Wednesday already, eh. Well, Tuesday was gone in a trice, and Monday was an honorary member of the weekend. Friday approaches at a casual amble. I’ll take it.
Tuesday night was unusual; the Precious Schedule was upended with a five-hour block of duty – first a funeral visitation in a far-distant part of town. Wife’s uncle. There was a video in the corner playing old photos; nice work, but – I know, I know, this is awful and petty – it used a stock 80s-style Microsoft font whose name escapes me. Made me think I should just put my own post-mortem slideshow in the can so I can control these things. The photos in these things move from black and white to color, as they do for the Greatest Generation memorial (the man was an Army MP, and every inch the role) – the farm shots, small and grainy, the faded 60s shots with everyone middle-aged and happy at the holidays, the women in dresses and cat-eye glasses; then the 70s shots, which fade to a sort of sickly brown, as if some thin syrup of sadness was poured over the whole damned decade. The 60s shots are merely faded, and can be brought back to their proper color; photos from the 70s sometimes seem to erase the very possibility of color, until everything is smeared with the same dun-hued film. Then you see people captured by their children with better cameras, which get worse when digital comes in, then gets very, very good. You can trace an entire epoch in the character of the film stock, and no one who ever grins for the flash thinks of that, just as someone today in his 20s doesn’t think his obituary reel will conclude with 3d holographic presentations.
I told my daughter not to use this font on my memorial. Rolled eyes. Okay, whatever. What font do you want.
I don’t know. There are fonts that you love, that say something to you, but they’re not about you. Hard to pin that down.
“I’ll put Hobo on your tombstone,” she says.
“I’ll come back and haunt you.”
Keep this in mind: no matter what your work is, no matter what you leave behind, everyone comes down to the same thing: a folded program you put in your coat pocket and take out the next time you wear the coat. Or you put it on the dresser because it would be wrong to throw it away.
I never throw them away. I didn’t really know the fellow at all, but I’m going to have a reason to go to the visitation, then the program goes in the things that go in the big plastic bag for the year. Yet I get the feeling that you’re expected to throw them away. That it’s okay. These are the least important remainders.
But still.
Then: racing up the freeways for a piano recital. My daughter’s finest performance, ever – and her toughest piece, too. A Chopin waltz, simplified of course – she’s not one of those robots-in-a-pinafore who can play with frightening yet mechanical skill that suggests every jot of joy has been drained from her childhood. I was surprised to see how nonchalant she was about it all, especially since to and from the funeral she’d been banging out a Memoir for a class assignment, a 22-page project that, of course, was due tomorrow. After the recital the family went to Perkins. It’s 8:30 PM. I’m falling over with hunger. Of course, we got there right behind a party of 16. But once the patty melt was delivered and the first bite taken, all the proper chemicals filled the brain, and equilibrium returned.
But late supper and work at home to print off the memoir, and off to bed, and by then – by now – it’s late and I’m beat. Tonight’s meal was so meaterrific I haven’t been able to move for about three hours. Seriously. All available blood has been called down to Stomach Central to work on the problem. So I’m going to bed. I leave you with the City Hall site, which was no small piece of work.
In reserve I have something I did Saturday night, and it has something for everyone. If everyone is interested in the narrow subject matter presented in this site, that is. It’s the City Hall site, and I like the design. There are a few pages that are downright purty. Which means I’ll hate it in a few years and disown it entirely, and wonder what I was thinking.
If you’re curious about the changing styles on this site – and gosh, why wouldn’t you be – HERE’s the old site. And HERE is the new. Not a lot of overlap. (Yes, I see the title of the first page is wrong. Will fix.) If you only see one page, see THIS one. But really, it’s all worth your time. There are plenty of spooky carved faces, and they just fascinate me. They’ve been peering out at people for a century, and no one knows who they are.
As for this site: I’m still trying to figure out how to get the comments link to the bottom of the page, because no one wants to scroll up to the top. I know. Give me a weekend. Have a grand day; see you in the usual places.
