Category Archives: Over the Transom

Thursday Detritus

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The rains have cleared away, leaving cold air in their wake. This pattern will keep repeating in the coming months, getting successively colder until snow replaces rain and mere cold air is a polar vortex or some such. Bah. At least the trees are coloring up nicely.

An open question for YouTube: how, in the age of digital spying on consumers — so I hear — can YouTube offer me such wildly off-the-mark ads? Lately I’ve been getting a lot of anti-vapping ads, for instance. Aimed at teenagers. Not, I have to add, ahead of much content that that demographic might watch on YouTube. The chances of me taking up vapping are pretty close to zero, YouTube.

Some time ago I picked up a copy of The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (1993) for $1 at Half Price Books. Now I’m reading it. It’s a good read and there are some good lines in it. Here’s one that helps introduce a character:

For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation.

One of the author’s idiosyncrasies is constructions like that, with “filled” instead of “filling.” But you get used to it, and it works. That’s a wonderful sentence that pretty much sets the tone for Tert Card. We’ve all met people like that.

From a press release over the transom the other day, a subject I have no professional interest in. I’m more interested in how the thing was written. I suspect the writer is a fairly fluent but nevertheless non-native speaker of English (all sic):

Businessmen hailing from UAE have an interest in making some investments in Armenia. The trade turnover in between the two countries has risen 10-folks from twenty-five million to about 250 million USD in the last five years as told by Zaki Nusseibeh, the Minister of the State after the sidelines of the ministerial conference of 17th Francophonie summit…

After Ruddigore on Saturday, Ann wanted ice cream. At about 10 in the evening in Evanston, Andy’s Frozen Custard seemed the only place still open serving something close to ice cream. She agreed that was close enough, so we went.
That image doesn’t have many people in it, but not long after we got there, the place was packed. Seems that selling frozen custard late on Saturday evenings near a major university is a pretty good business.

I’d never been to Andy’s before. Turns out there are about 60 of them, mostly scattered around the central U.S., though as far north as metro Chicago and as far south as central Florida. Andy’s makes a good frozen treat. Too good, in fact. I should have gotten a small triple chocolate instead of a medium.

Who did the score for Doctor Zhivago? I found myself wondering that yesterday. Maybe that’s something I should know, but I looked it up: Maurice Jarre.

That came to mind because I’d turned on the TV and DZ was playing. In fact, the very scene in which Yuri and Lara reunited. The Lara’s theme leitmotif was part of the action. I watched about 15 minutes of it.

“What’s this movie about?” Ann asked. I had to think. It’s been how long since I’ve seen it? In the summer of ’81 at the Texas Union Theatre, or in Japan in the early ’90s, when I saw so many movies on VHS? Either way, over 25 years ago.

“Well, let’s see. Doctor Zhivago, that’s him there, Omar Sharif. He’s a doctor of course, and he has a wife. He likes her well enough, but he really loves this other woman, who’s on screen now. I don’t remember who played her. Anyway, there’s a love triangle and they all get caught up in the Russian Revolution and are often in danger. Bolsheviks show up. Zhivago’s also a poet and sensitive fellow. He spends a lot of time looking off in the distance. And there’s a lot of scenery. Wide shots of the steppes of Russia. It’s an epic of a movie. Did I mention that it’s over three hours long? It’s an epic of epic proportions.”

Despite my flip description, I remember liking the movie whenever I saw it. Odd how details of most movies you see or books you read or music you hear or places you go tend to evaporate over the years, leaving a residue like the one I told to Ann.

Never have read Pasternak, so I don’t even have a residue of the book. Maybe I should, but life is short and Russian novels are long. The most recent one I read, a few years ago, was August 1914. Pretty soon into it, I gave up trying to keep track of all of the many characters.

Maurice Jarre, I learned, is the father of Jean-Michel Jarre, known to me for Oxygène. Back when people had record collections, there was always one kid on each floor of each dorm at your college who had unusual records, things no one else had ever heard of. I can’t remember the lad’s name, but he was on my hall freshman year, and that was one of the records he had.

Early October Debris

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We acquired some pumpkins today.
For now they’ll be on the deck, at risk of squirrel attack. I suppose we’re aspiring to jack-o-lanterns, but the way things go, we might not do any cutting until October 30.

A recent press release I received said, in part: “_____ chewables are refreshing… tablets that ward off fatigue, foggy head and nausea.

“Using Japanese _____, an ancient detox extract with hangover prevention properties and anti-inflammatory effects, _____ also contains potent antioxidants that replenish lost electrolytes. They boost immune support, hydration and give your liver much needed love.”

That should be “much-needed love,” but I’m nit picking. Yet it’s true, we just don’t love our livers enough in this country. Think of all that the liver does for us, and what do we do to it (some of us, anyway)? Lacquer our livers with alcohol.

Even so, I decided to opt out of more mail from that source. I get a lot of email as it is.

The camera does odd things sometimes.
That or I accidentally recorded the dog receiving a telepathic message from her home planet. It’s well known that such messages generate a fleeting green glow at the back of the eyeball.

A recent dusk.

Not long ago I saw a rainbow at about the same time of day. I was able to tell Ann, “Rainbow at night, sailor’s delight, rainbow at morning, sailor take warning.” She’d never heard that. Modern education is pretty much a failure when it comes to weather proverbs. Or is it “red sky”? Both versions exist, as far as I can tell.

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.”