My friend Rob has an excerpt of his recent column on Jobs here, and it’s a reminder that he may have gone gentle into that long night, but he didn’t go gentle into that prototype demonstration. I have the feeling he looked at the early drafts of the Apple.com homepage obit spread – he’d asked for the mockups last year – and threw a bedpan at someone over the picture. What the hell did you use to compress this? The thing Sarah Conner used to kill the Terminator at the end of the first movie? There’s artifacts all over the place.
I read a long big book about Apple many years ago, and it wasn’t exactly pro-Jobs. Woz talked to the author; Jobs didn’t. A perfectionist, a tyrant at times, a guy you dreaded getting into the elevator with because he wore the same damned turtleneck for days on end, that sort of thing. The book ended with his return to the company, and noted that it was a hopeful moment, but it probably wouldn’t save Apple. Its glory days were long past.
No! We said. It’s still the greatest! I remember reading MacAddict in those days, when we rejoiced over every new program (they’re still making them! Yay!) and vowed never to give up, to adopt a rogue mentality, us against the world, and so on. But the machines were ugly. The company’s attempts to come up with a radical new OS had splintered and foundered. What could Jobs do?
Perhaps he did this: he gathered all the engineers together. He said “here’s what we’re going to do.”
He laid out a manilla envelop with 25 sheets of paper inside.
“I want a laptop that’s this thin. No thicker. The processor speed will be ten times as fast as our fastest machine now.”
He took out a deck of cards. Cut them in half.
“I want a mobile phone this thick. It will be operated by touch. It will play music, movies, do email, connect to the internet.”
He took out an Etch-A-Sketch.
“I want a tablet half as thin as this. Like the ones you’ve seen on Star Trek, right? Also touch-operated, and it will do everything the phone will, as well as other things like music composition, video editing, and reading virtual books.”
He patted the big CRT monitor sitting on top a Performa. “We’ll still make computers, but I want the screen to be huge, flat, and oh – no box to sit on. The screen is the computer.”
He took the other half of the playing cards. “I want a personal music player, and it can start out this size. But it should get around to this.” He put down a postage stamp. “Also touch-operated.”
“One more thing. All these devices will talk to each other and share information, and store data in offsite locations that can be accessed anywhere through the air. Everyone else will be there in 15 years. I think we can do it in ten. So work backwards from these ideas, and have your ideas on my desk tomorrow. Start with a new Mac. For God sakes, the ones we have now are just an embarrassment. How about colored plastic?”
It makes sense, doesn’t it? It all seems inevitable in retrospect, but it wasn’t. It took a guy who could see several steps in the future. Beyond this to the thing beyond that.
And now he’s gone to the thing beyond it all. Thanks, Mr. Jobs. Every day: thanks.
I tweeted that it was, for my daughter’s generation, like the death of Walt Disney. Premature, too. The difference, perhaps, was that Walt seemed like a Grandpa when I was growing up; Jobs seemed to be in eternal that-friend’s-cool-dad phase.
At least I picked the right week to be sick; the weather has been spectacular, and there’s nothing like sitting in the sun to made you feel less sodden, as head colds are wont to make you feel. Too grotty to go out beyond the confines of the back yard, although yesterday, in a fit of early-cold enthusiasm (I can beat this! Yes I can!) I got up and drove to St. Louis Park to see if I could rent a cello. Hey, we’ve all had spur-of-the-moment ideas like that. I found the site online, noted that their terms were fair, and figured I could be there before they were open. In the back of my head something said “call first, to see if they actually have a cello,” but I knew if I did that the chains and anchors of the day would start to drape themselves around my shoulders. So I just hit the road.
To my surprise the store was next to the last surviving example of the Glass Tree Bank:
Sorry, I forgot; these things should be run through retro filters:
Midwest Federal put up several of these in the suburbs – there was one by Southdale, one by Rosedale, I know that. Perfect 60s modernistic whimsy, to use two words you don’t see in close proximity together. It’s a lamp store now. The slab out front still bears the sign of the Tree, the Midwest Federal logo that glowed green atop the building downtown most of you know as the Mary Tyler Moore building.
Here’s an old ad from 1960, with the tree fully anthropomorphized:
Anyway, they didn’t have a cello.
So I went back home. Got back on my laptop, checked out other places. There was one. Called it up. They had a cello.
It was ten blocks from the first place I went to. Sigh. See, befogged and cold-clogged; didn’t even think to check other locations on my phone. So I drove there and got a cello. While I signed up I looked at the wall, where there were many photographs of famous musicians. Perlman. Rachmaninoff. Benny. (Jack.)
So you had Rachmaninoff as a customer, eh? I said to the young fellow who took my order. He said he didn’t know. Have to ask the owner, and he’s not in. I figured it was unlikely they had him as a customer, this being the suburbs. Well, the inner-ring, which goes back, but still, I don’t think Serge popped in to St. Louis Park for strings and rosin.
While I was waiting for the order to be finished I looked at the picture of Rachmaninoff.
It was signed. To the owner, I believe.
Stood there feeling a curious sense of wonder: the things you find in the world. The things you never suspected.
Anyway. Drove home and got to work and did things, and later pounded out more novel. Home stretch. Two weeks to completion. Sequel already in my head, and that one may take the title “Skid Row Jack,” because it doesn’t fit this one at all. I’m actually considering “Tangle Town,” since a few key scenes take place in my neighborhood, specifically the Toast Castle up the street.
I’m in the pipe, five by five; novel done by Saturday night.
Sick. Worst is over. Worst came at 3:17 AM, when I woke from a strange dream, covered in the sheen of hallucinatory fever sweat, got out of bed, was struck by the chilly ambient temp of the room, went to get a glass of water, teeth chattering and limbs shaking, figuring: okay, well, dead soon.
Back to sleep. The dreams did not get worse. If the most I can muster during these fevers is a tale of a large indoor BBQ, where I join an electric guitar competition, and one of the judges notes that my playing was cliched, I’m okay. In fact I feel fine! I think I’ll go for a walk!
I could blame the scantness of this on sickness, but I must confess I did something else. A huge burst of novel-writing nailed the penultimate Big Revelation scene. I cannot tell you how happy I am, or how surprised I am, that it all hangs together. Plot-points, timing, motivations – it all works. Novel writing is like going down to the garage and throwing gears and tires and fanbelts in a heap, hoping one day you’ll come down and find a running automobile.
I have a running automobile.
