Multi-eyed flower.
The Saturday Blog: Flowers!
12 Saturday Apr 2014
Posted in Art
Tag Archives: The Write Side of 50
Want a Classy Name? Put an “E” on It
11 Friday Apr 2014
Tags
The people who name residential and retail developments always pick names that sound classy – or at least that they think will sound classy to the rest of us. For instance, if there’s a stream of any kind flowing near the property, they include the term “brook” in the title. And if they really want to be fancy, they spell it “brooke.” They seem to think that the linguistic extravagance of having a useless, silent vowel at the ends of words screams opulence:
“Hey – we know there’s an extraneous ‘e’ there, but dammit, we can afford it.”
If there’s a bridge across the “brooke,” then the namer has two choices. The first is to coin a “bridge” word by pairing it with any descriptive, or other cool-sounding term (e.g., Woodbridge, Westbridge, Longbridge, Cambridge, Bumbridge, etc.). The beauty of “bridge” is that it comes with its own silent, trailing “e,” so it pairs well with the other pretentious words in the name.
Then couple your newly-minted, “bridge” word with another term that purports to describe the nature of the homes being offered for sale, such as “Estates,” “Manor,” or the highfalutin, “Mews.” I can see “Estates” and “Manor” evoking luxury, since both terms refer to pieces of real estate owned by feudal lords – although I doubt any self-respecting lord, feudal or otherwise, would stoop to live in a McMansion on a quarter-acre lot in New Jersey.
But “mews?” In British usage, the word means stables built around a small street, or a street having small apartments converted from such stables, neither of which seem like particularly enviable places to live, unless you’re a horse. On the other hand, it could make for a pleasant-sounding, vaguely evocative name:”Neighbridge Mews.”
The other option for naming a development, including any kind of bridge, is to pick an upscale term for “bridge,” and feature that up front: “The Crossings at _____.” You could even double down on the bridge theme, and construct a name like, “The Crossings at Neighbridge Mews.” Or throw in another extra “e” word for good measure: “The Crossings at Neighbridge Mews Pointe.” Fun, isn’t it?
The same basic rules apply to naming retail areas: “old” becomes “olde,” “center” is “centre,” and “town” becomes “towne.” They’re all pronounced the same as the lower-class versions, but because of the trailing “e,” they’re classier, and just plain better. And of course, if there are any stores in the center of this old town, they’re not “shops,” but “shoppes.”
Here’s the lineup the developers want you to expect, depending on the spelling:
Olde Brooke Towne Centre Shoppes: Tiffany jewelry store, yogalates studio, organic vegan wrap and smoothie bar, a full-menu Starbucks, and hand-crafted, boutique clothing by Zoe, tastefully presented in an exclusive, village-like cluster of gleaming mahogany and glass storefronts. All on the banks of a pristine stream filled with darting minnows, dotted with stepping stones, and spanned by a carved teak footbridge.
Old Brook Town Center Shops: a 1970s vintage strip mall featuring, Pawn It – We Buy Gold, a mani/pedi joint called Nail Me, deli/newsstand, 24-hour laundromat, and a concrete bunker with welded steel cages on the windows and the words, “Check Cashing / Payday Loans,” in five-foot-high letters dominating the entire side wall of the building.
The bail bondsman’s office is just around the corner, downstairs from the Happy Lucky Massage Parlor, and next door to the Amble Inn Bar. All bordered by a weedy trench, filled with sludgy goop sprouting a rusting refrigerator door, old sneakers, and puddles of fluorescent fluid, that in some alternate universe passes for water.
Where would you rather shoppe? Pointe taken.
Hold the Flowers. It Might Snow
10 Thursday Apr 2014
Posted in Confessional, Men
Springtime in New Jersey.
When cherry blossoms bloom in Belleville Park, it’s time to put away the snow blower. Usually by this time of April, in Belleville and Nutley, we watch the falling cherry blossoms and think, oh, they’re like little pink snowflakes. But this year, things have changed. We predict snow falling just once more.
Can anyone blame us? It seems like we’ve endured the winter of “Dr. Zhivago” here in the Northeast. Don’t bother me with the old, “We’ve had worse winters with more snow.”
That’s all ancient history. What matters is right here, right now. Will it snow again before the May flowers bloom?
