tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18583950104113990932024-03-16T20:54:02.366-10:00ONCEWEREBACHELORSBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.comBlogger137125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-43157331795709065022022-09-03T16:44:00.007-10:002022-10-07T14:19:40.001-10:00The Unified Theory of Double Nickels<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2abNP7Bol1O-vNUVU5nPI1CXNrmsbmmc5reCF0XuUFYSijAnA19URMahlKyUXqYnRvQMXWJHRZhhMthZ1UyGRoQb5R-It_BtA7B_Uxz9svH2iYHNBtpwyOOC0OItYUczIkPWAGxrwNsn7L6bUK7lbEnnCOgRRExVvdJUepnNx24tg4zdzmkMtgJCm/s4032/FullSizeRender.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2abNP7Bol1O-vNUVU5nPI1CXNrmsbmmc5reCF0XuUFYSijAnA19URMahlKyUXqYnRvQMXWJHRZhhMthZ1UyGRoQb5R-It_BtA7B_Uxz9svH2iYHNBtpwyOOC0OItYUczIkPWAGxrwNsn7L6bUK7lbEnnCOgRRExVvdJUepnNx24tg4zdzmkMtgJCm/w400-h225/FullSizeRender.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>So I just turned 55, mere days after leaving my son at college on the East Coast. Naturally, this led me to reflect on my trip East 37 years earlier, the sights, the sounds, the sensations. And as the OnceWereBachelor journey turned a new corner (OnceAgainABachelor, maybe?) this transition caused me to take stock of where I am and what it all means. </div><div><br /></div><div> He is in the exact opposite corner if the country from me, as if he had mused "how far away can I get from mom and dad?" That's where he is, some elite liberal arts, New England school, with beautiful, remote grounds, that will very soon be exploding with bonfires of yellow and orange leaves dissolving into the Autumn sky. Until it all gives way to a World War I winter landscape of grey.
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I made the same trip, to a different school that was nevertheless much the same, in 1985. For both of us, it is our first East Coast fall, and later our first bonafide winter. Like me, he will become very familiar with the scent of smoke from chimneys and Blistex on the lips, the feel of gloves, the utilitarian importance of warm footwear.
</div><div><br /></div><div>As for sounds, my freshman soundtrack was informed by the fact that immediately upon arrival, I sought out the college radio station, and obtained a Friday night slot as a DJ, spinning the latest indy music. My roommate was a mid-day jazz DJ, so we pretty much defined ourselves by that radio station. I was betrothed to REM there, the Replacements, the Hoodoo Gurus, Guadalcanal Diary, Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper. But the song that most reminds me of that freshman fall, more than the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbWoTV15qHo" target="_blank">Violent Femmes' "Add It Up</a>" or the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl9KQ1Mub6Q" target="_blank">Replacements' "Bastards of Young"</a>, is this song, "Life in a Northern Town", by the Dream Academy.</div><div><br />
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<span> </span>Now, the plan was to spend a few days in the area, to assemble all the gear that a Hawaii kid would need for his first extended stay in the Polar North. That meant driving to Target. Driving to Bed/Bath/Beyond. L.L. Bean (<a href="http://oncewerebachelors.blogspot.com/2008/08/ll-bean-10-inch-duck-boots.html" target="_blank">my thoughts on Bean here</a>). While driving all over New England, I found myself listening to a band from the late Nineties and the new millenium, that I had mostly ignored until now. Fountains of Wayne were mostly an East Coast band anyway, unfortunately known for a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZLfasMPOU4" target="_blank">hit song</a> that was misrepresentative of their work.
I had recently downloaded their album <i>Welcome Interstate Managers</i>, generally considered their best work, and which I had come to appreciate as power pop meets singer songwriter. </div><div><br /></div><div> Fountains of Wayne co-founders Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger met back in 1986 as freshmen at another New England school, Williams College, where they bonded over learning REM songs on acoustic guitar in their dorm hallway. Thereafter, they became songwriting partners. <i>Interstate Managers</i> was self-financed and independently recorded in response to being dropped by their major record label. In sweet revenge, it became their most successful release thanks to the aforementioned hit song. The album is particularly resonant to me because it seems to comprise the magnificent highs, the gutter lows, and the general absurdities of Generation X adulthood that I had experienced these past 37 years. And it even contains a perfect New England winter song, just like "Life in a Northern Town" was, back when I was a freshman. I found myself hitting repeat on this song all week as we drove all over Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, a song to a New England girl I could pretend I knew. Here is "Valley Winter Song".</div><div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="322" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QdjBvc396rI" width="400" youtube-src-id="QdjBvc396rI"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>Another song on <i>Interstate Managers</i> is a crunchy uptempo number that wouldn't have been out of place on my college radio show on WRUC 89.7, which was flush with tuneful smartassery from bands like the Replacements, Mojo Nixon, or the Violent Femmes. Here is "Bright Future in Sales".</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0_cT83Bilbo" width="320" youtube-src-id="0_cT83Bilbo"></iframe></div><br /><div><br /></div>Now, Adam Schlesinger* had already carved a small niche for himself as a songwriter for movies and TV. My interest in Schlesinger was piqued because I had learned that he had <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrsUeuBPFhM" target="_blank">penned the title song</a> for Tom Hanks' directorial debut film, a love letter to not-the-Beatles early Sixties rock n roll. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8EdOdfCM1hM" width="320" youtube-src-id="8EdOdfCM1hM"></iframe></div><br /><div><i>That Thing You Do</i> had been on repeat in my living room for the past couple months. It is a perfect film that just captures a sweet and innocent creative moment, when fame doesn't really matter, and neither does musicianship or even songcraft. What matters is friendship and love and youth. Just consider the clip above, the pure exuberant joy, the sheer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbg8T9r1DiQ" target="_blank">Hard Day's Night</a> of it all, friends cheering each other on. It is the film I turned to when I realized that my son was in fact going to leave me very soon, and there was no turning back. It made me feel better about what was going to happen next. Or at least help me forget it was happening.</div><div><br /></div><div><span><i>*I hate to write this footnote, but, despite his youth and health, Adam Schlesinger died of Covid-19 very early in the pandemic, in April of 2020. Rest in Peace, Adam. Thanks for the tunes.</i></span></div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-80542192021222370692019-08-08T19:10:00.000-10:002019-08-19T00:18:04.296-10:00My Unified Theory of the Ramones<br />
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Johnny Ramone would most definitely have been a Trump supporter. Although he and I both were Reagan fans in the 80s, the Donald is where he and I would certainly have parted company vehemently. But for a variety of reasons, this has been a summer of Ramones for me. In fact, I had the opportunity to consider Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, Tommy, and Marky as individuals, and ultimately I arrived at a thought that I subconsciously knew to be true. The Ramones are my all time favorite band.<br />
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<b><u>SUMMER SOUNDTRACK, SUMMER READING</u></b><br />
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As longtime readers of OnceWereBachelors know, I like to choose a soundtrack for the summer. Like all summer soundtrack bands, I initially selected a few that I could blast in my pick up truck on drives to and from the beach, and which would raise my spirits when I spun them on my Hi-Fi turntable. I had chosen some good ones meeting those criteria.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m5g-ePY5OWE/XUy2F81pOaI/AAAAAAAABo0/Amg4PBjKujodLPFcMnNgSQZGSfRdR6QSQCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_E4867.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m5g-ePY5OWE/XUy2F81pOaI/AAAAAAAABo0/Amg4PBjKujodLPFcMnNgSQZGSfRdR6QSQCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_E4867.JPG" width="320" /></a>But for whatever reason, independent of the soundtrack I was listening to, my summer reading started with the memoir <u>I Slept With Joey Ramone</u>, by Mickey Leigh, Joey's younger and much more hapless brother. Then as I neared the halfway point of that book, I acquired a copy of <u>Punk Rock Blitzkrieg</u>, by drummer Marky Ramone, which I would quickly turn to next. By then, the other bands had disappeared from my iTunes rotation, and a steady stream of Ramones vinyl replaced it. Most popular on my playlist was the double live album <i>It's Alive, </i>a document of their December 31, 1977 show at the Rainbow Theater in London, a show which Johnny himself considered their zenith performance. Personal faves <i>Leave Home</i>, <i>Rocket to Russia</i>, and <i>Pleasant Dreams </i>also got lots of airplay in my pick up. Finally, after finishing these two books, I read Johnny Ramone's unusual little autobiography, <u>Commando</u>.<br />
<br />
<i>Nota bene</i>, I never felt the urge to read Dee Dee Ramone's own memoir, <u>Poison Heart: Surviving the Ramones</u>, because of his reputation as a notorious exaggerator, totally bereft of any serious credibility. I guess his mastery of punk rock metaphor, as the Ramones' prolific songwriter, went hand in hand with his daffy and loose relationship with the truth.<br />
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<b><u>RAMONES DIVIDED</u></b><br />
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After first blasting out of the gate in 1976 and establishing the blue print for all post-Beatles modern rock, the Ramones quickly became its own Nation Divided. Joey occupied one coast, a Blue Stater in everything but name, steeped in the Sixties counterculture ethos of individuality, inclusivity, beauty, poetry, and a good time. Despite punk rock's disdain for filthy, smelly hippies, Joey for all intents and purposes, was one. On the other coast was Red Stater, Johnny, who, upon induction into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, famously accepted his award by saying "God Bless President George (W) Bush."* The two became opposite ends of the compass, who were so estranged that they all but ceased to communicate.<br />
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<b><u>MICKEY'S TAKEDOWN</u></b><br />
<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jtI9FkOni8Q/XUy2Fp5yMxI/AAAAAAAABow/3nuA7Ib4PcMqm0PmkH4iIqUvI0MVTwscgCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_E4871.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1226" data-original-width="1600" height="245" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jtI9FkOni8Q/XUy2Fp5yMxI/AAAAAAAABow/3nuA7Ib4PcMqm0PmkH4iIqUvI0MVTwscgCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_E4871.JPG" width="320" /></a>Mickey Leigh did the best he could to posthumously deflate Johnny's legend. Aside from providing much appreciated insider detail about being in the pull of the Ramones' gravity, Leigh found many opportunities to portray Johnny as a bully, greedy and venal, and willing to beat women, and utterly callous about Joey's untreated mental illness, especially his OCD. I'm sure some of it was true, even the wife-beating, but I think Leigh's portrayal was a transparent attempt at giving his bitterness a target, a bitterness that was not really about Joey's treatment, but rather a bitterness that Leigh himself did not reap the meager benefits that his brother and the other Ramones enjoyed. Leigh is responsible for much of the Johnny-directed hate within Ramones Nation.<br />
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And it was this abiding repulsion that Leigh's book left me with that made me regret the reaction I had years ago, on the morning I learned that Johnny Ramone had died at the age of 54. I cried. Unabashedly and immediately, for probably a good five minutes, I cried. A full grown man, a father, and a professional, I cried. It just hit me hard. By the day of his death on September 15, 2004, Johnny was my favorite Ramone. He was a punk rock stalwart, a stoic warrior of the ethos who gave in to no one, even in his devotion to the Reagan Revolution, a hard worker who suffered no fools, pulled no punches, and -- his often cartoonish music notwithstanding -- kept the Mickey Mouse to a bare minimum. In that way, to me, Johnny was more a guitar-wielding Mercury astronaut than a musician. By 2004, I knew that it was Johnny who kept the Ramones train rolling all those years, in spite of Dee Dee's severe drug addiction, Marky's alcoholism, and Joey's erratic mental health, all with virtually ZERO support from the radio or MTV or the industry of cool that is popular music.** Even in the inclusive and supposedly free-wheeling world of rock and roll, the Ramones were misunderstood, uncool outsiders, who survived largely thanks to Johnny's sheer strength of will. Leigh's book made me question all that.<br />
