tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-144746312024-03-07T04:40:09.433-05:00Sippican CottageSippican Cottage. Cottage Furniture Maker From Maine.
A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everythingSippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.comBlogger2826125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-28946058108094719172023-03-16T11:58:00.001-04:002023-03-16T14:57:40.205-04:00Happy Opposite Day 2023<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHyhJG5ptN3GAF4JDYhl94wy412PW9DJ_u-m48IvksRvm0bL4IO6gb6fWxGIbN0oXlWeYO5JYhsczZ3Q2b16RBZSwuPNVIKXwW8PJuwsw8WP4FBOQcH6Zq3Hs2fQiIyEdau9Xqbw/s1600/Moms+drunk+dads+crying.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHyhJG5ptN3GAF4JDYhl94wy412PW9DJ_u-m48IvksRvm0bL4IO6gb6fWxGIbN0oXlWeYO5JYhsczZ3Q2b16RBZSwuPNVIKXwW8PJuwsw8WP4FBOQcH6Zq3Hs2fQiIyEdau9Xqbw/s400/Moms+drunk+dads+crying.jpg" height="421" width="549" /></a>
<br />
<br />
Mom's drunk. Dad's crying. Must be Opposite Day. Back when I was still in the music business, we called it "Amateur Hour." It wasn't a compliment. Ah, well, let's have a blessing anyway:<br />
<blockquote>
May
those who love us love us.<br />
And those that don't love us,<br />
May God turn their hearts.<br />
And if He doesn't turn their hearts,<br />
May he turn their ankles,<br />
So we'll know them by their limping.</blockquote>
Let's sing <i>Carrickfergus</i>, and weep, and laugh, all at once. And before anyone gets any ideas in the comments, there is only one version of this song:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="412" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bSngcH-TVWU?rel=0" width="549"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
I wished I had you in Carrickfergus,<br />
Only for nights in Ballygrand,<br />
I would swim over the deepest ocean,<br />
The deepest ocean to be by your side.<br />
<br />
But the sea is wide and I can't swim over<br />
And neither have I wings to fly.<br />
I wish I could find me a handy boatman<br />
To ferry me over to my love and die.<br />
<br />
My childhood days bring back sad reflections<br />
Of happy days so long ago.<br />
My boyhood friends and my own relations.<br />
Have all passed on like the melting snow.<br />
<br />
So I'll spend my days in endless roving,<br />
Soft is the grass and my bed is free.<br />
Oh to be home now in Carrickfergus,<br />
On the long road down to the salty sea.<br />
<br />
And in Kilkenny it is reported<br />
On marble stone there as black as ink,<br />
With gold and silver I did support her<br />
But I'll sing no more now till I get a drink.<br />
<br />
I'm drunk today and I'm rarely sober,<br />
A handsome rover from town to town.<br />
Oh but I am sick now and my days are numbered<br />
Come all ye young men and lay me down.<br />
<br />
I wish you'd put the battered kettle on <br />
The bag could take one steeping more<br />
I'd walk for miles across a rocky down <br />
To hear the whistle we're all waiting for<br />
<br />
The gulf yawns wide and I can't leap over <br />
Until my time is drawing nigh<br />
You're laid to rest in the nonesuch clover <br />
When you were here you slipped on by<br />
<br />
Those Christmas days and our destinations <br />
Trolley rides through the dirty snow<br />
My childhood's gone, like passing stations <br />
Eyes full of tears, some from the cold<br />
<br /></blockquote>
<br />
Nicely done, Van. More power to your elbow.SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-47254673149129121552023-03-13T09:39:00.000-04:002023-03-13T13:05:13.447-04:00The 3-6-3 Rule Rules. Well, It Used To<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ZQjVDpAGbXww5CxspMPgxAi6eeINyw_ZWsq7a2F1YAC8kkBIg7YEjaLI0AiWVAgZba9yJhrZb7Q-XaDEHIv82bcMiofGu40CBtzfnINozmt6iNLWRZVnMTg2j-7hsw_s7IcHpw/s1600-h/bankers" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304131807511168594" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1ZQjVDpAGbXww5CxspMPgxAi6eeINyw_ZWsq7a2F1YAC8kkBIg7YEjaLI0AiWVAgZba9yJhrZb7Q-XaDEHIv82bcMiofGu40CBtzfnINozmt6iNLWRZVnMTg2j-7hsw_s7IcHpw/s400/bankers" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><span style="color: #999999;">[Editor's Note: A hardy perennial. Originally offered in 2009. Still seems fairly trenchant, I'd say, if I knew what trenchant meant] </span></div>
<br />
Why did the nascent United States produce so many great thinkers? Where are they now?<br />
<br />
Great thinkers come to the fore when they are required. The founding of any great enterprise requires inspiration coupled to intellect. If the intellect is wanting, the inspiration is usually enough, but makes it harder to carry out the fruits of your inspiration except by dogged determination. Intellect alone is not useless -- it's worse than useless. On a good day it's counterproductive; the other 364 days it's destructive. You cannot come up with a worthwhile concept based solely on intellect. It qualifies you only to be a clerk or a sophist. Clerking is hard work, so everybody goes full sophist right away.<br />
<br />
Now the world is run by sophists. They think that because they read a few books about people who were great that they are great in their turn. There are two problems with this surmise. One, the people they think were great probably weren't. Secondly, most people are incapable of much more than misremembering and misunderstanding the twaddle they read anyway, because education isn't very rigorous anymore. If you think the world's business is decided by simply choosing wisely between John Galt and Noam Chomsky, I don't know what to say to you. Mozart is never going to show up on American Idol.<br />
<br />
I'll answer the question I posed in the opening myself. The reason Hamilton and Madison et. al. sat at the same table once is that it was required just then. There was an enormous market for ideas in the rough, right away. A few years later, the time for thinking like that was over. Old Muttonhead rightly sat at the head of the table and told Jefferson and Hamilton to put a sock in it, and see if they could manage to keep the spittoons emptied in their assigned offices before they got any more bright ideas. We could use some of the Old Muttonhead approach right now.<br />
<br />
I read the news in the most desultory fashion because it's so useless to read twaddle filtered through incoherence and basted with a faction reduction. I hear, literally, gibberish. There is no such thing as a "toxic asset," for instance. An asset is pass/fail. It either is, or it's not. A banker prone to adjectives isn't much of a banker. There's that sophistry again. To hear a person with their hand on the levers of vital things utter such bosh indicates to me that the people that formerly put stupid back-seat-driver bright ideas in the suggestion box at their crummy jobs thrice daily are in charge of important things now.<br />
<br />
Smart managers know the suggestion box is 99.9% for humoring cranks. The Internet is the world's suggestion box now, with much the same role.<br />
<br />
What possible good could it do to read a paper that refers to a capital injection into the money supply and a transfer payment to non-productive sectors referred to interchangeably as "a bailout." It used to be only the journalist that was that ignorant. When the people the journalists are interviewing start talking like that, why listen at all?<br />
<br />
My father was a banker. He told me the old saw about the only rule in the bank is the "3-6-3 Rule." Borrow at 3%, lend at 6%, and play golf at three.<br />
<br />
It was a joke and pop never played golf and he never left at three and people were always coming in to the bank to rob it and shoot the guard. You see, you don't understand the joke. You think it means that bankers were effete and lazy and thick-headed. It really meant that the wisest of them knew that after you borrowed (judiciously) at 3% and lent (wisely) at 6% there was nothing left to do. If you kept coming up with bright ideas after that, it was all bad, brother.<br />
<br />
Everybody's been working overtime in banking and government coming up with new and bright ideas to torture the language and the arithmetic so they could pat themselves on the back about how much smarter they are than everybody else. Can I have my bonus billion now? I'm going to invest it with Bernie Madoff because I'm so smahhht.<br />
<br />
You're not captains of industry. You're not visionaries. You're not statesmen. You're supposed to be clerks. I'm sorry, but clerks don't get paid all that much -- and never get a piece of the action. They don't get statues in the park in their honor. I can read well enough to know that <span style="font-style: italic;">real</span> clerks, honorable, hardworking clerks, are going to be taxed into the hereafter, never mind the foreseeable future, to make sure the fake clerks with delusions of grandeur don't have to go back to the real world they fled.<br />
<br />
It's an honorable profession, being a clerk. I spend part of my day being one. You intellectual swells should try dabbling in it. To paraphrase Randle Patrick McMurphy: Sell big ideas someplace else; we're all stocked up here.SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-56520124323879611522021-12-24T08:10:00.000-05:002021-12-24T08:10:16.565-05:00Merry Christmas, Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/j6eWW_QZ7PA" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-85495074615184788802021-11-10T16:38:00.000-05:002021-11-10T16:38:12.293-05:00I Looked Down, And There It Was (Redux)<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYSVuJ2ocNVCHBB655mt6keIsEWR29H5MLMxLDzmbclJzQtzoGVtKot3HWZvH583TBEzJ-3yFCHVnuYdqIcbnGUIyuTIXJoOWCI-xjP5yyJ2FJ4OUh8qKIJXOPKPXZ3TWfy3HejA/s1600-h/maplesyrup+%282%29.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="478" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5023240193788979890" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYSVuJ2ocNVCHBB655mt6keIsEWR29H5MLMxLDzmbclJzQtzoGVtKot3HWZvH583TBEzJ-3yFCHVnuYdqIcbnGUIyuTIXJoOWCI-xjP5yyJ2FJ4OUh8qKIJXOPKPXZ3TWfy3HejA/w640-h478/maplesyrup+(2).jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><i>[From 2007. Perhaps to be right too far in advance is the same as being wrong.] </i><br /></p><p>It's a hoary old joke my friend tells. The man of few words, in a restaurant slightly more elegant than he's used to. The waiter asks: "How did you find your meal?" He answers: "I looked down, and there it was." </p><p>Everything appears now, through a process so complex that no one can fully understand even a small portion of it. Persons that say they understand the machinations necessary to place the most mundane thing in front of a great many people well enough to regulate the whole affair, with an eye towards improving everything, are spouting nonsense. If a man walked up to you and confessed he didn't know your name, but claimed he could list all the atoms in your body, would you hand him your wallet? How about your skin? All day long, I hear the groundskeepers telling me they should be the quarterback. And I can't help noticing the grass has gone to seed, and the hash marks are crooked. </p><p>You look down, and there it is, all day long. There is a large chance that if you're reading this, you have never participated in the actual making of anything in any meaningful way. And as the world gets more complex, we all get further and further removed from the ultimate source of all of our prosperity. How far removed? To the point where it gets obscure enough that it can be blithely strangled in its crib, on the supposition that it can be improved by infantile wishing, followed by fiat. </p><p>See the man on the sleigh, bringing the sap back to the shed to boil? He knows the tree like a brother. He knows the woods like a mother. He knows fire like a caveman. He knows commerce like a loanshark. He knows cold like a gravedigger. He knows sap like you know the alphabet. And he doesn't have the slightest idea what you're about, because you labor in a vineyard far removed from his -- where the meaning of your efforts is likely always obscure, as all intellectual pursuits must be.
