Dog & Butterfly & Maybe a Squirrel

When my dog chases a butterfly, I don’t think it’s in the spirit of playfulness, however it’s characterized in the enigmatic song “Dog & Butterfly.” Not long ago I saw, for the first time, our dog chasing a butterfly, though it might have been a moth, or maybe just a small and less-than-colorful butterfly. Anyway, I’m pretty sure the dog had eating the butterfly in mind.

The dog is keen on catching insects and occasionally does. Fortunately for her, she hasn’t yet caught a bee in her mouth, even though I’ve seen her trying.

Today was warm again and the dog spent longer than usual scanning the upper reaches of the tree in the back yard.

DogI couldn’t make out what she was looking at. A squirrel would be the best guess. Or maybe a tree gnome invisible to us, but not dogs.

The EMP Museum

By chance today I saw about 10 minutes of Pompeii, a movie that apparently came out last year. The scene pitted gladiators vs. Roman soldiers, and clearly the gladiators were the put-upon salt-of-the-earth hero and his friends, while the soldiers fought for a cartoon Roman upper-class twit bad guy. I watched anyway. Nothing like a little implausible sword play to liven your afternoon. It didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that overall the movie was very stupid indeed.

But maybe I should have watched the end. According to Marc Savlov in the Austin Chronicle: “We all know what happens in the end and, to his credit, Anderson [the director] totally nails the vulcanization of Pompeii. You want it? You got it: flaming chariot melees, massive tsunamis, and a downright hellacious pyroclastic flowgasm that makes the ones in Dante’s Peak look like so many Etch-a-Sketch doodlings (all of it shot in well-above-average 3-D). Pompeii delivers the goods – well, at least during its final 20 minutes.”

It took me a while to remember what EMP stands for in the EMP Museum in Seattle, which I visited on the afternoon of August 28. That evening I said (jokingly) that I’d gone to the Electromagnetic Pulse Museum, because I’d forgotten it stands for Experience Music Project.

The EMP is at Seattle Center, just north of downtown. Seattle Center was the site of the 1962 world’s fair, interestingly known as the Century 21 Exposition. EMP didn’t come along until near the actual beginning of the 21st century, back in 2000, as the creation of Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen and right-angle averse starchitect Frank Gehry.

It’s a colorful 140,000-square foot blob of a building, roundly hated by many. I didn’t hate it, but it didn’t inspire much admiration in me either. I’ve seen plenty uglier buildings, following my own visceral and idiosyncratic standard for ugliness, which is uninformed by theory. Most parking garages are worse. So are many brutalist and otherwise concrete-based structures. EMP just seemed like Gehry being Gehry.

I understand it was a technical marvel to build, with more than 21,000 exterior aluminum and stainless steel shingles all uniquely shaped and designed to fit together like pieces of a puzzle, and an interior defined by strange irregular shapes and held up by 280 steel ribs. I found myself looking up at the interior with more admiration than the exterior. The engineers needed a terrific amount of computing power to design and put the thing together, which somehow seems fitting, considering that a software philanthropist paid for it.

Here’s an odd assertion from the museum: “If [the building’s] 400 tons of structural steel were stretched into the lightest banjo string, it would extend one-fourth of the way to Venus.” That must mean the average distance, since the true distance from the Earth to Venus changes every moment. Or maybe it means the distance between the orbits of Earth and Venus.

Wonder how many ping-pong balls it would take to fill it. Someone at the museum needs to figure that out.

Richard Seven wrote in the Seattle Times in 2010: “A smashed guitar, in honor of Seattle’s Jimi Hendrix and his rebellious style, was the inspiration and template. But the real collision was between one of the world’s most relentlessly anti-box architects, an unfathomable task of trying to freeze the rock ‘n’ roll process, and a wealthy private client who embraced the costs and advances in computing and engineering that allowed a building like that to even stand…

“When he toured the building just before it opened in the summer of 2000, Gehry told reporters, ‘It’s supposed to be unusual. Nobody has seen this before or will see it again. Nobody will build another one.’ ” Probably so.

As a museum, EMP is devoted to pop culture. Though “music” is in the name — and Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana each have their own galleries — that’s only part of the equation. One of the current exhibits, for instance, is “Star Wars and the Power of Costume,” which sounds like a display of costumes from that franchise. It cost extra, so I took a pass.

I didn’t miss “What’s Up Doc? The Animation of Chuck Jones.” That alone was almost worth the inflated price of admission to EMP. Besides original sketches and drawings, storyboards, production backgrounds, animation cels, photographs, and a fair amount to read, there was the opportunity to see cartoons on big screens, such as “What’s Opera, Doc?”, one of the Roadrunner cartoons — I forget which, not that it matters — and “One Froggy Evening,” which I probably hadn’t seen in more than 30 years, and which I didn’t fully appreciate when young. Especially the notion of a frog singing tunes from the 1890s.

