Art For Art's Sake
Hello World,
It's hard to believe that we find ourselves practically perched on the middle of June already, as the 15th will be coming up hard on Tuesday, and if you're anything like me, nothing to show for it. They said on the local news that we just went through the warmest March - April - May on record in New York, ever since they've been keeping weather statistics, going back to the 1860's, which is a pretty impressive record to beat after 150 years. It seems especially peculiar to me, as I look back through my old notes for the period, and keep finding words cropping up like frigid, blustery, dank, freezing, raw, bitterly cold, bleak and so on. I find us digging out from a snowstorm on 3/5, scraping ice out of the bird baths on 3/12, and reeling from a Nor'easter on 3/19. It gets no better in April, with a note about shivering in long johns and ear muffs on 4/16, and as late as 5/28, still saying things like "a bracing 40 degrees" during the week. There must have been an awful lot of extremely hot weather, in order to overcome what seemed like a very cold spring, and break the record for those warmest three months ever. Or as Jerry Reed once famously observed: "When you're hot, you're hot."
Speaking of hot, it was exactly that on Sunday when yet another catalogue showed up at church with its cover full of holly berries, poinsettias and pinecones, thanks so very much not. This one was from our friends at Lorenz, who assure me that they are Serving Today's Church Musicians With Collections For Piano, Organ, Instruments and More, and featuring selections for Summer, Fall and Christmas 2010. At the time that I found this catalogue in the incoming mail, it was so hot in the church office that I had taken off my dress while I was using the computer, since everyone else had already left after Bible Study, and there was nobody around to see me in my underwear. I can't tell you how it irritates me to get mail covered with snowflakes and reindeer, when I'm sweating like a team of Sumo wrestlers in a sauna, and it would be safe to say that Christmas is about the farthest thing from my mind. It's bad enough when they start coming in the dog days of August, but when it's 90 degrees in June and they're sending them out, that's just adding insult to injury, and I personally think there should be laws against it. In fact, it should be a law like gravity, so that when the temperature reaches a certain level, anything with Christmas decorations just spontaneously ignites, so the rest of us can be spared this flagrant seasonal incongruity once and for all.
Of course, it's easy for us to have our very own flagrant seasonal incongruity right here in the comfort of our own home, in fact, it seems like we do it every year. It happened again last week, when Bill went to all the trouble to put in the window air conditioners, and the temperature went down 20 degrees overnight, so that we were looking for blankets and fuzzy slippers instead of ice cream and cold showers. I suppose it's good to have some things that are reassuringly predictable, if nothing else, in this crazy mixed-up world.
And while we're on the topic of things that are mixed up, last Saturday was the 142nd running of the fabled Belmont Stakes, and that noise you hear is the chorus of yawns from a disinterested public, which not only had no Triple Crown to look forward to, but not even a Double Crown, even if there were such a thing. Both winners of the previous races - Super Saver and Lookin At Lucky - were absent from the Belmont, so there was no chance that either of them could end up winning two out of the three races after all. That left racing analysts to tout this race as a match-up of runners-up - that is, Ice Box from the Derby and First Dude from the Preakness - and in fact, Ice Box was the 9-5 favorite to win. What happened instead was that Drosselmeyer, a 13-1 longshot, ran away with it instead, beating Fly Down by 3/4 length, with First Dude in third and Ice Box fading to 9th place in a field of 12 horses. It was even tougher for the media to make any kind of story about the race at all, since neither the jockey, Mike Smith, nor the trainer, Bill Mott, had anything particularly newsworthy about them, or any coincidental connections from the past that could be woven together to make a heart-warming human interest story at the very least. The best they could come up with was that poor Drosselmeyer had been left out of the Kentucky Derby for failing to earn enough money to qualify, so I suppose that his Belmont win does count as a heart-warming human interest story after all. Or at least, a horse interest story, which like the Double Crown, if there only were such a thing.
Meanwhile on the retail scene, I was surprised to come home to find a big box from K-Mart on the front porch, which measured a brawny 14" H x 12" W x 18" L, and could have easily fit copious amounts of serious merchandise, although it seemed too light for anything substantial. I know that my poor over-worked brain is not what it used to be, heaven knows, but I couldn't remember ordering anything but swimsuits from our friends at K-Mart, and so this large box really had me at a loss. You could have knocked me right over when I opened it up, and sure enough, it turned out to be swimsuits after all, although why anyone would pack six measly swimsuits in a huge box filled with nothing else but those plastic air bags they use now, I'm sure is a mystery to me. Mind you, the swimsuits were all on hangers and wrapped in plastic besides, which is certainly a novelty to me, and a first in my experiences with buying swimsuits, and if this isn't a classic example of excess packaging run amok, then by golly, I don't know what is. I'm surprised they didn't throw in some packing peanuts and tissue paper besides, and then put the box inside an even bigger box, and cover the whole thing in shrink-wrap, because they were obviously on some kind of crusade to protect those swimsuits from the outside world, or vice versa, which can't help but make a person wonder. One thing I do know, you can believe after this business with the swimsuits, that I won't be ordering anything fragile from K-Mart, or I'd have to buy a whole new house just to fit the box they would ship that in, I'm sure.