Remember always what you don't know about him, lest one day, you look down, and there it ain't.</p>SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-59095238823444995962021-10-29T10:18:00.000-04:002021-10-29T10:18:29.079-04:00I Know That Smell Redux<br />
<br />
<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6113/1202/1600/Bristol%207-14-06%20%2871%29.0.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6113/1202/320/Bristol%207-14-06%20%2871%29.0.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="300" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: courier new;">[<b>Editor's Note:</b> First offered in 2006]</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: courier new;">[<b>Author's
Note:</b> Man, I was smart in 2006. Of course, like Cassandra, knowing
what's going to happen and doing anything about it are two different things. And there is no editor.]</span></span><br />
<br /></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">BY</span></b> god, how I know that smell. Old plaster and dirt and corruption and mildew and rockwool insulation and nasty fibrous plaster; it's the smell of grandma's grandma's attic. The smell of grandma, too.<br />
<br />
We walked past this doorway in Bristol, Rhode Island. It's the entrance to a vacant turn-of-the-twentieth century single-story retail business building. My wife commented on what a neat place it would be to sell my furniture. I've done that sort of mental arithmetic a million times, for myself and others, and I know anyplace cheap enough for me to buy is generally cheap for a reason. If it was easy, someone would have done it already.<br />
<br />
That little padlock you see is to "keep the honest people out," as we used to say. It's probably there to protect the valuables of the people working on the building, not the building itself. Some sort of demolition had happened, and the woolly interior of the walls and ceilings was partially exposed, but there was no sign of anything but the most desultory activity. No Coming Soon sign. No building materials. No people.<br />
<br />
Now, I told you I know that smell. I've worked on buildings and/or their furnishings for my whole life. And I've seen most everything at this point. I've seen wooden plumbing and DC electricity and steam piped in by the city for heat. I've seen vestigal carbide gas works and elevators with accordion doors,and secret rooms. I've seen ranks of identical rooms -- whole closed up floors of them-- one bed, one window, one dresser each, for the long dead live-in servants of the ghosts of the mansion's long dead original owners. I've seen the cubbyholes where settlers hid their children during King Philip's War. I've repaired houses sheathed with 24" wide oak planks 1-1/4" thick and as hard as a banker's heart. I've seen more lead paint than a Dutch Boy.<br />
<br />
That smell used to be common thirty years ago. It was a building that had gone to seed, but with hard use, over a long time, and barely altered. It wasn't continuously fiddled with, with only a vestige of its original form showing through the years. It was old, and a wreck, and wonderful, and had potential -- and nobody wanted it.<br />
<br />
Everybody wants everything now. I caution persons slightly younger than me that life was not always as rosy as it has been for the last 20 or 25 years, at least for the most part. There was a time when it was very difficult for a hardworking family to get by, and you jumped on any work situation that promised even a modicum of stability. With both feet. You'd accept work situations that would look like indentured servitude now, more or less. You never ever ever quit your job before you had another one. Never. And it took real nerve to buy a rundown building like this and turn it into something.<br />
<br />
My elders warned me about the Depression. It led them to certain habits which seem like madness now -- overreaction and paranoia. When you hear about honest people hoarding cash outside of banks, saving newspaper and cardboard and scraps of this and that, never throwing anything away, always afraid that all prosperity is ephemeral -- that's the Depression talking.<br />
<br />
Twice in my working life, unemployment in the construction business has exceeded 25% for a substantial stretch. That might be news to you civilians, but the reason you can't find anyone to do anything for you that involves heavy lifting, hammers, and speaking english, is that everyone but the hardiest souls and people with nothing but a strong back were driven out of the sector for sunnier economic climes. Everybody bailed out if they could manage it.<br />
<br />
Well, I'm not going to warn you about the Depression. Preparing yourself for a cataclysm that never comes is a form of unpreparedness, really. But recently, I hear that certain ex-government officials have gotten the idea in their heads that 1970 was swell, and had just the right ratio of carbon dioxide and economic activity, and we need to return there, pronto.<br />
<br />
I know that smell. It's the smell of the cake I'm going to be allowed to eat, when there is no bread.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6113/1202/1600/Bristol%207-14-06%20%2881%29.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6113/1202/320/Bristol%207-14-06%20%2881%29.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="300" /></a>SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-49976975043949950732020-09-16T06:00:00.001-04:002020-09-16T08:01:26.506-04:00Maine Is Totally Like This, Totally<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="309" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/83337695?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="550"></iframe>
<br />
Whoo boy, that's Maine.<br />
<br />
I live in Maine, if you call that living, and I'm here to testify that Maine is just like you see in the video. Why, lighthouses are thick on the ground, I tell you what. We were thinking of just stringing the telephone wires from one to the next instead of using those dang poles, but we got so many trees we decided to go the redundant route. Maine's a redundant place. We got two of everything. We don't have three of anything, though.<br />
<br />
All the trees are always turning color like that, too. All the time. Everywhere. Why, you can just walk up to any old maple tree and turn the handy spigot that Maine installs on them and syrup flows right out of it. They issue pancakes to travelers at the Hampton toll plaza on Route 95 instead of receipts. True story.<br />
<br />
The entire state is oceanside, just like in the video. There are rumors of some vast, undiscovered bogs or swamps or mountains or something out west, but no one would ever go there and find out. LL Bean is in Freeport, hard by the Atlantic, and you're not allowed to be in Maine more than an hour's drive from there. If we had police, they'd check. Bean's used to have catalogs filled with shotguns and fishing poles, but now they only sell banana hammock bathing suits for Canadians that go to Old Orchard Beach and think it's the Riviera, and button-down men's shirts for ladies to wear. <br />
<br />
The State of Maine has various slogans. They used to call it <i>Vacationland</i>, but Mainers couldn't help themselves, and got to reading the <i>Vacationland</i> billboards while driving to work in the office park in Westbrook, and forgot the signs were for people "From away." That's the charming soubriquet Mainers use when they want to call someone a Masshole, but the guy hasn't paid his bill yet. Anyway, everyone in Maine went to Disneyworld at the same time, on the same bus, and there was no one left in Maine to direct the tourists from Massachusetts to the best places to icefish in June, or where to find all the huggable bull mooses in rutting season, or how to properly approach a black bear cub. Note: Always get between Mama bear and Baby bear. They love that. <br />
<br />
"Maine: The Way Life Should Be," was another one. It was less of an overt threat than New Hampshire's motto, it's true, but it left too much room for rumination on its meaning. I haven't been to New Hampshire in a while, but if memory serves, their slogan is "Live Free, Or Else," or something to that effect. Maine's sounds friendlier, but its ambiguity rankles some. It's never wise to get the tourists thinking. It smacked a bit of "Your life is bad, and you should feel bad, and we're here to tell you so." <br />
<br />
Well, I'm sorry, but your life is bad, and you should feel bad. You should totally move to Maine. The clouds here move, and the tide goes in an out, and we've got so many goddamn lighthouses we use them for traffic lights and fenceposts and fire hydrants, and when all else fails, we string clotheslines between 'em. Now if you flatlander Philistines will excuse me, my wife is almost done chipping the ice off the well, and coffee break generally follows soon after that. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-30674795755046285282020-06-03T06:00:00.000-04:002020-06-03T09:53:51.705-04:00Sippican's Greatest Hits: Hostile Workplace<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitWhTf7USBTbEyS8wkr0wy9Hkum2x2-E0areEuv60Lw33YFoK0FqgTtPGc2MloN5UroWBEu4pRcnWACgk8eHM9d9rUMYEyBNR3v5koaaXZIC7n5FYFtJR4aYN7Np-apH80MND5fA/s1600/abandoned+gas+station.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitWhTf7USBTbEyS8wkr0wy9Hkum2x2-E0areEuv60Lw33YFoK0FqgTtPGc2MloN5UroWBEu4pRcnWACgk8eHM9d9rUMYEyBNR3v5koaaXZIC7n5FYFtJR4aYN7Np-apH80MND5fA/s400/abandoned+gas+station.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
In a previous life, I supervised the construction of commercial buildings -- filling stations, convenience stores, restaurants -- that sort of thing.<br />
<br />
After a short while, I was in charge of most everyone. When you're in charge, all the ticklish things make it to your desk. The staff tries on their own for a while, and then it escalates to supervised trying, and finally at the end of the winnowing process, there's nothing left but really tough things that only a person with the keys to the kingdom can handle.<br />
<br />
