UPDATE on that non-MSG almost-no-health-risk sign I posted at the Stribblog the other day. Ready?
Now we know what it is: MASTER FLAVOR FOOD. I swear, English and Chinese are like apples and bricks sometimes.
I feel a bit guilty taking a hiatus here, because it’s not as if I WORK in the sense that people who really WORK, er, WORK. I don’t. It’s all mental and it’s all cerebral effervescence that trickles out the fingers. My gold standard for WORK is still my father, who ran his own business – hell, he still works, at the age of 83, which is possibly why he’s 83 with a sloshing tank of fuel in reserve. He loved working, which I never quite got as a kid: it was smelly stuff and I didn’t get it. When he got up in the middle of the night to fill someone’s oil tank because they were out of fuel and it was 20 below and they’d been cut off of “keep-full” service because they hadn’t paid their bills for a few months, I picked up on the irritation, and I certainly heard my mother remark how unfair it was that he should go out in the middle of the night for someone who hadn’t paid. (There was also one night I remember clearly: someone had run out of heating oil, and they were keep-full, and my dad seemed to wince down to his marrow.) He worked because he came from nothing and took pride in the Something he’d built, and to this day when he gets behind the wheel of one of his enormous trucks and drives it hither, drives it yon, it all surely goes back to being a 14-year-old kid who was sent to a farm miles away to work for the summer for no money, just food and a cot, to take the pressure off the rest of the family. As he told me once: his twin brother was usually sent to another farm for the summer, but come Sunday a farmer might give a boy the use of a horse to visit his kin.
He always knew work; work for himself was something else. But the smell! I grew up with the stink of gas, but it was never a bad smell. It was the Dad smell, infused in the threads of his Unitog shirt with RALPH over the big red Texaco star. He had lost his sense of smell by the time I was in high school, I think. Small price to pay for getting the contract to supply the lubricant for a local tractor maker whose Bobcats went all around the world – oh sure, they’d add their own oil and grease eventually, but when that little tractor rolled out in god-knows-where, it had Lileks Oil lubricants. Not bad for a fella who grew up with a dozen siblings in a drafty shack, eh? Not bad.
Then there were the barrels. The station always had a barrel field, and the bulk plant – an adjunct facility he bought at some point, and later defended at gunpoint – had great mountains of barrels, color-coded to indicate the flavor of Texaco oil within. He could pick one up if it was empty, but when you’re a little kid you don’t question whether they’re empty or not: you see your Dad picking up a barrel and putting it over there, and it’s like you have Hercules for a forebearer. This makes it hard when you know you’re so far from Hercules status yourself. But still. I’m convinced this is why I do not, never have, and never will, have any interesting in anything Mario-related: all goes back to Donkey Kong. So the bad guy is the one who can pick up barrels and throw them around? Not in my world.
So that’s work. I’ve never had a job that didn’t have an element of Fun. My father’s generation separated Fun from Duty, and while a few may have combined the two, most expected, and experienced, a bright line between the concepts. Me, I waited tables: fun. Had a late-night radio show: fun. Worked at newspapers: fun. I expect fun. It’s a sad comment that I feel stress at all about anything, really: if it’s not something I’ve screwed up through laxity or sloth, it’s overreaction to the pesky deets of office life and the ego-jostle that goes with it. WORK is when you come home with your muscles aching and you lost a contract and the payroll’s due and all the rest of the joy that goes with owning your shop. Me, I confabulate.
That said, let me undercut everything by saying I do need, and will happily take, a hiatus now. Maybe! I could be back tomorrow and will probably add some updates next week, just because.
I mean, what did I do today that was so dang-fired hard? Nothing. I got up, went to the office, wrote a script in 30 minutes, performed it; boiled down some headlines, stood in front of a camera, read them; went down to the studio to interview a co-worker about a Sunday piece, and since he’s voluble and we’re friends, it was just a matter of turning on the cameras, talking, then wrapping it up after five. I will admit with no small amount of pride that there is a certain ability involved in facing a camera and talking without a script, but if YouTube and the rest of the internet has taught us anything, it is a skill shared by millions, so. The fact that the skill may not be excessively common in newspapers is like saying that few journalists can extract a bullet with a tweezers and cauterize the wound: a few can, but there are many more outside of the profession who have the skill. So don’t get cocky.
So then: other things, for a while. Back in a week or so. I’ll toss up Comic Ads: the Fifties tomorrow, and drop in for some open threads as well as links to the column; WORK must go on, bleat-hiatus be damned. For now: bleatplus is up for the subscribers. (Seems I forgot the last update, so you can know enjoy #4 and #5 in one swoop.)
