Oh the Shark Bites

Dillweed request: I have a mail program that sends up little alerts when I get a new message; it appears to be trashing some mails I mark as “unread.” If you’ve contributed this last week – and there’s one high-level contribution I can’t find – please email me with the subject line DILLWEED. Apologies; I need a staff.

Trying to do a live-chat about the Oscars without watching the Oscars: easier than you think! Get the news from Twitter window, apply snark or Insight, go to live-chat window. (This window is in-between.)

I wouldn’t be watching at all, except that I have to do a video tomorrow morning about the Oscar fashions. Yes. That. I know nothing about them, I don’t care, the only point is to critical except in the case where you Gush, and then everyone forgets it the next day, and the world continues to swing around the sun, which itself is in motion in an enormous cosmic arrangement that is but one of innumerable such structures fleeing outward into infinity, defining the boundaries of time and space as they create anew the boundaries that will be transgressed at the identical moment of their creation. So who cares!

I hate the Cosmic Irrelevancy argument. There’s always a video passed around that shows how tiny the earth is, and how big everything else is, and thus we are very insignificant in the larger scheme. Well, if we’re the only place in the universe that contains life – which I don’t believe – then we’re incredibly significant. Even if the joint teems with squirmies, and we’re just one of a hundred million civilizations, well, the “we’re so small” is not particulary useful information, is it? YOU ARE NOT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, one of the videos said at the end. Yes, one does figure that out eventually, and if not, contemplation of enormous flaming nuclear reactors will not dispel the delusion, unless it’s headed towards earth. Then it’s personal.

Didn’t have the creation mojo this weekend, and I don’t know why. Sometimes I sit down at the machinery and the stuff just flows, but I couldn’t fit my brain into anything. I ended each night with novel writing, and hit 40,000 words – 25K to go, so there’s that.

I watched “Top Hat,” thinking the sprightly music and fine dancing might lighten my mood, but it just annoyed me. The non-dancing parts. I have low tolerance for interminable romantic misunderstandings that could be resolved if people just LISTENED and THOUGHT THINGS THROUGH. Then i watched an impossibly quaint movie called “Rat Race,” which has Tony Curtis as a bumpkin who comes to New York and rooms with Debbie Reynolds. They don’t do anything, of course, because it’s a movie filmed in 1959, but it has some wonderful shots of New York in the era before things went to crap, and then all the neon was scrubbed from the storefronts. Dig it: Times Square.

Times Square at night: I don’t know if the Crystal Ballroom was real, or they added a sign for the movie, You can juuuuust see a little of the old Playland sign. (Note: this 1956 picture suggests a difference in the signage.)

42nd street:

The Selwyn was later turned into the American Airlines Theater. Before Times Square hit the skids, the wall of uniform marquees were almost an analogue to the Rockefeller Center addition – blunt repetitive modern structures that had a certain appeal when you saw them all at once.

My favorite:
Man, that’s sturdy signage. It’s not just sharp, it’s something from a culture that makes things. By hand.

Saturday I did errands, which will be the subject of an UltraBleat video this week. Big whoopin’ deal. Cold, too. Snowy. The general attitude towards the snow and the cold was hideous unspoken loathing, but Target had something to reassure us all: it’s Patio and Garden Season! The new furniture has arrived.

But there were no gazebos. I felt a pang of terror: where will I get my gazebo? Then I saw a shelf that had tiny little models, which made sense; no need to take up so much floor space. I found the one I want. It can be shipped, they say. Sigh. A repeat of the UPS wars of ’09, I fear.

Sunday: more of the same. Errands, this time with child in tow. I got my hair cut. The owner of the store was on duty at the cash register; he asked my name, punched it in, said “I used to read you in the paper.”

“I’m still there,” I said. “Unless you stopped because of something I said.”

“No, no!”

“Fridays and Sundays.”

My daughter rolled her eyes. We can’t go anywhere without this happening. I got a non-talkative cutter, and I was content just to sit there and think, but she asked “so, what are you up to today?” and that led to discussion of Errands, of Target, of the Patio Section, of the gazebo collapse, of the difficulties of having one shipped via UPS, and by the time the narrative had concluded she was removing the apron. “I hope that answers your question,” I said. Tipped her extra for putting up with me. Then off to Old Navy to get jeans for daughter; mortification at shopping for clothes with dad. I got some summer stuff, presuming it will come some day, and when we checked out the clerk asked if she could have my email address.

At that point I wanted to say “sure, and pretend it was greeblizer94boffo@qmmmre.tv, and spend five minutes trying to enter it with the stylus, but it’s not her fault. She has to ask.

Since it was lunchtime, I suggested a hamburger, so we went down the sidewalk to the adjacent McDonald’s.

It was closed.

It’s never a good sign for a commercial area when the McDonald’s closes. I looked around, and noted that the Storables store had closed – well, that makes sense; an enormous container store opened up a block north. The Ultimate Electronics store was having a STORE CLOSING, but that made sense; the Best Buy mothership display store is just ten blocks east. The Thomasville furnishings store closed, but that made sense; furniture stores are suffering. But a McDonald’s. And not just any McDonalds: This was a Mac Tonight McDonald’s. Since 1986 or so, there’s been a large unholy moon-headed man at a piano, plunking out tunes. Yes, that’s correct: a quarter-century, he was there, an item marooned in the Midwest by the vagaries of a failed ad campaign. I have a video of it somewhere; must find. Memories of toddlerhood at Happy Meals and useless plastic toys, and picking her up and putting her in the car seat -

“It’s GONE,” she said. “The Moon dude. He’s gone.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I hope they found him a good home,” I finally said, reverting to toddlertalk. “No, I’m sure they did. Someone paid good money for that guy.”

We went to another McDonald’s ten blocks to the north, as opposed to the one 15 blocks to the east.

Then we went to Lund’s to get sushi for supper. There was a young man standing at the sushi counter examining the preparation of his order with great interest. He was also listening to someone on his cell. He was standing in front of the display counter that made it impossible to fully examine the packages, let alone choose one. He was blocking the sushi.

I tried to make our presence known with the usual tricks – conversation, coughing, slight invasion of the periphery of his personal space. Nothing worked. I said excuse me. He did not move. Okay, then. I said “Excuse me” again and shouldered my way in, whereupon I became the Rudest Man on the Planet. Dude.

“He was kinda oblivious,” my daughter said. I agreed that he was.

“Always be aware of everyone else,” I said, turning this into A Lesson. There are worse rules by which to live, but it’s one of the hardest.

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New Joe for members; new Matchbook, here. See you around!