Summer Gear (part two)
July 1st, 2009
We’re having a summer contest on The Curriculum. I am the judge, and I’m trying to stimulate things.
We’re doing two categories, dress and casual. Guess which one this is?
Note on the sneakers — When I was a kid (a phrase which seems to be creeping into my daily patter more and more) the first thing to do with a new pair of tennis shoes was to get them dirty. Walking around in pristine sneakers was a good way to get your butt kicked by Arthur, the neighborhood tough guy.
Today kids keep a toothbrush handy to immediately deal with any little dings and smudges.
Can I get a “Harrumph!” over here?
Lands End seersucker shirt, LL Bean chino shorts, Sperry sneakers, Citizen watch with Brooks Bros. strap, Ray-Ban Clubmasters.
Camp
July 1st, 2009
One minor disadvantage of making the summer camp my operational base becomes apparent on mornings like this, when it’s really too chilly for a dunk in the lake.
There are bad hair days, and then there’s this.
(It’s hard to tell, but the jacket, though patched, is not darted.)
Now Let Us Praise Nascent Death Droogs
June 30th, 2009
I was rummaging around looking for a CD that had a version of “Down the Road Apiece” by the Rolling Stones, ca. 1964. I found 12 x 5, which has a good “Around and Around,” but there seemed to be a big gap in my Stones collection that the Hot Rocks compilation didn’t cover.
I probably loaned them to someone and they didn’t return them. That happens. A lot.
Anyhoo, Amazon came to the rescue, and four discs arrived: Out of Our Heads, The Rolling Stones Now!, Between the Buttons, and Aftermath.
The first two, from 1965, are a little on the hit-and-miss side, but it’s mostly on target. This was a R & B band, with an excellent drummer. “Down the Road Apiece” on Now! is absolutely the best bit of borrowing by a British Invasion group of the American R & B goove. None of the other bands ever got it the way the Stones do on this three-minute masterpiece.
Aftermath (1966) and Between the Buttons (1967) are all Jagger/Richards compositions, the days of covering Churck Berry and Bo Diddley were over. Brian Jones was adding zithers and recorders to the mix, and the songwriting is alternately forced, awkward and naive, or leering, knowing and growing. Some real oddities on these two records.
What’s fun about listening to these now is they’ve been remastered, and you can finally hear Bill Wyman, not to mention the two-guitar interplay, with rhythm and lead intertwined, a practice the Stones continue to this day.
And Jagger sounds like he’s about 12 years old.
(You also get producer Andrew Loog Oldham’s horrible “Clockwork Orange” liner notes on Out of Our Heads.)
The reissues are cheap, $10 each. Check ‘em out.
Summer Gear (part one)
June 29th, 2009
Short sleeve shirts. Chino shorts that aren’t ridiculously long and do not have a pocket on the side for “cargo.” Boat shoes. Propane.
Cotton sports jackets for work. Old resoled Weejuns. Big stacks of mysteries by Catherine Aird and John Harvey (among many) from the library. Summer is no time for reading Tolstoy or Thackeray or something heavy, anymore than you’d make a huge beef stew.
And if you’re out on the lake and something like this blows up from the west, get out.
Spam Dept.
June 25th, 2009
Ahem…
- Who is Kim Kardashian, and why are these people so anxious I see her nekkid?
- We DO NOT need the rain
- The mosquitoes have been sitting around in the damp, practicing their dive bombing skills and waiting for this day. The National Insect Service estimates there are 378 mosquitoes for every Northwest Corner resident.
- The Mets are mediocre without Jose Reyes.
Why We Thrift (early summer version)
June 25th, 2009
A major haul from the Bargain Barn yesterday, with a number of terrific summertime items.
And not one but two safari jackets — khaki (Paul Stuart) and olive drab (pre-softcore porn Abercrombie & Fitch).
I could wear my pith helmet with the jackets. On second thought, naaah. The fun’s gone out of the helmet anyway.
Never mind NIMBY…
June 23rd, 2009
We have a new one, courtesy of mystery novelist Catherine Aird:
BANANA — Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone
The Summer Plan
June 23rd, 2009
Despite the sight the other day of the old fellow in the tattered robe leading pairs of animals along Route 44, summer seems to arrived and I have formulated my objectives:
1. Read a lot. I have been up at the summer camp, where the only technology that works is a radio with batteries. So I’ve been on a reading tear.
I read fast. Last week I polished off half a dozen books, mostly mysteries.
So it shouldn’t be a problem to read 100 books by Labor Day. Or 50. Or something.
2. Stay off the grid, spend less time looking at screens. Television, computer, or otherwise. My home computer is kaput anyway.
I am really starting to despise the modern world’s insistence on instant communications.
3. I talk to people all day long, so my goal is not to utter a single solitary word that is not for the job. (Calling my folks excluded.)
4. Explore streams in Massachusetts and Vermont.
5. Avoid women.
6. Avoid men who do not have fly rods in their hands.
7. Continue to eat better. I have dropped eight pounds in three weeks by eating fresh, organic and humble.
8. Wear lots of seersucker and spectators.
9. Get back on the cigar wagon.
10. Crank out 1000 words per day, on any subject, on the manual typewriter. Perhaps something will occur.
The Housatonics
June 15th, 2009
The Housatonics sang at two fundraisers (for Owl’s Kitchen) at Salisbury School over the weekend.
The Cinema — One, Two, Three, Bananas!
June 11th, 2009
I found a mention of a 1961 Billy Wilder film, One, Two, Three, when researching the song “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”
(It was a Homeland Security project, and I told you any more I’d have to kill you.)
James Cagney plays C.R. MacNamara, Coca-Cola’s man in West Berlin. His problems are numerous.
He doesn’t much like his wife, and has insufficient time to devote to his affair with his secretary, Fraulein Ingeborg (the generously constructed Lilo Pulver) .
He wants to maneuver his way into the corporation’s top European job in London by reaching a deal with the Soviets, but the brass in Atlanta won’t hear of it.
And one of said brass sends his loopy teenage daughter to him for safekeeping.
The daughter gets married (and pregnant) to (and by) an East Berlin Commie, the trade talks stall, and everything goes south.
It’s a mile-a-minute screenplay with a fair number of laughs, some slapstick, and some very interesting period stuff. Anybody who finds today’s political films heavy-handed will enjoy Wilder’s deft satirical touch.
Clothing fans will like the scene when MacNamara has to get the Commie properly outfitted, and has habers dashing all over the office while he barks orders.
The high point, though, and what brung me there in the first place, is the rendition, in German, of “Yes, We Have No Bananas” by a motheaten orchestra in the Grand Potemkin Hotel in East Berlin.
Funny stuff. At NetFlix.
