Well…last week the show DIDN’T go on. Someone hit a tree down the road an hour before showtime, and my internet went down with the tree…so this is two weeks at once.
Enjoy…and when you travel…leave your Les Paul and antique Steinway at home.
[powerpress]
It promises so much with those April showers and the resulting May flowers.; those buds popping out all over the trees and bushes; the promise of outdoor barbeques and sunsets on the patio. It is all quite enticing after months of cold blustery weather trapped inside. But that’s not all that Spring brings.
Those first warm days bring other promises as well. The promises my wife extorts from me- at first with gentle suggestions but quickly building to a crescendo of unpleasant nagging. She wants me to do some Spring cleaning. It starts simply enough when I innocently observe how nice it is outside. So she takes a look returning a few minutes later with a scowl on her face.
Finally ready for sitting
And I suddenly realize that no good deed goes unpunished. The Spring cleaning genie has been released from the bottle and there will be no peace until it is satisfied. You might think that some simple steps would suffice, rearranging the outdoor furniture and removing and storing the covers. You would be wrong because each simple step has a related and more complicated association. You can’t arrange the furniture without washing the patio, which means moving all the pots and pruning the plants in those pots. Some of the pots need replanting so, of course they get moved to the side yard to await a trip to the nursery. Which causes further complications.
My wife hardly ever visits the side yard which makes it a perfect location for storage and work in transition. I’ve got bags of charcoal, potting soil and amendments. There are empty pots and pots with unsightly contents and even some gardening implements leaning against the wall. It’s a bit untidy, I confess but it saves me from the chore of finding an out of the way place to store them. The task expands.
My serene demeanor flees as the tasks escalate. For my wife, this is all a logical process. Life should be tidy and all untidiness must be stamped out immediately. There is no tomorrow. Do it now! For me , it’s a case of life going rapidly out of control. I accept that Spring cleaning is inevitable but I rebel at the growing snowball of tasks. This simple task could take weeks to finish culminating with a fresh coat of paint. I need to do something.
I know that if I don’t object this project will inflate to fill the entire day and that my wife’s solution for anything she considers to be clutter is to throw it away. It is exhausting to protect my turf from her onslaught once it gets going. I steer her to the back yard, hoping to keep her focused on the task at hand.
Hours later, the patio is clean and the outdoor furniture is arranged in an inviting grouping. Extraneous items have been removed from sight and the yard is now an inviting place for reading or flower watching. I can tell because my wife spent ten minutes out there last weekend. I’m not overconfident that my Spring cleaning problems are over just yet, however. Because I’ve been around this block before. She hasn’t forgotten the side yard. She is just waiting for a strategic advantage and she has claimed her next campaign. Next week we are cleaning the garage.
Ok I really like bookstores….for the most part. I can remember when it was fun to go into a bookstore and look for something new to read, or something from an old favorite author. Or even to find something completely new.
I went to a (large national chain(changed to avoid libel allegations)) bookstore the other day and was almost (read totally) annoyed with the trip. Just when did the salespeople at (large national chain) get direct dispensation from Jesus himself that they were darn near the center of the universe?
It was hard to get someone who was willing to help and didn’t seem like I was inconveniencing them. And they worked there! Even the girl who was ringing up the books seemed like a) she had better things to do, and b) what kind of a low life wretch would bring his kids into (large national chain) bookstore and then presume to actually buy something?!?! And if that wasn’t bad enough, c) no club and discount card???? Oh the humanity!
But I digress….There are some very…interesting people who hang out at (large national chain) bookstore. I am quite sure that a few of them lived at the bookstore or at least waited outside the door for the place to open like a junkie looking for a fix. People hanging out with their laptops getting coffee and just hanging out.
There were even people there who were quite enthralled in a novel, and at that point about half way through. I don’t know if they finished the book but I am quite sure it wasn’t paid for beforehand. I could be wrong, I frequently am.
My point is this, the word Store is in the title of the place which would mean that they sell things like…say….BOOKS! and another key word in the last sentence was SELL. C’mon people, if you go to a bookstore find a book and pony up some cash for it. Then go outside and read it! Or save your cash for our Cantankerous Old Coots book that we are working on. It will be worth it.
A bookstore is not a hangout joint. Go read something good, away from the bookstore!
Go live life for a while, summer is about over.
-Justin
Image by Brendan Lynch via Flickr
When I was a kid, movie theaters were magical. These days going to a movie is as thrilling as visiting the dentist. The first movie I remember seeing was Bambi. It was in a downtown movie palace (all the movie theaters were modeled on palaces in those days). There were uniformed ushers with flashlights who would find you a seat and shush you if you got too noisy. There were always fancy architectural themes to the decor, lavish lobbies with grand staircases and plush restrooms. I remember the exotic patterned carpets. Going to a movie was very special and you dressed up, just like for Sunday School. (Oh wait, you don’t dress up for God anymore either.)