Big link: If you are planning on having horrible fever dreams, this might help them be more toe-tappy. It’s HERE. See you tomorrow. Oh: an essay on the notification of Times Square, HERE.
Oh: new title page.
Hello. I have a cold. This is the bad day where you feel lousy and don’t do anything. Tomorrow will also be that day. Yes, I am gargling with Listerine, taking lots of vitamins and zinc, drinking orange juice, and avoiding over-the-counter medication entirely except for the nasal spray, which I use sparingly so I can fall asleep. I have faith in modern medicine, but I believe it’s best to let these things run their course instead of chugging Dayquil at the first sign of a tickly throat.
There will be more tomorrow. In the meantime there are two updates of note: the next batch of Matchbook Museum restaurants, HERE – and I do hope you’re enjoying the new site. I’m finding it very satisfying. Everything in its place. Logically named nested subdirectories! Actually, it occurred to me that I was doing the web a disservice, since the names of the matches have never really reflected their real name, and now they’re just arranged numerically. So I’ve created an index page that has the names, in case anyone wishes to search for them. Or rather in case anyone does search, and wishes to the quest to be successful.
The other project is the aforementioned Every Disney Cartoon conceit, HERE, which I will no doubt regret soon enough when I feel compelled to add alternate navigation that lets you follow characters chronologically, but what the hell. I’m doing this because I have almost every single Disney short, and having arranged them chronologically, I should do something to enjoy my labors. It’s a way of making sure I watch them, as opposed to cast an eye towards the folder every few months and bask in the warm satisfaction that it’s all there and it’s all in proper sequence.
Oh, it’s a sickness. Every day I set aside an hour for the following tasks:
Converting a month of archived Bleats to pdf form for eventual printing off
Redoing one folder of the Institute of Official Cheer archives for the relaunch next year (50 subsites, 200 pages), removing 250 photos from iPhoto (and then renaming them with a batch renamer, all so I’m not dependant on iPhoto any more) and converting one hour of old videotape from the previous decade. My daughter will not have some old chaotic scrapbooks or piles of envelopes in the living room end-table drawer. Straight narrative progression of every year.
And now, the novel. I finished everything but the last 10K, which will be the big joy to write: the payoff. The cascading tumbling revelations, the clicks, the reveals, the callbacks. Last night I decided to rely on an Ellroy trick to bridge the space between 1947 and 1949 – headlines and newspaper columns. But while writing one of the columns, penned by the paper’s Man of the People Ole Olson (a big man, white hair, black glasses, ruddy, cheerful, Machivellian – an evil Cedric Adamas) I wrote something that just explained it all. Stopped and looked at the screen and thought: of course.
The narrator of the fifth novel, the last one in the sequence, is Ole’s son, the managing editor of the Citizen-Herald in 2008, dealing with a series of assassinations of reporters on the site of the murders that form the plot of the 1947 book. (The narrator of the first book in the series is the son of a cop who served in Europe with the reporter in the third book, the Sherlock-Holmes-in-a-noir-novel guy.) The plotting of this one has been exhausting, and I’m looking forward to finishing #5 and banging out #2, which is much less knotty. But there I go, like authors everywhere: talking about it instead of doing it. Check your updates; enjoy; see you tomorrow.
Because my dog craps I was prepared when my daughter threw up.
Makes me feel blessed and humbled and mortal and happy to have known what I’ve known.
Hmm. Doesn’t necessarily follow, does it. Back up a bit:
“I’m going to be sick,” she said. And we hadn’t had the pizza yet. Quick –
No, let’s rewind.
Sixteen years ago we got a dog. He was -
No, fast-forward from that, but careful when we get to the right spot . . . there.
Late summer. We’re having Subway sandwiches. When we’re done I remember the bags are good for poop-scooping, and I set one aside.
No, let’s go back to Wednesday. Two days before.
Where was my iPod?
Ah! Perfect. That’s the entry point. Let us begin.
Where was my iPod? Haven’t used it in a while. Need it for an upcoming trip. It comes in handy during the day, of course – driving around, you want a tune or a drama – but when I couldn’t find it in the usual places for a week, I dumped some stuff on my phone and used that in the car. But I wondered if I’d lost it. I’d hate to lose it. It’s one of those Classics with a huge hard drive, holds everything. Or would hold everything; I decided not to load the classical collection until I finished renaming all the tracks. All nine billion of them. The art was fine; I use a picture of the composer for the album art, and that works with the big guys, but when you get into your Elgars and Waltons it’s not so clear. So the composer name should go in the song title field. And, for GOD’S SAKE, figure out whether it’s Symphony #1 or Symphony No. 1, or Movement #3 or Movement III. This stuff gnaws at a man.
You say: who cares? Who could possibly care? Except I was on a cruise last November and got into a long deep discussion about the glories of Bruckner, and the next day I was on the beach in Cozumel and wanted to find the movement we were talking about, and the truncated titles in the playlist were no help whatsoever, and if you’ve ever tried to find the proper movement of a Bruckner symphony while sitting with not much clothes on in a plastic chair in Mexico, you know what I mean.
I do. NOT. Want to experience that again.
It’s funny, but I actually believe there will be a time when my music collection is perfectly organized and tagged and has all the right art. I really think that.
Anyway. The iPod could be in the noise-canceling headphones container; I slip it in the pocket when I take a trip. No. Could be in the Bag of Way Too Many Pockets, which I use on vacations; no. Could be in the new bag – well, the bag I got for Christmas and have regretted asking for, since it’s impractical and too thick and doesn’t have enough pockets. Is it in the Goldilocks Bag, which has the right number of pockets, except for the middle pocket which doesn’t exist at all? No. (The nonexistent pocket is actually an expansion joint built into the bag; deploy the zipper and the bag gets thicker. Never used it. The number of times I’ve unzipped it, thinking it’s a pocket: 1 out of 4.) Tried the drawers where things go. Nothing. Ah: the car.
Checked the glove compartment, and found the manual, of course, which reminded me that the radio didn’t work. When the battery was replaced the radio went dead, and needed a code. Of course I do not have the code in the manual. It would be upstairs in a folder marked AUTO. Make a note of that. I’d used an old code I found in a stack of important cards, and after two unsuccessful tries I realized it was the code for the previous vehicle. See, the first time you enter the code and you get an error, you think, well, I entered it wrong. The second time you know it’s wrong. YOU HAVE ONE MORE TRY before you’re locked out of your own radio. So I backed off on that one. Fast. Anyway, the glove compartment had lots of things I didn’t need, including a plastic bag I’d got from Subway and stored away to use for future dog-poop picking-up. While I was cleaning out the glove compartment, might as well attack the utility space over the dashboard. An old notepad. Expired coupons. A pack of gum with one stick. I filled the bag, set it on the seat – because by now I’m in my parking space at work. Forgot to note that I did this after I parked, because when I got to work I realized I usually shut off the engine at the same time the BBC went to a particular program, and I hadn’t heard it because the radio was dead, and that wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d had my iPod, although that really wouldn’t matter because the radio wouldn’t accept any input, including the AUX input from an iPod. But still.