This was the winter we finally made up our mind that we were going to do it. Yup, this was going to be the year of the snow blower for us. Too bad we dallied when we should have dillied. We got hit with the first snow storm before we made it to the store. As soon as we recovered from shoveling, and clearing our driveway apron a few times, we headed to the nearby big box store.
It was easy to spot the snow blower section. It was the rows of empty racks with little picture cards of what snow blowers would look like if they had any in stock. Stealthily, we eavesdropped as the man in the orange apron explained to a befuddled snow-shoveler the subtle differences between the petite, sissy snow throwers, and the humongous, super-charged blowers that will toss snow over your rooftop onto the path of that annoying neighbor so he’ll think it’s still snowing.
As soon as that dolt shuffled off, it was our turn to be tutored. The man in the orange apron patiently went through the differences between the wimpy and the walloping snow movers.
You got your sizes: 21″, 24″, 28″, 30″. You got your stages: Single-stage, gas-quick, chute snow blower; two-stage, electric-start gas, and three-stage, electric-start gas. You got your accessories: heated handle, shear pin kit, clean-out spade tool, silicone lubricant, snow blower cover, engine additive – fuel stabilizer, oil – synthetic, gasoline, and a heavy-duty, floor-protective mat.
And while we actually began to understand what he was saying, in the end, there were none in the store. He suggested we order online.
We hadn’t been that excited tracking a delivery in 33 years. This time they delivered it to our door. The crates go to a local service shop for assembly, and then delivery to eager new parents, er, owners. We have to say the guy was thorough explaining everything from the forward speeds, reverse, chute direction, on-off switch, pump-primer, pull cord, and where the extra shear pins were for when our big blade tries to throw the ice block of our newspaper.
Dang. We couldn’t wait for it to snow. And so it snowed.
Dang. We couldn’t wait for it to stop snowing.
For years, whenever it snowed, we’d wait until our neighbor finished snow blowing his walks, then he’d hand it off, still running. He moved down the Shore last year, and we couldn’t really expect him to bring his snow blower up, and clear the snow for the new owner, now, could we? They were nice neighbors, but, apparently, not that nice.
The perception is that a snow blower makes clearing snow easy and fun. And you’ll be so popular with your neighbors when you do their walks because, no, you’re not a nice guy, you haven’t figured how to stop, and turn around, so you go all the way around the block.
The reality is that it’s more like plowing the south 40 acres behind an ornery mule. It’s great on a straight run, but try turning that baby, or backing up, or squeaking past the cars parked in the driveway. Not to mention the trudge across the deep snow to the storage shed to get out a shovel to clear out the doorway to get the snow blower out to start it. Yikes.
And don’t forget the fun clearing the driveway apron over and over with each pass of the town plow. We’re sure the plows carry an additive that makes apron snow heavier, colder and wetter than real snow anywhere else.
After several snow falls, we’d worn a path through the snow to the shed. Our technique in clearing apron snow has been nominated for an award for our precision directing the chute to toss across our cleared walk, and create a four-foot decorative berm on our lawn.
Sure, we’ve had worse winters. One winter started so early the autumn leaves weren’t cleared until March along with the wooden-stick deer and Santa ornaments on our lawn. That was then. This is now. When this last spring snow falls, we’ll be right over to do your walk. As soon as we remember how to start this thing. 
A Day Off
09 Wednesday Apr 2014
Posted in Art
Tags
“Big Brother” (And Everyone Else) is Watching
08 Tuesday Apr 2014
Posted in Concepts
Big eyes and big ears are watching you!
What strikes me, repeatedly, is how much distance the world has traveled from the way I remember things used to be. This past month, there was a flurry of articles detailing developments on how we, the consumers, are being observed from every angle. George Orwell nailed it in “1984,” where he wrote, “Big Brother is watching you!”
And it’s not just the NSA. It’s the marketing departments of every large corporation.
It is not breaking news that we are monitored for the music we listen to, the books we read, and the tuna fish we buy. But the extent to which our tastes are being quantified and categorized has led me to delete my Pandora app. Hypocritically, I have not stopped shopping at Amazon, the biggest data collector of all. (I guess convenience trumps outrage.)
