The Week in Meep: The First Sunday of Advent, Memento Mori, Tom Stoppard, and SUMO!
Post-Thanksgiving satiation can leave one in a torpor… but I’ve got some stuff for you to check out!
First Sunday of Advent and Memento Mori
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and thus it’s a new year in the Catholic Church.
But Advent is also a penitential period in the Church, though shorter (and usually a bit more festive) than Lent.
It’s also the last day of November.
In any case, I will end the month as I began it, with my perennial theme of Memento Mori (remember your death, or remember you will die…. eventually).
I have seen the above rosary at the Met Museum of Art in NYC:
I do return to this theme rather frequently. Yes, it’s a religious theme, but one need not be religious to contemplate mortality. It is a common issue for us all.
Apr 2023: Sunday Skeleton: MEMENTO MORI!
Jan 2025: The Week in Meep: An Interview, Memento Mori (Scrub), and Some Winter Art
Nov 2024: Memento Mori: All Souls Day
Mar 2024: The Week in Meep, 10 Mar 2024: The Skull of Aquinas, Michelangelo, and Ending in the Middle of It
May 2021: Mortality Nuggets: Global Excess Deaths, Memento Mori, and Mortality News Round-up
If you’d like your own skull-laden rosary, why not try this:
I made sure to buy mine before promoting it to somebody else….they have other rosaries, too.
Tom Stoppard, RIP
Tom Stoppard died yesterday, at the age of 88. I have long been a fan.
29 Nov 2025, Theatermania: Tom Stoppard, Oscar- and Tony-winning Dramatist, Dies at 88
The legendary playwright Tom Stoppard has died at the age of 88, his agents have announced.
The Czech-born British dramatist and screenwriter, whose output led to the Oxford English Dictionary-accredited adjective “Stoppardian,” held the record for the most Tony wins for Best Play, including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, The Real Thing, The Coast of Utopia, and Leopoldstadt. The Coast of Utopia also holds the record for most Tonys ever received by a play.
“Stoppardian” refers to work that engages with philosophical concepts in a witty, ironic, and linguistically intricate manner, often incorporating multiple timelines and visual humor. You can see these hallmarks throughout several of his works that didn’t win a Tony but were formidable contenders nonetheless—Jumpers, Arcadia, The Invention of Love, and Rock ’n’ Roll, among others. His characters are erudite and literate, navigating adult dilemmas through sharp intellect and playful language.
Obviously, I enjoyed Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead, though I first saw it as a play, directed by a high school friend as a college production at UNC-CH. (I was at NCSU - a bunch of us from my nerd school ended up at NC State, Chapel Hill & Duke.)
Given that the movie treatment of the play came out a couple years before we had graduated, I’m going to assume my friend had seen the movie.
It was a fun production, in an “intimate” setting (aka, not a large audience).
Some years later, one of my aunts gave me a copy of Arcadia, because she knew I’d enjoy it:
One thing I enjoyed about Stoppard was that he injected his plays with math and science concepts… appropriately. (Unlike some writers.)
But moving on from that, one way Stoppard made a lot of money, though not as well-known as his playwriting… or even writing original scripts for movies (such as Shakespeare in Love) was his script-doctoring.
Most of the time, he was not given explicit credit for fixing up scripts in need of it, but many are credited on his IMDB page (look for “Script and Continuity Department”), and some of these films are real stinkers:
But you can see that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is listed, and here is a good analysis and comparison (spreadsheet!)
That Mike Fitzgerald film analysis site also has some good visuals for comparison so you can see what was tightened/cut and what was extended:
Go to the post for explanation.
SUMO!
The November 2025 Grand Sumo Tournament wrapped up last Sunday, and it was a doozy!
The newest winner has had a meteoric rise: [and I’m not even including his latest ranking — he was just promoted to Ozeki!]
Here is some coverage from Sumo Prime Time:
I’m hoping that he can make it up to Yokozuna! (next year?)
Enjoy!
Comments are open.
Movember Fundraising
(Yep, I’m still doing this.)
Here are the places you can donate to the Movember Foundation, which supports men’s health, specifically focusing on prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and men’s mental health:
Mary Pat Campbell’s MoSpace – a place to donate at Movember itself
My Movember Facebook fundraiser – my officially linked fundraiser, if this works better for you
And here’s a QR code if that works better for you:
Thank you for the reminder of impending death. That is a great 16th century rosary, although I rather belive The Met should recognize that one of those burghers is a bishop. I'd like to know historic context, but after so many years, no one will remember whose portraits were being carved.
I am now surprised by how many memento mori rosaries are for sale today. I may scroll for hours considering buying one. I sometimes wonder if I will be able to supply a rosary to everyone on a plane if we ever have need for prayer. (Not really, I try to pack light and those extra ounces of weight can add up.)