“All is Lost,” which stars Robert Redford as a man sailing alone who runs into a series of troubles.

Here are just some of the many reasons:

1. Your sense of dread mounts from the first frame through the last
2. Which is twice the accomplishment given that the film has only one actor and almost no dialogue. It tops “Gravity,” which provides a hallucination for dialogue, and certainly “Castaway,” which resorted to a volleyball as a conversation companion
3. I’ve seen it twice now in a month — and paid both times! — and would see it again tomorrow if the idea didn’t make me feel like I have too little else going on in my life
4. Our Man’s resourcefulness and doggedness in the face of severe challenge and looming death are an inspiration to anyone who feels his day is shattered by, say, waiting 20 seconds for a traffic light to change
5. The literally all-star cast
6. Is exhaustive on the subject of what can go wrong — I’m stumped to come up with more
7. Serves as a helpful reminder never to go sailing alone in the Indian Ocean

Winner: “Garfield Minus Garfield,” which reveals the existential angst hiding behind the “comedy” by removing the cat.

Sample strip:

Goodreads just sent me a year-end status email congratulating me for reading “2 books this year!”

It’s somehow rewarding to know that while Google and Facebook seem to know everything you’re up to, Goodreads, being linked to an earlier age, hasn’t a clue.

It’s important to maintain a healthy balance, if you want to live long and achieve much.

That’s why I’m drinking wine now — trying to make up for the 90 minutes I spent at the gym earlier today.

It’s nice to see that Santa is an environmentalist too. It’s even nicer to see just how much he looks like my brother-in-law Steve.

A toaster that makes ugly toast.

(Full confession:  I just bought one of these for a white-elephant gift party. Will the ultimate winner of this gift enjoy it? Depends on how toasted he gets.)

With a lot of these logos, somebody’s gotten the shaft.

The ostrich pillow.

I have a short play that’s being performed during Moving Arts’ holiday party this Saturday evening. It’s one of six plays that will be staged at various locations around a large house in the Hollywood Hills.

I invited a relative to join us for this on Saturday night. Every industry has its jargon; when you’re a practitioner in that industry, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s jargon and therefore what people won’t automatically understand. So when I invited her to join me for a holiday cocktail party “in a large house, with six brief environmentally staged plays,” she asked me, “What is an environmentally staged play?”

I explained that an “environmentally staged play” means it happens in different locations and is specific to those locations. (Mine is set in a bedroom, and is performed in a bedroom.)

She responded, “The plays sound interesting. We were thinking it meant the props were all from recycled materials.”

Which, of course, makes sense on the face of it. Especially given that I once produced a play called “Cockroach Nation” with set dressing largely drawn from trash….

This new “mood sweater” that “spills the beans about your true feelings.” I think everyone already knows my true feelings just about all the time.