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<b><u>THE VIEW FROM THE DRUMMER'S SEAT</u></b><br />
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Then I read Marky Ramone's book. Marky rode the Ramones' drum throne the longest, and although he wasn't the architect of their relentless 16th note attack (Tommy pioneered that), he laid down the beat on many of their most iconic and enduring songs. <i>I Wanna Be Sedated. Do You Remember Rock n' Roll Radio. Rock n' Roll High School. Pet Sematery</i>. <br />
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A word about drummers: drummers are wired to be peace makers, conflict resolvers. Guitarists and lead singers may think they are the leaders, and ostensibly they are, but drummers lead from behind. I am a drummer, and I believe this. It is our beat that moves the whole room. The explosions of our cylinders propel the music. And instinctively, we want harmony and rhythm in our band, our tribe. Which explains, first why Marky's book was the way it was, and second, why I find it to be the most believable and honest.<br />
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Drummers also know that the rest of the band think the drummer is the most replaceable of its components. True or not (mostly not), it is what keeps drummers humble. It also makes them grounded, realistic, and clear eyed. Keith Moon and Ginger Baker are exceptions, not the rule, and Marky was not like them. As evidence of this, I learn, Marky rehabilitated himself by becoming an A.A. disciple. For the band.<br />
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And so Marky's memoir restored just a little bit of luster to Johnny's persona. Per Marky, Johnny is still conservative and reactionary and jingoistic, and he is still a bully and a manhandler of "his" women. But Marky affirms that he was also driven and, while demanding, also fair and just in his treatment of all the personnel that made the Ramones machine function. Joey is still an untreated mental casualty with paralyzing OCD and awful hygiene habits, but it's clearer in Marky's book that Johnny is doing his best to deal with Joey's faults -- and Dee Dee's chronic drug abuse and kleptomania -- in order to knit the band together enough, so they could climb onstage every night, 200 nights a year for 22 years.<br />
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<u><b>REQUIEM FOR HIMSELF</b></u><br />
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Before he reinvented himself as a Ramone, John Cummings was a prototypical juvenile delinquent, attended military school by his own choice, and held down a job as an ironworker for years. He, Tommy Erdelyi, Jeff Hyman, and later Douglas Colvin, came from the same Queens neighborhood. They talked themselves into forming a band (John and Tommy's second after the Tangerine Puppets), renaming themselves and developing an aesthetic in the process, and changing the face of popular music entirely by inventing punk rock.<br />
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His autobiography is the most remarkable of its type I've ever read. I can only assume it was his own decision to name it after one of the Ramones' many great, loopy chest-beater songs, <i>Commando</i>. It's title says a lot about what Johnny thought of himself.<br />
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In the book, Johnny confirms almost all of the accusations leveled against him in some of the most matter of fact prose this side of Hemingway. Some of my favorite quotes:<br />
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"<i>We started 1978 on tour with the Runaways, a band of dykes</i>"<br />
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"<i>I wrote the book on punk. I decide what's punk. If I'm driving a Cadillac it's punk.</i>"<br />
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"<i>In my head it was never officially over until Joey died in April 2001. There was no Ramones without Joey. He was irreplaceable, no matter what a pain he was. I wouldn't have wanted to play without him no matter how I felt about him; we were in it together. He never quit. We broke up and he died ... I thought I wouldn't care and I did, so it was weird. I guess all of a sudden, I did miss him. But he made an impact through his life, so he's still among us</i>."<br />
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His book also reveals that he meticulously kept track of the details in his Ramones life, in a collection of cheap vinyl-covered day planners available at drug stores. These were filled with terse notes:<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b> -June 23, 1975</b>: played for Sire (Records) - received offer. </i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b> -June 7, 1976:</b> Album: 113 on Billboard. </i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b> -Dec. 31, 1977</b>: Played London Rainbow Theater w/Rezillos, Generation X Att(endance): 2962 sold out</i>.<br />
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This continued through the years until the end. <b> </b><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b> -March 16, 1996</b>: Played Buenos Aries att: 43,000 Eddie (Vedder) at show</i>.<br />
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In the end, I believe Johnny was less the selfish and heartless misanthrope that Mickey and Dee Dee would have him be. He was less the false friend who stole Joey's girl. Then again, he was also less the heroic figure climbing aboard the rocket to venture into space that I thought he was when I wept for him on the day he died. He was more like the asylum orderly supervising the crazies who all harbored misperceptions of him.<br />
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If Johnny were alive today, I'm sure he would gleefully be cheering our current president on without remorse. I'd give him that, even though I gravely despise that perspective. After all, this is America, and America is where punk rock was invented.<br />
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*<span style="font-size: x-small;">The Joey-Johnny dichotomy may have its origins in the fact that Johnny ultimately stole Joey's girlfriend out from under him in 1980, and eventually married her. Johnny and Linda were together until the day Johnny died. But that is of little consequence to my summer.</span><br />
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**<span style="font-size: x-small;">Sire Records, the Ramones own label, and particularly its owner and his wife, Seymour and Linda Stein, are excused from this criticism. They always stood by the Ramones with what little power and capital they had, even from the beginning when they first encountered the Ramones' unpolished act on the dingy CBGBs stage in 1976.</span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-44580820455430513762018-10-14T23:09:00.000-10:002019-08-09T16:55:10.090-10:00The Police, Live on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert<a href="https://www.blogger.com/%3Ciframe%20width=%22560%22%20height=%22315%22%20src=%22https://www.youtube.com/embed/_gumi1weaL0%22%20frameborder=%220%22%20allow=%22autoplay;%20encrypted-media%22%20allowfullscreen%3E%3C/iframe%3E"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_gumi1weaL0" width="560"></iframe></a><br />
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When I was twelve, I was not seeking out live rock n' roll, on television or otherwise. I much preferred a good episode of Magnum P.I. I don't even know whether we got Don Kirshner's Rock Concert (or its cousin, The Midnight Special) here in Honolulu. My only exposure to live rock at the time was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, which more often than not I would use as the opportunity to go brush my teeth.<br />
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Pity then that I never saw this performance from February 1980 by the fledgling lads from the U.K. then diminutively known as the Police. It would be a few more years before they were known world wide as The Police, and decades before they would triumphantly return in the new millennium as THE POLICE (without question, I could make the same grammatical point about the bass player, then curiously calling himself Sting).<br />
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But check this 34 minute concert out, 10 months before they release their third album, Zenyatta Mondata. Here in America, they only really have Roxanne to hang their hat on, and maybe Message in a Bottle. It is remarkable for how undeniably determined these three young musicians are to show to the world how brilliant their music is. This is Sting before he became too big for the Police, too big for the world. This is Andy Summers before his own unique guitar style became a cage he would eventually want to escape. And this is Stewart Copeland demonstrating that he was beyond great well before anyone else ever realized it.<br />
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It's all there. The "Ee yo yo, ee yay yo" and "jah! jah!" refrains. The reverb triggers on the snare. The Mickey Mouse scoop-neck t-shirt and green nut-huggers. The glassy leads from that iconic tobacco Telecaster. Whether for someone like me, who never watched Kirshner or much paid attention to the Police until after the hype disappeared, or for longtime fans, these are not the familiar arrangements of their hits. Heck, the improvisational vamp alone in the middle of Can't Stand Losing You is memorable in that it's not what they did in their reunion tours in the 21st century, much less when they were doing it fresh in the Eighties the number of times I saw them live.<br />
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This is something entirely different than what Police fans are used to. This is them before they took over the world.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-49401384145140411922018-03-29T07:59:00.002-10:002018-04-30T13:16:33.962-10:00Good Sh*t From Hawaii: How I Invented the Poke Bowl<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">I am really pleased that Mainland folks
with very little if any connection to Hawaii have embraced the poke bowl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the Spirit of Aloha, surfing, and hula, all Hawaii
residents should be proud to add the savory raw fish dish to the list of
Hawaiian exports.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I for one can take personal pride in
the feat, because, you see: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>I.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Invented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poke bowl.</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">The first time I encountered poke was at
my first ever luau, which I attended in the 1970s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I forget the occasion, but it was a classic Hawaiian luau in
a large field, where beneath large tarpaulin tents, hundreds of <i>ohana</i> and
guests gathered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was hula
and a steel guitar band.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a nine
year old at the time, this is the extent of detail I recall, save one
other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember the poke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My 11 year old friend gave me a paper
cup and grinned, "here, try this."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I put the purple, slimy morsel in my mouth and immediately
gagged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was cold, clammy, and
salty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In retrospect, I'm
surprised I didn't bother to ask or hesitate before popping it past my
lips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I thought I was being fed boogers. </span>It was my first ever
experience with raw fish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luckily,
in the ensuing years I quickly took to sashimi and sushi and ceviche and poisson cru and all
things seafood, and my first ever encounter with the Hawaiian version of raw
fish was but a footnote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Fast forward to the Nineties, after
seven years of college and law school, and I returned to Hawaii, fully
immersing myself in the outrigger paddling lifestyle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a life involved canoe paddling on the beautiful
blue-green water surrounding our islands almost every day from February to
October, punctuated by almost weekly races.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My canoe club was a notorious party club. We often found
ourselves after these races reveling well into the night. We enjoyed sharing coolers of