The worst stuff was what employees would hide for years at a time. Carrying uncollectable debt on Accounts Receivable forever, never quite completing a project until a place needs to be remodeled before it's officially finished, stuff like that. A couple of times project managers went into the hospital for short periods and a casual look over what was hidden under their desk blotter gave me an aneurysm. The passing of an employee out of the building was like the old business saying about the tide going out: It affects everyone the same amount, but you get to see who isn't wearing any swim trunks. It was at the tail end of one of those cathartic employee convulsions that I gazed upon the second most beautiful woman in the world. You don't forget people like that.<br />
<br />
There was a convenience store/ gas station combo that had been built before I was even employed by the company, but was never really finished to the last jot and tittle, and there was some money left on the table and I had to go get it. The building was in the inner city of Boston. I arrived in the late afternoon after a long drive. The place looked as neat as a pin, like it was ten minutes old. I got out to look around a bit, then went inside.<br />
<br />
The building was built in what we termed "the urban style." What was meant by that was that it had to be constructed to withstand a zombie apocalypse, a full-on riot, a nuclear strike, and World War III at the same time. The building was constructed of textured concrete block. The block was ribbed to make it harder to deface. A concrete block might seem substantial to a layman but it's hollow inside and won't stop a high-caliber round. While laying up the blocks, each cavity in the wall was specified to be filled completely with mortar instead of the insulation a regular wall might be filled with. Reinforcing steel bars were put vertically through the webs before the mortar, because it was common for hijacked cars and trucks to be rammed through the sides of such buildings for smash-and grabs. In addition to the wall reinforcement, bollards were set deeply into the ground in front of any part of the facade with any sort of penetration in it. The bollards were steel pipe that were filled with concrete.<br />
<br />
The roof was flat with a short parapet wall, as is common with such structures. HVAC (Heating,Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning) and other mechanical contrivances were installed on the roof. In the "urban" environment, every opening that was required in the roof , some large, some very small, had to have a steel grate welded over it before the units were installed on them, to protect from entry to the building after removal of the machinery from their bases. <br />
<br />
The front of the building had a lot of glass, centered in the facade. It was all bullet-proof glass, and not ordinary bullet proof glass, but a form of it the suppliers often referred to informally as "military." That was just to protect the building during the day when it was open; there was an enormous sort-of steel garage door that was lowered over the glass part of the facade after the business closed for the night. The building became a short, squat metal and masonry bunker that showed no opening whatsoever. At one time, these sorts of buildings has a four-inch square window in the back door so that employees going out to the dumpster could look outside first, but a would-be robber had shot an employee in the face through the window at another building, and the architects changed to a blank, steel, bullet-proof door with a camera instead. There were cameras all over gas stations already, to allow the clerks to shut off dispensers if people were smoking and so forth; one more didn't cost that much more. That other employee at the other place died, by the way, and the robber couldn't reach the knob by reaching through the window hole, so he never did get inside.<br />
<br />
All the money in such places was treated like radioactive waste, and we used to install safes that were welded onto a sort of steel sled, and the concrete floor was laid over and around them. There was a kind of slot with a slim rammer that you folded folding money over, and injected it into the safe. There was no way for any employee taken hostage to open the safe. <br />
<br />
I went through the front door to talk to someone about whatever needed attention before we got our money. It was a conventional convenience store, with all the usual stuff that's in one. But instead of entering the store, you entered a sort of quiz-show booth, about the size of a roomy phone booth or a cramped handicapped bathroom, maybe. Nothing and no one in the store was accessible to a customer. Items were displayed on shelves facing the door. There was a stainless steel drawer, like maybe you'd find in a supermax prison, and everything going in or out went through it. I was in the noticing business, and noticed that the size and shape of the drawer was painstakingly designed to keep a robber from being able to put a hand holding a gun and turning the barrel up to the cashier when the drawer was half-opened; it would break your wrist to try it. <br />
<br />
The glass inside was way, way more bulletproof than the bulletproof glass on the outside. It gave a hint of greenish parallax to the view inside, like everything was under water filled with algae. It was like a window on a submarine. You were expected to point to what you wanted, pay first, and the item would be placed in the drawer. There was no penetration of any kind, and I knew from blueprints that the glass went all the way to the underside of the roof deck, so you couldn't climb over it. You spoke to the attendants through an intercom only.<br />
<br />
There was a young girl behind the counter. I am in the describing business, but I cannot do her justice by telling you how beautiful she was. It would be easier to build a time machine, go get Titian and DaVinci and bring them back and have them work in shifts trying to paint her picture. I'll bet the picture would never be completed because they'd be fighting over her with knives before fifteen minutes was up. She was so pretty that a normal person, which I sometimes am, would just look at her, slackjawed, and forget how to breathe or think or behave. If God has some plan for mankind it is surely inscrutable because no one else would put this daisy on the far side of Pluto like that.<br />
<br />
She was very pleasant, but didn't speak English very well. I was expected, and even though she was barely an adult, she had been left in charge and given instructions on what to show me. She told me to go outside, and she appeared from around the back of the building and showed me some trifling problem I can't remember right now; a busted hinge on a dumpster corral, something like that.<br />
<br />
There wasn't anything left to discuss. We'll fix it, you'll pay, case closed. I leaned on my car and was writing some notes about the meeting, and she put her hand on my arm. She was very worried, and told me that I must leave, right away, because the sun was going down, and very bad people would come out. She pointed to a park across the street and said it was very dangerous, and that after dark no one like me should ever show their face there. She wasn't frightened, exactly; she was frightened <i>for me</i>. I was born a few blocks from that place, and for all I know my parents
took me to that park when I was an infant, but I didn't mention that. She lives here all the time now. That's seven no trumps. She went inside, and I left. <br />
<br />
I'm told recently that if someone looks at you funny twice, or maybe if a guy with bad breath instead of Fabio pectorals asks you out on a date at your cubicle farm, you're working in a "hostile workplace." <br />
<br />
I've been to a hostile workplace. I'll raise my hand when you're in one.SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-601847389810995392020-04-16T08:00:00.000-04:002020-04-16T11:48:25.824-04:00I Looked Down, And There It Was (Again)<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYSVuJ2ocNVCHBB655mt6keIsEWR29H5MLMxLDzmbclJzQtzoGVtKot3HWZvH583TBEzJ-3yFCHVnuYdqIcbnGUIyuTIXJoOWCI-xjP5yyJ2FJ4OUh8qKIJXOPKPXZ3TWfy3HejA/s1600-h/maplesyrup+%282%29.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="476" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5023240193788979890" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYSVuJ2ocNVCHBB655mt6keIsEWR29H5MLMxLDzmbclJzQtzoGVtKot3HWZvH583TBEzJ-3yFCHVnuYdqIcbnGUIyuTIXJoOWCI-xjP5yyJ2FJ4OUh8qKIJXOPKPXZ3TWfy3HejA/s640/maplesyrup+(2).jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a><span style="font-size: 78%;">[Editor's note: This was originally offered in 2007. I'm pleased that these things make a certain amount of sense even though they are not new. Authors who are famously wrong need new material all the time, I guess.]</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 78%;">{Author's note: Being lazy, I tell the truth. Saves effort. Also, there is no editor.}</span></div>
<br />
It's a hoary old joke my friend tells: There's a man of few words, in a restaurant slightly more elegant than he's used to. The waiter brings the check, and asks, "How did you find your meal?" He answers: "I looked down, and there it was."<br />
<br />
Everything appears like that now, through a process so complex that no one can fully understand even a small portion of it. Persons that say they understand the machinations necessary to place the most mundane thing in front of a great many people well enough to regulate the whole affair, with an eye towards improving everything, are spouting nonsense. If a man walked up to you and confessed he didn't know your name, but claimed he could list all the atoms in your body, would you hand him your wallet? How about your skin? All day long, I hear the groundskeepers telling me they should be the quarterback. And I can't help noticing the grass has gone to seed, and the hash marks are crooked.<br />
<br />
