Highlights from the Collection (part 3)

I am not a philatelist. Rather, this is another in the ongoing series of incidental favorites, ripped from storage and thrown on the web. Attractive sets of vintage US stamps from the 1960s and early 70s. Compare this handsome sampling with the current, ethically and aesthetically questionable "Hershey's" kiss postage.

Notable: the zip code guy; the quaint, almost folksy, "Mail Early in the Day" announcement at top; and the jarring use of the word "crippled" in the set second from bottom. My favorite: the 100th anniversary of Canada (1867-1967) at bottom, simple, abstract and bracing.

"consanguineity": notes

I realize I have no tag or label for this post. Light research based on passing thoughts? Odd "thought clusters"? It was a passage from an article in last week's New Yorker about language and a remote Amazonian tribe that got me thinking about today's note cluster:

"'Besides,' Gordon said, 'if there was some kind of Appalachian inbreeding or retardation going on, you'd see it in the hairlines, facial features, motor ability.'

Aside from the stunningly un-PC articulation of "Appalachian inbreeding" what struck me was the noting of hairlines. Hairlines? I tried doing a little googling about inbreeding and physical characteristics but didn't come up with much about hairlines. Jawlines, though, is another matter. The Hapsburg jaw, as classically manifested in Phillip IV of Spain, at top, is "mandibular prognathism" or severe lantern jaw and underbite. The Hapsburg dynasty was rife with this and other unfortunate conditions, with Phillip's son Charles II apparently reaching the apotheosis of inbreeding. The effluent of generations of close intra-family marriage (his father and mother were uncle and niece), Charles was impotent, mentally deficient, and unable to chew properly.
...
The famous Goya portrait of the Spanish royal family of 1800 is an excruciatingly unidealized representation of mental sluggishness, close marriage, political commentary and the just plain fugly.
...
I then revisited old cyber-research haunts at the fascinating and not-as-creepy-as-it-sounds Eugenics Archive (where the next image down is from). The Archive has a terrific educational site that's admirably thorough, beautifully cross-referenced and simply well-done (a quick guide to themes here). A description of the Archive from their site:

Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes. Eugenicists effectively lobbied for social legislation to keep racial and ethnic groups separate, to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and to sterilize people considered "genetically unfit." Elements of the American eugenics movement were models for the Nazis, whose radical adaptation of eugenics culminated in the Holocaust.We now invite you to experience the unfiltered story of American eugenics – primarily through materials from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, which was the center of American eugenics research from 1910-1940.... It is important to remind yourself that the vast majority of eugenics work has been completely discredited. In the final analysis, the eugenic description of human life reflected political and social prejudices, rather than scientific facts.

I'd found the Archive when doing a search about a book I'd read of: "The Jukes; a Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity," by Richard Dugdale. First published in 1877, it was a study of the lineage of a certain (NY State) family perceived to be mired exclusively in prostitution, thievery and indigence, through several generations. The story continues:

A.H. Estabrook, of the Eugenics Record Office, resurveyed the Jukes (1915) and the Ishmaelites [another pseudonymous family] (1923), and found continued evidence of hereditary feebleminedness and other dysgenic traits. The Jukes and Ishmaelites joined the Kallikaks and Nams as examples of eugenical family studies that were widely taught to social workers and college students during the 1920s and 1930s.

The Archive has riveting field photos, case notes and truly mind-boggling commentary. It also documents Estabrook's other book, "Mongrel Virginians." Enough said.
...
Lastly, I was moved to rediscover the work of Shelby Lee Adams whose photograph of the Napier family, "The Hog Killing" (1990), is shown above. He was born into Appalachia-- Hazard, Kentucky-- and gradually, over 30 years, became known for documenting it on film. I have a book of Adams' work and find it fascinating, but difficult, viewing.
He states:

I have not shied away from what and who has been presented to me. Only an insider could share in this world and I've worked with that knowledge all along. Indeed understanding my place within this culture has been part of my motivation. ...In my opinion this mountain culture should be applauded. Many examples of my work illustrate tolerance of others, resiliency, and acceptance with dignity of conditions others would abhor.