beer, meats grilled on hibachis set up on the grass or sand, and plastic
containers of poke, which we purchased from any number of supermarkets selling it as an item as
unremarkable as apples or hot dogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The variety was endless, consisting of ahi tuna, octopus, marlin, even
raw white crab.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Drizzle these with
sesame oil, green onions, <i>shoyu</i> (soy sauce), and chili pepper flakes, and you
have a basic poke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you might
also find minced garlic, chopped kukui or macadamia nut, shredded ginger, even
a Sriracha-mayonaise dressing to make it spicy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of this would be passed around amongst my paddling
teammates and shared with endless beer after beer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mostly, we would pick the hunks of fish out of the
containers with our fingers, or maybe chopsticks if we refused to be uncouth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was my Nineties.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Then one Sunday, I thought to myself,
"this poke would be good with some hot rice."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was thinking of the Japanese <i>chirashi</i>
dishes that many sushi restaurants offered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than serving sashimi <i>nigiri</i> style, on bullets of rolled rice one at
a time, chirashi was a large shallow bowl of warm
sushi rice, upon which a layer of sashimi - ahi, hamachi, salmon, chutoro and
otoro - was decoratively arranged for one to heartily dig into with
chopsticks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is what I wanted
for my poke, and no one had ever seen it served that way before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Before my Hawaiian chirashi idea, poke
was more an appetizer, to be served as I had experienced it 2 decades before; in
a paper cup served on the side of a luau plate, little better than an
afterthought to the entree of kalua pig, shoyu chicken, and rice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">By the end of that particular canoe
season, my teammates were bringing portable rice cookers to the races, to enjoy
with the poke that would inevitably be passed around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I even introduced my new wife to it by instituting a Monday
Night Football picnic, wherein I came home with poke from the store and cooked
up a pot of rice, which we would enjoy sitting cross-legged on the floor in
front of the football game, eating from the Japanese bowls we got in our wedding.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Still, this particular style of serving
poke was not seen in local eateries, much less in fancy Pacific Rim Fusion
cuisine places like Roy's or Sam Choy's until a few years after our
wedding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first "poke
bowl" I noticed on a menu was at a small "plate lunch"
restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Historians are
convinced (OK, I, I am convinced) that that poke bowl can be traced backwards
from paddler to paddler all the way back to my canoe club's tarp tent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">In the ensuing years, I noticed poke
bowls at Zippy's, the humble and ubiquitous Hawaiian diner franchise, and at Sam Choy's Breakfast Lunch & Crab on the high end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To me, it reached local saturation when groceries
offered a poke bowl option at their fresh fish counter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I recognized it as a popular explosion
when a friend of a friend, both of whom lived in the Mid-West, sheepishly asked
me about poke bowls on Facebook, when she learned I was from Honolulu.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.0pt;">And to
that, you can bet my first reply to her was "You know. I. Invented. The poke bowl."</span><!--EndFragment-->Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-62203340513161233692017-03-17T08:30:00.002-10:002019-08-08T22:58:45.154-10:00STIFF LITTLE FINGERS ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KUHsgXFLk08" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
On March 17, 1991, I was a little over halfway through with my year abroad in London as a 2nd year law student. I was fully acclimated to this most familiar of foreign lands. With troubles in Northern Ireland still a fresh wound for everyone in the UK, before coming, Notre Dame advised us to please refrain from wearing any "Fighting Irish" attire.<br />
<br />
A fresh wound perhaps, but at least the yobs in London still felt it was appropriate to invite Belfast's own Stiff Little Fingers to play on St. Patrick's Day that year at the legendary Brixton Academy. And the wee admonishment from Notre Dame about political sensitivity wasn't going to stop me from seeing them, one of my favorite punk bands. I wouldn't even be deterred by the fact that I was in the midst of second term finals in this my most critical year of law school.<br />
<br />
I set aside the books I had furiously been committing to memory and ventured off to Brixton alone. No one else was stupid enough to endanger their grades for an incendiary Northern Irish band from 1977. And so I found myself amongst like minded strangers in a boiling, ever-crashing slam dance with my heroes not twenty feet away playing music that taught me more about defiance and integrity and loyalty and passion than ten Sunday sermons.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pl5V26oXHUI" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
One of their last songs was a searing reworking of Bob Marley's Johnny Was, about a boy killed in Belfast by an occupying army, a true favorite of mine in my personal top ten. It was during that song, and in that pit of youth, that I lost my glasses after a particularly large surge of punks rolled my way. <br />
<br />
I was blind without them on the tube ride back to school, where I was planning to immediately return to studies. I had an exam in a few hours. No matter. To Jake, Ali, Henry, and Phin: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hanx/dp/B00406WGDO/ref=sr_1_1_twi_lp__2?ie=UTF8&qid=1489775410&sr=8-1&keywords=Stiff+Fingers+Hanx">HANX</a>!<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VmeHLLrwSNQ" width="560"></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-90210418960412509702017-03-14T16:50:00.000-10:002018-04-06T08:03:19.918-10:00What Do Hockey and Iconic Architecture Share in Common<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1yWpDI1EBjM/WMcW-EK4U5I/AAAAAAAAA20/tNH2W3ZcaWYk2oJMVF9Nig5m1wE5CU4jQCLcB/s1600/IMG_9833.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1yWpDI1EBjM/WMcW-EK4U5I/AAAAAAAAA20/tNH2W3ZcaWYk2oJMVF9Nig5m1wE5CU4jQCLcB/s320/IMG_9833.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>By the 1930s, America's greatest architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was in a slump. He had disappeared to his singular home and school in Milwaukee, where Taliesin Fellows came to learn design from the Master, a refined philosophy of style that was acutely sensitive to its surroundings and also rejected the European old school that dominated the 19th Century. In fact, despite being a leader in this design movement and building many structures from that century into the 1920s, Wright had stopped taking commissions, withdrawing perhaps out of burnout, but also because of a handful of personal challenges including scandal (believe it or not, a mass axe murder at Taliesin) and divorce.</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>By that point, one wonders if Wright himself thought he was finished.</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>He was almost 68 when in 1935 he was approached by one of his students, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., the scion of a Pittsburgh, PA retail family, to design a summer retreat for his family near the Appalachian foothills. They had long held a large, uneven parcel of land there with a lively stream called Bear Run coursing through it. The rudimentary cabins the Kaufmanns maintained there had deteriorated and an upgrade of some kind was in order.</b></i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-- o O o --</div>
<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KLv6dh5KRbY/WMioJCxN5tI/AAAAAAAAA3Y/IX02Pb9sYck1IMRYP7O4LIhdQ5S0Pek9ACLcB/s1600/IMG_9851.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KLv6dh5KRbY/WMioJCxN5tI/AAAAAAAAA3Y/IX02Pb9sYck1IMRYP7O4LIhdQ5S0Pek9ACLcB/s320/IMG_9851.JPG" width="320" /></a><br />
This year, my son becomes a teenager. No longer can I baby him or touch him gently or affectionately, at home much less in public. The time has arrived for him to be treated like a man, so that, by the time he becomes one, the behaviors are already instinct. At the same time, my life reaches a mid-century. My 14 year law partnership is amicably -- but sadly -- dissolving as one partner is given a judgeship. My neglected health needs attention, and I've been getting by on decades of invincibility. I have been divorced for five years.<br />
<br />
<br />
As a History major, I've always minded my past, treating it as an important touchstone. So, it was with great joy that I received the response to this last minute status on Facebook.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>"If any yinz wanna grab a cold, frosty Yuengling, I'm in Steeltown the resta da week, an'nat. </i>"<br />
<br />
My son plays violin at a near professional level, and his school orchestra was traveling to Pittsburgh to compete in the National Orchestra Festival.<br />
<br />
In response to my Facebook post, <a href="http://oncewerebachelors.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-unified-theory-of-post-modern.html">my two best friends</a> from Georgetown were going to drop everything to drive down to meet me. Also, a law school classmate from Notre Dame, whom I knew mostly through Facebook, got a pass from her husband (who knows me not at all) to drive the two hours from Ohio to meet us. <br />
<br />
To add to my luck, I learned that same day that, as part of the trip to Pittsburgh, my son's school arranged for a guided tour of nearby Fallingwater, possibly America's most celebrated private residential home. Thinking they were mostly in Chicago and points west, I didn't even know any important Frank Lloyd Wright structures were in Pennsylvania, much less his greatest masterpiece.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-- o O o --</div>
<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bXyTwDeUWVM/WMcW7e7j2-I/AAAAAAAAA2w/v1fzl0IZB3cPOvPWsHi6LWtxlQnWWVO0ACLcB/s1600/IMG_9839.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bXyTwDeUWVM/WMcW7e7j2-I/AAAAAAAAA2w/v1fzl0IZB3cPOvPWsHi6LWtxlQnWWVO0ACLcB/s320/IMG_9839.JPG" width="320" /></a><i><b>Kaufmann's Department store made the family who owned it reasonably wealthy. Not as wealthy as Pittsburgh's steel magnates, like the Carnegies, but close enough. When the family first showed the property to Wright, they pointed out a beloved waterfall where for years Kafmanns would play and sun and swim. They hoped their new summer retreat would have a view of it.</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>The plans were finally revealed months later, in a classic surprise visit to Wisconsin by family patriarch Edgar Kaufmann Sr., in which Taliesin apprentices remember Wright calmly drawing the design he'd had in his head in the final two hours before his arrival. Kaufmann Sr., who had to be persuaded by his son to </b></i><b><i>commission Wright, was angered to discover that the architect had decided to situate the house atop the rocky waterfall. During construction, conflict and disagreement continued when Wright subsequently learned that an independent engineering review of his cantilevered design was conducted behind his back at the behest of Kaufmann Sr. Wright threatened to walk off the project and Kaufmann Sr. relented. Apparently, to this day, legend has it that the engineering critique remains buried in a stone wall on the property.</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
<b><i>Upon completion, the final cost of Fallingwater was $ 155,000.00 in 1937 dollars. Built of Pittsburgh steel, concrete, and stone quarried on Bear Run land, the family lived and entertained there for the next thirty years.</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
<b><i>It is unquestionably a masterpiece, nearly voted the Eighth Wonder of the World (losing to Macchu Pichu), or so the joke goes. Embodying Wright's tenets of harmony with its environment, organic design, and Asian spatial aesthetics, no words can really describe a visit to Fallingwater without falling short. </i></b><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-- o O o --</div>
<br />
When we fly out of Honolulu, my ex-wife drives my son and me. We are friendly. Supportive of each other. We are family and always will be. And yet I feel alone when there's no one to kiss goodbye. It reminds me of that scene in <i>When Harry Met Sally</i>, where Harry sees Sally lovingly say goodbye to her lover at the airport and he observes, "You're obviously at the beginning of your relationship."<br />
