Mission Accomplished
I work all the time, but make little money. That’s a bad combination for my family to put up with. I’ve tried lately not to work on Sunday so much, and my younger son has started getting wild idée fixe notions about what we’re going to do on the seventh day. And what’s possible.
By the time Sunday rolls around, we’re going to camp on the dark side of the moon using a rocket we made in the basement with cardboard and tape and eat bearburgers and ride mooses in races with movie stars and split atoms with kitchen cutlery and catch fish that would strain a politician’s mettle to claim they’d caught bigger. We’re going to find an extra moon on Pluto with binoculars and dig up dimetrodons and shoot an apple off every head we see. You can lick thirty tigers, today, surely, Dad.
Above all he wants to make a video. He wants to make one that would give Disney a truss to lug around the Oscars; grind Pixar to pixels; make Freddy Wong foreswear muzzle flash forevermore. He wants YouTube to send him a Nobel Prize.
We have a snapshot camera.
He was upset a little. His grand plans of building castle sets from legos, only bigger than a real one, and making his head turn all around in a circle met the immovable rock of our time and circumstances. I told him the secret that the penguin nun with the sweet face told me all those years ago: You need to tell a story? You need the five Ws.
And so he supplied himself as the Who and his things as the What and summertime as the When and his house as the Where. He drew out his little storyboard with an unsteady pencil while I sipped my coffee with one eye open.
“You need a Why, son.”
“To make people smile.”
Mission Accomplished, son.
Ken The Whirligig Craftsman Illustrates Perfectly How Stimulus Spending Works
Around the back, it explains green energy and quantitative easing. If he set it on fire and kept cranking, he could change the name of the machine to “British Riots” and no one would notice the difference.The machine is simply that versatile, intricate, and useful.
Are YOU Sophisticated Enough To Live On A “Desolate Shore”?
I think I was in that band for a few weeks. Not sure; I was really loaded.
World’s Greatest Junk Drawer
Wheathills is a fancy-pants furniture maker in Angle Land that makes bespoke “smalls.” A small in this case is a keepsake box. I’m feeling lazy today, and I have to box an end table I just finished that doesn’t look much like the Pantheon at all, so I’ll just cut and paste their description of it:
A short conversation at a busy Wheathills Open Weekend ignited an idea that began with the words, “a fantasy place where dreams, secrets and surprises are kept safe”. From those few words an obsession grew for both the clients and Nigel Heldreich, owner of Wheathills Exquisite Memory Boxes, and before too long a concept and a brief were created – a theatre of memories, secrets and surprises.
Over the following 18 months and countless conversations with the clients, Nigel and his team of highly skilled craftsmen, developed that initial concept into an amazing Memory Box in the form of a miniature Pantheon Theatre, created by hand using age old techniques and the very finest wood from all over the world.
Using ‘marquetry’, the very fine, detailed and beautiful craft of inlaying minute pieces of wood into another piece of wood in order to create imagery, the team of ten craftsmen and designers began creating a journey through Tuscany and many memorable holidays the client had experienced. The theatre, architecture and the visual arts were top of the bill, and all housed in a Palladian style building of stone, gilt Corinthian columns, domed ceiling, galleries and grand staircase.
Nigel Heldreich, owner of Wheathills, said; “What started as almost a throwaway comment has turned into a magical journey for everyone involved in this wonderful Memory Box. From the initial idea, through to the finished piece this folly has been played out in our workshop with wood, traditional craftsmanship, passion, emotion, laughter and even tears. Now though, it’s time for us to hand over ownership of the box to our wonderful clients who will, I’m sure, enjoy its beauty for years to come”.
Hmm. Allow me to translate: They took a “magical journey” through someone’s bank account. The “laughter” was of the nervous variety when the prospective owner was informed of the time and material bill, and the the “tears” followed close on laughter’s heels when informed that no, they weren’t pulling his leg. The “time to hand over ownership of the box” will no doubt be played out hostage style, with entourages of heavies, attaches full of fivers, and a hammer poised over the whatnot until the exchange is made.Everyone will then back out of the room like the Prime Minister leaving George III’s living room.
Cool thing though, ain’t it? It says ten guys took 18 months to make it. I hate to brag, but I could round up nine guys and build an actual Pantheon, and it would already have tourist chewing gum spangling the terrazzo quicker than eighteen months. But maybe the money spent on the trifle really doesn’t matter. The owner would probably have just blown it on a miniature giraffe or something anyway.
Month: August 2011
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