And here’s a small update to the World’s Fair site: the 1933 Heinz Exhibit. Navigation is still hinky in this quadrant of the site, so pardon. Have a great day! See you soon.
Pass it along, if you wish
225 Responses to Master Flavor Food for the Goodness
Host with the Most
_@_v – and this is post 200 for those of you scoring at home… and if you’re scoring at home… well… as the aussies say, good on you!
bgbear scores again – pictures of the Iverson Ranch, here:
http://www.cowboyup.com/08_Garden_of_the_Gods.html
are instantly recognizable.
If you ever visit these repeatably used filming locations, you get a deja vu type feeling you have already been there. The LA river and bridges is an example.
The last time I got the feeling was when I went to a wedding at the mission in San Juan Bautista and besides having not really having a tall bell tower, the movie “Vertigo” made me feel I had been there before.
My brother-in-law, an English professor, grew up in Sacramento. When he visited San Juan Bautista for the first time, he asked a lady working in the gift shop “what happened to the bell tower?” and she blew her top. I guess she was sick of being asked. Turns out it was completely faked, like the imaginary and totally fake Frank Llloyd Wright house in North by Northwest. On my visit to SJB, I remember the livery stable in the courtyard, and other locations from the movie, but as an easterner, the thing that blew my mind was all the beautiful olive trees loaded with olives in the picnic area.
It’s alive, alliive, aaallliiive, I tell you, alive! Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Shades of Gene Wilder and his predecessors. Oh, let’s not forget Edgar Winter either. This has taken on a life of it’s own. Love it.
I got to thinking about movies and places you recognize. The Sheen boys, Charlie and Emilio, were in a movie about trash collectors, called “Men at Work.” There’s a scene where you see a trash can arcing over a front lawn and hitting the ground unceremoniously. That scene was filmed in front of our house. Not a memorable movie or scene, but . . .
Now that
EddieLileks And TheHughCrusiers have returned, I’m giddy for a new blog post.I wonder if a spring return to Disney can be squeezed in? Those are almost like reading an old LIFE magazine pictorial.
at San Juan Bautista you can also look out over the valley and get a good look at section of the San Andreas Fault.
Have a good break. We’ll be here when you get back.
It’s a Bleat, not a blog.
James, you clever Boosterd!
My addiction to your wry apercus is in full blown mode now.
Sneaky. Left-handed. And effective.
But-must-not pay
Must-not-pay
Must-not…
KAHNNNNNNNNN!!!
Er,
Make that “Khan”.
A blog by any other name…..
I wonder if our host will come back all sunburned. Lord knows Hugh is so pale he would shrivel up in sunlight. This oughta make for some interesting bleating….
A blog by any other name…..
I wonder if our host will come back all sunburned. Lord knows Hugh is so pale he would shrivel up in sunlight. This oughta make for some interesting bleating….
So who’s watching the “hiphip hooray and ballyhoo” tonight? The only real question remaining: will Jim Cameron be presented with special “blue” Oscars, or just ordinary ones?
I won’t watch the Oscars, but I will watch the red carpet interviews, if it rains here in So Cal. It’s amazing how much the interviewers can moan and groan about a few drops of water.
There was much bitter complaining when the Emmys aired and there wasn’t a covered walkway. The local interviewers were VERY distressed and mentioned it constantly, which was funny to me. On the one hand, I do appreciate the fact that after getting ready for hours, you don’t want to get rained on, on the other hand, it’s not like you’re being asked to stand out in a typhoon.
Let’s see, 210 comments and to my knowledge, no one has mentioned Hitler or Nazis yet…
Oops.
#212 right here…
..but who’s counting?
I hope Cameron wins Best Pic, only because I want to see him make a great big flaming fool of himself … again.
Anyway, Avatar is a better film than Titanic … for what that’s worth.
(Me, I’m rooting for Quentin! Just to bug “certain people.”)
Hey Bleatmaster … are you boycotting Avatar? Just asking.
_@_v – the nazis are in the bathroom… just below the stairs…
@MadCanada: “I hope Cameron wins Best Pic, only because I want to see him make a great big flaming fool of himself … again.”
What I’d like to know is how Cameron managed to get an appointment with Peggy Lee’s hairdresser….
How often do you write your blogs? I enjoy them a lot 4 6 6
@shesnailie:
Nobody told me there’d be days like these. Strange days indeed.
_@_v – most peculiar mama!