Scalamandre: a brief tour, or, My Determined Effort

About four years ago I visited the Breakers, the Vanderbilt “cottage” in Newport, RI. It was explained that in restoring the building several elaborate fabrics and wallpapers had to be recreated from original 100+year-old damaged remnants. Scalamandre, a name I was vaguely familiar with, had undertaken analysis of fiber content, color and patterning and then reproduced these fine specimens of Gilded Age excess. With a little research I discovered that company excelled at small-run bespoke fabrics and high-end hand-screened wallcoverings of up to sixteen colors. Most importantly, the 75-year-old concern that had created custom silks for the White House, fringe for Big Bird, and tassels for the Old Merchant’s House museum was also responsible for the brilliantly zany zebra wallpaper* in the Red Sauce Italian landmark, Gino’s of Lexington Avenue. And at the time (this was late 2003) they were taking shipments of sticky, raw silk to finished dyed and woven fabric all under one roof—in a mill in Long Island City. I was astounded. Someone still did this? In New York City, no less?
I then made a determined effort to get a look inside the place… Long Island City**, a former industrial center, home to stapler factories, printing plants and shellac distributors, is now in the process of being radically transformed. At the time of my visit, the Scalamandre mill was probably among the last light industrial holdouts.

I found it on a non-descript and fairly bleak street: a relatively small 19th-century brick building with strangely beautiful skylit spaces and worn plank floors.

It was an idiosyncratic manufactory mixing pedal-powered wooden looms, Eisenhower-era machinery, handwork, and modern computer-run technology. I was fortunate to get a quick tour of the mill that day, learning a little about warps, swifts and loom cards in the process. Very shortly thereafter Scalamandre announced they were moving out-of-state, and selling the building.
I later read they were having a kind of fire sale—a dream flea market of antiquated bits and pieces, fabrics and trimmings, emptying the place of its arcane and –to the outsider—inscrutable devices. I was so emotional about that building (true)—I couldn’t even bring myself to go.


An important part of Scalamandre’s work is historical research and reproduction. In an on site studio in that mill they analyzed samples soiled by coal and wood smoke, faded by sunlight, or brittle with age. Probing hidden seams for color and poring over contemporary publications for design documentation they resuscitated vibrant color schemes and completely reconstituted complex repeating patterns. I loved the notion of forensic design technology, a sort of CSI: Decorative Arts Unit.
... ...
*The paper shows up, charmingly, in The Royal Tenenbaums, and, rather less interestingly, in Kate Spade’s bathroom.
**The 7 train’s elevated path through LIC into Queens, with its magnificent sight lines to Midtown Manhattan, is rather exciting and should probably be landmarked.

Images from top: the view from the 7 train; "the Old Mill"; hand-screening wallpaper, with the zebras in the background; swatches, and spools set up for weaving stripes; looms; some of the afore-mentioned Eisenhower-era machinery: a dying vat; quality inspection; patriotic passementerie; antique spinner, and spool boxes; classic zebra wallpaper at Gino's from the New York Times

recognized in passing

I came across this striking photo, top, taken by Lewis Hine in 1912, on the sentimental, sweet and sharply addictive Shorpy: the 100-year-old photo blog. I immediately recognized the balconied building and the small, much older gabled house at the corner at left, which remain today on Elizabeth Street at Houston. I went and took the update just yesterday.

I love the ragged density of the 95 year old image. The balcony (which is really a fire escape) serves as repository for all manner of domestic detritus: barrels, a child's rocking chair, a bird cage, and a cascade of laundry. The scene is chaotic and, paradoxically, alive. That little gabled building at the corner has been the restaurant Cafe Colonial now for several years. I've had several glasses of wine there... The tall corner tenement at extreme left mystified me for several moments. Then I realized that the entire block is no longer-- that is the middle of Houston Street.