You look down, and there it is, all day long. There is a large chance that if you're reading this, you have never participated in the actual making of anything in any meaningful way. And as the world gets more complex, we all get further and further removed from the ultimate source of all of our prosperity. How far removed? To the point where it gets obscure enough that it can be blithely strangled in its crib, on the supposition that it can be improved by infantile wishing, followed by fiat.<br />
<br />
See the man on the sleigh, bringing the sap back to the shed to boil? He knows the tree like a brother. He knows the woods like a mother. He knows fire like a caveman. He knows commerce like a loanshark. He knows cold like a wintertime gravedigger. He knows sap like you know the alphabet. But he doesn't have the slightest idea what you're about, because you labor in a vineyard far removed from his. A place where the meaning of your efforts is likely always obscure, as all intellectual pursuits must be.<br />
<br />
Remember always what you don't know about the man on the sleigh, lest one day, you look down, and there it ain't.SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-87003376093611732392020-02-12T10:19:00.000-05:002020-02-12T10:19:11.347-05:00If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On!<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kAqe6eNWgJQ" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
Happy St. Valentine's Day from everyone at the cottage. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-28601471973971582422019-12-24T08:58:00.000-05:002019-12-24T08:58:56.176-05:00Happy Crimble and a Very New Year to One and All<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/j6eWW_QZ7PA" width="560"></iframe>SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-69469557435152314142017-04-25T08:55:00.001-04:002017-11-04T19:05:46.796-04:00Bach In the USA<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/66999866" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
The internet sure is becoming professionalized.<br />
<br />
Became, I should have said. It used to be a scattered bunch of thought suburbs. Shotgun shacks of text. There were a few dirt roads linking early adopters, and visitors just happened by while out riding.<br />
<br />
Everyone's roped and branded now. There are megalopolises of text, linked by a superhighway with no on ramps. There's still a lot of churn, of course, and websites come and go, but it's ever so much harder to get your head above water than it was just five years ago or so.<br />
<br />
The users appeared before the internet did, really. People wanted to look at stuff, and there wasn't enough stuff to look at, no matter how much of it got pasted into websites. You could put almost anything on the internet and some people would find it and look at it.<br />
<br />
It strikes me as a zero sum game now. If you're going to get prominent on the internet, you're going to have to pillage someone else's audience. That takes money, and dedication. Mostly money. Not many people can hang in there until they reach critical mass and sell enough tschotchkes to keep body and soul together.<br />
<br />
You could point a video camera at anything five years ago and put it on YouTube and someone would watch it. Nowadays, you better deliver polished goods like this video. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-32590138059191638562017-04-21T17:58:00.000-04:002017-04-21T17:58:19.173-04:00I Still Want<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">[Editor's Note: <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-want.html?_sm_au_=iVVZRq78Trsj8PkN" target="_blank">From 2008</a>. The website where I got the photos is dead. I'm still alive, after a fashion]</span></span><br />
</div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIpYnBug9EOSeckWq8SI2Vp-QFQg22FK8aPsG8EX-PHady7swKvf14HkNXsnWUYan1M_n1RKWfhjmLMwHFKfz_ZMHxYb_LtqPIF3K__Up7sD_yya2WZ03gYWp7pD3w6J69kJyRiw/s1600-h/dance2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5177282623924182738" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIpYnBug9EOSeckWq8SI2Vp-QFQg22FK8aPsG8EX-PHady7swKvf14HkNXsnWUYan1M_n1RKWfhjmLMwHFKfz_ZMHxYb_LtqPIF3K__Up7sD_yya2WZ03gYWp7pD3w6J69kJyRiw/s640/dance2.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="435" /></a>I want to participate unreservedly in American life.<br />
<br />
I want to say hello to my neighbors. I want to send my children to school on a bus with their brethren to read of George Washington and Abe Lincoln. I want them to eat peanut butter sandwiches from a paper sack with waxy boxes of whole milk to wash it down.<br />
<br />
I want to watch the news and not think it's an assault on my worldview. I want to watch the news and not think it's an assault on the worldview of people with whom I disagree.<br />
<br />
I want to read a newspaper. I want to listen to the radio. I wouldn't mind constructing my own radio with a soldering iron and a few parts that came mail order, but I'd rather not construct the playlist of songs. How would I know what I liked if I had never heard it?<br />
<br />
I want to order a drink from the well. I want to sit on naugahyde. I want someone to smoke. I don't want to smoke. I want people to make music right there in front of me. I want everybody to know the words.<br />
<br />
I want everyone to dress as well as they can for a social occasion and still be dressed badly. I want to see dress shoes and white socks.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvVtpCmF8l5sgVrWBDkEWIBCJNVZRZLpwacWdzfT1OgtiEltgw8DtgOxO3P2prOSE-5v-fI9azvTMMzAw_omu62-eExeBAgmH8mMLGPYF3Vjfp6ED_GaanAYFTRepklFQjR6Upow/s1600-h/dance3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5177283040536010466" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvVtpCmF8l5sgVrWBDkEWIBCJNVZRZLpwacWdzfT1OgtiEltgw8DtgOxO3P2prOSE-5v-fI9azvTMMzAw_omu62-eExeBAgmH8mMLGPYF3Vjfp6ED_GaanAYFTRepklFQjR6Upow/s640/dance3.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="436" /></a>I want to see old people. I want to see babies. I want to tell people their ugly children are beautiful. I want the ballgame to be on TV. I want the TV to be on a shelf over a bar.<br />
<br />
I want to go to church on Sunday. I want to go to a bar on Friday night. I want to go dancing with my wife of many years on Saturday. I want to be buried in the same suit I was married in. I want people to stand there and look at my cold face and say I was no great shakes but I was alright.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8_FalDm5pa3ZykrhJUw8KQ6Jnk3ZkxAD6KvgPRYsZ4_SsPDO4ZOftTnBSfm9Tj6BE_7AKyPJm3nUpLOPoHOnX5VV0UB39aE9yDvklroToeh5XAa565AmBgQsd2jtrLfhsFYE9iA/s1600-h/dance1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5177282615334248130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8_FalDm5pa3ZykrhJUw8KQ6Jnk3ZkxAD6KvgPRYsZ4_SsPDO4ZOftTnBSfm9Tj6BE_7AKyPJm3nUpLOPoHOnX5VV0UB39aE9yDvklroToeh5XAa565AmBgQsd2jtrLfhsFYE9iA/s640/dance1.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="443" /></a>I want someone to put flowers on my grave after everyone else has forgotten I was alive.SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-42804415133968993032017-04-20T13:46:00.002-04:002017-04-20T15:01:16.009-04:00That's Nobody's Business But the Turks<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7A1q7v4btbk?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
The Mosque of St. Sophia is the chief lion of Constantinople. You must get a firman and hurry there the first thing. We did that. We did not get a firman, but we took along four or five francs apiece, which is much the same thing.<br />
<br />
I do not think much of the Mosque of St. Sophia. I suppose I lack appreciation. We will let it go at that. It is the rustiest old barn in heathendom. I believe all the interest that attaches to it comes from the fact that it was built for a Christian church and then turned into a mosque, without much alteration, by the Mohammedan conquerors of the land. They made me take off my boots and walk into the place in my stocking-feet. I caught cold, and got myself so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime and general corruption, that I wore out more than two thousand pair of boot-jacks getting my boots off that night, and even then some Christian hide peeled off with them. I abate not a single boot-jack.<br />
<br />
St Sophia is a colossal church, thirteen or fourteen hundred years old, and unsightly enough to be very, very much older. Its immense dome is said to be more wonderful than St Peter's, but its dirt is much more wonderful than its dome, though they never mention it. The church has a hundred and seventy pillars in it, each a single piece, and all of costly marbles of various kinds, but they came from ancient temples at Baalbec, Heliopolis, Athens and Ephesus, and are battered, ugly and repulsive. They were a thousand years old when this church was new, and then the contrast must have been ghastly -- if Justinian's architects did not trim them any. The inside of the dome is figured all over with a monstrous inscription in Turkish characters, wrought in gold mosaic, that looks as glaring as a circus bill; the pavements and the marble balustrades are all battered and dirty; the perspective is marred every where by a web of ropes that depend from the dizzy height of the dome, and suspend countless dingy, coarse oil lamps, and ostrich-eggs, six or seven feet above the floor. Squatting and sitting in groups, here and there and far and near, were ragged Turks reading books, hearing sermons, or receiving lessons like children, and in fifty places were more of the same sort bowing and straightening up, bowing again and getting down to kiss the earth, muttering prayers the while, and keeping up their gymnastics till they ought to have been tired, if they were not.<br />
<br />
Every where was dirt, and dust, and dinginess, and gloom; every where were signs of a hoary antiquity, but with nothing touching or beautiful about it; every where were those groups of fantastic pagans; overhead the gaudy mosaics and the web of lamp-ropes -- nowhere was there any thing to win one's love or challenge his admiration.
