What an odd week. There’s something about not doing the usual things for just one day, and at the start of the week, that throws everything into a cocked hat. Which no one ever does, of course.

Okay, let's google . . .

“This expression alludes to a style of hat with the brim turned up on three sides—the three-cornered (tricorne) hat worn by officers in the American Revolution—giving it a distorted look. [Early 1800s]”

Yes, but what about the throwing? It’s not throwing at all; I have it wrong. It was knocked into a cocked hat, and here we have an explanation:

A more likely derivation is that 'to knock someone into a cocked hat' was simply to pummel them so badly as to alter their normal appearance.

So what today means “to be confounded, altered” meant “beaten with fists and perhaps a cudgel so as to be unrecognizably human.” I’ll punch you into a Stetson!

I still don’t get it.

But! The week’s writing is mostly done, and now it’s just talking and interviews, and a three-day weekend that announces the official start of summer. I’m not feeling it. I’m sad to see Spring pass, to be honest; it wasn’t a very good one, but as long as it’s Spring there’s promise. Spring always seems to promise something other than summer, though. It promises more spring.

Next week it'll be a return to normal in all ways.

Well, not all, but if you've been a clever clogs, as Astrid says, you've noted something around here that's a bit different.

Unrelated but sort of: have you ever found an musical artist from days gone past, playing in a style you dimly recall that you liked, and it seems to sum up something that can only be remembered but never revived? Even if someone played the songs in the exact same way on the same instrument, it would never connect with today, but only point back to another time?

Thesis: the older we get, the less interested we are in the music we thought was terribly important to who we were when we were most passionate about music.

Anti-thesis: I've discovered some retrowave channels on YouTube, where they recreate 80s synthpop instrumentals. It's all based on Moroder / Jan Hammer tropes, and I applaud it; the videos are full of VCR static and wireframe computer graphics with Patrick Nagel influences. I love it, and makes me happy the genre has found new adherents. Hits me where I live, or at least where I lived.

I loved that stuff so much it made me buy the only Neil Young album I'd ever considered owning.

Well, I'm rambling. On with more structured irrelevancies.

 

I screenshot tweets that make me cock the Spock, as we say when describing an eyebrow raised to indicate someone is in error, or has made a curious assertion.

   
 

It's the second part that mystifies.

Why would one think otherwise?

   
  This takes a peculiar turn.
   

My lawn is killing the earth. My lawn is KILLING THE EARTH.

But my lawn is also a resource?

How unhappy does it make one to be carried around on a bus, looking out the window, getting angry about grass? Are parks likewise earth-murderers?

Another remnant from the scrapbook we saw earlier this week:

A peculiar way to sell coffee: small witches ringed by fairies. Excerpting the company's story would do it a disservice. If you're not in the mood, I'll just say that the XXXX meant "High Quality" in the advertising parlance of the day. If you are in the mood, it's a wonderful story.

 

It seems to have stalled, but that's always an illusion. Still . . . I hope it's going to be taller.

Across the street, something new:

The first examples of the exterior. It's VERY BORING. But I think it'll work well in context. Trust me. I'll be the first to admit I'm wrong if I am.

I mean, who else would admit I was wrong? They'd accuse me of it, or at least point it out, and ask me to admit it. Saying "I'll be the first to admit when I'm wrong" isn't really as self-effacing as it seems.

 

HERE IS THE GREEN INK

Lance runs into a lot of crime just by accident, doesn't he? Solution is here.

 

 

 

We begin the 2019 review of the music at the Blue Note Cafe.

 

Another few notes of a song we know. Or should!

 

 

 

 

   

Portentious gambling tools!

   
   

The Edna joke got old fast, so they had to add some winky dialogue.

   

 

 

2019 returns to the bins, and the records dumped back into the world when someone dies and the kids give the contents of Mom and Dad's entertainment system to the Goodwill.

Wikipedia: "The Fantastic Baggys were an American surf and hot rod group, created by P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. The studio group released several unsuccessful singles."

   

Judge for yourself.

   

 

   

 

 
What is in when Dirt is out?
   

 

That'll do - see you Monday!

 

 

 
blog comments powered by Disqus