Some inquisitive bloke has mapped the city of London by the frequency of surnames, and produced a nifty interactive web doogizmo to see who’s who, where. If you move the slider at the top left, you can see the map with the first to fifteenth most common name for the areas displayed.
I know a lawyer that does nothing but get permits and arrange financing for motels, gas stations, and convenience stores in New England. He has a big, rubber stamp that reads Patel, too, to save time filling out forms.
[Editor’s Note: The magnificent mundane pictures are from Square America.]
I want to participate unreservedly in American life.
I want to say hello to my neighbors. I want to send my children to school on a bus with their brethren to read of George Washington and Abe Lincoln. I want them to eat a peanut butter sandwich from a paper sack with a waxy box of whole milk to wash it down.
I want to watch the news and not think it’s an assault on my worldview. I want to watch the news and not think it’s an assault on the worldview of people with whom I disagree.
I want to read a newspaper. I want to listen to the radio. I wouldn’t mind constructing my own radio with a soldering iron and a few parts that came mail order, but I’d rather not construct the playlist of songs. How would I know what I liked if I had never heard it?
I want to order a drink from the well. I want to sit on naugahyde. I want someone to smoke. I don’t want to smoke. I want people to make music right there in front of me. I want everybody to know the words.
I want everyone to dress as well as they can for a social occasion and still be dressed badly. I want to see dress shoes and white socks.
I want to see old people. I want to see babies. I want to tell people their ugly children are beautiful. I want the ballgame to be on TV. I want the TV to be on a shelf over a bar.
I want to go to church on Sunday. I want to go to a bar on Friday night. I want to go dancing with my wife of many years on Saturday. I want to be buried in the same suit I was married in. I want people to stand there and look at my cold face and say I was no great shakes but I was alright.
I want someone to put flowers on my grave after everyone else has forgotten I was alive.
If you gave the average music exec a gold brick, they’d have it bronzed and sell it with an infomercial. The music business is the ultimate manifestation of throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. In a way, there is no explaining what catches people’s fancy about one song or movie or another. The greedy, grasping, grabby people that infest the business have learned how to make the wall they’re throwing things at slightly more sticky by applying a thick coat of cocaine and bagman money to it before they throw things at it, but it’s far from a science, even with all the experience they have now.
If it worked once, they try it again in the same way. They think it was the process that worked. I have my doubts. Here’s an example. They were presented with Aretha Franklin once. They said to themselves: I know, let’s make her a Shirelle — or whatever the hell you call the sleeveless tunic dress bouffant haired gogo dancers with the black Betty Boop voices. Boop, Shoop Shoop; whatever…
Why not have her paint your house? It would make about as much use of her talent. Eventually you’ve got to unleash the tiger. If you’re smart enough to know you have one in the first place.
Pop knew everybody. Didn’t have a dime and took me everywhere. We’d pull up to the Garden parking lot in our old beater. No hope. It was full when I was born, and now I’m in grammar school. I cringed until the face leans out of the booth and it’s his nephew in there. Right over there, Uncle Buddy. Where the players park.
You couldn’t buy a ticket with money. The Garden would thrum with excitement and no one would miss it for filthy lucre. Pop had four. Conjured them like a wizard at work because the boss was already wearing white shoes for the season and wouldn’t sweat in a seat in that hellhole when he could be on the Vineyard. Pop says he’ll sit behind the pole and stare at the big rusty rivets but I’d always end up there because I fit.
Uncle Smokey would come and puff his tiparillos and jape with Dad and I was in the company of men and stood in awe like at the foot of marble Lincolns.
There was weather inside there. Cumulus clouds of smoke would meet the smog from the drunken exhalations and clash with the cold front coming up from Bobby Orr’s ice under the rickety parquet wood floor.
Then we’d stand and the floor was lost to me, nothing but the boles of men in an endless forest swaying in the breeze of excitement.
I’d kill ten innocent men to go back there for ten minutes.
Tag: time marches on
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
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