This is one of the non-profit group license plates the Oregon DMV offers for passenger vehicles. Proceeds benefit the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and Cycle Oregon. Respect.
Tupador
© 2012 Proper Manky
My friend SA recently gave me detailed instructions on how to set up the perfect humidor which involved installing an Oasis Ultra Humidifier, spraying the inside of the humidor repeatedly with distilled water, etc.
I was seriously considering his advice but unfortunately all the humidors I found looked like baby coffins. Needless to say, I had a severe aesthetic reaction.
So I opted instead for a proper manky tupador for less that $20 including an OXO 2.4 qt storage container, a digital hygrometer, and a couple of Boveda 72% Humidipaks.
Presently, this set-up keeps a few Fonseca Cubanos, Dunhill Altamiras, Ashton Double Magnums, and an Arturo Fuente King T at a cozy, sub-tropical climate.
This Show Must Not Go On
Last night in London, the 2012 Olympic Games officially got underway with what turned out to be one of the more bizarre opening ceremonies ever staged.
The ceremonies were an oddball lesson in English history with a series of skits on what looked like sets from the Teletubbies. While it all admittedly was very surreal, the attempt to create a Monty Pythonesque vibe of black and whimsical humor fell mostly flat. Whoever came up with these hallucinations must have been smoking some doozy Bubba Kush.
At the start, the Olympic stadium appeared as a pastoral English countryside – the “green and pleasant land” – with maypoles, peasants, live farm animals, cricket players and fake, fluffy clouds. Soon, a giant tree on a green hill was mysteriously uprooted and then rose into the sky. Out of the hole it left behind, hundreds of coal miners and factory workers started to emerge, apparently “ushering in the Industrial Revolution” as Matt Lauer helpfully explained on NBC.
The NBC commentators, as usual, provided endless Olympic trivia with the same stilted and inane verbosity as is usually reserved for the floats at the Rose Bowl parade. Surely, NBC also butchered the tape-delayed event to forcefully accommodate commercial breaks and pieced together portions of the ceremonies in ways that must have only amplified the already preposterous absurdities.
Those industrial revolutionaries then proceeded to dismantle the first set which eventually was replaced by smokestacks rising out of the ground and blacksmiths forging enormous Olympic rings. At some point, a Queen double parachuted into the diorama from a hovering helicopter, accompanied by James Bond. Children in pajamas serenaded her with “God save the Queen.” Up in the stadium suite reserved for dignitaries, the Queen herself carried a dour expression. Evidently, she was not saved from this weird tribute to the National Health Services that had all the grace of an homage to a children’s epidemic.
Later, Mr. Bean made faces and an attempt at musical comedy, and then hordes of Mary Poppinses suspended the rest of my belief. I gave up for good after the Chariots of Fire thing.
This show never came even close to the beautiful opening and closing ceremonies at the Albertville Winter Olympics in 1992. Those had all the poetry and playfulness of a Cirque de Soleil performance.
This one – not so much.
Brenner and God
Done reading.
By Wolf Haas. Austrian Writer. First in a series available in English.
That’s some droll book. Unconventional crime fiction, somewhat noirish, with a likable protagonist and a postmodern narrator who chimes in periodically with warnings to pay attention or to be careful, and with comments dripping with sarcasm. Some wicked, twisted humor included as well.
Notable are the often short and fragmented sentences that go straight to the point without wasting line space on convoluted syntactic structures (e.g. “Because: emergency,” “Adrenalin surge: understatement.”). This does speed things up and frequently gives the book an offbeat, slangy tone. Time and place are often messed with leaving this reader occasionally borderline confused. Plot lines tend to intersect at odd and obtuse angles.
Some may be put off by this, but as long as one willingly submits to the curiously intrusive narrator as well as the serpentine plot and just goes along for the ride, it’s actually very enjoyable reading. It just takes bit getting used to.
There are many other endearing oddities in the book:
- The intermittent meditation on the “Zone of Transparency” is an interesting, and in this book topical, narrative device. This refers to “the glassy membrane of the ovum, into which the sperm implants itself.”
