Category Archives: Over the Transom

Electric Emblem, Grand Commandery of Colorado

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Unusually warm and especially windy today. I would have spent more time on the deck, but the wind was distracting. That and dust was blowing in from the baseball field in the park.

I’ve seen people playing baseball there sometimes, even in recent weeks. But no peewee football in the park yet. That’s still going on as far as I know, despite concussion worries, and the occasional brawl among the parents.

I correspond by postcard with a handful of people. Sometimes I get delightful cards. This one from a correspondent in Tennessee is definitely that.

It depicts, according to the back of the card, the Electric Emblem, Grand Commandery  of Colorado (Knights Templar, who are still around). The card has a copyright date of 1913, which as far as I understand puts it in the public domain. Something so delightful should be.

My correspondent tells me the card was once owned by her grandmother in Arkansas, “a prolific card writer,” she says. Makes it even more special to get in the mail. Millennials have no idea what they’re missing by giving up on postcards.

Mass Entertainment

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Here’s a list I spent some time with recently: Wiki’s List of highest-grossing media franchises. Being Wiki, there’s no telling how accurate it is, but I will note that there are an enormous number of notes and references. So I’ll take it as accurate enough.

The list is interesting for a number of reasons, but mainly for information on the high-grossing franchises I’ve never heard of, which are quite a few.

Most of them are Japanese: anime, manga, even franchises whose most profitable expression is pachinko machines. As far as I could tell from my years in Japan, pachinko parlors were insanely bright, intensely noisy places to throw away money. But I was just a barbarian outsider. Apparently the machines are branded, and the branding is big business.

Take Fist of the North Star which, originating way back in 1983, would have been around when I was in Japan. I’d never heard of it until today. Though starting as manga, the franchise has enjoyed nearly $16.8 billion in pachinko machine sales, plus a few billion more in manga and other games.

Pachinko, incidentally, comes up 13 times on the list. Most of those are Japanese franchises, but not all. There have been $2.85 billion in Disney Aladdin pachinko (and arcade) machines sold. Spider-Man pachinko machines are popular to the tune of $308 million in sales, and Tomb Raider has sold $300 million.

I was curious how many of the franchises I’ve supported, either for myself or my children, so I counted: more than I would have thought, about 50. That includes mostly through ticket sales, as well as small-screen viewing (at least occasionally), but also the quarters I spent on Pac-Man and Space Invaders, and things my daughters watched that I never would, such as Sailor Moon and Dora the Explorer.

Mass-market entertainment’s pervasive. Even when your tastes tend to run to less successful shows.

Two Harbors and Gooseberry Falls State Park

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It occurs to me that it’s been 40 years this week since I visited Wisconsin for the first time — and Minnesota for that matter, though I only passed through that state. I was on a bus full of other San Antonio high school kids on the way to the 1978 Mu Alpha Theta national meeting in Stevens Point, Wis.

So our recent trip up that way was a 40th anniversary tour for me. More or less. More less than more, since I didn’t go near Duluth in ’78, but never mind.

Northeast from Duluth, Minnesota 61 hugs the coast of Lake Superior, offering a number of sites to see. More than we had energy for, unfortunately, since a drive up 61 all the way to the Canadian border — all the way to Thunder Bay, though it’s Ontario 61 up that way — would make for an excellent few days, not an afternoon.

Still, on the afternoon of July 29, we made our way to the town of Two Harbors and Gooseberry Falls State Park. At Two Harbors, we spent time at the rocky shore.
3M was founded in Two Harbors. Unsurprisingly, the company has no presence there any more, though the corporate “birthplace” is a small museum that we didn’t visit.