The people who go into ecstasies over St. Sophia must surely get them out of the guide-book (where every church is spoken of as being "considered by good judges to be the most marvelous structure, in many respects, that the world has ever seen.") Or else they are those old connoisseurs from the wilds of New Jersey who laboriously learn the difference between a fresco and a fire-plug and from that day forward feel privileged to void their critical bathos on painting, sculpture and architecture forevermore.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
-- <b>Mark Twain</b> <i><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3176?msg=welcome_stranger" target="_blank">The Innocents Abroad</a></i> </div>
SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-60606746113182848152017-04-19T12:02:00.002-04:002017-04-19T12:04:04.054-04:00Exhibit A: How It's Done. Exhibit B: Not How It's Done<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b6MNg8JD5vE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
Glenn "Casey Stengel" Tilbrook thinks, Can't anyone here play this game? SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-13243426322224847552017-04-13T09:55:00.000-04:002017-04-13T09:55:54.734-04:00Frantic and Angry and Late Is No Way To Go Through Life, Son<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_fbVXEAWp5hy2fSpNaQSDoFpMTCIzhDhfHVpyyKTPkQQkd5THbkD66WLM-FLI3c-cJS3s5WsofnRQxq9kFBKhqvOOIhu0ZfG8P7PS28Gsez4wzRVmth3vIMVdXRhB0i2tldT1AQ/s1600/bugsbunny.gif.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_fbVXEAWp5hy2fSpNaQSDoFpMTCIzhDhfHVpyyKTPkQQkd5THbkD66WLM-FLI3c-cJS3s5WsofnRQxq9kFBKhqvOOIhu0ZfG8P7PS28Gsez4wzRVmth3vIMVdXRhB0i2tldT1AQ/s1600/bugsbunny.gif.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[Written <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2014/04/frantic-and-angry-and-late-is-no-way-to.html" target="_blank">in 2014</a>. I shed a tear to see Chasmatic's name in the comments. He was a nice man, and he has gone to his reward] </span></span><br />
<br />
I remember the dark days before <a href="http://sites.garmin.com/nuvi/">Nuvi</a>. <br />
<br />
Being lost in a car was a fairly regular occurrence for me. I built and repaired things out in the landscape, and I had to find my way to them first. More often than not, I was supposed to meet a homeowner or some other interested person at these prospective jobs at an appointed hour, so time was of the essence. In my experience, a person who can direct you to their location with any sort of accuracy is a very rare person indeed. Most people simply say things like, "Do you know where the... "<br />
<br />
Listen, if I knew the local landmarks, I wouldn't need directions. People rely on what's familiar to them by and large, and what's familiar to them encompasses a very short list of things. Precision in directions is almost unheard of. I eventually accumulated a substantial supply of gigantic streetmap books in my car, took the "take a left at the rock that looks like a bear" directions with a grain of salt, and carried on, until Nuvi saved me entirely with her curt, clipped directions. She even reads street signs at night for me. <br />
<br />
I noticed something about my behavior, and the behavior of many other people, when I got lost. You speed up. The lost-er you get, the faster you go, and the more frantic you become. There is almost no better time to slow down and think things through than when you're lost, but people don't do it. People behave just the opposite, almost to a man. It's the same reason an inveterate gambler lays his last, borrowed dollar on the green baize. He's trying to win back everything he ever lost, all at once, all the time.<br />
<br />
If anyone is in the car with you when you're lost, they will get an avalanche of fury directed at them if they find the temerity to mention that they told you to go left a mile back, but you didn't listen. They'll get the same treatment if they say absolutely nothing, because their silence is an accusation, after all. There is no way to be in a car with a person that is lost, and like it. <br />
<br />
People's judgment gets compromised fast when they're lost. They back up on superhighways when they miss an exit. They take left turns from the far right lane. They tailgate. They drive without looking out of the windshield. They cut through gas stations on streetcorners if the light is red. If they are involved in any sort of fender bender as a result of their situation, there could very well be bloodshed one way or the other by the side of the road. Frantic and angry and late is no way to go through life, son.<br />
<br />
But that's exactly how the general public acts about everything all the time now. They're lost. Almost everyone is traveling to a location they cannot name, but they seem hell bent to get to. Every milepost, sign, and touchstone that formerly directed their travel through life has been defaced or destroyed by vandals. They have map books that consist solely of dead ends on other planets. They started off edgy but by now they're entirely unglued. They will turn on anyone that comes into their line of sight. Even a Good Samaritan better watch out, as no amount of help is ever enough to turn back a clock. Anything resembling advice is seen as vilification, and even the mildest sort of criticism is an imperative to immediately drop the gloves.<br />
<br />
Everybody is stretched to their absolute limit, and further, and in every which way -- mortgaged and indebted into the hereafter, but still somehow with an enormous budget for dissolution and sloth; overworked but still somehow lazy; fifteen minutes late for being a dollar short -- angry, sullen, wound up tight and drugged insensate at the same time. The laziest person in the country is very, very busy being lazy. I see people that look like hobos walking by the side of the road, texting furiously while they walk, as if they were a captain of industry who needs to keep in constant touch with lots of important persons over serious affairs. There's no rest for the wicked, and everyone's wicked.<br />
<br />
If you interrupt, in any way, anyone's frantic attempt to get nowhere for no particular reason in order that they might achieve an equanimity they'd reject as boredom, and by doing so become conspicuous in their mind at the wrong time, which is all the time, you can expect the full fury of their frustrations to be immediately heaped upon you -- some real, most imagined, all overlaid with the dull image of violence and degradation that is their daily entertainment, and cozened to the top of their to-do list by the buzzing saw of a cocktail of drugs, illegal and prescribed, that they take to keep going, faster and faster, and basted in the inchoate fear that they're missing out on something. <br />
<br />
<i>Recalculating...</i>SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-58502405488039396622017-04-11T10:26:00.001-04:002017-04-11T11:03:13.755-04:00Torn From the Virtual Pages of the Maine Craigslist, April Edition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvwa-araSVz-uGIEW-p6WbCG7j16EzXt3yewTqi1lGsZq7DYnrB9aK8H8Js6tMps0mZIzZRGj48u-EiPMLXFVUzn66NDMIZA_O3_rynbTEjw3ZtKYoBcaeczGzbC5M6zaQCGP24A/s1600/mainefamilyrobinson1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvwa-araSVz-uGIEW-p6WbCG7j16EzXt3yewTqi1lGsZq7DYnrB9aK8H8Js6tMps0mZIzZRGj48u-EiPMLXFVUzn66NDMIZA_O3_rynbTEjw3ZtKYoBcaeczGzbC5M6zaQCGP24A/s640/mainefamilyrobinson1.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
The Maine Craigslist isn't a collection of items for sale. It's a happening. A cultural phenomenon. It is an encyclopedia of hopes and dreams. It's Maine, so the hopes and dreams don't cover a lot of ground. It's understandable. The ground isn't entirely frozen any more, so it's harder to cover a lot of ground this time of year. It's kinda squishy, and will capture the odd Bean boot if you move too quickly.<br />
<br />
Maine's a big place, geographically speaking. It's about the size of Ireland. It's entirely bereft of blarney, however. Mainers are incapable of projecting the false front of bonhomie that blarney requires. They are bereft of whimsy. This Maine Craigslist Cultural Encyclopedia is a great example of the heartfelt sincerity of the place. There is nothing ironic in the Maine Craigslist. Or more accurately, there is nothing deliberately ironic. It's refreshing to live in a place where you are what you is, as they say.<br />
<br />
So please -- no mockery. These people are in dead earnest, and deserve, if not respect, at least a hand in front of your mouth while you giggle.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxiKUhlpwm1sowopJl7o4OZNbKYofOf13PVNPrBNOjyWF93ZoZwG5298oGWJj7y9-tdCqtSfJ3ysVhl1pLnONUhOV9i-XUpsUzU0NEcv9aB3wGY4xqx-O_oVUXQsc2D05LuehyoQ/s1600/Kim_size_mattress_-_2017-04-11_09.43.45.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxiKUhlpwm1sowopJl7o4OZNbKYofOf13PVNPrBNOjyWF93ZoZwG5298oGWJj7y9-tdCqtSfJ3ysVhl1pLnONUhOV9i-XUpsUzU0NEcv9aB3wGY4xqx-O_oVUXQsc2D05LuehyoQ/s640/Kim_size_mattress_-_2017-04-11_09.43.45.png" width="633" /></a></div>
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It's a Kim size mattress. Kim's pretty big by the looks of it. Not washing with a rag on a stick big. More like shopping at <a href="http://www.mardens.com/" target="_blank">Marden's </a>on a hoverround big.<br />
<br />
Maine people are kind to one another. It's nice to see plain affection stated publicly once in a while. It refreshes the senses. It's nice to know that somewhere in Arundel, Kim's beloved wanted the whole world to know that she's older, but still comfy. Hallmark's got nothing on that guy, I tell you what.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgmmQLKH9i4TDjhwbfg64YhX7xUceabDRPcdYjQgD8bNs59mTNdIc92aM-bzZLBHiMJ3xXNGrBluu5U3kLOedewNbiyZfOTdr0X2AkK_DN-jPZby6-BpKwRrslvifOLa0qfU4yaQ/s1600/Free_love_seat_and_recliner_-_2017-04-11_09.49.34.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="617" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgmmQLKH9i4TDjhwbfg64YhX7xUceabDRPcdYjQgD8bNs59mTNdIc92aM-bzZLBHiMJ3xXNGrBluu5U3kLOedewNbiyZfOTdr0X2AkK_DN-jPZby6-BpKwRrslvifOLa0qfU4yaQ/s640/Free_love_seat_and_recliner_-_2017-04-11_09.49.34.png" width="640" /></a></div>
Don't you hate it when your boyfriend has eczema, and you don't, and you wear out the pleather couch unevenly?<br />
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People seem to think Stephen King is a good writer. I don't. I don't even think he's a writer. He just lives in Maine, looks out the window from time to time, and writes it down. That's not writing. That's typing.<br />
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This Craiglist poster must be "from away," as Mainers so charmingly refer to anybody that wasn't born in Maine. What gives it away, you ask? The description. That's no way to appeal to a Maine connoisseur. An Augusta aesthete. An Edgecomb epicure. A Bowdoinham bon vivant. That unique selling proposition isn't going to fly with a local. You've gotta put in some features and benefits if you want to sell a thing like that in Maine. He tried to pull it out at the end by lying and calling himself "Skip" to sound like a normal person, but any true Mainer can see through a flatlander ruse like that in an Umbagog heartbeat. He shoulda tried something like:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
Louise Nevelson sculpture for sale. Wood with black paint. Will burn pretty fair in a stove during shoulder season. Black paint ignites well. BONUS! You'll be able to salvage a perfectly good doorknob from the ashes. No swaps.</blockquote>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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And I believe I'm Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg. As the immortal bard, Steve Perry, once wrote, "Don't stop believing." And I am dead certain that this guy had Journey blasting the whole time he was painting this. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-25978206247196430282017-04-08T19:26:00.000-04:002017-04-08T19:26:31.232-04:00Don't Step On My ทารกสีฟ้า Suede Shoes<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2oe1lrXnF8g?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
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<br />
It's Saturday, right? I'm way behind. I'm pretty sure Saturday is traditionally the day I post Thai cover versions of Badfinger songs.<br />
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I may have forgotten to post Thai covers of Badfinger songs one or two weeks out of the last fifty or sixty, but for the most part, I never miss. I like to follow that whole scene, you know, the Bangkok Badfinger cover scene. I try to stay away from obscure stuff on the Intertunnel, and stick with middle of the road selections.<br />