Anyone who has signed up for FaceBook knows that along the right-hand side of the screen, they run ads for a variety of products and services that their members might be interested in. I couldn't help but notice one last week for what the heavy bold headline described as a "Full Rime Realtor," which really caught my attention so that I re-read it several times. I admit that I don't know everything there is to know about real estate, but it still surprised me that they came up with a term that I simply had no idea what it meant, and made me wonder what was new and exciting in the world of real estate since the last time I looked. So even though the type in the ad was small and faint, I moved in closer to read it and see if they explained what they were talking about. Aha! The mystery was soon solved, as the very first line promised wide-ranging benefits from a "full time Realtor," which certainly made a whole lot more sense to me than a "full rime Realtor," that's for sure. Although here again, I have to wonder just how much confidence they think I'm going to have in their services, if they can't even spell "time" right in their own ad. Of course, there are no standards anymore, heaven knows, and I was going to let that slide, until another ad leaped out at me from one of my games, which I believe was for Applebee's, or one of those other chain restaurants, where they were introducing some new seasonal meal specialties, that they were sure would tempt even the most discriminating diner. At least, I think that's what they were trying to convey, because what they actually called these new offerings was "Palette Pleasers," which I'm thinking would only appeal to the starving artists among us, and not the hungry tastebuds of the population at large. On the other hand, if they're going to use the wrong word instead of "palate," I suppose it's better than "Pallet Pleasers," which would only apply to scrap wood formed into skids for shipping containers, and I would expect that haute cuisine would tend to be lost on them. Although it would probably be right up the alley of our friends at K-Mart, where the shipping clerks probably carry their own pallets with them, in case they need to bring home any left-overs.
Elle
It's hard to believe that we find ourselves practically perched on the middle of June already, as the 15th will be coming up hard on Tuesday, and if you're anything like me, nothing to show for it. They said on the local news that we just went through the warmest March - April - May on record in New York, ever since they've been keeping weather statistics, going back to the 1860's, which is a pretty impressive record to beat after 150 years. It seems especially peculiar to me, as I look back through my old notes for the period, and keep finding words cropping up like frigid, blustery, dank, freezing, raw, bitterly cold, bleak and so on. I find us digging out from a snowstorm on 3/5, scraping ice out of the bird baths on 3/12, and reeling from a Nor'easter on 3/19. It gets no better in April, with a note about shivering in long johns and ear muffs on 4/16, and as late as 5/28, still saying things like "a bracing 40 degrees" during the week. There must have been an awful lot of extremely hot weather, in order to overcome what seemed like a very cold spring, and break the record for those warmest three months ever. Or as Jerry Reed once famously observed: "When you're hot, you're hot."
Speaking of hot, it was exactly that on Sunday when yet another catalogue showed up at church with its cover full of holly berries, poinsettias and pinecones, thanks so very much not. This one was from our friends at Lorenz, who assure me that they are Serving Today's Church Musicians With Collections For Piano, Organ, Instruments and More, and featuring selections for Summer, Fall and Christmas 2010. At the time that I found this catalogue in the incoming mail, it was so hot in the church office that I had taken off my dress while I was using the computer, since everyone else had already left after Bible Study, and there was nobody around to see me in my underwear. I can't tell you how it irritates me to get mail covered with snowflakes and reindeer, when I'm sweating like a team of Sumo wrestlers in a sauna, and it would be safe to say that Christmas is about the farthest thing from my mind. It's bad enough when they start coming in the dog days of August, but when it's 90 degrees in June and they're sending them out, that's just adding insult to injury, and I personally think there should be laws against it. In fact, it should be a law like gravity, so that when the temperature reaches a certain level, anything with Christmas decorations just spontaneously ignites, so the rest of us can be spared this flagrant seasonal incongruity once and for all.