Was the iPod in my work desk? No.
Later that day at home I found another bag I’d used to transport stuff to work, and there it was. The iPod! I plugged it in to charge; it immediately started to sync with the classical playlist. BUT THAT’S A WORK IN PROGRESS! I wanted to say, but really, it didn’t matter. Take the advice of Teri Garr in “After Hours.” Be loosey-goosey about things.
Later that night I got an email alert from Dominos, offering a free Artisanal Pizza. Well, okay. Genoa Salami and roasted peppers? Wife will love that. But it was carryout only. No problem. I ordered pizzas for Friday night a day in advance, and felt like a guy who was on top of things. Seventeen hours later we’re coming back from piano, listening to the radio – yes, code input three was successful – and I’m bashing the music of my daughter’s demographic. “It’s all people singing a melody sampled from something ten years ago and then some guy comes on and talks for a verse so they can say ‘Featuring DJ LC-Bufus’ or whatever.”
She actually agrees, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. Good point. When I turn to the 80s channel, they’re playing “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen, and she groans: this one. I groan.
“I didn’t like it either,” I say, “but they didn’t use synthesizers, and that was rare. Well not that rare, but they made a point of it, to show they were musicians. The guitarist hand-wrapped his own pickups and he’s also a respected astronimist. That’s as good as it gets for jobs: scientist and lead guitarist. But yeah, this song. I worked in a bar and it played all the time.”
“You worked in a bar?”
“I did. Here, you want something else?” I plugged the iPod into the AUX channel, called up the NEW playlist, and clicked a version of “Blue Monday.” One of those 80s remixes.
“When is something going to happen?” she asked. Good point.
I’d put 6:15 for the pick-up time. We were early. I drove south and east and north to chew up some time, got to Domino’s at 6:13. They didn’t have the pizza. In fact they’d never heard of my order. It was a mystery to them. Hmm. Chaos back in the kitchen; the manager was lashing everyone, moaning about the pies sitting under the warmer for 20 minutes, despairing over the tickets pouring out of the automated internet order-generation system. I had a horrible feeling that . . . no. Impossible. I’d put my address into the system, this was the closest store . . .
Ran to the car, got my iPhone, called up the confirmation email – the first time in my life I have ever cared about an automatically-generated Dominos confirmation email – and sure enough, I’d chosen a store three miles to the northeast of my house instead of three miles to the southwest. GAH. GAHHHHH. So. In the car and off we go. It’s now 6:22. I am starving. The pizza is getting cold. Getting? Is.
We get to the store at 6:40. There is no place to park because there’s an enormous old Lincoln in the parking lot blocking all the spots, three people standing outside arguing about something. Great. I pull to the side of the lot, we get out, run inside, get the pizzas. Back in the car; the Lincoln people are still engaged in disputation. I cannot possibly imagine what’s so important that you have to settle the matter in a Domino’s parking lot. On the way back I take the twisty streets leading to the twisty parkways. We have been driving around for 40 minutes.
“I don’t feel well,” she says in the back.
“You’re just hungry,” I say. “We’ll be home soon. Do you want some gum?”
“NO NO I DON’T WANT GUM. I’m going to be sick,” she said. “I need a bag.”
I look to the passenger seat, and there’s a Subway bag, stuffed with alllll the things I got out of the glove compartment and the storage space on the roof, and I pick it up by the end and dump everything out on the floor and pass it back . . .
. . . just in time.
She’s done ruping by the time I pull into the garage. I bring the pizzas up; Jasper Dog is thrilled with the aroma, and yips and dances and barks for a piece. We eat. It’s pretty good. Daughter’s STARVED. I’m thinking: no dog, no bag hoarding instincts, no barf-containment. No iPod location mystery, no sorting through the glove compartment, no instantly-available barf bag. The reason this day didn’t end with a stinky car can be directly traced to the moment I walked past a pet shop in Uptown in April 1996, looked in the window, and saw my dog.
Wife took him for a walk later. He was slow. Very slow. “He’s not going to be with us much longer,” she said. Resigned. Then hopeful: “But I’ve been saying that for three years.”
“You saw him when the food showed up. Annoying as a puppy. Where did he take you tonight?”
“Well, I let him go where he wanted, and we went up the hill to the water tower, and then back down, and when we got home he didn’t want to go up the steps so he went down the street, and I thought he would go up the back steps, but he looked at me, like ‘I’m not done,’ and we walked east and around the neighborhood again. But it was dark and he can’t see anything.”
“But he can smell.”
Nearly deaf and nearly blind, and the world is still a story, every scent a character, every strong odor a twist in the plot. The dog walks outside and the world is his iPod, and it’s always set on shuffle. So it is for us all, really. If you have a dog you know how they come to the door and stand there waiting for you to let them out. Standing at the glass door. The wall that keeps the odors out. They can see, but they can’t smell. Daily life for us is just like that. If you’re lucky someone opens the door and all the glories rush over you.
It’s days like these that you realize how much you miss. For once, you saw all the connections. You suspect there are just as many threads between the now and the then every other day. Probably more. Would you go mad if you considered them? Would you exult to discover how everything braids itself together, fear for the action ten years gone that will explode down the road, anticipate the bloom that grows from a casual act last month? Sure. All of that. All these things. You can’t act if you remember everything. You shouldn’t act if you remember nothing.
And so, to now: a tick past midnight. The dog on the carpet just sighed and snorted. In a few minutes I will carry him upstairs and put him on the soft bed. If he thinks of anything, it might be breakfast that comes when the light grows and the pack stirs. But he goes to sleep quickly at night. He used to spend his days by the window, watching the world, alert, intent. The world was a place of contention. It’s a congenial place these days, soft, indistinct, with quicksilver phantoms in squirrel form that scamper on the edge of his peripheral vision. Not that he’s lost his sense of adventure: the other day I was settling down for a nap, and I heard the squeak of the backyard gate. Daughter hadn’t shut it. Sigh. Went downstairs, went outside, and sure enough the door was open. Jasper was standing in the gap, looking out; I gave the whistle, the only sound to which he responds these days, and he turned around: yes?