The museum features some impressively large installations. One is made of guitars. A lot of guitars, arrayed upward in a kind of mass cone of guitars (and banjos and keyboards and other musical instruments) two stories high. The work is called “IF VI WAS IX,” and it was put together by a Seattle artist who goes by the single name Trimpin.

It’s more than just a cone of instruments. EMP notes that “short stretches of music were played into a computer then organized by Trimpin into a continuous electronic composition, with notes assigned to specific instruments. Customized robotic guitars play one string at a time. Six guitars work together to create the sound of one chord—a mechanical metaphor for how musical styles and traditions continue to influence one another.”

Nearby is the “Sky Church” room, whose main feature is a 33’ x 60’ HD LED screen that projects images on (from?) an enormous wall. The 65-foot ceiling is illuminated with parasols that seem to float overhead, and the space is well equipped with special-effects lighting. Technically impressive.

The perfect venue for, say, the restored color version of A Trip to the Moon. Or “Steamboat Willie.” Or “Duck Amuck.” Or the “Thriller” music video. Or any of many possibilities. All short, all worth seeing on a vast screen. Maybe shorts like these play at the Sky Church, but the day I was there, the venue seemed mostly to pump out music videos for people under 30.

I’ve read that the full name of the museum used to be the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (with the clunky initials EMP|SFM), but some years ago, the science fiction aspect was demoted. The museum still covers science fiction, as well as the horror genre, but in two galleries in the basement.

Not bad displays. I enjoyed seeing an assortment of SF movie and TV show props, such as the original Terminator’s leather jacket and I forget what else (no Lost In Space Robot, though), and playing with at least one of the interactive features: a large globe that would take on the likeness of each of the Solar System’s planets, along with the Moon (and Titan?), at the touch of a button.

Oddly enough, I got more out of the horror exhibit than the SF one. Besides static displays and props and the like, the horror gallery included a number of alcoves in which you can watch well-made short films on various renowned horror movies. These proved interesting, even though I don’t much care one way or the other about the genre.

Because of these shorts, I’m now inspired to watch two horror movies I’ve never gotten around to: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Exorcist. The former was on TCM late Sunday night, but I didn’t want to stay up late to watch it; such is middle age. I did see the haunting green credits, however, and I’ll get around to the whole thing before long.

There’s also a first-floor gallery devoted to the fantasy genre, but by the time I got there, I was a little tired of the museum. At least I happened to see the costume that Mandy Patinkin wore as Inigo Montoya.

As mentioned, two Seattle musical acts, Jimi Hindrix and Nirvana, had their own galleries. Of the two, I spent more time in the Hindrix room, despite being too young when he was alive to fully appreciate his talents, since he was common enough on the radio well into the 1970s. As for Nirvana, I was too old to appreciate them when they were around, and in fact out of the country during their heyday. I remember hearing about Kurt Cobain’s suicide right after I arrived in Hong Kong in April 1994, and my first thought was, Who?

Both galleries apparently change from time to time, rather than being generic tributes to the artists. The Hendrix exhibit I saw was  “Wild Blue Angel: Hendrix Abroad, 1966-1970.” It detailed his travels as a successful musician. As the museum explains: “At the height of his fame, Jimi Hendrix performed more than 500 times in 15 countries and recorded 130 songs in 16 studios. He was a musical nomad, his life an endless series of venues, recording sessions, flights, and hotels.”

His passport was on display. I got a kick out of that. Even better, while the original was behind glass, you could leaf through a replica, which I did. The dude got around.

Thursday Scraps

Last year my part of the suburbs was lousy with skunks. For whatever ecological reasons, the population was up — so much so that both Lilly and I saw them prowling the streets at night.

This year, not so much. This year, it’s rabbits. Yesterday I looked out my office window, which faces my front yard, and saw two, each helping to trim the lawn. I’ve seen single rabbits frequently in both yards, and in parks, but never two at the same time.

rabbits June 2015The dog would have had a barking fit if she’d seen them. But she didn’t.

Not long ago I woke up thinking, why are sidekicks just for superheroes and singing cowboys? Why not for other, less fictional occupations? Some examples:

Ben Smith, CPA, and his sidekick Tuck.
Deepak Patal, Ph.D., and his sidekick Hadji
President Clinton and her sidekick Slick (still hypothetical)

Earlier this month I was driving west on North Ave. in Glendale Heights, Ill., which is a western suburb, and decided I needed to go east, so I turned north on Glen Ellyn Rd. to find a convenient place to turn around. And then I discovered Easy Street. So I drove down Easy Street, just to get a look at the houses of the people who Live on Easy Street. More carports than usual in the Chicago suburbs, but other than that it looked fairly ordinary.