Of course, it's easy for us to have our very own flagrant seasonal incongruity right here in the comfort of our own home, in fact, it seems like we do it every year. It happened again last week, when Bill went to all the trouble to put in the window air conditioners, and the temperature went down 20 degrees overnight, so that we were looking for blankets and fuzzy slippers instead of ice cream and cold showers. I suppose it's good to have some things that are reassuringly predictable, if nothing else, in this crazy mixed-up world.
And while we're on the topic of things that are mixed up, last Saturday was the 142nd running of the fabled Belmont Stakes, and that noise you hear is the chorus of yawns from a disinterested public, which not only had no Triple Crown to look forward to, but not even a Double Crown, even if there were such a thing. Both winners of the previous races - Super Saver and Lookin At Lucky - were absent from the Belmont, so there was no chance that either of them could end up winning two out of the three races after all. That left racing analysts to tout this race as a match-up of runners-up - that is, Ice Box from the Derby and First Dude from the Preakness - and in fact, Ice Box was the 9-5 favorite to win. What happened instead was that Drosselmeyer, a 13-1 longshot, ran away with it instead, beating Fly Down by 3/4 length, with First Dude in third and Ice Box fading to 9th place in a field of 12 horses. It was even tougher for the media to make any kind of story about the race at all, since neither the jockey, Mike Smith, nor the trainer, Bill Mott, had anything particularly newsworthy about them, or any coincidental connections from the past that could be woven together to make a heart-warming human interest story at the very least. The best they could come up with was that poor Drosselmeyer had been left out of the Kentucky Derby for failing to earn enough money to qualify, so I suppose that his Belmont win does count as a heart-warming human interest story after all. Or at least, a horse interest story, which like the Double Crown, if there only were such a thing.
Meanwhile on the retail scene, I was surprised to come home to find a big box from K-Mart on the front porch, which measured a brawny 14" H x 12" W x 18" L, and could have easily fit copious amounts of serious merchandise, although it seemed too light for anything substantial. I know that my poor over-worked brain is not what it used to be, heaven knows, but I couldn't remember ordering anything but swimsuits from our friends at K-Mart, and so this large box really had me at a loss. You could have knocked me right over when I opened it up, and sure enough, it turned out to be swimsuits after all, although why anyone would pack six measly swimsuits in a huge box filled with nothing else but those plastic air bags they use now, I'm sure is a mystery to me. Mind you, the swimsuits were all on hangers and wrapped in plastic besides, which is certainly a novelty to me, and a first in my experiences with buying swimsuits, and if this isn't a classic example of excess packaging run amok, then by golly, I don't know what is. I'm surprised they didn't throw in some packing peanuts and tissue paper besides, and then put the box inside an even bigger box, and cover the whole thing in shrink-wrap, because they were obviously on some kind of crusade to protect those swimsuits from the outside world, or vice versa, which can't help but make a person wonder. One thing I do know, you can believe after this business with the swimsuits, that I won't be ordering anything fragile from K-Mart, or I'd have to buy a whole new house just to fit the box they would ship that in, I'm sure.
Anyone who has signed up for FaceBook knows that along the right-hand side of the screen, they run ads for a variety of products and services that their members might be interested in. I couldn't help but notice one last week for what the heavy bold headline described as a "Full Rime Realtor," which really caught my attention so that I re-read it several times. I admit that I don't know everything there is to know about real estate, but it still surprised me that they came up with a term that I simply had no idea what it meant, and made me wonder what was new and exciting in the world of real estate since the last time I looked. So even though the type in the ad was small and faint, I moved in closer to read it and see if they explained what they were talking about. Aha! The mystery was soon solved, as the very first line promised wide-ranging benefits from a "full time Realtor," which certainly made a whole lot more sense to me than a "full rime Realtor," that's for sure. Although here again, I have to wonder just how much confidence they think I'm going to have in their services, if they can't even spell "time" right in their own ad. Of course, there are no standards anymore, heaven knows, and I was going to let that slide, until another ad leaped out at me from one of my games, which I believe was for Applebee's, or one of those other chain restaurants, where they were introducing some new seasonal meal specialties, that they were sure would tempt even the most discriminating diner. At least, I think that's what they were trying to convey, because what they actually called these new offerings was "Palette Pleasers," which I'm thinking would only appeal to the starving artists among us, and not the hungry tastebuds of the population at large. On the other hand, if they're going to use the wrong word instead of "palate," I suppose it's better than "Pallet Pleasers," which would only apply to scrap wood formed into skids for shipping containers, and I would expect that haute cuisine would tend to be lost on them. Although it would probably be right up the alley of our friends at K-Mart, where the shipping clerks probably carry their own pallets with them, in case they need to bring home any left-overs.
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:16 PM
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