I snapped that picture, thinking: that’s him; that’s always been him.
Later he came inside, taking his time up the steps. I can tell it hurts. For him it doesn’t matter that it hurts. What matters is getting up the stairs and getting inside where the good stuff is.
When you’re inside, the good stuff is outside. Vice Versa. That’s why we love dogs. They boil it down to lessons we can’t dismiss. They know us too well.
So, to sum up this Bleat: because my dog craps I was prepared when my daughter threw up.
What I’m supposed to do with this information, I’ve no idea.
The wind picked up the gazebo and moved it two feet. The gazebo weighs 150 pounds, at least. Perhaps I should have gathered up the bug screens; they acted as sails. A chair was knocked over as well.
The fact that I’m leading with a chair being overturned gives you a sense of the pell-mell, dynamic nature of the day.
That’s fine, isn’t it? Some days you just get things done. and recounting what you did would be boring to others, but that doesn’t it mean it was inherently boring. Objectively boring. Some of the things I do would make some people stare slack-jawed with disbelief: really? You renamed all the Disney short cartoons by year, separated the characters by folders according to the original “Treasures” series disks, then set up a series of aliases to create a complete chronological account of all the Disney cartoons?
Really? Of your own free will?
Yes. Because in 2012 I’m going to watch the entire Disney oeuvre, as much as I have, in sequence. It’ll be a hard slog at the start, because those 1920s black-and-white cartoons – well, a little goes a long way. I remember showing a few to my daughter when she was young, and we’d watch the Silly Symphonies or Mickey in B&W disks, and her reaction would be confused: cartoon not funny. Lots of creatures with maniacal grins hopping up and down in endless loops. The 30s material is better, but there are still some what-the-HELL-people pieces in there.
It’s the title cards that knock me out, over and over. They’re just gorgeous. It goes from this . . .
to this . . .
to this . . .
to this . . .
. . . and beyond. The typography is usually wonderful, and that’ll be part of the fun.
Anyway, I’m spent. Or rather I have just been looking at things on a screen all day and manipulating things on a screen all day and if I’m going to get anything done tomorrow night, and not scream in horror when I sit down at my desk to look at things and manipulate things, then I’d best do something else and let my brain refill. Thanks for your patronage this week; see you Monday.
PS My “something else” consisted of watching “The Incredibles” for the first time in half a decade. Wow. I could write an entire Bleat on the music alone . . . but I think I already did.
I’m standing outside the Element, looking at it, and a nice lady walks past and says “how do you like your car?”
Most days I’d say I love it. But. Right now I am sitting in the deli department of Cub foods on a gorgeous day that is really, really going poorly. The most recent manifestation sits in the parking lot, a large, inert, green piece of metal and plastic that was formerly an automobile. It is not very mobile at the moment. Parked, ran in, got some stuff for dinner, then ran back to the car, put the key in:
Nothing.
Just nothing.
Obviously it worked before, since I’m here. Minutes before. But now it is dead. I called Triple A, and the tow’s on the way – but will it arrive before A) the ice cream completely liquifies, and B) I have to be home to let daughter in the house? FFS, what a day.
I know it worked earlier, because I seem to recall driving to a hazardous material drop-off point, where I unburdened myself of some old dead electronics and two computers that had seized up and developed fatal problems. One was an ancient iMac, and I’d been kept from turning it in because I couldn’t boot it to wipe the drive. Which I had to do because we all assume that someone along the line will take it out and look at it and hoover up your secrets. They can’t guarantee no one will. Isn’t that interesting? There’s the assumption someone will poke through your junk. But even if they guaranteed, no one would believe them. So they don’t.
Anyway: when I finally found the original software, it ate the disk and would not boot from that. Criminey. I despaired of doing anything, put it back in the closet, thought “I’ll figure this out later.” Later = half a decade. Why not just take the drive out? you ask. Well, I didn’t know I could. I though it was all sealed back there to keep you from touching the DEATH NODE, or capacitor, at the back of the CRT. So the matter remained for years, until, in a fit of get-rid-of-everything enthusiasm, I looked up instructions for removing the hard drive.
Hey, it could be done! Without a fatal shock, too. Began to take it apart, only to find that the instructions were for a different model. Mine was a rare rev-A slot-loading smoke-grey DV model with a gargantuan 6 GB hard drive, or something. If you’re thinking it’s sad I couldn’t turn it on for that time-machine moment, and see what my desktop looked like, what files I had –
I know. I have libraries of everything that’s ever been on my machines since 1996.
Got the drive out, but it’s some archaic interface I can’t use, so I can’t wipe it. Aw, to hell with it, throw it away. No! That’s wrong. Put it in front of a huge magnet! Where’s that ACME catalog? Oh, just put it in the storage closet, get to it later.
Thus is a bleat in 2016 set up. Stay tuned.
Loaded the damned thing in the car with the rest of the stuff and drove to the ‘burbs where they take your stuff and crush it to death. No, you can’t watch, don’t ask. No charge, at least not here; funded by county taxes. At least I pay county taxes, and expect a portion goes to this. On the way back I got stuck behind a train, of all things. In the city? A freight? Well, it was an industrial area. The train crept forward at the pace of a snail on hot asphalt, then blew its horn, stopped, blew it again, and began to creep backwards into it was just where it was before. Maybe it was a lesson for everyone to stop and smell the roses. There were no roses. Maybe people called up pictures of roses on their smartphones.
Then I went downtown to do some interviews for the column. Talked to a lot of police. Felt bad when I had to say “I’m with the newspaper,” because that just takes the fun out of everything. Plus, if you’re dumb, then you’re a dumb journalist, and if you’re interested and curious, you’re a cop groupie.
Then here. Then nowhere. The thing about your car going dead: you walk outside, look at it, go back in and try it again, as if something might have changed. Which it does. Then you pop the hood to see if there’s anything obviously wrong, but it’s just a solid mass of THINGS in there. I checked the battery to see if it was connected, and it was. Looks crusty, though.
So now I’m here, waiting, counting down the minutes. I have a funny column to write tonight – ha ha! – so if this is all there is, I apologize.