Pass it along, if you wish
47 Responses to Too much day and not enough evening
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Egad. Thank goodness opera lets me set custom css.
Couldn’t sleep. Stumbled into the office for a diversion, completely bleary-eyed. Fired up Firefox for a fix of Bleat and spent the first ten minutes wondering how long it would take for my eyes to be able to focus.
Finally it dawned on me: it’s not me, the body copy is illegible at a normal zoom.
Think I’ll go back to bed now: the exertion has worn me out. Probably have nightmares about going blind… sigh.
“But once the patty melt was delivered and the first bite taken, all the proper chemicals filled the brain, and equilibrium returned.”
It’s truly amazing how that works, isn’t it? And the reverse of that is when you need to pee, and the closer you get to the bathroom, the more urgent the need becomes.
Such strange things, these brains of ours.
Is that Gnat in the Tower Bells video?
As long as we’re doing Minneapolis history again, can someone please identify this church:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y164/ChrisBrame/minn52church.jpg
Date is 1952, and it’s being torn down, but hopefully OGH or one of my fellow Bleatniks can recognize it – the very high vantage point may be some help as well. The image came from the estate of a German fellow who moved to Minneapolis in the ’50s then moved to CA to work at Hughes Aircraft – I’ve got a boatload of his slides and home movies I haven’t gone through yet. Thanks!
Sometimes you just need a cheeseburger to restore your spiritual balance.
OftenUsuallyAlways works better, and faster, than sitting down and going “OOOM” for an hour.Dad did all his photography from the 40′s through the 2000s (when he went digital) using Kodachrome, with the slides stored in a cool, dark place. Pictures he took in 1950 look like they were taken yesterday. Slides I took in 1982 on cheap repurposed film stock Seattle FilmWorks FTL) have faded to unusability.
Seriously, the new font is borderline unreadable. Like dragging your eyes across sandpaper.
I love the way “Jimmy” Lileks looks at his bare wrist when the clock strikes 3. Already an archaic gesture.
Now, we pull out our phone, just like great-grandpa would pull out a pocket watch. A friend’s mom who died about 10 years ago always made the “using the phone” gesture as though she were holding a 30′s “candlestick” type phone.
I have no doubt that Bleatniks can supply the names of all the elevator faces. No problem.
In fact, I happen to know that the model for the Judge was Thor P. Mjölnirsen, “the Hammer of Justice,” known for coming off the bench to whack particularly odious suspects with his gavel. In those days, of course, everyone thought it was just harmless fun. He would sentence felons to highly original punishments, like being chained to the back of the streetcar for children to jeer at, or having to shovel horse manure off the streets with a silver spoon.
The Judge ended his days in the Blackduck Home for the Peacefully Incontinent, where he was given a Nerf hammer and encouraged to reenact his greatest hits for the amusement of the other invalids.
Did our genial host change the font since last night? I was reading yesterdays Bleat comments, uh, yesterday on my system at home (Win 7 pro, Firefox 4) and they had they horrible eye killing scratched into the screen font. This morning at my work PC (Win 7 pro Firefox 3.6.17) the font is lovely and readable. Interesting.
Actually I like the old courthouse site better. Brighter and better looking i think, snarky comments included. The added content on the new site if fun by the way. I enjoyed the Jimmy Lileks video. Am I right in thinking it’s a couple years old? I believe our host has been off the video beat for a while.
For the font, might I suggest Gothic? For your funeral, I mean. I don’t want to have to read Gothic every day.
Having watched Hudsucker Proxy last week, I am dissapointed that a giant clock like that can run without a room full of appendage-grinding gears, giant pedulums and those things that spin in clocks.
A 22 page project? Where does Gnat go to school? Stanford Elementary?
“I’ll put Hobo on your tombstone”
Outstanding, I need to work this into my lexicon ASAP.
I think that worrying about the font your tombstone will use is just a tad obsessive. Got your suit picked out?
