Mats Holberg

Hollywood liberal, Bollinger bolshevik, choose your favorite pejorative. Turn-ons include film/TV, music, civil rights, architecture, cars, travel, food, gin martinis. Turn-offs include broccoli, bigots and spectacularly awful people like some billionaires who come to mind. He/Him.

Avatar: Selfie of middle-aged white guy with salt-and-pepper hair and beard, and tortoiseshell sunglasses in an arcaded pathway at Bellagio.

Header: A street sign for Robin Leach Lane in Las Vegas.

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NIP-05 Address

holberg_at_mstdn.social@momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2024-11-15 23:12:09

Thought I’d pop into CVS for a few random vaccines it turned out I was eligible for and hadn’t gotten. While I still can, etc.
And just canceled my appointment because the joint was SLAMMED with people waiting for vaccinations. The RFK Jr effect, I suppose.

2024-09-11 03:27:50

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In the sense that he’ll feel like he can’t let her win?

2024-08-18 02:10:32

I ask a friend if a job’s worked out but he’s already signed an NDA and now can’t admit it even exists.
So, I establish that when I never ever mention or ask about his work, it’s because of that and not that I’m being an impossibly self-centered friend haha.

2024-07-08 16:10:26

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On the topic of emergency stuff for the car, this is something I always keep in the center console. It can break windows and slash seatbelts if you need to escape.
(I’ve been low-key paranoid about getting trapped in a submerged car ever since 1983 when the broadcaster Jessica Savitch and her companion drowned after the station wagon he was driving flipped into an old canal and they couldn’t get out.)
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2024-07-08 15:27:23

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Took all my willpower to wait until I got back to Vegas before washing my car after a severe dusting on this unpaved excursion. An Angeleno quirk, I guess, but I can’t cope with a dirty car. To the extent I WILL have it washed mid-road trip.
The bumpy road also shook loose the first aid kit and emergency urinal (better prepared than a Boy Scout!) in my trunk haha.
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2024-07-07 01:26:15

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It’s so variable for me—I tend to adjust based on my life the moment.
There was a time when I was beholden to no one and that’s when I learned my ‘normal’ state was going to bed at 3 or 4 and rising at 11 or 12.
But the caveat in all of this is that—perhaps like your husband—I need one to two hours each morning to ease into my day. I’m only really grumpy if I must rise earlier than usual AND immediately enter the day.

2024-07-07 01:22:21

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I have never properly experienced midwestern cuisine and would like to join you on this journey.

2024-07-06 02:22:28

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Kinda relieved to be going back down the crazy unpaved road in daylight haha.
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2024-07-06 01:55:37

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This is Black Sage at Open Sky next to Zion National Park, incidentally.
Everything’s good but the squash fritters are the unlikely superstar—so good I could eat them every day.
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2024-07-06 01:44:41

Was looking for somewhere interesting to have dinner and, boy howdy, did we find it. A restaurant in a luxury eco-bungalow hotel that’s completely off the grid.
Three and a half miles of winding, steep, unpaved road. But seeming like it’s very worth it.
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2024-07-05 14:25:17

If you're not familiar with Jacob Rees-Mogg, imagine the ghost of a Victorian aristocrat -- whose affectations were a bit precious even for his time -- possessed the body of a modern man. He's a real trip, like a performance art caricature.
Which would be neither here nor there, really -- simply baffling he made it that far in politics -- if he hadn't also been Brexity McBrexit. Good riddance.
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2024-07-05 04:22:42

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Would love to buy you one someday!

2024-07-05 02:41:38

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I DID actually do some traditional barbecue-and-pool-party type stuff this afternoon.
It will absolutely shock you what I’m doing currently. (Cheers!) Hanging out and drinking while I wait for a fireworks show down the street at Caesars. More of a spectacle than a rah-rah-USA show, which is more palatable to me.
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2024-07-03 16:41:32

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In a related sense, I also have a firm policy about time travel: I ain’t going unless they have indoor plumbing.

2024-07-03 16:39:07

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Preach! Let’s just say that the single time my family tried camping in 1989 my father drove home the first night because he couldn’t cope and I kept finding the nearest restaurants for those of us who held on through the long weekend.
We love nature, but give us a nice lodge.

2024-07-01 16:42:38

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Hahaha.
Related to Christ’s rule-breaking image: I was in Salt Lake City several months ago, visiting lots of historic sites—most run by the church—and I couldn’t figure out why everyone assumed I wasn’t LDS and would need extra explanations. Which weren’t being given to the other middle-aged white guys.
It was only after I got home, musing about this, that someone explained it was my beard. Which is shorter and neater than in all the photos of early Mormons everywhere I went haha.

2024-06-27 14:47:24

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I lost a nephew I loved like a son to suicide. He knew he was adored and he knew we'd have done ANYTHING in our power to help him. He could've chosen any approach from logic to faith. Which also tells me he knew whatever we could give him wasn't what he needed.
The only thing that matters is keeping someone here. I couldn't care less what does that. And I believe so strongly in asking, listening, supporting and connecting with experts -- not telling.

2024-06-26 23:47:53

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One wonders if Sumerians also groaned haha.

2024-06-13 15:20:43

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It may not fit all your criteria, but Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird has some fundamental advice I’ve been using for 30 years.

2024-04-02 21:58:39

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That’s my point. It shouldn’t be tricky. But certain groups justify all of the above by categorizing this as Israel defending itself with the same logic they’ve always used: Hamas terrorists hide among the civilians, in the hospitals, etc so the collateral damage is an unfortunate necessity. Criticizing Israel at all gets you labeled as antisemitic.

2024-04-02 21:08:31

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Oh, it’s a really tricky subject in certain circles—not at all a given that it isn’t justified.

2024-04-02 20:39:54

Still can’t quite believe it’s controversial to oppose without qualification the slaughter of innocents who—even before the indiscriminate killing—were trapped in an overcrowded sliver of poverty and power outages.