Oh, the real reason I’m out here: daughter needed some puffy letters for her science project. She’s doing an eleven-page book on the methods of scientific exploration, and she’s drawing all the pages with an ingenious set of characters she invented. But since the first five pages have puffy letters the rest have to have puffy letters, because otherwise it would look stupid. Or lame. I’m not sure which. But she had to have them, so I went to a place that looked like it would sell puffy letters.
Bought some googly eyes, just in case.
LATER
Well, the driver showed up, got out – tall rangy fellow, older than I expected, as if jumpin’s a young man’s game.
“First thing I gotta say,” he says, first, “I’m a big fan.”
And that just made a bad day a lot better. “My son’s a playwright,” he said. “Maybe you’ve heard of him. Lee Blessing.” Well, yes, I have. He looked at the battery, lifted up a plastic cap, and revealed some bright attractive crystals spilling out of the top.
“Can’t jump this,” he said. Da dada dum! Da Dum! Da Dum! Can’t jump this. But he had a battery in the van, so let’s slap that baby in. While he worked I googled his son, and his last play was “Heaven’s My Destination.” Huh – I remember that title from a very odd old paperback cover, and wasn’t it by Thornton Wilder? Googling . . . why yes.
The battery was replaced quickly, quatloos were deducted from my account, and I was off. Now I’m at a coffee shop while daughter goes AAAIIIEEE at karate. Would have written more, but it’s my day for fans; one came by to say nice things, and say he’d just heard another James speak – James Fallows of the Atlantic had talked at a gathering of Cirrus plane owners in Duluth. He was a Cirrus owner himself. The things you learn.
Unless you read this, that is.
UPDATE: Daughter didn’t use the puffy letters at all because they didn’t have sticky backs so she cut up other letters and used them.
Okay.
Grey day; September has been one long dull toothache. Hey, I forgot to tell you what I had for supper yesterday! Pizza. On a Monday, you say? Doesn’t that violate the Order of Things. Yes. But wife is out of town, and daughter wanted to try this:
The 100-option drink dispenser. And it still doesn’t have Beverly. (I am the only man in America who likes Beverly. The only one.) She went to the Fanta sub-menu, and chose raspberry. I think I had strawberry. They tasted the same. The grape Fanta had blue foam. It’s an odd machine.
A fellow walked up as she was making her choice, said EXCUSE ME and inserted himself between her and the machine. Tall guy. He put in his cup. He made a selection. He pushed the button with one long finger and withdrew his digit. The machine spat out an ounce. He waited. He pushed the button again, just a tap. The machine spat out an ounce. I’m thinking he might figure out by now that the machine cannot automatically discern the size of his cup, and the button has to be depressed for a user-specified action. I’m hoping he doesn’t, because he sort of pushed my daughter out of the way.
While we’re waiting I notice there’s a hobby store across the street. Seen it for years. Never went in. We decided to go explore after dinner, and spent an agreeable half-hour – it rekindled my desire to have a train set in the basement, even though there’s no room. But I would love one. Amend that: I would love to be the sort of person who had the time and patience to build one.
They had model rockets, and I told my daughter about sending ants up in a capsule. She was appalled. But it was for science! And they survived. Ah, the hours I spent in the basement, putting rockets together; still amazed we ever recovered any.
Some retro models, brought back for purposes of nostalgia or a desire to experience a time when one was not alive, and hence must have been cool in some way our anodyne era lacks:
I remember these; they creeped me out. This was interesting:
It was made infamous by an ad that must have had Frederick Wertham sputtering with fury.
What the hell is this?
It looks familiar, but I can’t place it. It’s not the Land of the Giants spaceship. Okay, sub-orbital ship. It’s not the “Fantastic Voyage” ship; that was the Proteus. It’s not anything I can put my finger on. It may be a knockoff of the Proteus – the bubble on top, the viewing window in the front – but it seems odd that someone would bring back a knockoff that didn’t have a show to support it. The box was no help.
Google was no help, tossing up nothing but Star Trek, until I googled Voyager model kit, and hello:
Prepare for Miniaturization!
Ok, we know this cool sub/spaceship model isn’t from an Anderson or Irwin Allen production, but it’s so cool we just had to carry it anyway! Plus, we really like the folks at Moebius Models and want to support their efforts, even if this kit falls slightly outside our regular line of merchandise.
The Voyager is from Filmation’s animated Fantastic Voyage TV series which ran on ABC from 1968 to 1970. The told the story of the C.M.D.F. (Combined Miniature Defense Force), a secret United States government organization which possessed the ability to reduce people to microscopic size.
Recognize the voice? It’s Ted Baxter.
The closing:
I wanted to see if they had Pacer model kits; alas, only one, behind glass, expensive.
When I got to the candy aisle and saw the Bonomo Turkish Taffy, I wondered if the entire place was living in a bubble of time left over from the 70s. Then I saw this, and knew that it was:
New today: an update to the B&W world, a Lum & Abner film of interest to those who know Lum & Abner. If you don’t, well: the Old-Time Radio site is now up, if a bit spare. The art section is up, in case you want some custom art for your iTunes. A public service of limited utility, I know, but a public service nevertheless. See you around!
Recall the tale of the glasses with the bad glare-reduction coating? No, it’s not some time-worn parable. It happened – to me! Yes, I got glasses that became cloudy and scratchy, and when I went back to Lenscrafter an unfriendly manager told me that they were out of warranty, even though they were a year old, but they’d give me half off on new ones. I said this was not acceptable, left, went back another day, and found a manager who looked at them, checked the records, said “jeez” – more or less – and gave me new lens. I got those, decided I didn’t like the glasses, and got the low-low priced model I wear now. Well:
Today I get a letter from Lenscrafters, and it says that a review of their records shows that they gave me the wrong glare-reduction film on my recent glasses. I’d ordered Scotchguard, but they gave me the cheaper variety. They were sorry. So very sorry. I could either get new lens at no cost or get a $40 rebate, and in either case here’s a $50 gift card. Hmm. This was impressive. Hadn’t noticed. So I called the store to get new glasses.
The manager checked my records.
“You didn’t get glare reduction on your most recent pair,” he said.
So this was about the previous pair.
Moral dilemma: do I ask for the $50 rebate?
You might wonder why it’s a dilemma at all, but think about it: the $40 is compensation for paying for a treatment I didn’t get. But they did replace the lens. So I got the proper glare-reduction film.
On the other hand: I have no idea if they gave me the right glare-reduction film on the replacements. Not that it matters; they’re just spares now, unlikely to deteriorate because they’re seldom used. I suppose I could claim the $50 for pain and suffering. For months of looking through cloudy lens. And hell, it’s a big company! They can afford it! Right?