<br />
I find myself feeling that way a lot lately. Ennui. Cosmic ennui.<br />
<br />
The perfect panacea for cosmic ennui, I hope, are the boys from Georgetown, the Jesuit and Thomas the Editor, and the person I shall call The Domer. The plan is an afternoon of cocktails and laughter in a reasonably hospitable publican's establishment, followed by an Uber ride to the PPG Paints arena for a face off between the Penguins of Pittsburgh and the Lightning of Tampa Bay. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
After days of attending orchestra events with my son, his classmates, and their way-too-intense-and-invested parents, Friday comes and I finally break away to meet my friends. I'm just getting used to the feeling of my son so eagerly shooing me to walk off and leave him with his friends.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u2_9uvmOsro/WMcX8nJnHlI/AAAAAAAAA24/QwAQLYQAdlkreC7zRTz0Yrts-xbQcpa9QCLcB/s1600/IMG_9774.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u2_9uvmOsro/WMcX8nJnHlI/AAAAAAAAA24/QwAQLYQAdlkreC7zRTz0Yrts-xbQcpa9QCLcB/s320/IMG_9774.JPG" width="320" /></a>"I'm gonna head down to your lobby and mill around like Julia Roberts," the Domer messages on Facebook. She has a way of being familiar and chummy, and yet she refuses to engage in cellphone texting with me and the Georgetown boys. Too cozy. I love that. She and I were like ships passing in the night in Law School, sharing mutual drinking pals and seeing each other at every social event, yet probably never saying a single word to each other. I was in the Slow Learner's class, as Notre Dame's Prof. Charlie Rice quipped, and she, not. And yet, even then, I knew that she would be great fun to down beers and take in a hockey game with. I was not wrong.<br />
<br />
I knew that this cocktail of people would work, otherwise I never would've stirred it in the first place. I've already painted enough of a portrait of Thomas, but the Jesuit deserves a bit more attention. As I've said before, he comes from the Eisenhower era. Unchallenged as our spiritual and moral center, around which Thomas and I whizzed and sparked around like electrons. The Jesuit was my guide through things literary and Catholic. He came from Buffalo and had a major league throwing arm. To that point in my life the Jesuit was probably the smartest person I knew.<br />
<br />
And I was right. The Domer fit right in. Joke for joke, story for story, entendre for entendre, we entertained each other, running our fingers over the sometimes-pebbled, sometimes-polished texture of our fifty year long lives. We compared child raising notes, even Thomas, who was later to the parenting game than even I was. That night I went to a hockey game and a conversation broke out.<br />
<br />
It was just what I needed.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-- oOo --</div>
<br />
<br />
<i><b>Over the years, people quipped that Wright and the Kaufmanns should have named the summer home Spreadingmildew. I've read that when owners of Frank Lloyd Wright homes meet each other, the first thing they ask is "how many leaks does your roof have". Walking through Fallingwater, especially as I did during the tour with my son's orchestra at the end of February, the spaces were cave-like and dank. Spectacular views out, yes. Beautiful built in furniture, yes. But cozy? Not exactly.</b></i><br />
<b><i><br /></i>
<i>No matter, though. Perfection needn't be perfect.</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i>
<i>It was still the most sublime space I'd ever stood in. Ample sunlight made for wonderful shadows everywhere. Generous glimpses of the nature outside from every spot inside. Rainfall shower heads in every bath, over a half-century before rainfall shower heads were even a thing.</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i>
<i>In 1968, the Kaufmanns left the property in the hands of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, so that accomplished middle school string musicians could experience it for posterity. In 1981, a comprehensive report was written by an expert museum auditor on what could be improved at Fallingwater. This experienced curator recognized the pricelessness of the property and its contents (all of its furniture, after all, had been designed by Wright), and recommended numerous ways to improve preservation in the midst of daily tours. The report was shared with Kaufmann Jr., then in his seventies. Kaufmann, like Wright before him and the engineer's report, rejected it outright. He commented to the WPC Director that Fallingwater was a summer retreat to his family, a place where his family sent discardable things too beloved to discard. They felt no instinct to put these things behind glass.</i></b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
-- oOo --</div>
<br />
I tried to get Thomas and the Jesuit and the Domer on the list for that afternoon's private tour of Fallingwater, but there wasn't room. The Domer would rise early the next morning after the hockey game to be home in time to find her husband embarking on yet another ambitious home improvement project. No wonder she got the pass. "Next time, mai tais in Waikiki," she said, and I'm pretty sure she meant it.<br />
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Thomas and the Jesuit were really interested in the house but they had roughly ten hours of driving between them to their respective homes in Brooklyn and Buffalo.<br />
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Our orchestra group jumped on the tour bus that had taken us around Pittsburgh all week and we set out for the foothills. We enjoyed lunch in Ohiopyle, a speck of a town that existed only to guide river rafts in the summer and feed Fallingwater tourists. On the final leg of our drive to Bear Run, the Juicy Lucy I ordered put me to sleep as I listened to Steely Dan's "My Old School" from a playlist I had created just for my reunion with those three.<br />
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<b><i>-- oOo --</i></b></div>
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<b><i>To gain an initial view of Fallingwater, one follows the original driveway several hundred yards downhill. The house appears dramatically from within an obscuring thicket of trees. As I was walking down this drive, I easily picked out Thomas and the Jesuit, who had decided to take an earlier tour, hoping also to catch me upon my arrival.</i></b><br />
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<b><i>We exchanged brief comments about the tour and the house and the drive, laughing like we always do. We hugged and I continued down the hill and they up. It was less than three minutes.</i></b><br />
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<b><i>Perfection need not always be perfect.</i></b><br />
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<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-86036508131685202782016-08-04T16:29:00.000-10:002016-08-04T20:27:11.625-10:00Let's Do Something With Our Hands<br />
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Boy it's been a long time! No, I haven't forsaken longer form writing for the 140 characters of Instagram or Twitter. My life is just not that interesting. In fact, after several years into the successful experiment that has been my divorce and BachelorDadHood, I fell into a comfortable rut. A rut I felt I could only power my way out of with 750cc of vintage Japanese motorcycle engine. I've said before that <a href="http://oncewerebachelors.blogspot.com/2008/10/two-wheels-good.html">I would love to own and maintain a vintage cafe racer</a> to zip around town on in the early mornings and late evenings, and to work on in the cool dusk of my garage. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed.<br />
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No motorcycle. It certainly would've spelled the death of me.<br />
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So what to do. I was still in a rut, remember? Clearly, I needed a hobby other than sulking at home, listening to my vinyl records, or worse, chasing tourist skirts in Waikiki (especially since I was doing that so poorly, as well). Then I discovered it while talking with another OnceWereBachelor friend, a good friend of mine since third grade, a father of three girls, and husband to a wonderful woman who had his life tuned to such a perfect pitch that he too went searching for a hobby. Something to keep his hands busy at night.<br />
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Three words: DIY Electric Guitar. Okay, I know that's more like five words, but you get the idea.<br />
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I've always thought the quintessential rock n' roll guitar was embodied by the Flying V, originally built in the heady days of Sputnik by Gibson. I've always wanted one. However, their versions, even the most affordable of them, are laughably expensive. I discovered a company in Australia that will mill one (in China) to one's preferred specifications. After many weeks waiting, it will arrive unassembled and unadorned. A moderate amount of woodworking skill is called for, and a like amount of painterly talent and soldering fearlessness, and, as the French say: voila!<br />
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I was going for mid-century American muscle, something evocative of tailfins and checkered flags and motor oil on rain puddles. The center ornament is from an old Chevy Impala, since GM seems to have also gone with the flag motif (to the chagrin of this dyed-in-the-wool Ford guy).<br />
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My second guitar began shortly after the V was completed. In fact, I believe I was still wrestling with electrical issues on my V, when I found this interesting guitar kit on eBay. Unlike most Les Pauls, this model was routed for a single pick up. Even more interestingly, it was fitted for a single-coil P90, as opposed to the more common (and more modern) humbucker pick up. I fell in love with its unrepentant purity and simplicity, and I resolved to build it as the ultimate Punk Rock workhorse, but adorned not with stickers and graffiti, but with the most vintage of vintage paint schemes from Gibson, the venerable Goldtop. Like the V, it would also have an unfinished neck, for hand speed, and a stinger headstock, where the paint job forms a point on the back of the neck. I would throw out the cheap Chinese tuning pegs for vintage, snot-green Kluson-style tuners.<br />
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Because of the single pickup, it would have much simpler electronics involving only one tone and one volume knob. And for the pinnacle of simplicity, as well as vintage fidelity, it would have a one-piece wrap-around bridge, literally half the hardware of more modern guitars (and by modern, I mean post-1954). It will take every ounce of self-discipline in me to refrain from stickering it up.<br />
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The last DIY guitar was a little different. I had an old stratocaster-style guitar sitting in a closet, a $30 purchase off Craigslist as part of a punk rocker costume I wore for Halloween a few years ago. After a little tweaking, I had already made it sound above average. I decided I wanted an homage to one of the great icons of horror comic books, a rock n roll femme fatale if ever there was one, the voluptuous, the vexatious, the venereal, Vampirella. For this "build," all I did was learn that old craft skill from the Seventies, decoupage. I purchased a readily available pile of old Vampirella comics from the local nerd-store, and, (in Bela Lugosi voice) "Good Evening."<br />
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And that's what I've been doing for the past six-months, at night when my son is with his mom. I think it's been well-spent, and it's much better than wrapping myself bodily around a streetlight off the back of a motorcycle. But don't worry, other stupidity follows, and I also feel one of those Universal Theory posts bubbling up very soon.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-37872250381909793292015-10-29T20:12:00.001-10:002018-05-15T16:47:56.000-10:00Vinyl Adventures in a Quieter Mode<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I put together a second stereo for the OnceWereBachelor Pad. This latest one is not as "totally awesome" as my first. But in at least one way, it's particularly special to me, as it is partly comprised of my father's old sound system from his dark, solemn den in Manila. While I found the Sansui 1000X receiver, manufactured in 1969, and the Kenwood KD-5077 turntable from the Seventies both on Craigslist (a place becoming for me more and more like an online heroin shooting gallery), the Standard Radio Corp. speakers in walnut and black and matte steel (very Bauhaus) were smuggled over from Tokyo by my dad in 1968 in a spare pilot's bag. They are compact, well made, and absolutely beautiful. They followed us over from the Philippines, along with my dad's own Sansui 5000x receiver and SD 7000 reel to reel. The latter two pieces gave up the ghost in the Eighties, but my dear mom lovingly stored the surviving speakers away, for me to find decades later.<br />