Rather, we spent a few minutes at the Two Harbors Light Station. Or Light House, depending on the source.
Up the road from Two Harbors is Gooseberry Falls State Park, reportedly the most-visited state park in Minnesota, and I can see why. The place is drop-dead gorgeous even before you get to the falls.
As promised, the park sports plenty of falls as the Gooseberry River cascades toward Lake Superior. Here are the Upper Falls.
The Middle Falls.
The Lower Falls.
I understand that the flow of the falls depends entirely on runoff, since the relatively small Gooseberry has no headwaters. So I guess it’s been a rainy summer in this part of Minnesota.

Who developed much of the park infrastructure? Here’s a clue.
The lads of the CCC, of course.

Near the Upper Falls is an unusual, and sad, plaque. It’s both a warning and a memorial.
I looked up Richard Paul Luetmer, who has missed out on being alive these last 40 years. He went diving in the river and hit a submerged log. RIP, Richard, but I have an editor’s nit to pick with the plaque editor: In Memoriam, not In Memorium.

High Summer Misc.

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Time for a high summer break. Back to posting around July 22.

Last night around midnight I spent a few pleasant minutes on my deck. Temps were neither hot nor cold, the noise from traffic was subdued, and Mars hung above the garage, a pretty orange point of light. The suburban haze dimmed it some, of course, but not enough to obscure the planet as a object of contemplation.

We, as in human beings, could go to Mars if we really wanted to. So far we don’t. The people who will go there might not be born yet, but I think they will go.

Closer to home, I visited a mall recently and decided to document something that might not be around much longer.

The same retailer has a location in Chicago — a neighborhood store, smaller than the suburban locations, that I drive by sometimes — that’s closing. Or maybe it has already. I wouldn’t mind documenting it either, but it would be a pain in the butt to find parking, and then a vantage to get a good shot.

In another store, an actual bookstore that sells other things, I saw these recently.

I know there are a lot of variations on Monopoly, but Deadpool Monopoly? Walking Dead Monopoly? Golden Girls Monopoly?

Somewhere out there is a collector of Monopoly editions. Must be hard to keep up. Or maybe the Smithsonian, or the Library of Congress, has tasked itself to preserve a copy of every edition. Maybe not. Maybe Golden Girls Monopoly will be highly prized for its rarity by collectors during the Monopoly craze of the 2160s.

Finally, a picture of Independence Day fireworks here in suburban Chicago.

Not a great picture. But not bad for a phone camera.

Grandpa Tom

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Learned today that a high school friend of mine, Tom — another Tom, not the one we visited Mexico City with, but rather the one in this picture — has lately become a grandfather.

He’s about six months older than I am. I knew this particular Tom as far back as fourth or fifth grade, pushing 50 years ago, when we hung out a lot. Less in high school, but still a fair amount. Both of us were Class of ’79. Went to his wedding in 1986.

It’s a tempus fugit moment. Circle of life, that sort of thing. Guess it’s going happen more often in the coming years, just as there was a wave of weddings among my contemporaries beginning in the mid-80s and then a bunch of births. Congratulations to Tom and his wife Rebecca.

It Was Entirely Possible To Eat, Drink and Be Merry in Logan, Utah in 1980

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The beginning of one of the more amusing press release retractions I’ve received recently went as follows:

So very sorry… everyone was rushing to get this one out late yesterday. We all missed it. It should be “20-screen _____ Theatre” and not “20-seat _____ Theatre” … It appears in the fourth paragraph below. I fixed it below. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you, thank you!! –

I got a chuckle at the thought that that particular brand would open a 20-seat theater. Then again, there’s probably a market for an ultra-luxe movie theater with only 20 seats. The kind of place that where four or five attendants, each dressed in posh re-creations of usher and usherette costumes, bring patrons high-end food and beverage at a comfy seat and table facing a high-end digital movie screen.

I have a collection of aged t-shirts that I don’t want to part with. They are mostly too worn for ordinary use, but each reminds of a certain period or trip. Such as this one.

I picked it up in Logan, Utah, during my first visit there in June 1980. I took a bus from San Antonio to Logan that month, and stayed with my high school friend Tom for a while. He was attending Utah State University at that point, and I hadn’t seen him in about a year. A fine visit.