Still doesn’t feel ethically correct, especially considering the $50 gift card, which I can use to buy five year’s worth of cleaning fluid.
What say you? I say no.
of retail. Sunday I went to the mall, aka the large local costume shop. That’s what clothing is, after all. Everything is dress-up. A culture derives its parameters from many things – history, morals, and least of all personal preferences, which are based on the parameters of other periods and a generally agreed-upon understanding of what they mean (this is “casual,” that is “formal,” that is “hippie,” this is “preppy,” and so on). I say “least of all” because we have no idea what we would prefer if we had different options in a different culture. We’re handed a narrow series of choices, and believe the choices are great because they come in so many colors.
Unless you’re at Banana Republic, where everything is black or grey or a subdued, if not sullen, color. Banana Republic is the classy Gap, you see, just as Gap is the classier Old Navy. Banana Republic began as a place that sold tropical-themed clothes, switched to upscale muted garments, and now has a name that has nothing to do with its clothing. Neither does the Gap – the name referred to the Generation Gap, but now grandpa wears jeans. Old Navy? They just made that up.
There were two guys at Banana Republic looking at stuff, and one said, with a slight tone of worry, “I’m getting out of my comfort zone with this.”
It had stripes.
The music was cool – slinky chill, sophisticated lounge, soulful crooning. You are this kind of person when you’re wearing this stuff. Or rather you are already this person, which is why you’re here. Welcome. Over at the Gap, they were playing “indie” rock, because the people who shop there are iconoclasts and free-thinkers and independent souls who find expression of their carefree spirit at the largest seller of mass-produce blue-fabric pants store on the planet. I got a T-shirt with a collar that was slightly different from any other T-shirts I had; this made it different, and desirable. Also, it was four dollars. It made me realize I should go through the T-shirt drawer and winnow out the ones that never make it into rotation. They had failed me, somehow. Whatever they said in the store they stopped saying once they went into the drawer. Could have been the music.
I was at the mall because the newspaper came with a Post-It note coupon good for ten percent off anything at Penneys. I don’t shop there much, because I don’t like anything they have. Anything. But once a year I’ll see a dress shirt in a hue that seems appealing. To my surprise they had a two-for-one sale on shirts, and I found two I liked: green and red. There was a sale on ties, as well, and I chose a green tie that was slightly different than the shirt’s color; I like the monochromatic look. The tie was narrow. Half the ties were narrow. Finally: might we be getting back to skinny ties? Has Mad Men trickled all the way down to Penneys? (Banana Republic baldly touts its Mad Men style, with signs that assure you the dresses were designed by someone connected with the show.) Couldn’t find a second tie, because they were all ugly. That’s the thing about ties: they’re all ugly. To someone. There was a guy pawing through the Jerry Garcia collection, and he said aloud “Now this is a good one here.” I snuck a peek: covered with big American flags in bright colors. Gawdawful.
Up to the counter with my purchases. The clerk had an unusual voice: very high, and very soft. And by “high” I mean hummingbird-on-helium high. I couldn’t understand half of what she said. At the end she gave me a receipt and wrote her name and said I could go online to complete a survey and get a coupon good for 15% off. Well, I couldn’t very well say she was difficult to understand, could I? It’s not her fault. So I would have to lie to get the discount.
Moral dilemmas. They’re everywhere.
Bad night last night – daughter was exhausted from a long day that included swimming and tennis. Supper was some leftovers from a dinner out with Mom the previous night. Four hours after ingestion it wanted out. Wasn’t food poisoning, just . . . I don’t know. Urpage. Before I went to bed I checked to make sure she was still breathing, hadn’t bonhamed on the rest of the meal, and she woke up. What are you doing? Seeing if you’re okay.
“Did I dream that last night?” she asked this morning. “You were just standing in my room?”
“No, I was there.”
“It was kinda creepy.”
“Would have been creepier if it hadn’t been me. So be grateful.”
They never are.
It is a column night, so I’ll leave you with some updates: there’s Joe, there’s a batch of matches in the restaurant section HERE, and Comic Sins HERE. See you around.
Never heard this one before: they were cruising in the Caribbean, a day out of San Juan. A clear night, calm seas. My dad looks out and sees . . . a sub. It’s come up to fire its torpedoes. In fact it has fired its torpedoes: he can see the trails in the moonlight. The shallow draft of his ship meant a sub had to fire close to the surface. There was no time. There was no stopping. They watched the first pass right in front of the bow. They watched the second head straight for the bow . . . and go under the ship.
Another day at the office.
No, amend that; another day behind the fast-food counter, since he was 17 at the time. Yes, we stayed up late talking, and this time I surreptitiously turned on my phone and hit the voice recorder function, and got a batch of tales down for posterity. Should mention why he was here:
Two years ago he came down for the North Dakota State University football team, the Bison; they were taking on the Goofers in the Metrodome. This year they met at the new stadium, which is a beaut. Very collegiate in the classic sense, architecturally restrained, timeless but new. Parking was going to be an issue, I knew, and he wanted to tailgate, so we went early. Hours early. Parked by the old Ralph and Jerry’s food mart – asked him if he minded a hike. No; he does a mile or two at the Mall every morning. So we walked into Dinkytown, then got a cup of coffee at McDonald’s. “They have good coffee,” he says. “That’s where we have coffee every morning.”
Don’t you go to one of those Starbucks places?
Snort of NO. Expensive, fancy, not all that great. Besides, McDonald’s has good coffee. Actually, they do. And it’s a buck. So we sat and chatted, and I saw a denizen of Dinkytown from my old days in the 80s; raised a cup in a toast. Then we pushed on to the stadium, and tried to connect with my cousin and his group, who were tailgating in a Bison lot. Took a while, even with cell phones, but we found them in a rather unpopulated lot. The big Bison bash was apparently at the State Fairgrounds, with free buses taking the inebriates – er, fans to the game.
I didn’t know this, but teams pay other teams to come and play. The Gophers paid the Bison $275,000. Oy. Well, at least they knew they’d beat them; the Gophers were a Big 10 Team, after all, and the Bison were from a friggin’ farm school, man. Yeah, a real hick town, with 3% unemployment, and a building boom that continues to this very day. They’re still putting up houses and apartment buildings and the town just keeps growing. Why? Oil, of course; Dad said he was talking to a guy who had an interest in a well, and it pulled out $165,000 worth of oil in a week. The state took 16 grand off the top. One well. One week. So yeah, they’re doing fine.