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Apropos of nothing, I'm fairly certain the very last time I played music is in this video right here. Seven years ago my friends dragged me over to their house to get outside some beers and make some noise one last time. I put the bass in the case after, moved to Maine, and never opened it again.<br />
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Yep, it's a Badfinger cover. There's also a cover version of me playing the guitar. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="420" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/6515490" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="560"></iframe>
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<br />SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-7430349467849833732017-03-26T13:08:00.000-04:002017-04-11T16:43:02.994-04:00Give America Gumption Again<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ba37X9f9wA0" width="560"></iframe>
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<br />
[This video is dedicated to Kathleen Murphy, whose support of our boys is as constant as the sun]<br />
<br />
If you're new in these parts, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/unorganizedhancock/videos" target="_blank">Unorganized Hancock</a> is an Intergalactabilly Band from Maine. If you're a regular reader, well, Unorganized Hancock is still an Intergalactabilly Band from Maine. The band consists entirely of my two sons, a plywood bass player named Laverne, and a whole lot of gumption. I call them The Heir and The Spare. Sunshine and Ravioli. Garlic and Gaelic. <br />
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This video is fresh off the assembly line, but they recorded <i>Go, Go, Go! </i>sometime in 2015, I think, when The Heir was hey nineteen, and the The Spare was eleven years old. The Heir sings and plays the guitar, bass, and keyboards, and The Spare plays the drums and tells jokes.<br />
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It's a song about gumption, as I said.<br />
<blockquote>
<b>gumption</b><br />
[guhmp-shuh n] <br />
noun, Informal.<br />
1.<br />
initiative; aggressiveness; resourcefulness:<br />
With his gumption he'll make a success of himself.<br />
2.<br />
courage; spunk; guts:<br />
It takes gumption to quit a high-paying job.<br />
3.<br />
common sense; shrewdness.</blockquote>
My kids have gumption, and recognize it when they see it, hence the video, but that dictionary definition is way off. It takes gumption to quit a high-paying job? That's like telling me it takes gumption to rope and brand a Sasquatch. Let's stick to the possibles, as the cowboys used to say. It takes gumption to keep working for peanuts. It takes gumption to keep going when it's hard, not to quit when it's easy.<br />
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The Heir and the Spare know all about that. They recorded this song in an attic room without heat or electricity. They dutifully dragged an extension cord down the hall whenever they wanted to play. That's gumption.<br />
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<h4>
What's Unorganized Hancock Up To Now?</h4>
<h4>
</h4>
Stay with me, and I'll explain. In 2015, the boys entered a contest to write and perform the fight song for the local minor-league hockey team, the <a href="http://www.fightingspirithockey.com/" target="_blank">Lewiston-Auburn Fighting Spirit</a>. The couple who own and operate the team are some of the nicest people I've ever met. It's hard to run a semi-pro hockey team in an out of the way place. It takes gumption.<br />
<br />
The contest was promoted by the <a href="http://www.mainesbigz.com/index.cfm" target="_blank">local radio station, Z-105. </a>They're in Auburn, Maine. They have an affiliated station called WOXO, too, which broadcasts from Mexico, Maine, just over the river from where we live. They also have a studio in Norway. Norway? Mexico? Maine's funky, isn't it? It takes gumption to live here.<br />
<br />
The children were interviewed on the radio station as part of the promotion. I was amazed by the people that own and operate that company. It's nearly impossible to make a go of it in the radio business in this day and age. They manage it while being pleasant to everyone. That's impossible, I know, but they do it all the same. They have gumption.<br />
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<br />
The universe still rewards gumption from time to time. My kids won the contest with another song they wrote called <i>Spirit Score!</i>. The hockey team loved it. They were all 19 years old or so, and wonderful young men. They treated The Spare Heir like a little brother, and made him feel ten feet tall. One of the greatest moments in my life was standing in the concrete runway between the rows of seats in the Lewiston Colisee and hearing <i>Spirit Score! </i>blaring over the PA system when the team skated out onto the ice, and again every time they scored. They scored a lot. That team has gumption. <br />
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Unorganized Hancock signed a contract to have the song played for one year at the rink, to make it all legal. The following year, the team had another band write another fight song. The hockey team refused to play unless the old fight song was restored. It was. That took gumption.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Which Leads Us To </h4>
<h4>
</h4>
My boys were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT9nalKKTdU" target="_blank">interviewed on Z-105</a> a few more times after that. The station noticed that The Heir had a sonorous voice, and he had the kind of aplomb that radio hosts need. They hired him. He's now on the air six hours a night, five nights a week. He sometimes hosts call-in shows on the weekends, too. That takes gumption.<br />
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The radio job was too far away from our home for him to drive back and forth, so we lost him to the world. It's a hard thing to raise your children to leave you. It takes gumption, and breaks your heart a bit.<br />
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The Unorganized Hancock YouTube page recently passed 100,000 views, a notable milestone for them, I thought. Their performance of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf7TXYmhjWo" target="_blank"><i>Minor Swing</i></a> has over 25,000 views, although their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlzOEaggQ6A" target="_blank">live version of the song</a> is, er, livelier. But <i>Go, Go, Go! </i>is their own thing. It encapsulates their approach to life. They have gumption. I hope the <i>Go, Go, Go!</i> video helps to Give America Gumption Again.<br />
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Say, that's a cool slogan. We should make hats.<br />
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You can download an MP3 of Go Go Go! at their Bandcamp page for 99 cents if you like:<br />
<br />
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=2993185158/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://unorganizedhancock.bandcamp.com/track/go-go-go">Go, Go, Go! by Unorganized Hancock</a></iframe>
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Of course you're welcome to listen to it for free by hitting play on the YouTube video, too. Unorganized Hancock just wants to get a little more gumption out in the world, and doesn't care how it happens.<br />
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[Update: Many thanks to Michael K. for leaving a big fat tip on the boys' Bandcamp page. It is very much appreciated]<br />
[Update: Many thanks to Kevin S. for leaving a tip on the boys' Bandcamp page. It is much appreciated]<br />
[Additional Update: Many thanks to longtime friend Dinah H. for her generous contribution to the PayPal tipjar. It is very much appreciated] SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-41611477418795213872017-03-25T14:46:00.000-04:002017-03-25T21:44:06.381-04:00Life, The Universe, Errol Flynn, and Erryting<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ib5elm08rT8?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
So, the universe presents us with this.<br />
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That's a performance at the <a href="http://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/info/" target="_blank">Sydney Fest </a>from 2012. Sydney's in Australia. It's <a href="https://www.antipodesmap.com/" target="_blank">the antipodes</a>. Or as they say around here, <i>you can't get there from heah</i>. The band's name is the Jolly Boys. They're from Jamaica.<br />
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They're playing a Steely Dan song. Steely Dan was a Horace Silver cover band from New Jersey. Close enough. The original version of the song features a solo by a computer programmer playing an electric sitar, because of course it would. The computer programmer is famous, if that's the word I'm looking for, for helping to produce <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_(programming_language)" target="_blank">a compiler</a> for ms-dos programs. This may not turn out to be a growth industry if Microsoft Windows becomes popular. You never know, Windows might catch on.<br />
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Why are the Jolly Boys playing in Sydney? Because Errol Flynn. Errol Flynn was a Tasmanian devil, until Hollywood made him famous and he became American, which is a sideways move, I think. He got rich playing English people in American movies, because Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson weren't available. In 1946, Errol Flynn took his Captain Blood money, bought an island off the coast of Jamaica, and threw a party that only lasted for ten years or so, with a couple of bathroom breaks. He liked some of the local musicians who played <a href="http://www.mentomusic.com/TheJollyBoys.htm" target="_blank">mento music</a>, which is the zygote of reggae. He hired them to play at his party, and named them The Jolly Boys. The name stuck.<br />
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I was going to say that Errol Flynn eventually died from cirrhosis, a bad back, drug abuse, hepatitis, alcoholism, tuberculosis, malaria, several venereal diseases, none minor, and the lingering shock of seeing <a href="https://fineartamerica.com/featured/2-dolores-del-rio-1935-everett.html" target="_blank">Dolores del Rio </a>naked, but I figure it will save time if I just say Errol Flynn died of a severe case of Errol Flynn.<br />
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So a Jamaican guy wearing Richard Nixon's bowling pants and Tony Manero's Qiana shirt is singing a New York song at least figuratively about Las Vegas in Australia, while a guy in Maine watches it. He is a brand of awesome. He survived Errol Flynn. Even Errol Flynn couldn't manage that. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-46195437191041384772017-03-24T10:49:00.000-04:002017-03-24T10:49:16.762-04:00How To Play Sunny on the Drums<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TNYfrKlOpq8?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
As you may recall, I have determined -- announced, really -- that <i>Sunny</i> by Bobby Hebb is the <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/search/label/the%20official%20song%20of%20the%20twenty-teens">official song of the twenty-teens</a>. I will brook no contradiction on this point. I don't know what trout have to do with anything, but stay with me here.<br />
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This is the procedure for playing Sunny on the drums. The fellow in the video gets it. Follow his method and you'll be famous on unread blogs the world over in no time: <br />
<ul>
<li>First, learn how to play the drums real good</li>
<li>Second, steal some drums</li>
<li>OK, that second thing maybe should be the first thing</li>
<li>Now kill your Shop teacher and take his eyeglasses</li>
<li>Then go to Himmler's barber and ask for the men's regular</li>
<li>Get a brick wall to play in front of</li>
<li>Get a Kia Sephia with a trunk big enough to haul your drums and your brick wall</li>
<li>Don't worry about bringing your OSB wall, the bass player will bring his</li>
<li>Remember, the guitar player is really just the hood ornament on your bass drum </li>
<li>Lift an eyebrow about two minutes in</li>
