Wasted RAM Space

Summer is the perfect time for idle reflections about what is truly important in life. On the long, slowly winding drive up to Stowe, Vermont I began to ruminate over what we do in life and how it grows from our early memories. How would my life be different if the memories that formed it were different? More specifically, what could I be doing with all of that wasted RAM space?

Here's a list:

If I didn't waste RAM space on the fact that Charo, as April Lopez on the Love Boat really made Captain Merrill nervous when she said "cuchi-cuchi" or that Jamie Sommers became bionic after a parchute accident, then I would be able to speak Mandarin and I would be working for the UN in China.

If I didn't waste my RAM on the fact that Sly and Robbie are the premier reggae percussionists and production duo, then I would be able to remember the bloodlines of the British monarchy.

If I didn't waste RAM memorizing American Pie and Tangled Up in Blue, then I would have been able to actually retain the arguments of various postmodern theorists in my head during hours of wading through their obfuscate prose. OK actually, I think I made the proper choice there.

If I couldn't recite the entire damn script of Monty Python's Holy Grail I would have earned a perfect score on my sat's and gre's, I definitely would have solved global warming by now.

Here's a link Blicky's favorite Cat Power song that he doesn't realize is actually an eloquent and haunting protest song. I tried explaining that she's not an actual cat, but a talented human singer named Chan Marshal.  His memory's been a bit dodgy ever since plummeting off the ski lift on the way to the alpine slide in Stowe.

Odes to Summer

Here's a link to Vivaldi's Summer (scroll down and click on movement 2 for the nice adagio) just in case you want to hear a snippet while you read. I know, we've all heard plenty of Four seasons but it's lovely nonetheless. If you prefer, here's the best summer song ever: The Specials, Too Hot.

For your summer enjoyment:

Colorful Southern Phrases For The Inept And Nerdy Northerner To Describe The Hot Weather:

• It's hotter than a goat's butt in a pepper patch.
  
• It's so hot, the trees are bribing the dogs.
  
• It's hotter than a two dollar pistol.
  
• It's hotter than butter on a biscuit.
  
• It's so hot the hens are laying hard-boiled eggs.
• It's so hot you could pull a baked potato right out of the ground.

Bad Southern Sayings Which Were Too Awkward And Just Didn't Make The Cut (with apologies to Wendy Molyneux)

• It's so hot, my thumbs slipped out of my armpits.
  
• It's hotter than my gun barrel at the fishing hole.
  
• It's hotter than my six-year-old at her beauty pageant.

Feel free to add your own.

And finally here's a certain two-year old kitten's version of summer bliss. Does it count as haiku if she doesn't get the meter counts right?

I like the sun,

I close my eyes,

And the sun be's on my eyes.

Attack of the Giant Baby Heads

I took the kittens up to Boston to see the exhibit of Antonio López García in the MFA's Foster and Rabb Galleries. This is a picture taken by David Ryan at the Boston Globe's blog showing the installation of López's large scale sculptures. The exhibition is ending this Sunday, July 27 so we thought we'd squeeze in a trip.

The MFA show is accompanied by a stunning exhibition of seventeenth-century Spanish painting, El Greco to Velázquez, which uses the reign of Philip III as a common thread. In a bizarre review by Ken Johnson at the New York Times (which seems more a celebration of his own grasp of SAT words, and finely crafted rhapsody than a useful review about art) he writes that realism is the common, if unstated theme of that "saves the show from being merely a hodgepodge of Spanish treasures." Hmmmm, then he uses that as a way to describe his favorites in glorious, well-written detail. At one point he dismisses El Greco's "brushy, spectral paintings of white figures with weirdly elongated limbs." I prefer to think that you can learn more from spending a little time with "not great" El Grecos than you can from focusing on your beautiful sentence structure. I'm sorry. Poor Ken. I'm sure I'm just jealous he gets paid to write about art, but it's also that I don't think criticism has a place in art. There are artistic and intellectual merits in so many things that it's fruitless to try to grade or rank them.

By timing the Antonio López García exhibit with El Greco to Velázquez, the MFA means to situate López within the pantheon of the great Spanish masters. Some writers have described him as the greatest living painter. You really have to get up close to appreciate his amazing technical mastery. Here's a good source of images. His work is so complex! In some sections it's so photorealistic I had to check to see if photography or collage was listed as medium, and in some sections you can see a very confident, painterly style of brushwork. He is known for depicting mundane subjects, like people eating dinner, a half eaten plate of food and a bathroom sink with incredible, formal lyricism. That is not unique in the art world, of course, but what sets López apart from so many of his contemporaries is the lack of irony he brings to his subjects. One gets the feeling that he's earnestly searching for beauty in our everyday surroundings. A friend pointed out that because of this he makes us see the mundane trappings of daily life in a new light.

If you miss the Spanish Masters show in Boston --as we almost did-- it will travel to the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC in August. López's Baby Heads as we called them, or Night and Day are part permanent collection at the MFA and adorn the front lawn.