In a successful ploy to avoid doing work, I've spent time coloring in part of the image. I've been considering how to best experiment with this: How do antique streetscapes, in all their foreignness, change once the sepia is turned into a more recognizable approximation of reality. How much more "accessible"can they become?

writer's block, mental torpor and Ed Kienholz

I'm stumbling over myself for quite a while, unable to compose a coherent post. A death in the family (and the long illness that led up to it) has, I think, really eaten away at my concentration. "Eaten away at" is not the right sense, more dissolved, mixed with and diluted. What was never really sharp-eyed or crystalline to begin with is now more of... a colloidal suspension. Little granules of thoughts and ideas, diffused and suspended in a sluggish mental matrix. How apt it is then that I've finally rediscovered Ed Kienholz, the master of polyurethane resin. His work is like opening someone's memory closet, an illicit, stolen view of thoughts suspended and things coated and gelled. Reified inertia.

For the longest time I couldn't recall his name, all I could remember was the immense impression this piece, Sollie 17, above, made on me, X-years ago at the Whitney. Then, just the other day, the name somehow came back--Kienholz, Ed Kienholz (not Kurzwiel, not Ed Gein) --and with that, the recollection of several other of his insistently disturbing pieces. Fantastical ugly things that are, to me, mesmerizing– a brash and experientially bullying version of Cornell. I love the materials list for this particular piece:

wood, plexiglass, furniture, sink, lights, photographs, plaster casts, pots, pans, books, cans, boxes, three pairs of underwear, linoleum, leather, wool, cotton, sound track, glass, metal, paint, polyester resin, paper, metal coffee can, sand, and cigarette butts

And then there's this description of kienholz at artnet.com: "George Segal's pristine white sculptures after an evening of intense carousing with Charles Bukowski."

how did I get here?

Verbatim Google searches that have led people to this blog:

what is olfactory
what is tyranny
london's national treasures a red pillow box
ancient rome street scenes
morgue slab
what did Karl Blossfeldt do as a child
peevishness
onion skin paper
Love's Baby soft
wow man far out
greetings from anywhere
crystal palace favorite dessert poo recipe

• • • •

On the subject of lists, a beguiling selection of card games:
whist, piquette, cribbage, euchre, pinochle, bezique, canasta, fantan, mah-jongg

and, real-life business names:
Operative Cake Corp., Scientific Foods, Boring Business Systems, Aggressive Glass and Mirror, Dent Hardware, MS Carriers (think on that one a bit, the tagline: "delivering your future")

and also, bird names:
little grebe, cormorant, coot, curlew, whimbrel, magpie, jackdaw, rook, crow, bittern, lapwing, nightjar, thrush, bunting potoo, limpkin, petrel, snipe, shrike, crake, grackle,loon, dotterel, ouzel

Kangaroo, Brooklyn, 2005

'vibrant', yes, 'artful' too

In a comment on a previous post of mine ("the vibrant line") regarding fashion illustration (appreciation; death of) "Robin" mentions an illustrator I hadn't heard of and so I did a little googling. Sorry to say I didn't come up with all that much of substance for Kenneth Paul Block but I did retrieve something unexpected: display pages for an intriguing exhibit held at FIT in 2004 called, The Artful Line. While the site is nothing to look at it does feature a few choice things from the special collections in FIT's Gladys Marcus Library. At top, George Barbier's frontispiece for the magnificently titled Falbalas et fanfreluches, 1924. With its very contemporary-seeming winding tendrils and graphic silhouette it's difficult to believe the drawing is 83 years old. Directly above is an amazing cover for the Surrealist magazine, Minotaure, 1936, by Matisse. Below, what Carl Erickson was doing for Vogue the year before (from a good visual selection at something called the American Art Archives). It was in the air I suppose.

"on vacation"

My mother has been going through old slides. "What do we do with all of these," she said, meaning the 20 or more antique-looking metal boxes stored at the top of the closet in my old room at home. Most of these had been fixtures in the closet for as long as I can remember. Each box, a paper label fixed tenuously with yellowed tape, had a cursory jotting of a place-name or two and dates. There was no logic behind either cataloging or labeling and one box might read, "Rome 1962" and "Jerusalem 1966" and "England '75." Once, perhaps, years ago, we'd taken out a tank of an old slide projector and looked at some scenes, overexposed, familiar faces squinting and smiling against a backdrop of notable classical antiquities, but most have never left their boxes.