Nonetheless, an article in The New York Times on March 6 that stated the chief executive of Spotify had acquired Echo Nest to help Spotify “improve the customer experience” by giving its 24 million users better suggestions about what songs to listen to caught my eye. I could only interpret this as meaning that every time me, or you, log on to Spotify, we are contributing to the systematized homogenization of musical taste.
Spotify is not alone. The business of “examining what songs are being listened to by whom, and how,” is a small, but burgeoning, field because “major media companies like Sirius XM, Clear Channel and Univision” eat up the data as food for the production of music-related apps that can be sold to you to shape popular taste and, thereby, sales.
So every time we tune in to tune up our personalized music accounts, marketing is gathering and digitizing the bits and pieces of our predilections to create a composite template of “the consumer.” Who we are, what we buy and how we think:
Pandora said it had begun selling political ads based on the listening patterns of its 75 million users — Bob Marley fans are usually Democrats, for example, while gospel and country listeners lean Republican.
And, if that is privacy trampled by distance, think of Google Glasses as the up-close-and-personal version. Besides being the wearable gadget that keeps you wired to the computer screen 24/7, it allows customer service to track your every move in their effort to better serve you. Virgin Air is currently using Google Glasses, on an experimental basis, to see if they can improve the travel experience:
Kenneth Charles, a Virgin customer service agent, picked up Mr. Jones’s suitcase and peered at him through a Google Glass headset, which had been informed of Mr. Jones’s arrival by the driver of the limo, a pickup service provided by the airline to its most-valued customers.
Without breaking eye contact with his guest, Mr. Charles consulted the virtual reality glasses to verify the details of Mr. Jones’s flight to Newark, N.J. He also confirmed the other data Virgin had on file for Mr. Jones, including his passport information, frequent flier status and whether he had completed the necessary customs and immigration formalities for travel from London to the United States.
I assume Virgin even knew what their “guest” had eaten for breakfast so it could tailor his meals on board to fit his diet.
That the unknown eyes and ears of marketing departments peer into our living rooms to better enhance their bottom line is a phenomenon that was in place when I was growing up in the ’70s, and no doubt way before. But the lack of technological knowledge kept the digging at arm’s length. Computer evolution has broken down these safeguards. Big brother watches all the time.
I do not want to be an atavistic dinosaur – unconnected to the world as it moves like a bullet train into technocracy. But I am experiencing deep-seated angst at the pace with which the world turns. We have gone way past sands through an hourglass.
Weddings Today: Short on Ceremony, Long on Food Stations
07 Monday Apr 2014
I had an interesting cultural experience recently when I attended a wedding of two friends of my daughter. Since these were not relatives, and in fact were people I hardly knew, I was able to sit back and take a dispassionate look at the state of wedding culture today. Being over 60 gives me the perspective of a parent, and the fact that I still have an unmarried daughter adds some relevance to the matter.
You should know up front that this was an Italian wedding, though not the Italian Football Wedding Pat Cooper spoofed 50 years ago. This was a classy affair in a high-rent-district wedding facility. But years ago, this would have been the site of just the reception after a church wedding. Now, it housed both the wedding and the reception. That’s because many young people no longer want to jump through the hoops required by the Catholic Church to receive the sacrament of matrimony. So they forego the sacramental church wedding and are married by a deacon or justice of the peace. That’s a fundamental change over the past 40 years.
So everyone gathers for the ceremony in a chapel provided by the facility. The ceremony is short and sweet:
Do you take him?
Do you take her?
You’re married!
And of course, the last thing the presider at a wedding always says no matter whether it’s in church or on a beach is, “You may kiss the bride.”
So we always have the money shot of the two people kissing just before they head down the aisle.
This time, as I watched the bride and groom kiss, suddenly the words of the Paul Williams song made famous by the Carpenters started playing in my mind, “A kiss for luck and we’re on our way.” The bride and groom bound down the aisle, but no one throws anything anymore. Years ago, people threw rice, and later, the more ecologically-minded moved to birdseed and bubbles. Now we seem to have given up on it altogether. That’s fine with me. Let the cocktail hour begin!