When we moved to the suburbs, we didn’t make the trip to downtown as much and most of the movies we saw were at
the drive in but when we moved to the country, our small town had a movie theater which became a focal point of my young social life. The Vogue was no palace but it had it’s share of pretension. There was no grand lobby or stairs but there was a small lounge next to the restrooms and a separate balcony room for parents with noisy kids. On weeknights, they played current movie releases, usually in one or two night stands but on Saturdays, it was all organized for kids. There was always a double feature with westerns or pirate movies dominating. In between there were the previews, a cartoon, a newsreel and the highlight of the day, the serial. This was usually a very hokey science fiction story and it was always the excuse not to miss a Saturday. We lived five miles out of town and so my folks would drop me off at noon or so and pick me up at 5. I think the movie cost a quarter, popcorn was 10 cents and a candy bar 5 cents. You would meet your friends and enjoy the afternoon completely unsupervised. It was heaven.
In high school, the Vogue was a little too intimate and ordinary for a date. Going to a movie meant driving the 30 miles back to one of the movie palaces in the city. That was where you found the first run movies and got the glamor of big time entertainment.
Those palaces started to die in the 60’s with the growth of the suburbs. By the time I started my working life in Los Angeles, the movie palaces were largely abandoned or converted to porn venues. To survive, some were divided into two or more theaters just like the old mansions surrounding downtown were converted to dingy flats The last gasp for movie palaces in the movie capitol was built in the 70’s, The Plitt in Century City. It was a modern venue but with the grandeur of the old palaces and it was a palace that made great movies even greater. We say Jaws there and Star Wars and nothing compares to the grandeur of a great movie surrounding you in a grand viewing space like the old Plitt. Alas, the magnificent Plitt was only a moment in time and quickly replaced with some more profitable use.
These days there is no place to get an old fashioned movie experience. The new movie multiplexes have all the personality of a shoebox in spite of the comfortable reclining stadium seats and over-loud three dimensional sound.
I’ll still go to a movie from time to time but the thrill is gone. There is no magic to these shoebox venues playing social effects overloaded features with little plot and no human interest. I remember the days when going to a movie was an event. You would go to a movie just to get away from real life and escape to the fantasy. The old movie palaces helped with that escape. Maybe the movie was a dud but you still spent the time in an environment that made you feel special. A few hours in the movie palace and you could go back to your hovel knowing that it wasn’t who you really were. Going to a movie doesn’t do that any more. All you get it the movie.
This is part two. If you missed part one of Down With Flying then follow the link.
I say that the problems with flying are all our own fault. I think it comes down to two things – Americans have rejected the concept of class and we are cheap.
The airlines, just like any other business in the free world, cater to their customers and compete to provide what customers demand. Today , we insist on cheap transportation- at least when we fly. Since 1995 airfares have increased about 20% (my mental trend line analysis of the chart below) while inflation has been nearly 45%. It is not a perfect measurement because not everything increases in cost but it suggests that airlines have had to compromise to keep airfares from increasing to provide the same levels of service 1995. Something had to give and it was service.
The more complicated question is why we tolerate the degradation in service levels since we manage to pay for increased costs in other areas of our lives and take for granted that we are entitled to cost of living adjustments for wages. For most of us, travel is not a regular part of our lives. We fly infrequently and are therefor more willing to put up with occasional inconvenience.
I think the biggest problem is that Americans have lost respect for class. I don’t mean social class like living on the right side of the railroad tracks. I mean having class: dressing up rather than down and looking like you matter. People associate class with snobbery or pretense. Nobody cares how they look or wants to be seen as pretentious. Look at your plane-mates next time you fly. Try to imagine what went through their minds selecting their wardrobe for the day. You can be sure that they weren’t thinking that the wanted to make a good impression. Everybody is afraid of looking classy. Nobody minds looking like trailer park trash, shlepping all their worldly belongings on and off the plane in their ratty luggage. And if you do check your bags (at additional cost on most airlines) and dress in a civilized way you get looks from the other passengers as if to say. “You think you are too good to shlep bags?”
The answer is easy. Yes, I do think I am too good to shlep bags and while you are at it, I’m too good to look like I took a break from slopping the hogs to fly to Cincinnati today. People don’t respect themselves enough to dress themselves well. I don’t think anybody thinks they are worth getting good treatment these days or care enough about how they look to dress like somebody deserving of respect. So if the airlines treat passengers like cattle these days, don’t blame the airlines. They are just providing the good customer service demanded by most of their passengers who don’t think they are worth any better treatment and dress to prove it.