The other day, my mother handed me about 12 slides and asked if I could "make pictures out of them." They were of, I suppose, an important occasion, at least to my parents: my baptism, and attending scenes, in Jerusalem. The fact of this event was often mentioned to me over the years, as though it was supposed to be momentous for me, give me some defining insight. But no particular details stuck in my mind from the repeated tellings (and I'd never seen anything of the actual trip) except the bare cast of characters: me, my parents, "the Archbishop," and a kindly nun who took a liking to me. That and the fact that a bus load of German tourists evidently filmed the proceedings (which took place in a row boat in the Jordan River) from the shore. No documentation of that mind-boggling scene exists in our collection unfortunately, most likely because my father, who does not swim, was afraid of dropping the camera. Of the slides we do have of that expedition, this one, above, struck me immediately. Its far more spontaneous and ... exhilarating than any of the others. There I am, a comically oversized infant, surely larger by half than any local child-- unwitting emissary of the American Good Life; a triumph of vitamin-enriched formula and fluoridated water. But its the kindly nun— that kindly nun—looking ancient and very foreign and captivating in her black garb, that is the center point of that image.

Many years after that photo was taken my aunt, on a tour of the Holy Land, stopped in at this convent. She told my mother that she'd inquired after the kindly nun but was told she was "on vacation." It was only later we realized, in the amazing and somehow beautiful elision of that reply, that the nun had died.

HBO, BBC and SPQR*

Gladiator was on cable last week and I'd forgotten that Derek Jacobi featured so prominently in the movie. Jacobi is cemented in my mind with I, Claudius, the risqué and influential BBC drama (it played here as a Masterpiece Theater) that was an illicit thrill to a certain 7th grader at the time. Gladiator prompted me on to do some 'Claudian' research, and, yesterday, a browsing expedition to the library, which yielded the awkwardly-titled "Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Ancient Rome."** All that was then joined by my weekly Rome viewing. I've been on a veritable Roman Holiday.

Periodically I go crazy over some tv show or other— watch religiously, pore over details obsessively, proselytize— and right now I love HBO's Rome. (above, images of the Rome set at Cinecitta, Rome's --the city-- famed studio, and apparently the world's largest standing set). The series has a rankness, a gutter naturalism, that's a vibrant contrast to the white marble pomp one is used to seeing. There are several scenes in fetid graffiti-marked alleys and two and three story wooden tenement houses. From the finer points of animal sacrifice to the murky dimness of life by oil lamp to the blotting powder spread on a freshly written document, the small passing details of the lives of the working populace are the most fascinating aspect of the series for me.
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There is a good deal of blood, both human and animal, and just about every other body fluid as well being flung around by the bucketful. BBC News reported on the show's more lurid charms, with a comical mix of prurience and formality, in an early review:

"Rome drama generates shockwaves"..."Those who do not switch off in disgust will be treated to a flogging, a crucifixion, numerous deaths and an impalement."

I stand by my obsession and am crushed that the series isn't returning for a third season. It appears that the scope of the production just got out of hand. An astonishing tidbit I just picked up from the bbc site:

The Roman coins were all made at the Vatican mint, and have the likeness of the series' Caesar, Ciarán Hinds, stamped on them.

How perfect that Rome was brought down by excess.