So we all walked over to a nearby hall where the latest wedding innovation was in evidence – stations. Where we once had cocktails at a bar while waiters roamed with hors d’oeuvres, now we have a shellfish station, a meat station, a salad station, a pasta station. At this wedding, there was even a sliders station. I think stations are a big improvement over the old days. In fact, I ate so much at this cocktail hour I would have been happy to proceed directly to the dessert table.
But after an hour of drinks and great food, we headed to yet another room where tables were set up for dinner. We were seated close to the music. The music these days is mostly deejays. All the music is in their computer and so they can please just about every musical taste. I do miss live bands though. They were often mediocre and wedding singers were hit and miss. But every once in a while you got a great band, and that’s when you really appreciated live music. No matter how loud the deejay makes his music, it doesn’t compare with a live guitar, drums or trumpet. I think the convenience of a deejay, and the vast variety of music they can play is helping them drive wedding bands out of business. Anyway, these days I’m stoked when I see that a wedding features a live band.
Despite all the changes in wedding culture over the years, most weddings I have been to recently still feature the obligatory dances with the bride’s father and the groom’s mother. And most also still have a ceremonial cutting of the wedding cake. Although the nonsense with the garter seems to have thankfully faded away.
The finale to a modern wedding is the Venetian Table, which usually features just about every dessert known to man. Here, again, we have stations like the chocolate station, the pastry station, the cake station and the ice cream station. As someone with a gigantic sweet tooth, I give the modern wedding dessert festival two sticky thumbs up. The dessert table brings the wedding festivities to a close for people my age, though younger guests dance until the deejay closes up shop.
We as a society devote a lot of time and money to weddings. In fact, it’s an industry unto itself. But at the end of it, what matters is whether the bride and groom are willing to work at being a team, respect each other and live together in harmony. Everyone who has been married knows how tough it can be at times, but if you work hard, with a little luck, you end up with a life partner. That reminds me of another song. If memory serves me it was written by Carole King. It says, “I know that each of us is all alone in the end, but the trip still seems less dangerous when you’ve got a friend.” And that’s why we get married.
The Saturday Blog: Heirlooms
05 Saturday Apr 2014
Posted in Art
Christmas Lima Beans.
I Still Love You, Dean
04 Friday Apr 2014
Posted in Confessional
No shortness on seduction.
I just found out that Dean Martin was only 5’10” tall. I had pegged him as at least 6’2″. No matter – he still measures up.
I’ve had a lifetime love affair with Dean Martin. Ever since I first liked a boy (12 years old?), I had hoped that all boys would grow up and turn into Dean Martin.
Everything about him moves me. Like some sort of swirly, swooning chemical substance, his voice – that heartfelt tremolo, mixed with a suggestive cadence – is the kind that closes eyes, quivers lips, sways heads. And weakens knees. I wish I could drink wine and eat meat with Dean.
But beyond all the obvious – his swagger, his cool (the bedroom eyes, the Colgate smile, those hands!) – what is just as striking is the nuance of Dean. He didn’t seem to sweat the small stuff. He didn’t try too hard. His confidence was as innate as that square jaw. Put all of Dean together – his manliness, his poise, his mystique, his talent, his flair – and he is downright poetic.
Dean died on Christmas Day in 1995. I was 40. And a hard-core rock and roller. But I remember buying a bunch of his Christmas albums when he died, and I still put them on every December 25. He’s my go-to Pandora guy, and I have the “Best of the Dean Martin Variety Show” on my iPad.
So, I still love you, Dean. You remain my touchstone, my dreamboat. And I love that you can still surprise me with stuff that I didn’t know. Like your height.
On a Dock, With New Perspective
03 Thursday Apr 2014
Posted in Confessional, Men
It’s funny how time can change your perspective. In 1968 I was a 13-year-old high school freshman just starting to wonder about my place in the world. Although full of energy and enthusiasm, I was also plagued by the usual teenage insecurities. I wore my hair long, and smoked pot, so I could fit in with the nonconformist “hippie” crowd, whose approval I coveted. I cursed the blotches of acne that were starting to bloom on my chin and cheeks, and I worried about being too chubby to be attractive to the girls in my class.
Still, while the insecure teenage-me sought acceptance, and feared failure, at my core, I firmly believed that anyone could succeed if only they worked hard enough. I thought things could never get so bad that you couldn’t find some good in any situation. That life was never hopeless; that dreams never died.