<li>All the chicks. All of them</li>
</ul>
<a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/search/label/the%20official%20song%20of%20the%20twenty-teens" target="_blank">The Official Song of the Twenty-Teens</a>SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-49200425728654034642017-03-23T08:52:00.000-04:002019-07-24T17:05:51.094-04:00A Real, Live, Time Machine<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FaxRQh03BOw" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
When I was little, I wanted a Raleigh bicycle.<br />
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A Raleigh bicycle was exotic. It came from England. My neighborhood was full of Schwinns and Columbias, as elegant and useful as tanks. They were the transportation version of a three-legged stool. I wanted a <i>fauteuil</i>.<br />
<br />
Raleigh bicycles were only owned by WASPs. WASPs were exotic, in their way. Not many of them passed through the world I lived in. The few I encountered seemed to own everything by some kind of subtle transubstantiation that turned one person's wealth into another's. They had money without working, a kind of magic show to a little kid. They went to school to learn things that weren't practical, another astounding thing to a drudge like me. They rode Raleigh bicycles and thought nothing of it.<br />
<br />
Well, there's the Raleigh factory. I don't see anyone who looks like a toff working in there. They all look just like I did, when I went to work in a big factory at the age of eighteen. The movie (that's what it is) was a Signet production. In America, that would have been a Coronet film. They were shown in schools, generally when the teacher was hung over and wanted to sleep for a solid half hour, instead of fitfully like they did during a regular school day.<br />
<br />
Everyone dreams of a time machine. They want to go back in time to rule it, or forward in time because they assume, incorrectly, that they're more wonderful than their contemporaries, and would fit in better on Star Trek than they do on the subway.<br />
<br />
Well, there's your time machine, boys. Time machines lie thick on the ground, but you're not interested. Look at it and weep. I testify to you, right now, that I could climb in that time machine, and perform any job in that Raleigh factory, including drafting by hand. Could you?<br />
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Instructing the troglodytes you meet after you step out of your time machine that if they would simply listen to reason, and get an autocad set up, put guards on the machines, let you stop every fifteen minutes to take pills for your imaginary ailments, let you hold a binky bottle full of sugar water in one hand the whole time, allow you to stop every 30 seconds or so to use a telephone, and that they'd have to ban gluten from the cafeteria that doesn't exist, so they better set one up, would be of doubtful utility.<br />
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They'd hire me, because I'd tell them that I thought I could be vaguely useful to them, I had always loved Raleigh bicycles, and I wanted to earn enough money to buy one. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-76431707395570812572017-03-22T10:26:00.001-04:002017-03-22T11:55:32.874-04:00Chef, Or The Greater Creep Theory of Internet Success<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5BTfctEmg5w?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
My wife and I watched <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chef_(film)" target="_blank"><i>Chef </i></a>last night. We enjoyed it. Movies, TV shows, and websites about cooking as serious bidness are thick on the ground these days. We are studiously unaware of them. The milieu was brought to its perfect form by <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2007/02/big-night.html" target="_blank"><i>Big Night</i></a>, and hasn't required any care and feeding from me since then.<br />
<br />
I have seen the TV show with the screaming Scot, however, and enjoyed it. Not the execrable American thing. Before he was Intertunnel famous, there was a British version where that wasn't a total fake. There were failing food businesses, he went in and told them how they had screwed the pooch, and showed them how to fix themselves. They rarely did. The reason they all failed, no matter what the hectoring pict did to help them, was that it's easy to know what to do, but hard to do it. The not very lovable losers all secretly liked their lack of success, because it put no pressure on them. Customers are a pain in the arse, after all. They all wanted to have a restaurant to lord over, with no pesky customers or creditors to bother them while they did it. <br />
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The American version of the show was more like looking for the restaurant version of a homeless person who was begging on a street corner for a crust of bread, but instead of giving them a tenner for a square meal, you bought them a brothel with a food court in the lobby. No thanks.<br />
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<i>Chef</i> isn't about cooking porn, although there's plenty of that in there. Favreau knows he has to put Iron Man in Iron Man movies, and Iron Chef in Iron Chef movies, and he does his duty. The movie is about honest work, which I appreciated, and the movie properly portrayed the mystification of a boy, not yet grown, presented with parents living in separate places.<br />
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The movie is trite in the right ways to suit us. Its stereotypes are gentle, and the people in it long for the right sorts of things, and get them in the end by exertions that seem mildly daring but mostly rely on a shoulder to the wheel approach to your circumstances. It's more Aesop than Shakespeare, but a lack of swordplay and mutual suicides never hurt anyone.<br />
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For all its cartoonish qualities, there are many accurate details in the movie. The movie gets one thing absolutely right. The tweenish son understands social media, but the father does not. The father participates in it in an off-hand way, but is quickly made to understand what a sewer it is. The child is wary of social media accounts like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVJ9Z3Js7Ww" target="_blank">Jitter and Friendface</a>. He knows about them, but doesn't care about them. He likes Vines.<br />
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If you're not familiar with Vines, they were the next big thing in social media for about ten minutes, and then disappeared without a trace. The service archived five-second videos. I suspect they weren't able to prove their value to an insane investor class by hemorrhaging billions every quarter fast enough to look important. They probably didn't have a ball crawl in the boardroom, or a ten-ton chrome panda in the lobby or anything. I bet their CEO didn't even want to go into space.<br />
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I can testify that my little son has no interest whatsoever in Jitter and Friendface, but he loved Vines. He watched very wholesome people making quick little jokes that suggested flash fiction written by the Three Stooges. It was all very amusing and harmless. When Vine disappeared, my son was so distraught that he made his own on his desktop. He wrote and recorded hundreds of them on his own. In the <i>Chef</i> movie, Favreau got one detail wrong. When his character watches the Vine compilation his son made from their Crosby/Hope/Leguizamo road trip, he doesn't cry. No man is that strong. Believe me, I know.<br />
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The accuracy of that detail highlights a rule about the internet. If you want to know how successful something will be on the internet, judge it solely on how creepy it is. The creepier and more degenerate it is, the more likely it is to prosper.<br />
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Twitter is really, really creepy. Uber was creepy long before you found out exactly how it was creepy. The only human thing about anyone who worked there was their hamhanded attempts to grope the help, now that I think of it. When that's the top of your interpersonal heap, Dante Alighieri should write your yearly reports. Facebook, and the avaricious little twerp that runs it, is the creepiest thing I've ever encountered on this world, and I've renovated apartments that had a dead body in them. Google is creepy turtles, all the way down.<br />
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Snapchat prospers, if you define success as the ability to use up borrowed money for a longer period of time than your creep competitors before the laws of supply, demand, and plain old addition and subtraction start to apply. Snapchat gives their users the impression they can get away with being a creep on their service. Being creepy is the appeal. Google Glass failed because they lied, and said it wasn't supposed to be creepy. Snapchat makes the same thing, and touts creepiness as a feature, not a bug. That's how you do it fellows. You'll be able to borrow another half-a-tril with that approach.<br />
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Virtual Reality goggles can't work. Because of the way your brain and eyes work, they will invariably make you physically ill, or deranged, or both. So what? They are immensely creepy, so they will be a success. People will drug themselves, or vomit and go back to them, for another suckle on the creep tit.<br />
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You can tart it up any way you like, all you Singularitarians with a dream of a WestWorld honey, but you're just humping a knothole in a dress dummy, and always will be. It's a supremely creepy concept, so you can't go wrong dumping your 401K into it. Your broker will just dump it into another Creep Unicorn if you don't. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-11107082586222845042017-03-21T10:29:00.000-04:002017-03-21T12:25:29.958-04:00The Sippican Cottage Musical Test dell'Acidità<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/04GEJyxRaYI?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
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Everyone likes what they like. They don't know why they like it. They assemble reasons to explain their affection after the fact. It's a weird form of <i>post hoc ergo propter hoc</i>. Because things happened in sequence, the first caused the second. With pop music, it's a sequence of one thing. I like it. Fire up the confirmation bias furnace. Unroll your cart-building plans after the horse steps on your foot. He couldn't do that if he had a cart in front of him. <br />
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I mentioned pop music, but music is no different than any other topic in this regard. Everyone works backwards. It goes something like this:<br />
<ul>
<li>I like it</li>
<li>If I like it, it's good. No way I could like something bad</li>
<li>If I like it, there must be a good reason</li>
<li>I am wise, so the entity that produced the thing I like must be important</li>
<li>Liking important things makes me more important </li>
<li>If you do not like what I like, it's because you're a philistine</li>
</ul>
I have never successfully convinced another human that it's perfectly OK to like dreck. I have pointed out many things that are dreck to persons who liked them, but did not think they were dreck. This always led to one of two reactions, either of which resulted in enmity towards me, not the thing itself: <br />
<ul>
<li> You're right, it is dreck. I can't like dreck, so I can't like it any more. I hate you for ruining my fun</li>
<li>It's not dreck. [Insert name of person with no talent here] is a genius, and [insert name of magazine here] says so. </li>
</ul>
The whole mindset leads to 50 year old men telling you that Motorhead is Mozart, and Camille Paglia telling you that Madonna is Moliere.<br />
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So, to make things easier, I've invented the Sippican Cottage Musical Acid Test:<br />
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If you're from Liverpool, and your composition is played Santuario-di-Madonna-di-San-Luca-skiffle style by five Bolognese men a half a century after you wrote it, you're on to something with your approach to songwriting. That's as far as I'll go. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-55405073190603824622017-03-20T05:00:00.000-04:002017-03-20T07:33:50.487-04:00Getting Fresh and Familiar<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/onUopX0pKHw" width="560"></iframe>
