THE 2022 GOLDEN RASPBERRY AWARDS

One more condemnation of Russia:

Junk mail is of course now digital as well. Nearly 300 billion emails are sent and received every day, and spam messages accounted for more than 45 percent of email traffic in March 2021, according to Statista. Which country is most responsible for invading your inbox without permission? Russia, where nearly 25 percent of unsolicited emails originated.

Most spam emails are benign if annoying, but a growing number of variants include spyware, trojans, ransomware, and other malicious agents designed to damage systems or compromise recipients’ personal information. It was a so-called “phishing” expedition by Russian hackers that famously led to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016 when a fake “account reset” claiming to be from Google sent to Clinton campaign manager John Podesta was opened.

By the way, did you know that SPAM is called SPAM because it is a contraction of spiced ham, invented by Hormel Foods in 1937? It became widespread because of World War II, and is particularly popular in the Pacific Islands and the Orient, including, of course, Hawaii. Surely you've had a spam musubi. You'd think that the latest dietary trends would eliminate Spam from the marketplace. But, no, sales last year hit an all-time high, for the seventh year in a row.

What an appropriate switch to the subject of the day. One of the lowlights of the movie industry is the Golden Raspberry Award ceremony, to occur on March 26. A few things you should know:

Members of the organization pay for membership, and number 650 from 19 countries.
Both the nominations and awards are revealed the day before the Academy Awards, although they made an exception by having the session on April Fool's Day in 2012.
Some recipients actually accepted their statuette, including Halle Berry and Sandra Bullock.
Three actors received both Oscar an Razzie nominations for the same role: James Coco (Only When I Laugh), Amy Irving (Yentl) and Glenn Close (Hillbilly Elegy).
An Aerosmith song I Don't Want to Miss a Thing from Armegeddon similarly was nominated for both.
Wall Street is the only film to win both an Oscar and a Razzie.
The Bodyguard won seven Razzie nominations, but was a huge box office hit.
Rudy Giuliani was nominated for his role in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars the Phantom Menace won a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor.

The Golden Raspberry Awards, known as Razzies, honoring the worst cinematic under-achievements, was co-founded by UCLA film graduates and several film industry veterans. This will be the 42nd year. This statuette is a golden raspberry sitting on a super 8mm film reel with an estimated street value of $5. Sylvester Stallone has won 10 awards, beating out Madonna with nine. He was named the Worst Actor of the Century, and Madonna same for an actress.

Nominees for 2022 were revealed on February 7. You can read them all, but some of the worst include:

Diana the Musical by Netflix. RT: 12/33. Wow, this is pretty miserable.
Worst Actress, Amy Adams, The Woman in the Window, another Netflix loser. RT: 26/23.
Worst Actor, LeBron James, Space Jam, as himself. RT: 25/79. Could be okay,
Worst Supporting Actor: Ben Affleck, Nick Cannon, Mel Gibson and Jared Leto.
Worst Supporting Actress, Amy Adams, Dear Evan Hansen. RT: 29/88. Hmm, might worth watching.

Diana the Musical got 9 nominations. A special category was announced this year: Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 movie...and there were eight.

For two years now BTS has been #1 in the world. The top ten for the year?

BTS
Taylor Swift
Adele
Drake
Ed Sheeran
The Weeknd
Billie Eilish
Justin Bieber
Seventeen
Olivia Rodrigo

Two meals featured this weekend. Artichoke with foie gras pâté, cheese and salad and a splendid La Crema Rose.

Next tonkatsu (Japanese pork cutlet), provided by 15 Craigside:

I hardly eat rice anymore and avoid those veggies, so I fried the tonkatsu in butter:

Bought some otoro (ultra fatty blue fin tuna) at Marukai. Have you ever paid $90/pound for fish?

Kirin beer, chilled sake, hot green tea and Toki Japanese whisky over rocks. Lots of cabbage, sea asparagus and avocado.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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