Addendum: Somehow I neglected to mention the excellent "historian's blog" on the HBO/Rome site. Jonathan Stamp, an Oxford-educated BBC historian, was the historical consultant for the series. Here he's explaining the significance of "ambition."

images from the sets of Rome, from top: side street (wikipedia); "the spice market" and "view of the Basilica Giulia and the Temple of Jupiter" (HBO)
*SPQR-- Senatus Populusque Romanus "The Senate and the people of Rome" Used as an official signature of the government
** The book is a series of excerpts from various sources of the time. Here Suetonius, the Dominick Dunne of ancient Rome, gives some background material on Julius Caesar: "And that no man might have any doubt how infamous he was for sodomy and adulteries, Curio calls him, in one of his orations, 'Every woman's husband and every man's wife.'"

typeHigh, Hello (again)

: : : Stylish missives produce smiles upon the most snarling countenances : : :

Tasteful designs of the highest order now available for purchase on Etsy

Letterpress cards by typeHigh, hand printed on 19th-century platen presses.

the vibrant line

Top: April 13, 1929, Eduardo Garcia Benito; January 2007; 2nd row: March 1, 1949, Marcel Vertes; October 1, 1941, Carl Erickson; December 15, 1936, Jean Pages; 3rd row: December 15, 1932 Erickson; October 1, 1935, Benito; July 15, 1939, Erickson; Bottom: December 1, 1938, Benito
I stumbled on a limited but truly enthralling collection of Vogue covers in the Condé Nast Store. Images available are heavy on the 1920s and 30s, with nothing past the late 1950s, but the offerings are well worth a detour over.

I was quite familiar with the (beautiful) covers of the Twenties. I had studied fashion for a bit, interned briefly at the Met's Costume Institute, and I still have a few books of fashion art. However, nothing prepared me for the brilliant, daring, effortlessly vibrant art of the 30s and 40s covers. The covers in the second row above, especially, are amazingly risky: The strange spiky bird for "Spring," autumnal passing legs--shod in non-descript day wear no less!, and what looks like a pre-saging of Pearl Harbor but is in fact meant to evoke a cruise ship steaming its way toward glamorous shores for the "Resort Issue." Unusual vantage points, edgy color choices (brown! with fluorescent pink!) and not a celebrity in the bunch. How dull and and flaccid that Angelina Jolie cover is--merely a vehicle for the headline text and a wrapper for the ads. A predictable end product of demographic surveys, publicity campaigning, and marketing pronouncements.

I virtually never buy "women's" magazines anymore and I probably haven't picked up Vogue since the nineties. I do remember illustrators having quite a high profile in the eighties: Mats, Stavrinos, Antonio, Viramontes. What is happening today? And the oddly alienating and irrelevant drawings used in newspaper advertising for stores like Macy's and Lord & Taylor until, what 10 years ago? are they still being used? That was like the dry husk of fashion illustration. What I wonder is: Did true fashion illustration die without my noticing?

Highlights from the Collection (part 3)

Another in the sporadic series of posts that both showcase some of my "collections" and offer the easy way out when concentration fails. Here for review: ticket stubs, mostly parking. Note fins on left-hand car diagram; this was found in the mid-nineties.

I think I need help

I've begun to think that this blog is getting a too scattered. I've just been writing about things that I think about. period. Perhaps I'm "recording" too many "fancies"?

People looking for letterpress and discussions about onionskin paper (and you wouldn't believe how many people out there are searching for onionskin--what were they THINKING stopping production on that) come by and see posts about found photography. Ephemera collectors find the site and then run away from the (overwrought) philosophical noodling. Then there are the rants about "peaches" or bad architecture...and those abstruse German terms!

Those German terms probably send everyone running.

And to top it off, since I am a graphic designer after all, some friends refer to this as a 'design blog', when of course I haven't written once about graphic design...

I'd most likely do everyone a favor if I concentrated on some graspable topic (and preferably a topic I know something about). Perhaps something prescriptive-- like:

"I am a graphic designer and I've found this cool French site of "incongruités typographique", where, if you choose your links carefully, you can get free fonts!"

Then I'd have several nice pictures of foreign- looking and idiosyncratic French hand-painted signs.

Is that what I need to do? Is that what I need to do in order to keep readers after I get great mentions on ephemera, or things? In order to get some discussion going? I really need advice.
Hello? Is this thing on?

what if Domino magazine...

used this image for one of their "Can you make this outfit into a ROOM" stories? Inane? Yes! But fun...
I was lightly inspired by a recent conversation on finds and fixations with an interiors and design-savvy friend (brand new to the blog world), Mister Particular. Something about that Domino feature fascinates me, silly yet compelling: translating color, line, silhouette into furniture and mood.