- There are several very unique and graphic scenes that require low-tech special effects imagination.
- The Jimi Hendrix ring tone “Castles Made of Sand” is a gem.
- Several times the expression My dear swan is used to indicate bewilderment. It sounds strange in English and is probably lost in translation for most. Yet, German is full of funky expressions like this: Mein lieber Scholli, Mein lieber Herr Gesangsverein, etc. The origin of My dear swan is evidently in Wagner’s romantic opera Lohengrin. Had no idea.
- A nice section:
There’s nothing that doesn’t exist in the world. I’d even say that the biggest mistake in our world is that there aren’t at least a few things that don’t exist. Because more often than not, non-things and non-people are far more likable than those who’ve pushed themselves elbows first into the world. Or have a look for yourself: non-ideas! Then non-opinions, non-feelings, non-loves, non-conversations, non-thoughts! I’ll say it up front to all of them, walk right in, my door is wide open for you!
East River Terror
Source: Esquire
I just ordered the DVD And Everything Is Going Fine, a documentary Steven Soderbergh made about Spalding Gray. I hadn’t heard of it before but have been a fan of Gray since seeing “Swimming to Cambodia.” I was looking for a review of the DVD when I stumbled upon a brief but graphic account by a 28-year-old web developer of how he and a friend came upon Gray’s washed up body in the East River. Two months earlier, in an apparent suicide attempt, Gray had jumped off the side of the Staten Island Ferry. (The DVD cover and title are thus perhaps a bit, shall I say, mordant.) Gray had evidently suffered from severe bouts of depression ever since a car crash a few years earlier.
Then they flipped him over, and we saw the face. It was like a blast wave from a bomb emanated from it. His face was totally torn off, like you see in the zombie movies. Just… red. Eyes poking out. The cops explained that in the winter, bodies sink to the bottom and get dragged around. When the water gets warm, the bodies float to the top. Apparently this one had been rubbing on the bottom for some time.
Shocking and sad. The story is told with candor, some humor, and unfailingly bizarre images: so very Gray-like.
PS: One of my favorite Gray quotes is:
“I refer to jet lag as ‘jet-psychosis’ – there’s an old saying that the spirit cannot move faster than a camel.”
I have been there. Too many times. Not good.
Out-Onioning the Onion
NYT Op-Ed columnist T. Friedman has had his fair share of duncish moments but today’s column truly takes the cake.
And, for me, the lesson of Iraq is quite simple: You can’t go from Saddam to Switzerland without getting stuck in Hobbes — a war of all against all — unless you have a well-armed external midwife, whom everyone on the ground both fears and trusts to manage the transition. In Iraq, that was America.
The rest of the column is equally crossing the line into Glenbeckesque drivel. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Gawęda Szlachecka*
There’s been some good discussion over at Detectives Beyond Borders on the works of Ryszard Kapuściński. I chimed in with the following thoughts:
I haven’t read this one (The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat), though I may now given the recommendation. I did read Shah of Shahs and Shadow of the Sun, the latter of which I liked a lot as well (esp. the story of the small beetle which the Tuareg call Ngubi and which toils to produce sweat in order to drink it to survive). My views on his apparent lack of journalistic integrity and communist collaboration are mixed.
I realize he has been heavily criticized for both in his home country as well as elsewhere, but I think it’s important to realize that in much of Europe there’s a slightly different expectation with respect to journalism. There’s more emphasis on the role of the reader, as opposed to the writer or the journalist, and there’s much less of an expectation of the “objective journalist.” It’s the reader, who has to construct a view of reality from multiple opinions and to remain skeptical of potential biases.
Furthermore, I think RK viewed himself more as a travel writer or even ethnographer than as a journalist. I always found much of his work wildly entertaining and I don’t think it’s far-fetched to realize that his very style of writing signals, from the first paragraph of every book or article, that the content needs to be read with a grain of salt. So, the fact that he embellished his stories has never especially surprised or disappointed me.