Occasionally, as in once every few years, the urge to listen to early ’80s German-language rock ‘n’ roll is just too strong to resist. We all feel that way. No? Well, I feel that way now and then, and the Spider Murphy Gang is just the thing for it. There’s always “Schickeria.” or “Skandal im Sperrbezirk.”

Waterloo and All That

Been quite a week for multi-centenary anniversaries. After Magna Carta earlier this week came Waterloo today, so famous you don’t even need to call it the Battle of Waterloo. It was the occasion for a lot of showy commemorations in the UK and Belgium (and what are they doing in France? Calling it jeudi, probably).

I guess everyone was busy with other things during the centennial, so the bicentennial got star treatment. The Daily Mail has a fine collection of photos for the commemorations. The pics made me wonder: will the fellow who’s playing Napoleon, according to the caption a French lawyer named Franck Samson, be sent to St. Helena for a while now? You know, to buttress the re-enactment’s authenticity.

The Daily Mail again (man, they know how to use the Internet): pictures of St. Helena. Apparently the island’s going to get a real airport soon, so that the not-so-frequent royal mail ship from Cape Town will be a thing of the past.

One more thing about Waterloo re-enactments: I wonder who played Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher? That’s a pretty important part, after all. An elderly German with a taste for re-enactment, no doubt, made up to look like his horse had fallen on him.

As I look around, I find more things inspired by Waterloo. That’s one of the time-eating dangers of the Internet, but also its prime joy. The song that helped propel Abba to a higher income than the GDP of Sweden (or something like that) was named “Waterloo,” of course, but there’s also a song lost to time of the same title, recorded by Stonewall Jackson in 1959, which hit the country charts just after Johnny Horton’s “The Battle of New Orleans.” It was the golden age of battle-themed honky-tonk music, clearly.

Stonewall Jackson’s song includes the following deathless lyrics. Punctuated as I hear it.

Little general, Napoleon of France
Tried to conquer, the world but lost his pants.
Met defeat, known as Bonaparte’s retreat.
And that’s when Napoleon met his Waterloo.

Incidentally, at 82, Stonewall Jackson — reportedly not a stage name, and I believe it — is still with us. That’s good to know.

Heavy Rain, Then Sudden Fireworks

After posting yesterday, we had more fierce rain, until it finally petered out around 9 pm. At about 9:50, I started hearing pop-pop-pop-BOOM-pop-crackle-bang-pop-pop. As in, fireworks. Private fireworks, not a large public display, as people shoot off on the Fourth of July or New Year’s, neither of which was yesterday. Is that really fireworks, I wondered, or some kind of bizarre thunder? What’s going here?

Soon I figured out that the Blackhawks must have won the Stanley Cup. Pull up Google News and sure enough, they had. Then I heard some yelling in the street by some happy knuckleheads, something that almost never happens in the suburbs. I don’t remember that happening the last time Hawks won, or the time before, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention.

I do remember fireworks and — possibly — distant gunshots when the Bulls won one of their championships in 1997. I figured it was a good time to stay home, which we did. Anyway, it’s been a long time since I got news via fireworks. Odd how things come to one’s attention sometimes.

Or not. I didn’t hear until yesterday that Ronnie Gilbert had died. Time to look at the Weavers’ 1951 videos, made for Snader Telescriptions. Been a while since I’d seen them, and before the age of YouTube, I never had.

Oddly enough, I found out that Blaze Starr — a different sort of entertainer — had died almost as soon as the news was out, by a mention in an email, of all things. That was a case of, she was still alive? (But I knew Ronnie Gilbert was; now there’s only one original Weaver left.)

Maybe I need to pay more attention to this constantly updated Roll of Death, which could also be called the Death Never Takes a Holiday List. If I had, I’d have known about not only Ronnie Gilbert, but also Tiffany Two.

Thursday Squibs

Sometimes at the bank I get a roll of dollar coins, which totals 25 all together. These days, most of them are presidential dollars, though some Sacagaweas and Susies are usually mixed in. Since the presidents after Garfield have relatively low mintage — Garfield had a total of 74.2 million from both mints, while Arthur had only about 10 million — it’s rare to see one of the later presidents. This week, a TR coin turned up (one of 9.2 million minted) in a roll. In worn condition. Odd.

