Whatever Happened to the Class of ‘87?
This summer I’m passing another one of ‘em signposts of getting older: my high school graduation class is holding its 20 year reunion. I’m not going. High school just wasn’t my thing.
During that period I only attended my classes dutifully, obtained a slightly above average G.P.A., and kept my socializing and extra curricular activities to a bare minimum. I was a member of The Science Club, not nearly as well-attended as the most popular club (Ski Club), but both did basically the same thing (weekend field trips). Mostly my high school was all about football and attending mandatory morning pep rallies all the time. Rah fucking rah. Check the number of football players listed as “notable alumni” on the school’s Wikipedia entry. Another semi-famous attendee was Doug Hopkins, the songwriter from The Gin Blossoms who killed himself in 1993.
Another high school memory — on the first day of seventh grade, I remember making a conscious decision to never eat lunch in the cafeteria. For the next six years I either went home for lunch, ate in the school’s outdoor café, hid out in the library, or walked to a nearby grocery store to hang out and read magazines. It sounds pathetic, but in all honesty I liked being alone — even today.
So we’ll just pass on the reunion and let everyone else talk about their families and their SUVs and their perfect golf swings. I have a Classmates page in case anyone would want to contact me. The photo is from my senior yearbook, taken when my hair was at its longest (is that a mullet?!?).
Design for Living
The L.A. Times takes an in-depth look at the iconic Pacific Palisades home of Charles and Ray Eames (thanks Christopher!). I used to think the Chemosphere might be my dream home, but the Eames’ place seems a lot more comfortable and homey while still retaining that all important modern chic. It shares a lot in common with the Glidehouse and other currently hot home styles. Of course, if I owned the house, I’d also have to take Ray Eames’ collection of tchotchkes from around the world as well.
Pieces of Eighties
You know how things that were normal and harmless 20+ years ago often appear so weird looking today? I got that in spades while browsing through YouTube user dcbatwing’s collection of local station promos, demo reels and other video effluvia of the past. One such item is this neat demo reel that motion graphics company Atlantic produced in 1986. I vaguely remember some of this stuff, but it’s a mind blower to watch them edited together. One can only conclude that clients in the ’80s absolutely loved their shiny, chrome-y moving surfaces!
WJLA’s “So Good To Turn To” promo from 1982 is a cheezy delight. This particular one came from Washington D.C., but really it could’ve been anywhere. Wasn’t there a time when every local news station desperately tried to convey an image of cutesy family-friendliness? You can’t avoid the relentlessly cheery jingle which sounds as if it came from an ABC sitcom (”Also Starring John Schuck as Cranky Neighbor”).
Letter to CBS
Dear CBS,
I was sorely disappointed to learn that you are replacing the last four episodes of Creature Comforts with repeats of some other show. Please, please reconsider and air those final episodes. It may not be as profitable for you, but just please think of the goodwill you’ve lost as a result of this ill-advised move.
In our household, CBS News Sunday Morning, Jericho and Creature Comforts were the only CBS programs we enjoyed regularly. And now two of the three are gone. With C.C. yanked so suddenly off your schedule, I will have serious reservations on investing my time in any further CBS programs.
- Matt Hinrichs
Addendum: Tell CBS how you feel. Go to CBS.com and click the Feedback link at the very bottom of the page. Perhaps enough fan support will convince them to do something with the remaining episodes.
Doo What?
The Washington Post has a small article on the beachside ’50s-’60s motel revival in the Wildwoods section of New Jersey. The locals call this architectural style “Doo Wop,” which bugs me since Doo Wop is a musical style and I always thought “Googie” is the accepted term for that kinda stuff. The Wikipedia entry for Googie lists Doo Wop as another term for it, though, so maybe it’s correct. At least they’re preserving this stuff nicely — check the Doo Wop Preservation League Gallery.
The In Sounds of Today
Let’s discuss what’s been playing on my computer, eh? Delighted to find that eMusic carries the back catalog for influential UK indie label Cherry Red, I spent several downloads recreating the Japanese compilation Cherry Red for Cafe Apres Midi for a whole lot less money than if I’d bought the CD itself. eMusic wound up having having 23 of the disc’s 26 tracks, with the other three songs available at the iTunes store. The resulting playlist makes me wanna smoke clove cigarettes and wistfully compose bad poetry whilst sitting under a tree. Best known for introducing Everything But The Girl to the world, Cherry Red’s roster specialized in introspective pop drawing from bossa nova, ’60s jazz, folk, and, yes, punk. Although spotty, this particular comp is anchored by some shimmering instrumentals and offbeat cover versions like Tracey Thorn’s take on “Femme Fatale.” Acoustic guitars never sounded so yummy.