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The whole system is not the powerhouse I have downstairs. But I leave that for the punk rock. This upstairs unit, just steps from my and my son's rooms, doesn't threaten the same wattage, but for things like Sinatra at the Sands with Count Basie & his Orchestra, conducted by Quincy Jones, a record pressed in mono in 1966, it's perfect. I like to think of my upstairs system as a spiritual successor to Don Draper's stereophonic console.<br />
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<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-59494235429922499742015-10-27T22:36:00.002-10:002018-05-15T16:50:23.987-10:00An American Look Back<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eKYF962P-KI" width="560"></iframe><br />
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She & Him is the pop music duo of Zoey Deschanel (the uncertain rebel hippie of Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous) and guitarist/producer M. Ward (sorry, I got nothing on this guy; the world is full of unsung guitar talent). Their aesthetic is decidedly retro-lux, and their presentation is reminiscent of my favourites the <a href="http://www.oncewerebachelors.blogspot.com/2013/04/more-adventures-with-style-council.html">Style Council</a>. I discovered this video one night while obsessively searching for vintage stereophonic console cabinets.<br />
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I was instantly captivated and charmed. I had to know more. I had to hear more. Thanks to the aforementioned obsessiveness, I quickly pieced together that their video was almost a direct cribbing of a Chevrolet film short from 1958 celebrating American Design. Wow.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8WnIXkeGGUs" width="420"></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-23863152938491741762015-08-03T16:40:00.000-10:002019-08-08T22:58:19.172-10:00Vinyl Adventures Redux<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The hit parade of vinyl continues, and consequently a Mood Room is developing. I enjoyed the first couple of weeks of vinyl as played through my Eighties era Sony, when I suddenly got the hankering for analog knobs and buttons and the blue glow of Non Specific Warning Lights. As luck would have it, a 1978 vintage Sansui G-6700 showed up on Craigslist and in two shakes of a lambs tail, said knobs, buttons, and NSWLs were mine. It now serves as a 100 watt per channel traffic cop for all the audio signals my growing 70s and 80s record collection can produce.</div>
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Finding the Sansui was fortuitous for another reason. As I was driving home from the purchase through an unfamiliar neighborhood, what should I spy but the often-replicated (often poorly) Eames lounge chair, waiting to be picked up by the bulky item sanitation crew, in a condition that can best be described as Not Quite Ready for the Dump. It's sumptuous naugahyde was only a little sunbaked and cracked. Shook that lambs tail again, a screech of the brakes, and it was in the back of my truck. Only made the neighbors a little nervous.</div>
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Now, I know this particular chair was nowhere near an original example of the mid-century masterpiece by Charles and Ray Eames, manufactured by the Herman Miller Co., and extant in the dens of Mike Brady, Don Draper, Tom Corbett and his son Eddie, and Maj. Anthony Nelson and his Jeannie in a bottle. It's armrests and base were all wrong, and the quality of the materials was barely residential grade. In fact, I already have another one, also a copy, of much better accuracy, which I keep as a placeholder for when I have a spare five grand laying around for a real one. So I could've taken a pass on this one. But in an instant an alternative vision developed in my mind for this dumpster find.<br />
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Sometimes, with good fortune comes the blessing of freedom; the departure of limitation that zero overhead affords. This vision fit in perfectly with my idea of the Mood Room, where I was already doing my most profound thinking, whilst listening to vintage New Wave. The iconic lines and proportions of the Eames chair would serve as a framework for something edgy, and "out there" at least for the Reagan Era. Something graffitied and hot pink, maybe, and that goes well with the post-apocalyptic simulacra of Billy Idol music in its very prime. Something that the Warriors wouldn't be afraid to hide behind during their odyssey across New York's deadly five boroughs, while fleeing the Baseball Furies. Something that Lord Humongous of the Wasteland could use as a campaign chair while laying siege to Mad Max and his friends. You get where I'm going? Something that rocked.</div>
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So I resurrected some long dormant graphic design skills. Wielded them poorly. Took my time. Two weeks later, I have this, the listening throne to go with my crown jewel Sansui.<br />
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Reduce. Reuse. REBEL YELL!</div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-19270911824261155972015-07-18T00:06:00.000-10:002019-08-08T22:57:58.913-10:00Vinyl Adventures in Super Mid-FiAfter probably 2 decades of incapacity, I am once again able to play record albums. This is no small development for someone of my penchant for music. We are now GO for vinyl in the OnceWereBachelorPad. My new favorite saying is, "Come on over and let's listen to records!"<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Billy Idol's Rebel Yell Spinning, Black Flag's Jealous Again On Deck</td></tr>
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For years, I had been browsing Craigslist for a used system, but I couldn't find one complete that didn't smack of too much digitalia or oversensurroundsound. No thanks. Two channels, maybe a bank of levels. Blue lights. Finally, after <a href="http://www.oncewerebachelors.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-life-in-drive.html">driving Bill's MG</a>, I also acquired his stereo receiver and awesome Bose 302 "bookshelf" speakers. All I needed was a turntable, and for that I finally bit the bullet and simply ordered a basic one online, as well as a separate phono preamp. If you're at all similarly inclined, stay away from the cheap self contained units that you find everywhere. They're no better than the crappy plastic players we used to have as kids in the 70s, from Sears or worse. <br />
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I tell you all this not because I am a techie audiophile. Lord no. My music hardly calls for the highest fidelity. With records, the journey's the thing, I think. Besides putting the stereo components together, consider the act of accumulating record albums. I've already <a href="http://www.oncewerebachelors.blogspot.com/2009/06/unified-theory-of-pop-music.html">waxed lyrical about sifting through album stacks at Tower Records</a>. Bringing out my old collection, which I've gathered since I was about 14 years old, the activity is downright autobiographical. And now that I am again vinyl ready, I get to return to used record shops? That's just a bonus to having the stereo.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eames Fiberglass Shell Chair and Record Player</td></tr>
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And what of the act of listening to record albums? With CDs or iTunes or Pandora or Spotify, the experience is disposable. One can skip past songs, assemble playlists, impose your own aesthetic on the artists whose songs you've downloaded. It's also portable, in that one often does other things -- walk their dog, work out, read their email -- while listening to their iPod. Those are not bad capabilities<br />
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by any means, but consider the alternative. One occupies the same space as their stereo. One has to set aside time to listen to the entire record because it isn't as easy to skip songs on an album. Also, you'll have to listen to the songs in the order that the artist put them in on the record. Do you think they put thought into that order? I should think so. And if you're going to listen to one record, you might as well listen to a bunch of them. And what do you do while listening? Maybe you could still clear your email, but just as likely, you could sit down, in your music listening space, and turn your attention to the cool stuff that came with the record album, the lyric sheet, the booklet. Heck, even the picture on the album cover is reproduced in a stately, full size that lends itself to hours of scrutiny. Don't think that it only holds the attention of teenagers. It's happened to me since I got my stereo. And I haven't been a teenager for decades.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">5 LPs of Bruce Springsteen Live, and Collectible Booklet With Lyric Sheet </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cheap Trick's In Color</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Back Cover of Cheap Trick's In Color</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside Foldout to Cheap Trick's In Color</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This Calls For Super Mid Fi</td></tr>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-40931394975401054572015-06-07T16:42:00.001-10:002015-06-09T11:14:15.214-10:00A Life in a DriveI can't help but feel a little bit intrusive today. I was given the privilege of doing something highly personal with another man's dearest. It's not what you think. Or, if you hang around here much, it's exactly what you think.<br />
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I was granted the high honor of taking a friend's father's classic 1966 MGB Roadster on a Sunday drive. I have to confess that I all but invited myself to this party, made it seem like it was her idea, but, as I like to coyly admit, "I am not completely without artifice." Sure she needed help burning off the better part of half a tank of gas before shipping it off to the mainland, but was I just a bit too eager to help? Did I take advantage of someone who doesn't know how to drive stick? Again?<br />
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Mindful of the intrusion, I made sure I was respectful of its owner, my friend's father. Bill bought this little British Racing Green roadster, brand new in 1966. It rolled off the lot in Ann Arbor, Michigan, if there even was a dealer back then. I doubt it. It could very well have just been an importer or broker. Even in its heyday, MG hardly enjoyed much of a market share in the U.S.<br />
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This little convertible remained with Bill for the rest of his life, right up until January 2015. Besides Michigan, Bill and the MGB were on the East Coast, probably Maryland, DC, and Florida. Eventually, Bill's skill set with the technical aspects of Navy nuclear submarines brought him to Honolulu, HI (and probably explains their time in Virginia Beach and Cape Kennedy as well), and of course, the MGB accompanied him.<br />
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As I drove the little roadster today, I made sure to keep Bill respectfully on my mind. He took great care of this little sports car, and, on my watch, I would too. I'd never driven such an old foreign car before, and I was ever watchful of the various problems for which these vehicles were known. Overheating. Leaking. Rattling apart. I made sure on a couple occasions to park the roadster to let it cool in the hot sunday afternoon. Under the shade of a huge banyan in Waimanalo, we popped the hood and took in the gorgeous little convertible. But not because we had to.<br />
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No gremlins ever appeared, as Bill seems to have left this car in fine fettle. And his daughter has cared for it lovingly in this difficult time, until she hands it off to Bill's friend in Ohio, who already cares for two other MGs. While we drove, she shared a few memories of her dad with me. They were bittersweet, of course, but I hope she enjoyed the drive as much as I did. She did joke that she was her father's "other child," this car being her more beloved sibling. No, you weren't, and it wasn't.<br />
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I realize I learned very little about Bill, and yet in driving his little MG, I feel I know a lot because I know that, for some people, a car is more than a car. The clutch was tight and firm, the H-pattern shifter felt like I would guess it was meant to feel. Perhaps the dash was blemished and shopworn, but the gauges were clear and all appeared to work properly. The seats, while well used, were firm and supportive and uncharacteristically tear-free. I felt like I was steering with a hula hoop, but lock to lock, it was solid. Before ignition, I made sure to inspect things under the hood, and I observed no leaks, and fresh rubber connecting all the oily and sparky bits. The rear vinyl backlight, despite it's age, was clear. The engine ran - forgive me for the overused simile - like a sewing machine. It wasn't very confidence inspiring when I wanted to overtake other traffic, but that wasn't Bill's fault.<br />
