which point the app was no longer supported. In that span of time over not quite a decade, I had a record of 5792 wins and 4369 losses and 16 ties, with a winning percentage of 56%, although it was most likely a few points lower, as I had to force forfeit some dummies who had a week to move but didn't. I had 2499 bingos -- all seven tiles played in one turn -- with my best bingo ("talkings") hitting two triple-word scores for a total score of 204. In short, I won more games than I lost, and every now and again, I won big. I usually...