I liked Logan too, with its warm days and cool nights, inexpensive eateries and college town vibe. I visited again in 1982, but not since. Probably best to leave it that way, as a pleasant spot I visited in my youth.

They Might Be Serious About This Burger Thing

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Today I encountered the strangest press release I’ve seen in a long time, and I’ve seen a few odd ones over the years. Normally, press releases purposely avoid eccentricity of any kind. Sometimes there are as dull as can be. But not always. Especially in this case. It starts off:

BURGER, Calif., June 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Today, IHOP® Restaurants announces that it is going by a new name – IHOb. For burgers…

Turns out it’s a temporary “name change.” IHOP wants to add a little oomph to its effort to compete in the crowded field of hamburgers in America.

The change, in fact, celebrates the debut of the brand’s new Ultimate Steakburgers, a line-up of seven mouth-watering, all-natural burgers…. According to a company spokesburger, “These burgers are so burgerin’ good, we re-burgered our name to the International House of Burgers!”

That isn’t even the strange part. The third, fourth and fifth paragraphs of the release are, and I quote exactly as they appear:

Also, burgers burgers burgers. Burgerin’ burgers burgers. Reburgered burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers. Burger burgerings burgers burgers burgers. Burgerin’ burgers burgers. Moreover, burgers burgered burgers burgers. Burgers burgers burgerin’ burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgerin’ burgers.

Furthermore, burgers burgers burgers. Burgerin’ burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgerin’ burgers burgers! Burgers burgers burgers reburgered burgers burgers burgers burgering burgers. Not to mention, burgers burgered burgers burgered. Burgers, burgers, burgerin’ burgers and burger burgers.

Lastly, burgers burgers #burgers. Reburgered burgers burgers burgered burgers burgered burger burgers. Burgers burgers burgers?

New Robins in the Front Yard

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May is ending, and June is beginning, as they should: warm. With periodic rain — which we had a lot of yesterday — to keep things growing for a while.

The robin eggs in the front yard nest hatched not long ago, and the hatchlings are eager for food. There seem to be three.

The female and the male robins oblige them. This I can see with my own eyes, though I read a bit about robin behavior to confirm that both parents feed the young.

As “The Story of Robin Eggs” puts it, “Now it becomes a full time job for both parents to protect the nest, find food, and feed the clamoring babies during the 9-16 days they spend in the nest.”

New Library in the Neighborhood

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A Little Free Library has appeared on my block. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there a few days ago, the last time I walked by. Dog walking usually takes me by that front yard.

Today I took a moment to look into the new Little Free Library. Looks like the family that put it up stocked it, for now, with children’s books that their daughters no longer want. I know them slightly: husband, wife, two daughters younger than mine, but not little kids any more. And a dog smaller than mine. Sometimes they sniff each other through the back yard fence.

I’ll have to contribute a volume or two, to be neighborly. Right now, though, I’m looking for my copy of The Right Stuff. Wonderful book. I read it again last year, after first reading it ca. 1991. Now I want to re-read a favorite part, about the trials of Enos the space chimp.

Recent Sounds

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I take my digital audio recorder some places that I go — I’m resisting the temptation to call it a “tape recorder” — and sometimes to step outside the door and record the ambient sounds.

Such as outside my mother’s house in San Antonio last month. The birds were a lot livelier than in the cold Illinois I’d left, and the selection of birdsong somewhat different, though I can’t pinpoint the exact differences.

In Marathon, Texas, late last month the wind blew much of the night and into the morning one day. I captured 20 seconds of it, but it went on without much pause for hours.

The spring rainstorms in northern Illinois have been numerous and loud recently. This is what I heard from my front porch about 24 hours ago.

The rain had stopped by the morning and the sun dried up a lot of the puddles today. But not everywhere. The back yard is still marshy.