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It's paint job wasn't perfect by any stretch, but it was most certainly British Racing Green, and it was satisfying to be seen in it. I caught people on the road admiring us as they passed (rarely did we do the passing). This was no car show queen. Appearance was important, but not <i>that</i> important. This was an engineer's car. This was a car lover's car. This was a driver's car. This was a father's car, a father like me. This was the car of a man who knew how to enjoy himself. Bill kept this car to enjoy the drive, and I hope he doesn't mind that I got to enjoy it for myself. <br />
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I tried to be, first and foremost, respectful.<br />
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<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-41452256247061392942015-05-07T18:35:00.000-10:002015-05-07T18:35:31.463-10:00On My Wall: Shy Luchmand's Harley Girl<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In 1990, George H.W. Bush was drawing a line in the sand, Twin Peaks was preparing to jump the shark in its second season, and culture was still very much locked in the Eighties. I had landed in London for my second year of law school, where me and me mates had managed to rent the top two floors of a Clapham row house belonging to an elderly Irish couple who always made it available to Notre Dame students abroad. One look at the price of burritos in the Taco Bell on Piccadilly and I knew I needed to watch my pounds sterling, at least enough to keep my local willingly pouring pints of Guinness for me between classes.<br />
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Of course, this frugality didn't last long, and soon enough I was spending as frivolously as ever. A poster of a Harley Girl was probably one of the first luxuries I treated myself to. I found her at the Camden Lock flea market one sunday, so I must've still been trying to pinch my pence a bit. Nevermind who Shy Luchmand is; apparently he's some photographer, somewhere south of Man Ray, and West of Nagel. I liked her because, like the Eighties, she radiated style, rebellion, and edge. Flannel and combat boots was still a good couple of years away. Leather, chrome, and shades, and studiously tousled locks of blonde were still not ironic.<br />
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When I left London, I left her on my wall in Clapham along with an empty bottle of Beaujolais covered with a year's accumulation of candle wax. If I could find an actual poster sized image of her, instead of this blown up thumbnail, I'd pay the equivalent worth today of what I paid then, on the cobblestones of Camden.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">If this is your image, you must be Shy Luchmand. Please let me continue to use it. However, if you disapprove, feel free to let me know and I will take it down.</span></i>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-33238331460084036362015-01-28T16:29:00.000-10:002017-04-10T14:36:35.421-10:00An Unforgettable Documentary: "The Last African Flying Boat"I know I don't post as much as I used to anymore, but it's not from disinterest. Sure I could write more about cars or punk rock or watches, but what's the point. I'd rather wait and throw on something of substance here, when I happen upon it.<br />
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Through a confluence of circumstances, I was reminded of a documentary I saw on the BBC while I was living in London in 1991. On a whim, and of course following very little effort, I found it on YouTube. If you have a spare seventy minutes, watch it, especially if anything I've written here ever grabbed your attention. It's got it all.<br />
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"The Last African Flying Boat" was a documentary shot for the BBC in 1989 about an aging twin-engine Catalina flying boat retracing a journey from Cairo to Mozambique. Historically, this represented the Southern route established by a long-vanished British concern called Imperial Airways. Flying boat travel was pioneered by Imperial Airways in the inter-war years. Following the Nile River, this journey evidently took weeks to complete. The purpose of the modern day adventure was to reopen the route for well-heeled tourists.<br />
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So much about this story captures my imagination. Of course, there is the beautiful Consolidated PBY Catalina amphibious plane, with its high wing, twin rotary engines, retractable pontoons, waist gunner blisters converted to observation windows, and an interior which is part luxury yacht and part Orient Express. Imagine flying at a stately 80 knots below the cloud cover as the African landscape slides past beneath you. You count crocodiles and hippopotamus while you sip on a perfectly crafted gin and tonic swirling in crystal.<br />
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The Cat is flown by a taciturn American with a bird's nest of curly blond hair, forever sporting a pair of American Optical aviator sunglasses with traditional bayonet temples. We meet "Jim", as he is called, as he is landing the bird on the Nile river with one hand, while flicking the ash of his cigarette out the sliding window of the cockpit. Aside from being checked out on this aircraft type, Jim is also a certified Cat mechanic, and as the trip progresses, many of his skills are put to the test, airborne, floating, or chocked up.<br />
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Our travel companion on the journey is a British travel figure of some renown, Alexander Frater, who, considering this is 1989, isn't above behaving like an imperialist of an earlier generation. We see him chagrined to learn that there is no bacon to be had at breakfast in the Muslim-run hotel in Cairo; something his predecessors apparently wouldn't have put up with in the old days. On more than one occasion, we see him seeking out the company of other "colonists," most memorably spending a pleasant evening in the veldt with the descendants of the notorious <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Valley_set">Happy Valley Set</a> of Kenya, an enclave of Anglo-Irish aristocrats who had gone borneo long ago, but not without keeping up their polo stables, high tea, and African servants.<br />
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There are other memorable characters as well, including Bill Cragg, an intrepid expatriate bush pilot who warns Jim of the perils of flying through war torn regions of central Africa. Another brief search on the internet informs me that, shortly after this film was in the can, Cragg himself was shot down by a Soviet-sold SA-7 surface-to-air-missile over contested territory, launched by Sudanese rebels.<br />
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I don't want to spoil the ending for you, but aside from the will-it-or won't-it of a rather difficult take off at elevation, there is very little tension. Light on drama, but heavy on atmosphere, it remains unclear to me whether this brand of tourism ever returned to the Dark Continent. If it did, or if it remains, or if it ever does, count me among those wishing I could partake.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hv8PDWHNOfA" width="560"></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-71526615223727662022014-09-30T16:21:00.000-10:002014-09-30T16:21:28.482-10:00In Honor of Backsides (A Multimedia Essay)<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/VMnjF1O4eH0" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-29962050261753674172014-07-30T14:12:00.001-10:002015-07-01T11:34:11.127-10:00The Unified Theory of Post-Modern Friendship<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; tab-stops: -.5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">So I collect friends like
I collect shoes. I have a few special pairs I’ll wear
forever.</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">I pledge fealty to them
and keep them going until they can’t stand it anymore.</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">The same is true for friends. I make
them for life.</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">Distance and time
may separate us, but I’m proud to say I have two types of friends: those I’ve
known for a lifetime, and those I will know for a lifetime.</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">If one doesn’t fit into either of those
two categories, then I’m sorry, but he’ll be nothing more than part of the
backdrop of my life.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">Luckily, things like email
and Facebook are helpful in this regard.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">These digital tools have helped me to stay connected with my beloved
friends, and I must confess, it has also helped me expand their numbers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Copley Hall, Georgetown University</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">Take for example Thomas,
whom I quickly fell in with our first year at Georgetown.</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">Friendships formed deep in the dark
bowels of an antebellum dormitory are hard to quantify or describe, but he and
I, and a couple others, drew closely together like a tight, wet knot.</span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">In the end, we marched drunkenly side by side up
muddy hills in that final Senior Week, feeling like we’d all been in the same
platoon in Vietnam.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">The last time I saw Thomas
was probably 20 years ago in Buffalo.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">I had come from Honolulu and he from New York City, to stand next to our
other bestie while he took his marriage vows.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">We were there moments after Larry had his “talk” with his
Eisenhower-era dad, who offered a few terse words before the whole shebang
fired off:</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">“Tonight’s the big
night , Son.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">Be gentle.”</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thomas and I looked at
each other with bemusement so familiar …</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">Anyway, right, the digital
age.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">So we email on a semi-annual
basis, and these messages serve as a more substantive exchange than those we
enjoy every few weeks on Facebook.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">Here’s a lengthy one that is, I think, emblematic of men just
like us, who have followed this path to forty-something OnceWereBachelorhood. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.15pt; line-height: 12pt;">It is mostly unexpurgated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Three of Us at a Wedding, Plus Backdrop</span></span></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">TO: BEN<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">FROM: THOMAS<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Totally random question that a) I should know about because it’s my
field or b) I should have asked you about a long time ago, but do you remember
this dude from Gtown, pretty sure his name was Ben Wallace — he was more my
friend (for a brief time and never that close) around Village B time; he also
lived in Village B with this totally wild crew who basically destroyed their
apartment and lived like animals, with broken whiskey bottles on the floor,
etc. — one of the dudes he lived with was like a [something infamous] and
general problem child but was [vaguely well connected]; the other was some
French dude who used to lie around naked in bed with this weird chick when I
was over visiting. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyway what I remember of Ben was that he had kind of dark ratty hair,
a decent amount of it, and he was quiet and kind of writerly/literary, or maybe
just an English major; he was from DC; and maybe that’s about it. We hung out
for a small bit and then drifted apart I guess.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyway, do you think/would you recognize him from this shot/bio? All
the details fit, I think, but it’s hard to gauge because he looks so “normal,”
for lack of a better word, and without the big hair it’s hard to judge:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.benjaminwallace.net/bio.html"><span style="color: #386eff;">http://www.benjaminwallace.net/bio.html</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hope all is well with you. I’m at the tail end of
closing/shipping/putting out Sine Qua Non’s million-page September issue.