Anyway. We took our seats and waited for the sun to fade and the temps to drop; expected a chilly night. The game began with all the pageant and ballyhoo that makes college games so much fun – an enormous marching band, cartwheeling maidens, a high-stepping major domo, fireworks upon the entry of the team, the National Anthem with a flag that covered a fourth of the field. Gophers won the toss, elected to receive, and drove for one first down after the other. The jumbotron and other video boards play the same thing when they get a first down:
AND THAT’S ANOTHER GOLLLLLDEN GOPHER
“FIRST DOWN!” the crowd shouts, and everyone makes the gesture of a ref declaring a first down. The fellows in front of us were high-fiving and awww-yeahing and talking trash to the few souls brave enough to sport Bison green: “Go date your cousins,” one barked. This got my father’s ire up.
“It doesn’t take an intelligent person to say something like that,” he growled.
The guy said he used to live in Fargo, he loves Fargo, it’s all good-humored ribbing. But he didn’t say it anymore.
The Gophers score, and I’m thinking, we may not be here all night. But the Bison took the field, marched down and put it in the endzone. So there. The defense would be a bit too porous the rest of the half, but they scored again, and led going into the half. Hah! I was rooting for them, since that’s my home town team, and I never, ever had a scrap of loyalty to the Gophers, not even in college. Partly because they’ve been losers – the Goofs, the Goofers – as long as I can remember. There was great satisfaction in seeing them get beat in this enormous new stadium by a band of kids from North Dakota, some of whom were Minnesota kids the Gophers never even deigned to try out. So, yeah.
The guys who were awww-yeahing the FIRST DOWN shout got pretty quiet.
I got a couple of garlic roast-beef sandwiches from the Mazlack’s stand – mmmm, mmmm – and we settled in to watch the rest of the game. Mostly Bison from then. An interception run in for a TD! An incredible field goal! Hah! The Gophers got within seven as it came down to the last few minutes, but the Bison put another one on the board, and that was it. We walked the mile back to the car in fine spirits. He wanted to stop halfway and rest his leg.
“I sprained it,” he said. “Last winter.”
How’d you do that?
“Oh, I was fueling a train and stepped in a rut and twisted it.”
I point out that most 85-year-old guys aren’t fueling trains in the middle of winter, but they were short a man that day. Truth is, he likes to work. When he got home the next day he fueled up a tanker and drove it to Carrington and offloaded 300 gallons of avgas.
But first, breakfast. I took my wife to the airport – business trip – and met Dad and daughter at Perkins, where we tucked into one of those enormous breakfasts that will keep you going all day. He slipped her a twenty.
“I didn’t do anything to earn it!” she protested. “No, thanks, that’s okay.”
Gladdened my heart. So I took it. (FOR HER. He wanted her to have it.)
Snapped a picture of the two of them in the parking lot. Bright golden autumn sun. Flash: my own grandpa, what I remember. The farmer, the old guy, slow but clever, games at the farmhouse: hide the thimble. You’re hot. You’re cold. Reward: a pink peppermint lozenge. Grandpa in his chair with his cigarette burned down to the filter, the grandkids with their reminders: Grandpa, your ash. He would move it with deliberate care to the ashtray and tap it.
“Remember the lighter?” I said to my cousin when when we were standing in the tailgating parking lot. “A big pewter thing, like a murder weapon, always smelled of butane. She remembered it. She remembered hiding from Grandma when she came from the farmhouse to her house, because towards the end she was indistinct on the details of the day, and frequently thought it was Sunday. She would dress up in her best, assume it was Sunday, and go across the road to fetch her son and his wife and her grandchildren to go church.
“I’d say no, Grandma, it’s Wednesday,” my cousin said. The other cousin. Did I make that clear? Three cousins on my mom’s side. Two brothers, a sister. One brother died in a car accident last year. Smart man, clever, creative. Heading back from the cabin, drifted over the center line for reasons we’ll never know, hit an RV: instantaneous. His son is standing next to me in the tailgating parking lot as I’m talking about the great-grandfather he never knew. The son looks so much like his father you feel your heart bang in your throat when you see him.
But I’m talking to the daughter of his father’s father about the great-grandmother he’ll never know. “I’d say no, Grandma, it’s Wednesday,” she says. “But she’d get halfway across the road and look down and see she was wearing her best and she would think it must be Sunday, and she’d turn around and head right back to the house to say it was time to go to church.”
I had no idea it was like that towards the end.
“Do you remember her walking along with her hands behind her back?” says the other cousin. I admit I don’t. “She was hiding a cigarette.”
No.
“Yep. I remember I barged in the house one day and she was vacuuming and she was smoking a cigarette, and she she saw me she just crushed it in her hand.”
Why? I asked. Grandpa smoked. Constantly. Two-pack-a-day man, Old Golds, left the earth at the age of 88. Your dad smoked. He said he had no idea why she hid it, but she did. I had to laugh: all three cousins smoked. I smoked. We all quit. My dad never smoked. The website for his ship has a link to a site that processes claims for people who got lung cancer from the asbestos used on vessels of the era. My dad’s talking to someone else, laughing, and he finishes his beer, and my cousin hands him another -
but now I’m back in the Perkins parking lot taking a picture of my daughter and her grandfather, and I’m saying smile, one more, okay hold it, and meanwhile firing as many pictures as I can, hoping I get the one candid where she’s her and he’s him.
Then we shake hands and we go south, and he goes north.
“Oh, I dream about it sometimes,” he said. “I dream I see the torpedoes coming.”
And then?
“I wake up.”
And then?
“Well I lay there for a while, you know. But then I go back to sleep.” He looked into his glass and rattled the ice and I went to the cupboard for a refill. “That was early on. There was more after that.”
Perkins, Sunday morning:
“Did you kill anyone in the war?” Daughter asks.
Grandpa doesn’t move a muscle. The previous night I’d finally got the details on the strafing run: he was the gunner responsible for firing the AA gun, as well as the up-and-down position of the gun. Another sailor handled lateral motion, and they had to practice to learn each other’s style. One sailor got the bullets out, handed them to the second man in the chain, and the second man gave them to a man who fed the gun. A Japanese plane made a low pass. My dad ran out of ammo: the second man in the chain had turned the cartridge the wrong way when he handed it to the third man. The Japanese plane killed the first man and wounded the second.
“Did you kill anyone in the war?” Daughter asks.