“What’s syncopation?” Lilly asked recently. Being in band, I thought she’d know that. Maybe not. I learned about it in high school, but when she asked I realized I’d forgotten how to describe it. Just what YouTube is for: this is a lucid explanation, and he even makes Philip Glass a little more interesting.

In line at a grocery store the other day, a man behind me was carrying on a vigorous conversation on his phone. Nothing unusual about that anymore, unlike the day in 1989 when I saw a woman pull a brick of a phone from her purse at the McDonald’s that used to be on the Mag Mile and start talking into it. Overhearing one side of a call these days might even be annoying, depending on the conversation.

I couldn’t pin down his language. It didn’t quite sound like Russian, but it was some kind of Slavic tongue. Maybe Ukrainian. Anyway, he had a good voice, so I listened. There wasn’t much else to do in line anyway. Then I started to notice: talktalktalktalk OK talktalktalk OK talktalktalktalktalktalktalk OK talktalktalktalktalktalk OK.

I know OK is practically universal. (Or do the French resist?) That wasn’t a surprise. Still, I marveled that a bit of 1830s American slang, whose origin even now isn’t quite certain, has traveled so far. So naturally did he use the word, it might as well have been native from his point of view.

New fact for the day (a couple of weeks ago for me, when I learned it): Neil Diamond wrote “Red, Red Wine.” A strange notion at first, but then again he’s written other songs with an alcohol motif. Then I learned that that’s his actual birth name: Neil Diamond, son of Akeeba and Rose Diamond of Brooklyn. It always sounded like a stage name to me.

In Branson in 2012 I met a fellow whose act was a Neil Diamond impersonation (tribute, as they say). He had the enormous mane and the good looks of young Neil Diamond, but I didn’t get to hear whether he had similarly impressive pipes. I’d hope so.

The last episode of Mad Men is on Sunday. A lot of shows now have last episodes, so it isn’t quite like the novelty of watching the end of The Fugitive (which I don’t remember) or even, come to think of it, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (which I do). Here’s an interesting essay about final shows, though maybe covering something that doesn’t really deserve an essay, namely the last episode of Hogan’s Heroes.

Still, I’ll be watching Mad Men. If only to see whether Roger Sterling gets one more funny line or scene.

Summer Interlude

Summertime and the living is — not so different from the rest of the year, considering that we have climate control in the house, have to meet the same deadlines as the rest of the year, and so on.

Time for summer break anyway. Back to posting around July 27. Till then, a handful of summer tunes. Been fond of “Summer Wind,” sung by Sinatra, only since the late ’80s, when I acquired a tape of Strangers in the Night. Music by Heinz Meier and lyrics by Johnny Mercer.

I’ve known “Summer Breeze,” by Seals & Crofts, probably since it was released, or at least fairly new. It evokes a moment in summer, in particular a summer evening, without mentioning beaches or puppy love or such.

Not quite sure what’s going on in “Suddenly Last Summer,” by the Motels, but it’s to do with a particular summer. Some summers, after all, are more memorable than others, especially when you’re young.

Also, some recommended reading. I just started Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger. I’m already hooked, and I haven’t even gotten to his crossings of the Empty Quarter. He’s only been dead about 10 years. The Telegraph’s obit is here, and the Guardian’s is here.

Anna Maria Alberghetti in a Wintry Mix, Honey

Another day above freezing. That’s a good thing, except for the current forecast. The following is direct from the National Weather Service, which is worthy of respect for its accuracy, but also the fact that it doesn’t fix cute names to winter storms. The NWS put out this “Special Statement” for my part of the country early this evening.

RAIN AND EVEN SOME THUNDERSTORMS WILL DEVELOP ACROSS NORTHERN ILLINOIS LATER TONIGHT. HOWEVER… TEMPERATURES ACROSS FAR NORTHERN ILLINOIS… MAINLY ALONG AND NORTH OF INTERSTATE 88… [we’re north of I-88 by a few miles] MAY REMAIN COLD ENOUGH TONIGHT FOR THIS PRECIPITATION TO BEGIN AS A WINTRY MIX OF SNOW… SLEET OR FREEZING RAIN BEFORE MUCH WARMER TEMPERATURES ARRIVE THURSDAY MORNING.

DUE TO THE FACT THAT THE PRECIPITATION COULD FALL AT A HEAVY RATE LATE TONIGHT…THIS COULD RESULT IN SOME SNOW OR ICE ACCUMULATIONS ACROSS PORTIONS OF THE AREA BY DAYBREAK THURSDAY… POSSIBLY IMPACTING THE MORNING COMMUTE.

CURRENTLY IT APPEARS THAT A COUPLE INCHES INCHES OF SNOW MAY ACCUMULATE BEFORE THE WINTRY MIX CHANGES TO ALL RAIN EARLY THURSDAY MORNING.