Insane. I’m handling 37 stories over 125 pages. Psycho. Kid #2 on the way,
supposedly due August 4, don’t know whether boy or girl. . . Kid #1, Funicular,
now 2.5 and he/she sings early Stone Roses singles by himself/herself,
unprompted. Good times. . . <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All best//T<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">-- <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">THOMAS BUTTS (a pseudonym)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Senior Editor<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SINE QUA NON FASHION MAG (a pseudo-title, for perhaps
the flagship of its kind)</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">1 FANCY STREET<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">13th floor<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">New York, NY 10036<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">TO: THOMAS</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">FROM: BEN</span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dude.
<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One day I
was driving and half-listening to NPR. I tuned into the middle of an
interview; they were talking about this ancient bottle of collectible wine that
supposedly belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Sounded interesting so I perked
up and paid attention. Turns out they were interviewing the author of a
book focusing on that particular bottle. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Billionaires-Vinegar-Mystery-Expensive/dp/0307338789">THE BILLIONAIRE’S VINEGAR</a>.
I made a mental note to get it used on Amazon because the curious subject
sounded engrossing in an esoteric but entertaining way, and because the author
sounded engaging and intelligent. At the end of the interview, they ID’d
the author as Ben Wallace.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A chill
went up and down my neck, because I remembered the following:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Many years
ago, you had a brief man-crush on a fellow named Ben Wallace, or at least
that’s what Larry and I thought. Maybe Don, too, but as with everything
Don, that’s hazy. You would come home and tell us about this guy who was
intelligent and engaging and living what I subsequently learned was what could
be described as a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bright-Lights-Big-City-Mcinerney/dp/B001V8B2E8/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406763031&sr=1-2&keywords=bright+lights+big+city+by+jay+mcinerney">BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY</a> lifestyle. Much alcohol,
debauchery, and hateful characters whom one would years later regret being
associated with. One of them, I knew through my friend, Laura, as a John Belushi-type.
Anyway, this Ben, like you, was nurturing some nascent literary
tendencies. I think I remember meeting him somewhere, probably that
bookstore/bar/coffeeshop that was enjoying some of-the-moment cachet.
Dylan’s I think it was called. You both smoked Camel Uns, I think.
Possibly weeks later, Larry came home saying that Ben had begun
researching a book he wanted to write about vampires and was turning up at
Lauinger Library with all kinds of requests.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Your
man-crush, as with many of your misadventures of the time, inexplicably faded,
never to be acted upon.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So I found
the book and paid $ 0.99 plus $3.99 shipping on Amazon Used*, eventually turned
my full attention to it, and concluded that I was right, the author was
engaging and intelligent and had written an engrossing, esoteric piece. It was a great read. And that he in fact was the fellow you had a man-crush on, many years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I never
highlighted this discovery with you because I figured that you, being a New
York man of letters of sorts, would already know. Guess I was wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[Take
care].</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">*Incidentally,
I just picked up <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871133962/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1">GOJIRO</a> used for a similar bargain basement price, after being
swept up in the giant lizard craze of summer 2014, remembering that in your
first year at some publishing house, you had shared an excerpt with me. I
can’t be bothered to read it, but it’s nice to have on my shelf, a remembrance
of 1990.<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-shw2lNif_4o/U9mFHvf5MtI/AAAAAAAAArk/vPRebGhZ2Rk/s1600/Godzilla-2014-Poster-Wallpaper-400x225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-shw2lNif_4o/U9mFHvf5MtI/AAAAAAAAArk/vPRebGhZ2Rk/s1600/Godzilla-2014-Poster-Wallpaper-400x225.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; tab-stops: -.5in; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I also
just finished <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eminent-Hipsters-Donald-Fagen/dp/0670025518">EMINENT HIPSTERS</a> by Mr. Donald Fagen, a loose collection of his
writing. Again, the low low price being the common feature of this
footnote. He sounds like an asshole. Be careful not to meet your
heroes.</span></i><br />
<i style="line-height: 12pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -.15pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></i>
<i style="line-height: 12pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -.15pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></i>
</div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">TO: BEN</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">FROM: THOMAS</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">The whole thing is kind of nuts — I’ve seen his byline (off and on ... he’s been getting some
good play lately at New York mag) for years now but never had the a-HA! moment
until yesterday. (In fairness, it’s a somewhat generic name for a NYC writer,
and there’s another more famous one named Ben Wallace-Wells throwing me off the
scent.)</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Your recollections are quite exact — more detailed than mine. I’ll cop
to the man-crush and the literary vibe, and a big yes on the roommates, and the
strange abandonment of friendship. (For no particular reason; I think we
enjoyed each other’s company fair enough but we never really found like THAT
THING that we were both obsessed with, or bonded over, or some such. And/or we
weren’t secure enough in our literary man-crushes to be all “Hey — do you love
William Blake and want to pattern your life on his work? Me too!") Don’t
remember the meeting at Dylan’s (though I do remember the
hot-spot-of-the-moment vibe of that place). I think I’ll look him up — though
my initial note to him is bound to be quite awkward (“Remember some weird dude
from Village A that you hung around with for like 5 minutes in 1987 and then
never really saw again? Well it’s me!"<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyways. . . GOJIRO! Yes. I remember everything about that book being
kind of cool, though even I never read the damn thing. Have since become
friendly with the writer, who’s a very cool cat. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And Fagen’s book: It’s been on my maybe-I-buy-this-next list for a
while now; frankly the only thing holding me back is what I have heard or read
from reviews about the whole bummer/bitter vibe of the whole thing. Or maybe
it’s just part of the whole thing. Though I think I do understand his
frustration (I think I read some excerpt about his opinions of the crowds at
his recent shows, and having seen he and Becker a couple years back at the
Beacon Theater here, I second that emotion — I didn’t think the crowd would be
filled with eminent hipsters per se, but I also didn’t think it would be filled
with beefy men from Long Island in suits from 1982 with their wives dolled up
like they’re seeing Frank Sinatra at the Sands in 1963.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That said, F@CK IT!!! If I judged bands solely based on the attire,
demeanor and hipness (with minus points for the dark side of the hip coin,
douchebaggery), I would have precious few bands to listen to. I’ve already
doubled down over the weekend and downloaded lossless audio files of the entire
Steely Dan discography, the better to nerd out on their particular genius of
artistry, virtuosity, and production. Long live the Dan — though I may skip
that book.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Rock//T</span></i><!--EndFragment-->
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></i>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/RKNMaArursQ" width="420"></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-71898612967406021932014-07-08T17:11:00.000-10:002014-07-08T17:36:55.896-10:00We Have No Secrets: Carly Simon & Harry Connick, Jr.Sometime in 1989 or 1990 I was a first year law student. I would occasionally drive 2 hours to my cousin's suburban home in Morton Grove, IL, for some home cooking and face-time with my godson. My departure from Notre Dame those weekends sealed my persona as an outsider in law school. Nevertheless, I appreciated the escape (try living in a graduate dorm in the winter; it is the nadir of miseries). My little cherub nephew, a warm living room, a clean and readily available washer and dryer to do my laundry in peace. And HBO. My cousin had premium cable and I was able to be a couch potato for a couple days.<br />
<br />
One night I was flipping channels in his living room and I came across an intimate performance pairing Carly Simon and then-hot newcomer Harry Connick, Jr. (who had just put out the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack). I watched what I could, perhaps the last 40 minutes or so, and found myself transfixed by Carly's beauty and talent. This song never left my memory; the clapping hands providing the timekeeping, and Harry on double-bass. The performance disappeared, evanescent, and I never saw it again. Until I searched for it and found it on YouTube today.* It is exactly as I remember it.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/D2pKj0aQln4" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*In fact, I searched for it on the very same YouTube a few years ago, to no avail, so it's appearance, finally, is a nice turn of events.</span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-3305070090866447242013-12-27T11:36:00.000-10:002013-12-27T11:36:01.589-10:00Walter Cronkite's View of the 21st CenturyI don't know if you realize it, I barely did, but we are fourteen years deep into the 21st Century. At no time in my life have I felt like I lived in the future, but really at every point I in fact have. Born in 1967 I am indubitably post-modern. <br />
<br />
Especially from the Eighties on, I could've stopped, taken a breath, and looked around and said "this is science fiction I'm living in!" First supersonic flight. Remote controls. Microwaves. Power windows, power mirrors, and power antennas. VCRs. Then 24 hour news, 24 hour sports, 24 hour new wave music videos. Desktop computers with the capacity to store half the information of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. And it progressed from there. Cellphones. Laptops. GPS. Clones. A black president (finally)! <br />
<br />
But look at the view from the year I was born. It all seems so quaint.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ituFqnI0ANo" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/V6DSu3IfRlo" width="420"></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-46599234880213508722013-12-05T12:31:00.001-10:002013-12-05T12:31:16.043-10:00An Example For the World<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/AgcTvoWjZJU" width="420"></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-67519605237182099702013-10-08T11:17:00.000-10:002013-10-08T11:17:11.545-10:00Magnus Walker: Early Porsche Aficionado and Life ArchitectSo everyone, especially the male of the species (which means bachelors and OnceWereBachelors), has a vision for their life formed early on, before the restraints of reason and common sense take hold. If you were to ask boys what their ideal life would look like, I bet we can all speculate accurately about what answers we'd get.<br />
<br />
"I want to grow up to be a man of adventure, who travels the world, fights evil, makes lots of money, has a jet plane. And my mom makes me brownies and my favorite spaghetti and meatballs everyday."<br />
<br />
"I want to be a scientist who has his own lab and invents things that help the world."<br />
<br />
"I want to live on an island with my friends and hunt and fish for food and surf and swim all day."<br />
<br />
Whatever that vision is, it involves an element of freedom and desire to be left alone by others - perhaps grown ups - to write one's own script, to be an architect of one's life. No one envisions a life with a mortgage, private school tuition, and high overhead.<br />
<br />