Grandpa doesn’t move a muscle. “Close up, you mean?” He shakes his head. “You shoot a plane far away, you see it go down into the water.”
Daughter nods and doesn’t press the matter.
Like I said, the Bison won. I’ll never forget that night. Walking through my old Dinkytown, down 4th street choked with traffic, past the apartments were I lived, talking with Dad about the game. Coming home, hearing my daughter say YAAAY that the North Dakota team won. Where did that come from? Staying up late. Hearing stories. Perkins’ pancakes. Farewell on the edge of the highway in the Perkins lot.
“Funny article in the paper,” he says. “Now I don’t have to buy the Sunday newspaper.”
“Oh, buy it for the coupons.”
“Do you know how much your dad hated to do his paper route?” he says to my daughter. “If it was snowing I had to help him.”
“I wasn’t into the whole distribution aspect then, Dad – “
“And do you know how much he hated to practice piano?”
“Dad.”
“Had to drag him to the piano to make him do it.”
Daughter grins: really? You didn’t like to practice, either? She looks at me: I’m just like you! I look at my dad, and wish I was more like him, but you are what you are.
“How old are you now?” he says as we’re walking to the stadium.
“Oh, 53 or so,” I say. “Never felt better.”
He nods and we keep walking, and we can hear the music of the band outside the stadium; we can see the sun bouncing off the great silver wall, and it’s beautiful. It’s a great night. It’s going to be a great game.
Short takes:
1. I will be going back to the old format. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. the change will come at the start of the new year. New software will be needed; there might be – gasp – an URL redirect. There will be comments. There might not be tags, though. Yes: it’s true. You will not be able to search past entries via tags. We’ll all get through this together. I will warn you that I intend the column width to be about 600 pixels, so if you’re still using a 640 X 480 monitor, there might be scrollbars on the bottom.
2. Watched the last half of “Toy Story 3” last night – first time since I saw it in the theater – and was struck again by how incredibly dark the last reel gets before the characters are rescued by the most brilliant plot callback in animation history – I mean, drawing on the theology of minor characters from the first movie. It must have been a thunderstuck moment when the writer hit on that one: OF COURSE. I know the feeling; you want to dance around and shout, because it fits with a great cosmic CLICK. But the incinerator scene is still the Bambi moment for the younger generation, without the parental-death part. It’s not the terror of the imminent incineration that’s harrowing to a kid, because movies are full of peril. It’s the resignation. That’s what hits you. Everyone realizes there is simply nothing to be done. It’s going to end here. This goes against everything kids are supposed to learn from movies: heroes never quit! Heroes never stop trying! But the game is up; ingenuity, pluck, optimism, perseverance, and every other laudable quality aren’t magic skills that turn away the horror every time. In a way, their rescue is almost divine intervention – at least according to the disciples who arrange their extraction.
The last scene, as anyone who’s seen the movie knows, is so full of Unbearable Autumnal Goodness you can’t watch without huh-huh-huhing softly to yourself. And I mean “goodness” in the traditional sense, not the mock arch ironic sense of “an old advertising word now appended to anything to make you feel hip for understanding that the term is used with earnest sarcasm.”
3. Speaking of which: I’m tired of “awesome” and its variants. The other day a program I love, and use every two minutes – Alfred, a launcher / search tool / multi-macro thing / said I should upgrade to the new version, which had “awesomesauce.”
Oh, grow up.
4. As promised yesterday, the Whinny. I’ve written about this before, but it’s been three years.
Here it is.
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Can you recognize it? Play it again. I’ve isolated and amplified the sound.
Now, here it is in context, from “My World and Welcome To It.” A few words about that – I wrote a few years ago about the show, how I loved it as a kid, and was disappointed by the examples I found on YouTube. What, exactly, drew me to the show? Thurber, of course. When I was 11 I was mad about Thurber. Also, I’m pretty sure I had a crush on Lisa Gerritsen, who was about the same age. I identified with the cartoonist character, who was brilliant! and funny! and saw things no one else did and was beset by the tiresome forces of duty and obligation. But after watching the pilot I wondered if people hold the show in high regard because they haven’t seen it in four decades. In the pilot, at least, the main character isn’t just a “curmudgeon,” he’s a selfish, childish, unappealing mope. But pity him! His wife is such a shrew the entire house seems to conform to her peevish spirit:
. . . except that his wife in the show is perfectly pleasant. There’s nothing wrong with her. The cartoonist says he doesn’t get along with his daughter, and it’s clear quite quickly that this is his fault, because his daughter – while smart and preternaturally worldly in the sense you only find on TV – is a perfect companion for an adult of his genus. He’s cynical and guarded and sarcastic. She looks forward to being all those things. They ought to be kindred spirits, but he can’t be arsed to help her with homework because he’s upstairs drawing all evening.
Now. I suppose that this sort of anti-parental-instinct approach was fresh and new, but it doesn’t wear well. I have seven episodes, so we’ll see if the pilot’s tone was modified. I suspect it was.
Anyway. The Whinny. Here’s some dialogue. The scene: some workman are bringing up a pallet of paper to the magazine where the cartoonist works. Because the elevator is old, it vibrates, and this spills ink on the cartoonist’s work. Because the cartoonist is a dick, he goes into the hallway to lob some passive-aggressive sarcasm at the men who spend their day doing physical labor, and in this case have done nothing wrong but activate a piece of machinery whose maintenance is not their responsibility. Indeed, they are delivering the very paper on which the cartooinist’s work will be printed and sent to a little old lady in Peoria. Because they are humble workmen who know their place, they kowtow to the Smart Man who makes his living drawing pictures. The Whinny occurs six seconds in.
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If you’re my age, you grew up with the Whinny. It is not a human sound. It’s the Wilhelm of laugh tracks; once you can identify it, you hear it everywhere.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the only guy who noticed. Maybe I’m also the only guy who hears that annoying nasal wise-guy staccato laugh in Tom Lehrer’s live album.
But that’s for next week. Bleatplus returns today! Stray subscriptions unanswered should be cleared up by noon. Helluva weekend coming up – I will be sitting outdoors at night watching a football game, and the reason’s obvious: the U of M is playing North Dakota State University, and I know this guy who’s a big Bison backer. Got me some seats. Yes: a football game with my dad. All the details on Monday, along with 25 more matchbooks, and the things I didn’t finish this week but will be along now ANY MOMENT. Have a grand -
Oh! Newspaper column. It’s about cereal. I have to do that every two or three years. HERE. There you go. Have a grand weekend.
Host with the Most