Also, as someone who lived for a while in Eastern Europe at the time of the fraying of the Iron Curtain, I had many encounters with writers, artists, actors, etc. that made it very clear that expressing yourself in ways that tackled reality head on was fraught with dangers. The history of samizdat is full of examples of allegories, metaphors, and wild imaginations that served as disguises for true intentions and meanings. RK’s affinity for an Eastern European form of ‘magical realism’ is very intuitive to me. As for the allegations, apparently now well-established, of RK’s collaboration with the communist party, they are of course bothersome to me and by and large inexcusable.
However, I do tend to think of RK as a brilliant, flawed, slightly nutty, if not tragic, character, who did his thing in however odd ways, compromised himself where he thought he needed in order to maximize his opportunities for pretty wild adventures (e.g. be permitted to travel). Reading about those adventures, however fictitious, has always given me a special thrill. Then again, I wasn’t one of those he reported on.
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* As PR at DBB mentioned, the Wikipedia article on RK points out that he wrote gawęda szlachecka,
“a traditional Polish anecdotal narrative exercised throughout the literary history of the 17th to the 19th centuries by segments of lower nobility and sometimes referred to by the irreverent as the art of elegant mendacity.”
Addendum 08/11/2012: There’s a related concept espoused by Spaulding Gray, which is “poetic journalism” – something he admitted to practicing in his monologues and books wherein he “filtered reality through his imagination.”
James Joyce Cocktail
Source: New York Magazine
Lovely quote. Interview with Martin Amis; interesting throughout with plenty other gems.
It sounds schmaltzy to say, but fiction is much more to do with love than people admit or acknowledge. The novelist has to not only love his characters but also to love the reader. The difference between a Nabokov, who in almost all his novels, nineteen novels, gives you his best chair and his best wine and his best conversation. Compare that to Joyce, who, when you arrive at his house, is nowhere to be found, and then you stumble upon him, making some disgusting drink of peat and dandelion in the kitchen. He doesn’t really care about you. Henry James ended up that way. They fall out of love with the reader. And the writing becomes a little distant.
James Joyce Cocktail?
- 1 1/2 ounces Peat
- 3/4 ounce dandelion
- 3/4 ounce Cointreau
- 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
The original James Joyce Cocktail is here.
That’s Some Journey!
RIP Sally Ride
Source: NYT
Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space, died today of pancreatic cancer. She was 61.
So very sad. Glad that D#1 and D#2 once had a chance to meet her at a Sally Ride Science Festival. We bought them t-shirts and she came up to sign them and chatted briefly.
Sunday Nap
Source: Winston Churchill, Spring 1946
Some say napping indicates laziness, a lack of ambition, and low standards. I’m with Churchill on this:
You must sleep some time between lunch and dinner, and no half-way measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one-well, at least one and a half, I’m sure.
Angiotensin Antagonist
鳶が鷹を産む
Apparently, there is a Japanese folk tale about a kite that gives birth to a hawk (Tobi ga taka wo umu).
Source: Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
Krugmenistan vs. Estonia
Poor Krugman is not getting a whole lotta love in Europe these days, mostly because of his adamant anti-austerity attitude and Keynesian case for more stimulus. This article covers a recent uproar in Estonia over a Krugman blog entry about the country. Interesting are some of the tweets by the country’s president. E.g.
9:06 p.m. Guess a Nobel in trade means you can pontificate on fiscal matters & declare my country a “wasteland.” Must be a Princeton vs Columbia thing
9:15 p.m. But yes, what do we know? We’re just dumb & silly East Europeans. Unenlightened. Someday we too will understand. Nostra culpa.
He didn’t, but he might as well have tweeted:
You need coolin’, baby, I’m not foolin’,
I’m gonna send you back to schoolin’,
Way down inside honey, you need it,
I love the article’s main illustration below with some arctic (?) landmass serving as Krugman’s frizzies.
All Alliteration Aside
Could this really be a page in Maurice Sendak’s 1962 edition of Alligators All Around: An Alphabet?
Alas … nope.