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There's a concept in design called something along the lines of, "Fresh, But Familiar." It means in order to be the Next Big Thing, you've got to organize familiar things in a fresh way. Or more likely, you add a single novelty, while the remaining 99% is the usual stuff and junk. People will go crazy for a small excursion from a well-beaten path, but they're wary of truly new stuff. I used to explain the concept as, "Pioneers are the fellows you see lying by the side of the trail with arrows sticking out of them." That has too many words, so we'll stick to FBF. Alton Ellis covering <i>A Whiter Shade of Pale</i> is FBF to the max, ain't it?<br />
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FBF is a very important concept for people who attempt cover versions of very familiar songs. Being an essential concept doesn't mean anyone who wants to cover <i>A Whiter Shade of Pale</i> is going to listen to me. People dutifully try to copy what they like, usually with their tongue in the corner of their mouth the whole time. It never occurs to them to bring anything new to the table, because their table of talent wobbles too much to keep anything on it anyway.<br />
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If you're a budding baker, missing out on FBF gets you featured on <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-who-totally-nailed-it?utm_term=.bjDWPKPLW#.rm4jwbwqj" target="_blank">Buzzfeed in a Nailed It listicle</a>. If you're a musician trying to, as it were, execute <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Whiter_Shade_of_Pale" target="_blank"><i>A Whiter Shade of Pale,</i></a> you end up on YouTube in triple digits.<br />
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I hereby award that dude one internets for the Steinberger bass. <br />
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Why do people eat at McDonald's? It's because they know exactly what they're going to get, and what it's going to cost. There are no surprises. Well-to-do people sneer at McDonald's because they don't understand the concept of no do-overs. Their budgets allow them to experiment. Regular people know they have one shot, so they take no chances. They'd prefer the exact kind of bad they're sure to receive to an outside chance of better. This explains second presidential terms as well. <br />
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Cover songs are like McDonald's. Musical performances are great
levelers. Everyone in the audience is spending the same amount of the
only currency they have: Time. Rich and poor alike have the same skin in
the game. If it sucks, you can't get your 4:03 back.<br />
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If you loved the
original recording of <i>A Whiter Shade of Pale</i>, and you wanted to
make sure you weren't going to get<i> A Sallow Shade of Pale</i>, or <i>A
Carioca Chick's Shade of Pale</i>, or if you're heading to the cruise ship
lounge, <i>A Shade of Pale With Impetigo and a Sunburn</i>, you'd be
cautious. You'd go to Branson or Vegas or wherever and watch a
white-haired version of what's left of Procol Harum play the song as a
spontaneous second finale that's printed right on the schedule. Accept
no substitutes. The concept has been keeping hair band members with
skullets in business for decades.<br />
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Bar bands try to play things note for note, but they usually end up being
McDowell's, not McDonald's. They enter the uncanny valley, a place where
your resemblance to the actual item is only close enough to weird
people out. See Meg Ryan's face for the visual version of the effect. <br />
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<i>A Whiter Shade of Pale</i> isn't going to let you change one, solitary detail to make it fresh. One different thing just appears out of place. For instance, I can't quite put my finger on the one thing that's different with this stalwart attempt to cover <i>A Whiter Shade of Pale</i>, with the added challenge of overcoming the ennui brought on by the curtains, and a room listing to port:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fz1CnhaWdHM" width="560"></iframe>
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I can't put my finger on it, because that would be sexual assault. But my point stands. <br />
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The problem with songs like <i>A Whiter Shade of Pale</i> is that it's 100-percent familiar to everyone in this galaxy. It's incredibly easy to enter the uncanny valley, because that valley has been surveyed on a US Geological Service scale. Every blade of grass has been mapped. It's totally familiar to every visitor to that alpine meadow of descending bass notes and churchy chords. Every miss is as good as a mile.<br />
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You can't put Big Macs on a Burger King menus without hearing grumbles from the customers, and their stomachs. Certain things are just too familiar to leave out. Like, say, an organ:<br />
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Songs like <i>A Whiter Shade of Pale</i> have another problem. They're just too easy to play, so everyone takes a crack at them. Hell, I can teach anyone to play <i>A Whiter Shade of Pale</i> in about 10 minutes, and I have no idea how to play the organ. That's not an idle boast, by the way:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/duPlJEJ9Hgk" width="560"></iframe>
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Me? I'm not afraid I'm not going to get <i>A Whiter Shade of Pale </i>that sounds just like the record. I'm afraid I am going to get <i>A Whiter Shade of Pale</i> at all. It's coming out of gas pumps. It's playing on the Muzak at the Home Depot and Lowe's at the same time. It seeps out of the ground like Uncle Jed's oil. I don't hate it, or like it, either. It's like the wallpaper in a waiting room. It's just there. There's really no need to form an opinion about it. But there's no escaping it, either.<br />
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My ambivalence to the tune means I can afford to go Harum-hungry for very long periods. I can hold out until I can visit the Alton Ellis fusion bistro. They plate a superb <i>Whiter Shade of Pale</i> croquette, paired with locally-sourced, artisinal, free-range rocksteady sungold rastapasta, drizzled with the ghost of James Jamerson, in a farm to table riddim reduction.<br />
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It's FPF, surely. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-76442612118569857982017-03-18T21:09:00.000-04:002017-03-18T21:17:39.960-04:00Chuck Berry Has No Particular Place To Go<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eoj_-N1aiX8?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
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<br />
Chuck Berry's dead. He was 90. <i>Bonne chance</i> at Saint Peter's gate, Chuck, you're going to need it. You were a magnificent mean weird wonderful hack genius AMERICAN.<br />
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He was all those things, surely. He wasn't American. He was <b>AMERICAN</b>. Only America could possibly produce him. The rest of the world loved him, as you can see by watching this video from France in 1965. Europe loved him, but they could never cobble a guy like that together. The important part of his career was already over when this video was made, though few knew it at the time, including Chuck. Europe was already an off Broadway production.<br />
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Europeans sent us a bronze broad to stand in the granite harbor outside Ellis Island. It was allegedly a gift, but I suspect they sent it so they'd have something familiar to look at after they bolted the doors on their dusty museum of cultures and fled. We sent them Chuck Berry records in return as a way to show them <i>This is how we roll</i>.<br />
<br />
To Europe, America has always been a <i>bad man</i>. The pecksniff attitude their governments have always heaped on us has a dash of cowardice in it. Chuck was a bad man. It made him all the more American to a toff, I imagine. I don't mean he was a bad man in just the figurative sense, though. Chuck was a real live criminal. If you read Chuck's bios, you're bound to find fans desperately trying to pooh-pooh his criminal background. <i>The gun he used in a carjacking was broken, so it doesn't matter...</i><br />
<br />
Don't buy it. Chuck was what he was, and he never really made any bones about it. He really was kinda mean, edgy, hypersexual, pushy, grasping and grabby. Who cares? He went to jail occasionally, and that was that. Chuck had a chip on his shoulder after he got out of jail, but then again, he had one before he went in. <br />
<br />
Chuck Berry was important in the context of the 1950s. He was a big star for half of the 1960s, too, but after <i>Nadine</i>, he mostly traded on the fact that a whole lot of British Invasion bands adored him. He made a little money in the seventies by making a damn fool of himself with songs like <i>My Ding-A-Ling</i>. It was simply dreadful, and not very fun for a novelty tune. After a while, Chuck just showed up to his gigs in varying states of sobriety with an untuned guitar. He plugged it in and started blasting away without first bothering to count four with an endless procession of ad hoc bands he didn't have to pay or acknowledge. Occasionally it was a few Beatles or Stones, most often a bar band. He didn't seem to acknowledge the difference. The checks only had one name on them.<br />
<br />
But the fifties, man; he defined America in the 1950s. Forget Elvis. Elvis went up the front stairs and asked your big sister to go to the movies. He really wasn't all that subversive. It was Chuck Berry that came up the back stairs, round about midnight, and asked your mother if your father was home. He went up the back stairs of the whole damn world before he was through. I offered that video with the underwater sound and the band that doesn't know the arrangement to show you what the fuss was about. Look at Chuck. The stage is too small for him, even though the world is his stage.<br />
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America was the most important thing in the world at the turn of the twentieth century, but no one knew it yet. It took World War I to demonstrate what paper tigers the European empires had become. America flipped the 19th century script and went to Belleau Wood with all the fury of a father turning the car around. When it was over, we shirked the big mantle and went back to our cornfields. We avoided the responsibilities of a great power until the hakenkreuz and the rising sun were waved right in our faces. We shrugged and rolled up our sleeves and pounded the world flat again, because that's the way we liked it. It's easier to drive on.<br />
<br />
Then came the fifties. The Soviets stood there, leering over half the globe, and said they would bury us.
We yawned. We had the sobriety of Eisenhower on our side. We had the muscle of finned cars rolling off assembly lines uncounted with a sunburned arm out the window on day one. We minted legions ready for the next version of America from public schools with the mortar still setting. Jonas Salk and a thousand others like him beat not only microbes, but fear of sickness itself. Hollywood gilded the country in pictures, and then gilded itself. Something raucous or fun or serious or thoughtful came bubbling out of our radios, projectors, and TVs in an endless stream. Broadway shone like a thousand <i>Folies Bergere</i>.<br />
<br />
And then came Chuck Berry, from Saint Louis, the center of our universe. He stood up like a man and looked you straight in the eye. He was full of the optimism of a card sharp and his own unsavory brand of charm. <i>I'll strut, thank you, like the peacock I am</i>. He didn't wink or pinch. He winked <i>and </i>pinched, and he meant every one. There were no idle threats, no meaningless boasts. Chuck don't flirt. Chuck asked for what he wanted, flat out, with a twinkle in his eye and an angel on his shoulder and the devil in his heart. He'd put up his fists if you wanted it, and laugh with you afterwards, too -- when you've said you've had enough.<br />
<br />
Chuck Berry outlasted the Soviet Union by a quarter of a century. Bury us? We Berryed you. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com11