Bob
This new font just isn’t working. It looks fuzzy and out of focus.
Regarding the new font, I think this guy said it best: “Harry, I’m BLIND!”
Animal, Stalag 17.
Another year of this and I’m going to need a seeing eye schnauzer. But dang, the content is worth it!
Is it a wink and a nod that this great post begins with a critique of fonts while we’re reading it through a nightmare of a screen font?
I do like one thing about this new set-up. There used to be a little button at the lower right-hand corner of the screen that displayed the fonts used on the website. I was constantly tapping it by mistake and calling up the Wall O’Fonts when I really just wanted to scroll down to read the comments.
A concern for the Sensitive and Sensible Use of Typefaces may seem like one of more picayune obsessions of the terminally anal, but (as I may have said in a long-ago post) they do convey a message as well as information. Last spring, in my ongoing quest to make myself more Jobworthy, I took a class called Design and Typography where we spent a lot of time talking about what a typeface like Futura “said” as opposed to a typeface like Bernhard Modern (pretty in italics!). What typeface suggested “honesty” for example? (Melior).
Actually, “Hobo” is a sort of dumbed-down Art Nouveau typeface. (heaubeau?)
I also like the typeface used for the “Leave A Reply”. And the little pencil. Love those Dingbats.
Yes, the seventies did turn into a brownish decade. Was it the prevailing atmosphere of BS? Was it that sticky-looking fake brown “paneling” that was used on walls? Birkenstocks?
I must say despite some of my own tendencies toward OCDness, the concern over fonts here never ceases to amuse me.
“I’ll put Hobo on your tombstone”
Great stuff.
As to the funeral video, there’s no time like the present, James. After all, ya never know…
Love you like a brother, James, but having raised two girls through high school, let me suggest you practice leaving some nits unpicked. Bite your tongue, do whatever it takes. Eye rolling now. Explosive anger later when Dad does the know-it-all schtick. When they’re little, everything they know is just interesting, but not necessary. They will be taken care of and Dad will take all hurts away before they get too bad. When they’re at Natalie’s age, they are beginning to feel the stress of needing to know what’s cool, what’s right, what everyone is saying about everyone, and how the world works. Too daunting for words. At that age begins a period of 5 years or so when you don’t understand the significance of anything and the things you think are important are just not. For five years your “go-to” comments should be “you look so pretty today”, “tell me all about it” and “could you use a few bucks?”. Save the running critique of everything you see for the Bleat. It’s entertainment for us.
Love the content as usual, and sad as I am to have to say anything that even smacks of being critical…I popped in to the comments section to say that the new font is very hard to read. It looks kind of faded and jaggy, and my eyes just don’t want to focus properly on it. It’s like it’s a ghost font that’s worked its way up to about 80% corporeality. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who isn’t in love with it.
Bob: OGH isn’t just worried about his tombstone font which might last 200 years but the font on the photo retrospective which will last a couple of hours. However, lets all wish a long enough life for OGH that by the time he croaks most funerals will include professionally designed templates and that when he passes in the early 2040s that the 70s will not have returned as a model decade.
in firefox, go to tools, options, content, fonts, advanced and uncheck box that lets site choose font. You can play around with you defaults until you get what you like.
James – check with a handyman and see if you house has aluminum wiring. Sometimes that crap works loose and will create an intermittent connection. Aluminum expands and contracts differently than copper, and electrical parts like outlets that are tied into aluminum wiring have to be specific for aluminum.
oh, and when james finally listens to the masses and fixes the font, check the box again.
Nice to worry about fonts at funeral and on tombstone rather on the font on the sign at the sanitary landfill and recycling center we will probably end up in in the green egalitarian future or maybe the wrapper design on the soylent green.