In January of that year, the Otis Redding song, “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay,” was released, and by March, it had reached the top of the pop charts. Part of the song’s appeal was the tragic story behind it: Redding and five of his bandmates all had died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967, just two days after putting the final touches on the recording. The song has since been covered by many other artists, and it’s been replayed endlessly over the years. In fact, in 1999, BMI declared it the sixth most performed song of the twentieth century, with six million performances.
But in 1968, I hated it. There I was, ready (or so I thought) to embark on the terrifying and wonderful adventure of adulthood, hearing this hit song about a guy who had nothing better to do than ” … sittin’ on the dock of the bay wastin’ time.” It seemed like a woefully misguided ode to indolence, glorifying defeatist behavior that I had been taught to condemn rather than applaud. This song seemed to fly in the face of all my beliefs, and I just couldn’t accept it.
The first verse sums up his day:
Sittin’ in the morning sun.
I’ll be sittin’ when the evening comes.
Watching the ships roll in,
Then I watch them roll away again.
I pictured some bum dozing in a daze of creosote fumes against the greasy piling of a California pier, doing zilch all day long. Oh no – not nothing – he’s listlessly noting the comings and goings of “ships” like fishing boats, freighters, and ferries piloted by people who have actual jobs, and some sense of purpose in their lives. A couple of verses later, he says he roamed “two thousand miles just to make this dock his home.”
Why, I thought, would anyone in their right mind leave a home in Georgia to live on a San Francisco dock steeped in the reek of rotting fish and seaweed?
Fast forward 45 years or so, and a sampling of life in those intervening decades: A lost love or two, plus a whole host of unrealized dreams that withered, not for lack of trying or faith, but simply in the harsh light of reality. Chances are, I’m not going to be a rock star, astronaut, Olympic athlete, world-renowned poet, or any of a dozen other things I might have considered within the realm of possibility when I was young. Throw in relatives and friends who have passed on – sometimes after wrestling long and hard with diseases you wouldn’t wish on a dog – and top it off with random natural disasters that destroy man and man-made things alike with impunity at the drop of a hat.
So the more tolerant, late-50s, me brings a far different context to the song. “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay” now seems less the empty lament of a dissolute ne’er-do-well than a bittersweet mourning of the passage of worthy, yet unattainable, dreams, and one man’s peaceful acceptance of that fact. Loss doesn’t make you a loser; it’s just part of life. And sometimes, just sitting there resting your bones, watching the mad parade pass by, can be the most peaceful, and productive, way to spend your time.
The Beauty of Art is Often in the Eyes
01 Tuesday Apr 2014
Posted in Art
Besides all of the touristy things to see in Naples, there are the unexpected finds, like this poetically museful door lintel wearing a rope of green beads. I saw it on an apartment building while wandering around the Vomero area of the city. Later that day, I was walking on the Via Toledo, a central artery and shopping street, and saw a sign that Caravaggio’s The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula was available for viewing inside. I had seen The Seven Works of Mercy at the Pio Monte della Misercordia and The Flagellation of Christ at the Capidomonte Museum. The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula was the the third, and last, Caravaggio to see in Naples.
I bought a ticket, and found myself standing in the Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, a ducal palace from the 17th century. Befitting the home of a billionaire of yester years, the interior was opulently excessive, from the bejeweled ceilings to the marbled balconies and the Caravaggio was as great as its reputation. He is a phenomenal painter from every aspect, be it composition, color, light or sensitivity. But what will live on in my psyche is this self-portrait by the artist Francesco Paolo Michetti. It was painted in 1877 when he was 26 years old. There is something in the eyes that I find mesmerizing and transportative.
Francesco Paolo Michetti Self-Portrait 1877
I never get tired of looking at them, even in this digitally-transcribed photograph. They remind me of the door lintel above.
I showed Steve the two photos, and asked him if he thought the eyes looked similar.
“Sort of,” he said.
But his immediate association was that Michetti looked like the actor Robert Walker, who plays Bruno in Hitchcock’s 1951 masterpiece “Strangers on a Train.”
Which makes me think, it’s time to watch that movie again!
The Write Side of 59 