I wonder if, when Magnus Walker was a young kid he said "I want to live in a large warehouse with tastefully wild furniture, and a tattooed bombshell for a wife. I want to make that warehouse available to Hollywood to use in edgy movies and music videos. And I want to take the fabulous amount of money I make doing that, and spend it on restoring or modifying dozens of early Porsche 911s. And I want to not have to bathe or observe norms of male hygiene too much."<br />
<br />
If so, his dream came true. If you have an odd half hour of free time, and you like old cars and interesting living spaces, watch this.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ZZlRFsRG6K0" width="560"></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-91439938181940909902013-09-18T13:14:00.002-10:002013-09-18T19:38:03.974-10:00"Oh no, Mr. Tate, he can't shoot!"I can't believe that this blog -- about fathers, fatherhood, and especially now, for me, fathering alone -- has never ever considered Atticus Finch. A widowed man who is a calm influence, letting his kids kick up a joyful, curious swirl around him. A man who instructs not by lecture but by example. A man who blesses his children with both his involvement as well as his absence. A man whose character is revealed before his children's eyes over three summers in Maycomb, Alabama.<br />
<br />
Here is my favorite scene of revelation, as portrayed in the Oscar winning 1962 movie:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/S2L0WQu2fEI" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
So although Harper Lee's story is widely recognized as a meditation on American race relations, for me it is also about how to be a father (and, to a lesser extent, how to be a lawyer). As part of my Canon, I keep a First Edition Library reproduction in my office, but I never refer to it. It is only a touchstone, but like my law partner once said, it's a story he never wanted to end. Fathering is a work in progress, and if one can keep examples like Atticus Finch in one's sights - even when one's glasses slip every now and then - the target will be hit often enough.<br />
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<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-56253153906438364312013-09-17T15:55:00.000-10:002013-09-17T15:55:49.200-10:00Res Ipsa LoquiturThere is a legal concept embodied by the latin phrase "res ipsa loquitur". It essentially means that no discussion whatsoever is necessary because "the thing speaks for itself". Well. Here's an example.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/BCxUsbI4ivM" width="560"></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-148422193431856152013-07-15T15:18:00.000-10:002019-08-09T11:10:01.441-10:00Summer Mixtape 2013: Pre-1984 SpringsteenHere I am halfway through this summer and I still haven't put together a Mixtape to play in my truck for those morning drives to the beach, or along Ala Wai Blvd. at night while the hookers congregate three at a time on the sidestreets to stay off HPD's radar. <br />
<br />
Then I find this <a href="http://thetrad.blogspot.com/2013/07/wintertime-at-jersey-shore-1982.html">post at The Trad</a>, images of New Jersey in the early 80s. As a kid I spent several summers with cousins in Cranford, NJ, and we would always go down to Wildwood or Seaside Heights for a day or weekend. Those Jersey kids I hung out with, Mickey Marino, Dave Levy, and Frankie Williams (the strongest kid I ever ever met) and the inimitable Schlick and Styszy -- I can't say we became friends for life, but it sure felt like we would be. Sneaking into the community pools, raiding my uncle's bar, collecting newspaper money to spend on the weekend, lifting weights in somebody's basement, trying not to get into a fight with the bigger kids at the community center. Crowding onto a field on July 4 with just about every other kid in Union County, waiting for the fireworks show to start. During the day we'd sleep in, then hop on our ten speeds and ride uptown to the Pink Submarine for sandwiches and soda and to spin Bruce Springsteen's "Prove It All Night" for about the billionth time on the jukebox.<br />
<br />
This was before Born in the USA. A fine album, sure, but Springsteen before then will always be those summers to me, before he was the world's, he was Jersey's. <br />
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<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-21014089217621572862013-07-10T16:13:00.000-10:002018-04-06T08:38:32.259-10:00Good Sh*t From Hawaii: The Last of the Great Original Tiki Lounges<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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On a whim, we tried to get into the Honolulu Surf Film Festival at the
Hawaii Art Museum. It was opening
night and the Festival were screening one of those films that was a little smarter
than you’d expect from the surfer crowd; you know, probably some tasteful acid
jazz over 16mm footage of peeling surf – looking very much like lines of coke
on a glass coffee table – from oddball surfari destinations like Kiribati or Fiji. Art crowd meets surf crowd. Since it was opening night there would
be a cash bar and a live band. Looking
forward to tropical images, surf music, and good libation, we circled the
Museum in my truck looking for parking. </div>
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I already knew we’d have trouble getting in. There was a trickle of Beautiful People
sauntering towards the Museum from the nearby street parking, all decked out in Aloha shirts, Little Black Dresses and dress slippers (you mainlanders call
them “flip flops). Anticipating
them, I had dressed the same in my <a href="http://www.oncewerebachelors.blogspot.com/2009/10/good-sht-from-hawaii-aloha-shirts-for.html">kodachrome Phil Edwards-designed,surf-themed Aloha shirt</a> and khaki Duck Head shorts. The beachy version of Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic were all
turning out.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sea Shell Lamps</td></tr>
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It would’ve been a memorable night had we gotten in. But without advance tickets we were sh*t
out of luck. Since we didn’t want
to be uncool and get in off the waiting list (nobody wants to be uncool in the
surf world), we executed Plan B.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mai Tai and Blue Hawaii</td></tr>
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Plan B: The last of the original tiki bars in Honolulu is
located not in Waikiki, but hidden away in an industrial area off Sand Island Access Road,
amidst a boatwright’s lot, some warehouse storage facilities, and probably a
junkyard or two. It’s called the
La Mariana Sailing Club, and although there in fact are slips for several dozen
sailboats, it’s not like any yacht club I’ve ever seen.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset at the LMSC</td></tr>
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As you might expect if you know me, the LMSC is the real
deal. It didn’t pop up in the
midst of the lounge and tiki revival movement of the late 90s. By that point, the LMSC was already
into 40 years in business at roughly the same location. Every artifact of the genre there, the
tikis, the glass fishing balls, the hanging blowfish lamps, have the patina of
authenticity, the aura that it was hung in the Kennedy era by some monosyllabic
manservant to <a href="http://www.lamarianasailingclub.com/?page_id=103">Annette La Mariana Nahinu</a>, the establishment’s founder. There is dust settled into the cracks of
the koa carvings and mahogany filigree that dates back to the era of Skinny
Elvis.</div>
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The food, while generous of portion, is average at best, but
really, you’re there for the Boat Drinks.
The drinks you sip on a <i>Lurline</i>
class ocean liner. Mai Tai. Zombie. Blue Hawaii.
All strong, all original, all irony-free. Brought to your table or served at the bar, where, on the
night of Plan B we drank bathed in the light of startled blowfish, next to a
particularly salty and pickled patron of dubious condition. We watched him get politely 86d because
he hadn’t lost his sea legs yet and was still a bit unsteady on land. Evidently, outside he engaged in
fisticuffs with some of the solid, and very real tikis lining the walkway.</div>
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Glass Fishing Balls</td></tr>
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There were other tiki bars in Honolulu, mostly in
Waikiki. Famously, there was a
Trader Vic’s at the International Marketplace and a Polynesian Village (founded
by Don the Beachcomber), but they, and the multitude of smaller, lesser known
establishments had all but died out by the 80s, when irony as a precious natural resource was discovered. The only ones left standing on the
island by that time were the LMSC and the Tahitian Lanai.</div>
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The <a href="http://gregg-n.tripod.com/wakikiantour2.htm">Tahitian Lanai</a>, and
it’s adjacent tiki themed hotel, the Waikikian, sounds like it was a fine place
in its day, hosting many sing alongs around its much revered piano bar. I’ve heard anecdotes of holiday parties
there involving guests like Martin Denny, Connie Francis, the Lennon Sisters,
the cast of “Hawaiian Eye”. It remained
open until 1997, leaving the LMSC alone to carry the torch, which Annette did until
her passing in 2008. In the 90s
when I started going to La Mariana, she would greet us as we walked in, dressed in a
long floral mu’u mu’u and often a <i>haku</i>
lei on her head, shushing her caged parrot. And the LMSC continues to outlive her in exactly the manner
she intended. </div>
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The Kodachrome Phil Edwards Surf-Themed Aloha Shirt</td></tr>
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On the night of Plan B we had a C+ pupu platter and potent
mai tais and Blue Hawaiis. There
may have been a martini and a beer in there, too. We watched the sunset over my shoulder and through the masts
of the LMSC fleet. The place got
dimmer, but the colorful glass fishing balls turned on. Tourists and regulars were all charmed
by the place. The same entertainer from the Tahitian
Lanai piano bar was there, too, singing for us, encouraging the shameless to
sing along.</div>
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Believe me, Radical Surf Chic was not missed. An irony-free zone, when it can be found here, is definitely Good Sh*t from
Hawaii.</div>
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Spiny Blowfish</td></tr>
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Fresh-Water Fish Tank, here?</td></tr>
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Piano, Ukulele, and Sing Alongs</td></tr>
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The Old Salt</td></tr>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1858395010411399093.post-43173629689018550552013-06-15T21:54:00.000-10:002019-06-18T09:01:15.485-10:00Father Son TimeThere are 32 years between my dad and me. He was a childhood survivor of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II, and I was destined to be a self-absorbed '80s punk rock preppie. I had everything and he started with very little. Yet because of his force of personality he imprinted me with a love of cars and aircraft, a handiness with firearms, a readiness for conflict, a facility towards tenderness, and an inclination towards forging deep relationships only.<br />
<br />
I don't think he ever understood the skateboarding, the aggressive drums and guitars, the comic books, or the foul language, but I also know he let me be what I wanted, within gentle parameters. It's what makes me stand aside scratching my head as I watch my son chart his own way.<br />
<br />
We are exactly alike yet so different. It's precisely why when we did something together, father and son, it was always rare, bitter and sweet, and indelible in my mind. I remember him taking me to see an aviation movie when I was 8. I remember him grimacing when I confided in him that I thought I had a girlfriend at the age of 13 (I was wrong, but he let me figure it out on my own). I remember him taking me to see the Blue Angels. I remember him sitting through some ridiculous Japanese superhero stageshow that came into town. I remember going with him to the Academy of Sciences Museum at Golden Gate Park while my mom sat in a medical seminar. I remember getting a Tad's Steak with him in Midtown, because it was what he did when he was still flying. <br />
<br />
And I remember going to the Hawaii Raceway Park in 1971 in a rented Chevy Camaro to do some laps. I had a pink plastic F-104 Starfighter in the pocket of the shorts he and mom brought back for me from Amsterdam. I was wearing Chuck Taylor knock-offs from Manila. See?<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0PixFYraHoI/Ub1uiUfM5iI/AAAAAAAAAoE/85DZPya_Ls8/s1600/135613_115293965207371_8343020_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0PixFYraHoI/Ub1uiUfM5iI/AAAAAAAAAoE/85DZPya_Ls8/s640/135613_115293965207371_8343020_o.jpg" width="624" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Incidentally, I think he's none too please with how close I am to the dirt. Sorry, Dad. Love you.</td></tr>
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<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18227626694414844848noreply@blogger.com5