Great video of James on tour of the bell tower at city hall
and you can just see Natalie in the back ground , at one point James seems to look down at pants to check to if they are ?
http://lileks.com/mpls/cityhall/tower/index.html
@Tim McNabb: the outside stuff that is failing or failed was done in the past couple years, documented on bleats. that’s got no aluminum.
the house… I suspect Jasperwood has about ten different styles and types, including two stages of very bad mung-it-yourself, as most homes do. I found a whole bunch of branches in the basement with two inches of wire in the box, hidden open boxes inside walls, and all that kerappe.
I would not be surprised if there is a hunk of wire in the attic of Jasperwood done with Red Diamond barbed wire on sewing spools.
Gotta agree with the font being too small, especially as a serifed font it is by nature harder to read on a screen.
As to the post itself, I have a real problem with the “Greatest Generation” designation. It is an absurd notion that generations can be rated, and like so many comparisons is weighted by recent memory. I cannot consider either the generation that remained through the worst at Valley Forge or the one that marched into the guns at Gettysburg as only “Near Great.”
@DCOriole, blame Tom Brokaw, not Lileks for that one.
@chrisbcritter: the church looks like St. Nitro’s
patron saint of “blowin’ stuff up Real Good!”
that ain’t incense.
@bgbear,
Personally I prefer the fonts used here. So I took your advice to see if maybe Firefox 4 overrides the site font. No. The font I see is the font OGH chose. The box is checked.
The only explanation I can offer is that I use a big monitor (24″ – for 3d CAD) and I zoom in (to fill the monitor.)
Try using CTRL+ to zoom in and see if that helps. Otherwise you must conclude I am a genetic mutant with bizarre tastes in fonts.
@chrisbcritter, swschrad is right, made me think of
I shall read from the book of Matthew, Mark, Luke and… duck
@Wramblin’ Wreck, what I am advising is that you do override Lileks current choice if you are having trouble reading it.
You can always go back and check the box when Lileks comes to his senses again or when navigating to other pages or sites.
(as said yesterday, the site looks great on a Mac, looks awful at my work Dell)
@bgbear: Thanks for the tip about Firefox… I had no idea you could override a site’s chosen fonts that way. I really don’t want to be a picky jerk about the font… it probably looks really great on some machines, but my machine just doesn’t render it well at all. As they say, it ain’t personal, just business… and I hope OGH doesn’t feel that his aesthetics are under attack. If nothing else, it should demonstrate that we really do like to read his content…
If I understood more about CSS, there might be some way to hack the settings so that it would appear on my screen in a more readable font. But I appreciate OGH’s design effort just the same.
My advice is, if it’s important to you what your tombstone looks like, buy it now. It’s called pre-need planning and we all should do it, to spare our loved ones some stress when we join the Choir Invisible. Whatever it costs now is nothing compared to what it will be in the 2040s.
I want a holographic tombstone like the ones in Serenity
I want to walk into the woods and never be seen again.
@MJBirch: gotcha, dude, those were oak woods. ya birches stand out.
can’t make a fool out of me in ten seconds, I’ve been at it for 56 years.
Interestingly, my home and work systems show completely different fonts for the Bleat, and I’m unsure why?
My boss got a very expensive mausoleum with a view at Holy Cross in L.A.; but the way his family has been getting along, when it’s full the people inside will be speaking to each other about as much as they did when they were alive.
Me? I don’t care; just give me one of those discount funerals from Catcher in the Rye: “He probably just shoves them in a sack and dumps them in the river.”
I was hoping to wake up this morning with an opinion about fonts. So far, nothin’. I’m beginning to get worried. Pease advise.
James,
Rarely do I disagree with your content, or anything else in the Bleat. This time I must. Please, change the type font. I don’t know if it is Bookman or Cambria or wierd TNR, but it is very hard on the eye. It reminds me of Time magazine in the ’30s.
what font is it? Not that I mind it.
I know Brokaw was the source, I just wish everyone else would stop using the phrase.
I personally like the new font…perhaps make it a few point larger to satisfy the less visually acute.
Love the observation about funeral programs…got a stack on my dresser as we speak. I do eventually throw them unless they are relatives.