Odd forecast. Deuced odd, it is.

Speaking of odd, it took me nearly 40 years to get the following knock-knock joke, as told by Ted Baxter during the Sept. 13, 1975, episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, “Edie Gets Married.”

Not that I’ve been puzzling over it for 40 years. I’d forgotten all about it until today, walking around in the fairly pleasant afternoon air, when I thought, What did that joke about Anna Maria Alberghetti mean? Memory works in mysterious ways.

Just as unlikely, I remembered to look it up when I got home, connecting the joke to “Darktown Strutters’ Ball,” which I’d heard before – but (much) more recently than 1975. It was clearly a joke for grownups back then, back when sitcom writers actually wrote jokes for grownups.

A lot of singers have done the song. Fats Domino’s version is here.

Send More Chuck Berry

Time for another winter break. The better to admire the snow drifts and icy sidewalks and salty roads and bare trees. Back to posting around February 2 — when I’ll still be able to see those things out my window and under my feet.

I didn’t know until recently that Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” a fitting song for the pit of winter, was included on the Voyager Golden Record. But so it was. Dark is space, cold is the void.

This handy JPL web site tells us that Voyager I, for its part, is now 19+ billion km from the Earth, or more than 126 AU, with a round-trip light time from the Sun of more than 35 hours (so that would be about 17.5 light hours out — not even a light day). The thing’s been flying for over 36 years. Lesson: space is really big.

I did remember that “Johnny B. Goode” went with the Voyagers. Probably because of a SNL skit that mentioned it.

Kreeg Antwoord: You see, it all started on August 20th, 1977, when NASA put up a recording of the sounds of Earth on Voyager I. A two-hour long tape included natural sounds of animals, a French poem by Gaugliere, a passage from the Koran in Arabic, messages from President Carter, United Nations Secretary Kurt Waldheim, music — everything from classical to Chuck Berry.

Maxine Universe: Uh — and you’re saying that the — another civilization has found the tape?

Cocuwa: Yes. They’ve sent us a message that actually proves it. It may be just four simple words, but it is the FIRST positive proof that other intelligent beings inhabit the universe.

Maxine Universe: Uh — what are the four words, Cocuwa?

Cocuwa: The four words that came to us from outer space — the FOUR words that will appear on the cover of Time magazine next week — are [he holds up the magazine: Send More Chuck Berry].

The Greenstone Church

The Greenstone United Methodist Church is at the corner of 112th St. and St. Lawrence Ave. and it’s green.

Yuriko suggested it was covered with moss, but closer inspection reveals that much of the rock itself is green. Apparently it’s made of serpentine quarried in Pennsylvania. I wasn’t familiar with serpentine, so I looked into it. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica says that it’s “a mineral which, in a massive and impure form, occurs on a large scale as a rock, and being commonly of variegated colour, is often cut and polished, like marble, for use as a decorative stone… Although popularly called a ‘marble,’ serpentine is essentially different from any kind of limestone, in that it is a magnesium silicate, associated however, with more or less ferrous silicate.”

Why aren’t more things built of it? Could be the expense. But it does make for a sturdy structure. Greenstone has been standing since 1882, designed by Solon Beman, who did all of Pullman. He did a number of other things – including a large number of Christian Science churches, interestingly enough – but he’s best known for Pullman.

Back in the days of Mr. Pullman, the structure was built as a Unitarian Church “for all to unite in a union body and get a broad-minded evangelical clergyman,” according to the Pullman Foundation. That dog didn’t hunt, with each denomination going its own way in rented space elsewhere. It also didn’t help that rent was high at Greenstone. In 1907, a decade after Pullman and his company ceased to own the property, Methodists acquired it.

The inside is modestly adorned, with its original cherry wood pews. I’m sorry I didn’t get to hear the organ.

Again from the Pullman Foundation: “The organ was built in 1882 by the distinguished firm of Steere and Turner as their Opus #170. It is one of the few manual tracker organs remaining in the United States… The organ contains 1,260 pipes ranging in size from the large front pipes to others the size of a pencil. It consists of two manuals for the hands, one for the feet, twenty-one stops and twenty-three ranks of pipes, three couplers and a twenty-seven note-pedal board.”

I don’t know a lot about organs, but that sounds fancy. The foundation further says that “its tracker action means that the valves are mechanically linked to the keys and are directly activated by the organist’s hands and feet. Most organs have an electrical system which eliminates this direct link between the keys and pipes. Today’s organists find playing this organ a physically demanding but emotionally satisfying act.” No organ for old men, you could say.