That's me, Charles Foster Kane, publishing magnate! The Substack, you know. Thanks again to everyone who signed up and chipped in. I'll be adding a fourth subscriber feature in a while, and if there's a fifth, it'll be free.
Well, let's see what piled up in the Misc folder this week . . . oh. From the endcap at CUfB grocery store: Meet Carmella Creeper. Con Malvaviscos De Monstruos, of course:
I'm going to go to YouTube to see if there's anything, and here's the problem: I want a throwback-style commercial. I fear I'm going to get an excited review from a grown-posterior man.
Or Grown-posterior woman.
Looks like it came out last year.
Don't know how I missed it.
Anyway, the usual suspects are keen to REACT and show us all how they REACTED.
THESE ARE TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE
Cheap Trick's guitarist is looking a little shaggy.
It's one thing to be interested in the pop culture of your childhood. It's another to inhabit it when you're in your 40s.
I think it's possible to oversell the attributes of ordinary objects. I get "Enchanted Garden" as an overall vibe for the line, but I am not sure what a New Age trellis is. I guess if you're listening to Enya and waving burning sprigs of balsam around with one hand while you stick it in the dirt with another, it's for you.
I get "Enchanted Garden" as an overall vibe for the line, but I am not sure what a New Age trellis is. I guess if you're listening to Enya and waving burning sprigs of balsam around with one hand while you stick it in the dirt with another, it's for you.
Someone looked at this and said "Pot Trellis is not enough. We have established the garden as enchanted, but I'm just not getting the sense of easy, vague spirituality you want in your trellis."
"How about we use a term familiar to the gardener 40 years ago when she was listening to Windham Hill CDs while brunching?"
"Nailed it"
This next item was seen on Reddit, where I went to see if things were still boring, predictable, and filled with AI generated stories masquerading as true confessions. They were. On the Skyscrapers subreddit, this ordinary but not offensive slab:
Alas:
It's in Lake Charles, by New Orleans. Damaged during the hurricane, and slated for demolishment. Google street view then . . .
. . . and now.
To which a lot people might say: eh. And? So what?
To me, it's terribly sad. All of the empty skyscrapers, everywhere, are sad. It's a devolution. No, it's just a change in the way things are done, it's more convenient now, offices are stupid, I have social anxiety anyway and it's hard to work when someone else's phone is ringing. No, this was a culture, a whole world, and we killed it.
Then again, sometimes they have to go.
This was the high-rise residence in Fargo, put up in my early teen years. We were proud of it, but it wasn't a particularly notable structure. It was part of urban reknewal, the leveling of several old blocks of wounded and dying buildings. In retrospect, it would have been better to save half, because they created an empty dead zone downtown that never came back.
When a skyscraper goes down, I think the spaces that existed for a while up there in the sky, a contained and defined space, a room with pictures on the wall, furniture, carpet, family photos on the desk. All so solid. And then it's gone, and the space is defined by nothing, and birds fly through it without knowing that someone sat up there on a Friday and dreamed of an afternoon on the boat, line in the water.
I had returned to DC after a long posting abroad, and was moving into a temporary housing. Or was it? The suite was quite large, and intended for long-term stay, but I didn’t know if I could decorate it to my whims. I went down into the facility to talk to the gals I knew down there, one in particular who I had my eye on. She was always cheerful and friendly in a way you couldn’t help but misinterpret. Going down the stairs, I saw Manny from the orchestra in his white tux, looking older and woebegone, and he said hello with no particular enthusiasm.
I chatted with the gals and exaggerated my importance and my efforts abroad, showing off the large gold coins I’d gotten in my travels. The cute friendly one was eager to hear more, but she really did have to get back to work, bye now!
Back up at the suites, I learned that my uncle and nephews had moved in, and would have the property for six months. They were already redecorating. I remembered that I should check my next shift at the restaurant, and realized I’d probably missed it. I had. I was supposed to have been there at 11:30 AM. Well, that job was gone.
Then I saw my cousin out in the pouring rain, glowering, pushing a baby carriage. He stomped out of sight and the rain filled the gutters.
And now, a related feature that will provide some Friday amusements:
To commemorate the end of the State Fair, I asked the dreaming idiot to imagine a State Fair in Late Summer.
The sequel to the Robert Michum movie, later remade by Scorcese:
It's so damned literal
Nothing saiys Farfay like some Lan7eal Piatter Cate!
I wonder what source material told it to do this.
Every abandoned fair with a parking lot of rusting vehicles will have a few fresh flags unfurled:
It's - just - always - out - of - reach of perception
It's more interesting than the 1819 Newspaper Offices I asked it produce - 100 bearded men at typewriters with vague steam machinery in the background.