Continuing the Brit pop theme, I also finally got to check out the 2005 double disc set It’s So Fine: Pye Girls Are Go! via Dusty Groove. This baby collects a whole bunch of energetic 1963-72 girl pop, mostly b-sides from U.K. labels Pye and Picadilly, with illuminating liner notes from Cha Cha Charming’s Sheila Burgel. Fifty songs worth, to be exact — and most of it’s pretty fantastic! It’s amazing to think a great majority of this stuff never made it to the U.S., since the songs are heavily influenced by a variety of American ’60s pop and Girl Group sounds — all the while retaining that vaguely “British” feel. My fave track might very well be the irresistable and very showbizzy “Take Away The Emptiness Too,” a 1970 single from the wonderfully monikered Tina Tott. Other pleasures lie in the bubblegummy “Sunshine Follows the Rain” by Sweetcorn and Nita Rossi’s pissed-off classic “Untrue Unfaithful (That Was You).” Time to break out those go-go boots, people.
Cleanup on Aisle Five
These circa 1970 photos of Hy-Lo Drug Store shelf displays (part of Paula Wirth’s Vintage Drug Stores flickr group) have an eerie stillness to them which I love. They remind me of the scene in The Long Goodbye where Elliott Gould visits an all-night grocery store and you see all these wonderfully pristine 1970s food packages on the shelves. I can’t possibly be the only one who gets off on stuff like this, right?
Headaches by the Number
Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 writes of his chronic headaches in The New York Times Magazine. Funny!
Getting Gay with Kids Is Here
Another embedded video to share because I’m too lazy to write anything substantial, I know, but this one’s a real kitschy gem. Back in 1986, NBC celebrated its 60th anniversary with an all-star special which somehow escaped my notice back then. The clip below showcases Nell Carter, Bea Arthur and others (Punky Brewster!) singing “Family” from Dreamgirls. Now, read that last sentence again and tell me how terrifically gay that sounds. Then watch the clip and mourn a little that today’s TV networks would never in a million years do these glorious displays of outright earnestness. “We are a family, like a giant tree.” Yeah, right, until your series gets cancelled, bucko.
A Future That Never Was
Did you know that today marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of Monsanto’s House of the Future at Disneyland? My s.o. commemorated the occasion with a thoughtful Just Ask Christopher post. Guess the folks at Disney were too busy manning the new Finding Nemo submarines to notice this particular anniversary.
God Hates Reckless Drivers
You gotta love the internet these days, when you can read about something in a book and then turn around and check it out online. The book: Amid Amidi’s Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation. The film: Stop Driving Us Crazy from 1959. This jazzy short occupies the weird intersection where Christian values overlap with swank-ola ’50s aesthetics. Wild, man, wild.
Charles Harper 1922-2007
Yesterday, scrubbles reader Hilary left a comment on my Charles Harper book review that the artist passed away. His hometown paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, has confirmed the news with an obit and editorial cartoon. R.I.P. Charley Harper, and thanks for all the wonderful art you left us.
Something to Chew On
Time magazine illustrates what families around the world eat in an average week. Interesting in so many ways. Looks like the Mexican family loves its Coca Cola, and the German family has more alchohol than usual.
How to Make a Mosaic
Let’s talk about art. For the past several weeks I’ve been driven to try something new — transfer a digital image to a hangable piece of mosaic art. I’ve always been fascinated by this kind of stuff, with people using Legos and whatnot, but the process is proving more complicated than originally anticipated. I started with this simple cropped photo of a horse, then reduced it to 40×40 pixels and eight colors:
Eventually I’d like to render the horse in painted wood balls. Or maybe beads if the balls don’t work. This will require a large but still manageable amount of pieces — 1,600 to be exact. At that point what I needed most is a Photoshop plugin that tells you how many pixels of each color an image contains. Far as I know, such a thing doesn’t exist. I’ve also tried various online ASCII art doodads to translate the pixels to text, but those didn’t work out they way I wanted. Finally I ended up enlarging the image to 400×400 pixels (as seen above), overlaying a grid in Photoshop, then printing a screen grab of the gridded horsie (because Photoshop doesn’t allow grids to be printed; see, I told you it was complicated). The next step will be roughly calculating how much of each color I need, then actually doing it. Piece by piece, line by line. Exactly how is something I haven’t quite figured out yet. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I came across a few helpful links during my research. Adam Kempa’s archived weblog post on how he made an awesome bottle cap mosaic really inspired me, since the older Lego mosaic he refers to in the post was one of the original sparks for this project. The post contains many neat links to other mosaic projects. The Instructables.com article on making a Lego mosaic was also very helpful, although it references a piece of software made only for Windows users.
Clay Pigeons (And Other Critters)
Did anybody see the Americanized Creature Comforts on CBS? Did anything in that preceding sentence make sense? I’m a huge fan of the UK edition of this program, along with pretty much anything Nick Park/Aardman does, so personally this was a genuine treat. For those unfamiliar with C.C., they take the recordings of real people talking about a variety of subjects and animate them with funny looking animals mouthing the words. A lot of the reviews I’ve seen for this American version were surprisingly negative. I guess people looking for broad, slapsticky comedy and dumb one-liners are bound to be disappointed, but for the rest of us it’s a subtly funny comment on what makes us human. All that and poo-poo jokes, too.