I love this painting. I saw it 4 or 5 years ago at an exhibit in London's National Gallery and I was just dumbfounded –the hairdo, the articulated parasol, those shoes! That nose! It is the Portrait of Frau Wilhelmina von Cotta, of 1802, by Christian Gottleib Schick. She's like the Antimatter Universe Madame Recamier and I think she's just captivating.

It's unlikely they'll tackle this one, SO, here's my take:



I know-- the little red cabinet is not quite right (those legs, hmmm). I should have diaphanous muslin drapery, maybe a red cashmere floor pillow... But hey, this isn't an interior design blog|| Most of the items here are from Oly Studio, Mecox Gardens, Stella Christie Lighting, and Benjamin Storck. A wonderful array of Karl Blossfeldt images here, and stunning reproductions of Ernst Haeckel here. The adorable, albeit not-quite-right, curvy red cabinet can be found at anthropologie.

into the window (with Joseph Mitchell)

If I come across a particularly vivid old photograph, especially if it's a New York street scene, I find it thrilling--as though I've uncovered a bit of treasure. I find I can pore over it so intently, get drawn in so completely, that, if I allow myself, I can almost —almost—fantasize being in the image. It's sort of embarrassing.

To the extent that a photographic image, the rectangle, is a metaphorical window, its frame blocks the rest of the world that continues just beyond those edges. The "glass" is immovable, the "window" shut. I wonder, though, about what is to the left or the right. Or what connection there might be, in that photo of yesterday, to what I know today. The photographs here are part of a series of modern reprints I found in a drawer at Bowne. I believe they are a set of tax ID photographs taken in January and February of 1928 of the South Street area – in other words scenes right around Bowne. It shouldn't have been a surprise to see that the relatively tidy retail mall of today was rough, ragged-edged and tired-looking in the light of that day 79 years ago.


The dirtiness of the street, the worn and dusty clothes on the worker in the cap (click the details above for very large view), a horse drinking from a stone watering trough, the bundles of rags and paper scraps: the 19th century is palpable. Here, "the modern" is foreign. Seventeen years after these images were taken, Joseph Mitchell described these streets in Up in the Old Hotel:

I could distinguish the reek of the ancient fish and oyster houses, and the exhalations of the harbor. And I could distinguish the smell of tar, a smell that came from an attic on South Street, the net loft of a fishing-boat supply house, where trawler nets that have been dipped in tar vats are hung beside open windows to drain and dry. And I could distinguish the oak woody smell of smoke from the stack of a loft on Beekman street in which finnan haddies are cured; the furnace of this loft burns white oak and hickory shavings and sawdust. And tangled in these smells were still other smells— the acrid smoke from the stacks of the row of coffee-roasting plants on Front Street, and the pungent smoke from the stack of the Purity Spice Mill on Dover Street, and the smell of rawhides from The Swamp, the tannery district, which adjoins the market on the north.

After rereading more of the book, I discovered that the building above, left, in my photograph, 92 South Street, is the "Old Hotel." By the time Mitchell hung around the docks, the restaurant at 92 was called Sloppy Louie's (It was still John Barbagelata's place in 1928) and the locals stopped in for breakfast specialties like a shad-roe omelet or sea scallops and bacon. (The South Street Seaport of today does not say "sea" or "port" or "shad-roe" or anything marine to me at all, unfortunately...)

The Romantic-era philosopher and essayist Johann Gottfried von Herder created the term Einfühlung, which is often translated as "empathy." Not that I know very much about Herder (as I've said before I know a little about a lot of things, just enough to be annoying) but when I first came across this word I recognized it and identified with it as putting a name to a complicated, elusive and for me, enjoyable, state of mind.

... a "feeling into," [Einfuhlung is] projecting one’s mind into the object of one’s contemplation, of seeing and thinking and experiencing from its perspective and so coming to understand it better, of turning it into a subject and oneself into the object of its gaze.– Robert Daly (SUNY Buffalo)

Herder's intent may be different from my reading of it, but I'm satisfied to have it defined in my own mind.