Come on Baby...Don't Fear the Reaper

I spent a long night in the bushes at Cheech Air Force Base (do they plant poison ivy there on purpose?) with my trusty telephoto lens and my high speed film, but I finally have the proof I need to confront Blicky. Our relationship has really been strained since he accepted that defense contract, but I never realized how high-level his work really was.

Apparently he was the lead engineer for the new remote control fighter-bomber aircrafts known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. When asked about the effectiveness of the virtual cockpit, pilots could not comment because they were too busy making "eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh" gun noises, "jjjjjrrrreeeeeeooooww" airplane swoops and pweeeooooouuu" explosion sounds. I finally confronted Blicky with this new project because I really felt he was betraying our family's ideals about peace. I feel so much better now though because he explained that the new technology will reduce deaths on bombing missions in Afghanistan.

Then I asked him, "But Blicky, doesn't this new technology just remove us from the violent impact or our weapons? What about Afghan civilians? Doesn't this just further distance us from the human victims of our actions, be it US or foreign, whom we have already deemed as 'other,' inferior and somehow less human? It doesn't strike you as a little eerie that our news media is extolling the wonders of an air-conditioned command center for these 'armchair pilots' who can drive to work and use weapons dubbed "Reaper" and "Predator" to kill other human beings from 7,500 away?" Blicky responded "Mao, look something shiny!" then ran away.

Blicky Going Geothermal?

We heard about a local company, Coneco, that designs geothermal heating systems for the home so we had a couple of folks come over to check out the Blicky homestead to provide an assessment. Supposedly it's one of the most energy efficient ways to heat and cool your home. The technology taps into the temperature way down in the earth, which because of its density remains pretty constant year-round -- cooler in the summer warmer in the winter. So you get cheap heat, cooling (which we don't presently have) and hot water. Plus you get to stick it to the MAN!

The Blicky house is passive solar, designed during the baby-oil crunch of the 70's but we have too many (well-loved) trees for it to work as it should. The design is pretty labyrinthine so we realized that for any sort of central heating system the major challenge will be the duct work. We'll keep you posted. 

Blicky has his own heating and cooling plan for our homestead. He's planning to heat it with plutonium. I think he wants to suspend the plutonium in water tanks and wrap them around the house. Then in the summer he want to fill the living room with ice sculpture portraits of his hero and mentor, Dick Cheney, and keep them cool by opening the refrigerator doors and turning on electric fans.

What I Learned From TV

I have read so many articles criticizing the effects of television on young people, but they neglect to mention the positive things. Television is what unifies and defines our culture as a big community. Forget big cars, warfare and jingoism. TV is the one thing that truly unites (and edifies) us. I just get teary when I think of it. I was probably eight or nine when I started watching the the Donny & Marie Show, The Love Boat, Wonder Woman and Fantasy Island. They are truly brilliant shows that I'm proud to have watched taught me so much about what to expect from adult life in America:

1. All you have to do to be super hot is take you glasses off and let your hair down. If you don't, no one will ever recognize you or think you're hot.

2. Being smart is for suckers. If you're a woman and you're smart, then she should pretend to be dumb for a half hour in order to get a boyfriend. At least she should take off her glasses.

3. All women grow up to be skinny with huge boobs. If you don't then there's something wrong with you and you need to starve yourself and stuff your bra unless you want to be a freak.

4. Infidelity is hilarious. So I knew that when I grew up and Donny Osmond cheated on me, I would just laugh and kiss him at the end of a half hour.

5. I thought I'd spend much more time wearing low-cut evening gowns than I do.

So as I grew into adolescence I got to appreciate the much underrated 1980's success story movie. I knew that when I grew up and went into the work force I would find something challenging, then an 80's anthem would play to a montage of me in glasses working really, really hard and then I would have a really cool sports car. Although by then, I wouldn't have put Donny Osmond in there riding shotgun anymore. I don't know maybe Sting, or David Bowie or both. They would be enjoying how my giant boobs looked in an evening gown and then I'd really surprise them by taking my glasses off and letting down my hair. We would speed off while laughing uproariously about their latest infidelity.

Blicky Kitty will return after this next commercial. Maybe it's one of the black Burger King ones where the entire clientele is African American and they have way cooler music. Did this places really exist or was segregation just limited to the commercials in the seventies?

Alas, Poor Bean Plant July, 2008-July 2008

I lost my little bean plant,

I think it was a mouse,

I do not know from whence he came,

Perhaps from his mouse house,

He dug with foulest fingers,

Then leered with fiendish pride,

And clapped his hands with pleasure,

As he my poor bud espied,

He seized my little bean plant,

Thrust it in his pointy maw,

And never gave my grief a thought,

As he licked his craven paw.

But perhaps my tale of sadness,

Will not end with woe,

For the end of this rabid beast 

Is one I do not know,

Perhaps he's in my garden,

Helping more bean plants die,

Or eaten by the red-tailed hawk,

With noble gleam in his eye.