When I look at these photographs above, I think about being on those streets with horse-drawn wagons and automobiles and the last shadows of the 19th century, and then I think of Flappers and the Chrysler building, Hollywood and Art Deco, and I can almost see it happening at the same time, just beyond the frame.

zugzwang!* schlimmbesserung!*

This isn't an actual photo of my old television, but almost: the rounded corners, the double- decker dials, the on/off/volume knob are all spot-on. It had a small sticker in back that said "manufactured: March, 1987" and it might possibly have been one of the last appliances made with the gesture of faux walnut cabinetry. Over the years I spray painted the cabinet, first gold metallic, more recently white. People would say, "Wow, a B/W tv?!" but it was actually a full fifteen inches of glorious cathode ray color. That recent glossy white coat actually gave it an almost Verner Pantonesque flair, like set decoration for a *Wallpaper shoot. I never really had any problem with it, or with reception (it had a rabbit ears antenna) and the image was just fine until the very end. I finally replaced it, with a new flat screen, shortly after its 19th birthday.

In researching for my next tv purchase I had been told that new(er) television sets were more "sensitive." Sleek, sliver-like, highly attuned, they picked up ambient interference, electromagnetic fluctuations and the like that the old(er) sets, stolid and workmanlike, did not. No longer could I just plug the thing into the wall and go-- I would need cable. I was enabling a neurasthenic intelligentsia to take over from the lumpen proletariat.

{eight ensuing months}

As I began this post, a gossamer sprinkling of snow glittered in the street lights outside, but my flat screen remains dark. The cable box flashes an insistent 7:15, but it is after 9. My friends in cable repair are coming to visit again! But I need to wait 3 days.

*zugzwang-- (from chess) A position where one is forced to make an undesirable move.
*schlimmbesserung - literally means, "an improvement which makes things worse."

four things i can do without this year

No, this is not some vow of self-abnegation. This is some time-honored peevish blogging!

1. deer heads
It pains me to say because I'm partial to all things surreal and macabre-- and these started out as such. But they've gone cute. Some heads and horns out there are still appealing, though. This one from local Brooklyn design emporium Matter has a nice Baroque kitsch sensibility, but the formerly (and formally) wonderful ceramic antler chandelier, also at Matter, has been tainted by the rest of the herd. They are still proliferating, like here and here, but the deer-head-as-coat-rack is dead.

2. public privates
This makes me positively shiver with hatred. To what depths of mindless skank has this country sunk? We're down at (warning: link NSFW) crotch level documenting a rash of "celebrity" front bottom airings.
3. ornamental kale
They have been sprouting in patches of bare dirt in front of countless office buildings like alien mold spores. There is just no reason for this.

4. lists
"What do you mean?" I hear you think, "isn't this, right here, a list?" Well, yes. (I could have just updated my beloved opinion circle.) But listmaking has become some knee-jerk, dumbed-down, commercially manipulable, ADD-oriented excuse for content. Ten years ago, during my time at sidewalk.com (the antecedent to citysearch), someone on staff introduced a new feature, something like "Weekend Top Ten." It was a list of the top grossing films of the weekend and how much they made. I remember thinking, "what is that? why on earth would someone be interested in that? That's going nowhere..." Quaint, huh?

reading old postcards

I'm experiencing some unfortunate blogger technical difficulties so my 'special New Years post' is not ready for viewing. So here's an evergreen from the pipeline:
I collect postcards sporadically. Most of my favorites are peculiar Christmas cards or those of the highly sentimental "pleasant thoughts for a dear friend" sort, the more sugary the better. Some people will buy only blank, unused cards. When I can I'd rather have the entire, completed journey: chosen, written, sent, postmarked, and, implicitly, saved. Some cards may not, on first view, be all that compelling visually, but reveal themselves on closer consideration. Many of the cards showcase abysmal grammar skills: "Best Wishes to yous all," "we are well. Hoping you and your husband is the same." That aside, reading the cards can pay off with some important (well, in a relative sense) tidbits. This Venice scene, postmarked August, 1906, is certainly pretty but hardly extraordinary. But the inscription at top caught my eye. It reads, in part, "... it is very hot at mid day but cool at night. The girls are "crazy about it" as they say..." "Crazy about it" was put in quotation marks. Significant because it indicates the phrase was new as an expression or was considered kids' slang, but yet it had to have been common enough that the author was confident that the reader would understand. Kind of like if I were to write my Aunt Helen saying, oh, 'the "bitches are down with it."' Obviously "bitches" (as a term of, uh, bonhomie) and "down with it" have been around for quite a while in Black slang, not as long in general slang. Still my Aunt Helen might get what I'm saying because the phrases have had currency long enough already for someone like me to write them. So when my American Slang Dictionary puts its citation for "crazy about it" at 1914, I just happen to know, from my 50¢ postcard, it must have been kicking around a fair bit earlier.

some belated thoughts about "You"

For a while now I've been mulling over the hollowness of "You"-- the purported prime mover in the consumer chain. Design your own personal sneaker, Hummer, pizza. Express your personality through the oxymoronic doublespeak of "mass customization." The escalating illusion is that now, with technology at one's fingertips, the power is in your hands. As with niche marketing, innovations with just your slice of demographic in mind, one is told many times over, "you deserve it." You're so busy/ important/overworked/ worthy, you deserve 500 channels of 24-hr HD sports (or whatever), you deserve soup in a go-cup, a good night's sleep with AmbienCR. Here's a fat-free fudge-dipped caramel bite with extra calcium created expressly for your over-40 bones. Coach or L.L. Bean in your Lincoln Navigator? Your choice! This proliferation of specious choice-- the so-called American ethos of individualism ("freedom") distorted through a lens of consumption. All of this disingenuous catering (pandering?) to "you." And then last week Time made "you" the Person of the Year in one of the most oleaginous essays I've read recently:

And we didn't just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software. ...Who has that time and that energy and that passion? The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you.

What about me? Despite both designations having to do with the individual, presumed solipsism, and implied atomization, the "Me" of the Me Generation (I believe it was Tom Wolfe who christened the 70s the Me Decade, with "generation" being an extrapolation from that.) strikes me as a different concept. At its most elementary level, the term is subjective: me, I. And I read the term, at very least, as active --seeking out self-definition, though not necessarily through consumption. This "You" moment conveys an object observed and defined by others: what you buy, what you own, your 'audience.' The you as consumer defined by age/income/race/ demographic...
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I only just recently saw the Frontline show "The Persuaders" on the web, although the episode is more than 2 years old. It is a disturbing and utterly fascinating overview of the current culture of marketing and advertising and its societal influences. The web site for the episode is dense with interviews, transcripts, commentary--it is a must. Someone there (cant remember which person sums it up) distilled for me what had been ill-defined complaints and ravings: the danger of an atomized populace in a completely immersive, consumer-driven society is that there is no longer a recognition of "the common good," or civic duty; democracy itself comes apart. Media critic Mark Crispin Miller (whom I had not heard of before) delivers some of the most devastating commentary.

Consumers are feeders. All consumers do is consume. ...They're being manipulated to think only about the grass that they're chewing and nothing else, and manipulated into thinking about ways to get more grass. They're not operating on a sufficiently high level to participate in a democracy…

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So the Burger King "have it your way" campaign of circa 1974 (?) was a brilliant precursor to the mass customization model...

a new world christmas

While I gather my thoughts and work on the several posts sitting in the "draft" line I'll put up 3 cards from my Christmas collection. At top is the very curious "Christmas Greetings from the New World." The reverse says the card was "printed in Saxony," obviously in English, though it was sent "To Willie, from Harold" entirely within the confines of Brooklyn. It is postmarked, 8 pm, December 21, 1911. The bottom two, polka dot sleigh ride and manic circular Yuletide, match, by happenstance, in warm red and silver, and are from c.1930.