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not into roots rock
Saturday, November 26 2016
I finished a painting of a hippopotamus late this morning. As has been the pattern of late, I painted it on an old credit card from the stack of them I've been keeping in the laboratory (evidently for this moment in time). The results were perhaps better than usual:
[REDACTED]
This afternoon at around 2:00pm, I loaded up the dogs and ran some errands, starting far out-of-my-way at the Tibetan Center thrift store. On the way, I stopped for the first time in my life at a small parking area near the northeast corner of the Ashokan Reservoir just so I could snap a photograph of the shoreine. We've had a persistent drought since the summer and I'd never seen the reservoir so low. (Somebody told me the reservoir is now at 57% of capacity.)
The Ashokan Reservoir's eastern end (looking towards the north) today. Supposedly it's at 57% of capacity right now. I've never seen so much exposed bluestone and shale along its shoreline (all of which would normally be covered by water). Click to enlarge.
There were good things at the Tibetan Center, so I bought four or five of them: a three-outlet brown basic brown extension cord (you can never have too many of those), a swivel pivot (the kind that allows a hanging object to be rotated freely), a 900 MHz remote headset (yesterday after the shock of realizing we are both about seven pounds overweight, Gretchen expressed a need for a way to better hear the teevee while using her much-neglected exercise machine). Finally, I found a great toy in the toy section: Laser Pegs, which are a kind of clear-plastic snap-together block that can be combined with LED-illuminated blocks so they can glow from within. This overcomes the worst thing about Legos: the garish primary colors (I'd much prefer if they were all grey or brown). Unexpectedly, Laser Pegs are actually compatible with Legos, evidently because the patent has long since expired. (When I was a kid, I remember buying, over the phone, a set of cheap knock-off of Legos called Brix Blox. Their element spacing was a bit wider than Legos and they were completely incompatible. I didn't know at the time that Brix Blox weren't actually Legos; all I knew was that the price was right, and I recall using the word "Legos" and confusing the Sears sales lady on the other end of the line.) I don't have any immediate plan for the Laser Pegs, though it looks like a great way to quickly add blinkenlight decorations to a costume or a party. All this loot only cost me a little over $8, because the nice skinny guy was there, not the slightly-unpleasant skinny woman who works there on Sundays.
Next I drove out to 9W to get a new thermostat for the laboratory (I'd been having to turn on the heat with a jumper cable), and while there I also made a number of impulse purchases. Who knew Home Depot sold rare earth magnets? And that tactical aluminum LED flashlights are now less than $6 each? While I was in the ShopRite buying onions, crackers, beans, and beer, a couple attractive young women staffing a Guinness tasting table gave me a few samples of their product. Nevertheless, the beer I then went and bought was a sixpack of Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Sumpin'; Guinness doesn't know anything about hops. I should mention that trying to buy generic antacids two days after Thanksgiving appears to be an impossible task. (More people than I would've expected apparently recognize that branding provides little additional benefit when trying to neutralize stomach acids.)
This evening we'd be going to a post-Thanksgiving party hosted by our friends Peter and Alison. First, though, Gretchen wanted to stop at the Kleinert in Woodstock at a book launch party for a book about The Band (the local roots-rock heroes with a name seemingly designed to thwart Bittorrent piracy). The book was entitled The Band FAQ and the author Peter Aaron was reading from it when we arrived 20 minutes late. That was followed by a panel involving several local celebrities and people who'd known The Band. And then a number of local musicians (including Mike & Ruthy and Gretchen's new young local favorite, Connor Kennedy) played a short set of The Band covers. I have to say, I'm not a fan of roots rock and have no interest in the music of The Band (or Bob Dylan, for that matter), and only begin liking that sort of thing when it takes on more of an alt-country flavor (early-to-mid-career Jayhawks, for example). For someone not interested in roots rock, the only material of interest at this event were the many mentions of celebrities. But I'm not interested in that either. Still, I was on my best behavior and paid attention (even if I didn't bob my head to the boogies or wistful waltzes). [REDACTED]
Down at their place south of Bearsville off Wittenberg Road, Peter and Alison had decided to host an almost entirely vegan post-Thanksgiving party. Only just this summer, there'd been plenty of meat and cheese at a party I'd attended there, but perhaps Gretchen's evangelism is working its magic (as it has many times before).
For most of the party I sat on or near a daybed in the dining room chatting with a Gretchen, this woman Pamela we'd met at Jeff & Alana's summer party, this new guy named Eric, and later with first our friend Julianna and then her husband Lee. This whole veganism thing was a bit new and irritating for Eric, I could tell, and he powerfully resisted the idea that a vegan Philly cheese steak could be any good. I found myself listening to the conversation through his ears, as a non-vegan, and I could see him finding the sheer amount of vegan content oppressive. But maybe that's how evangelism works.
Later Eric told us some stories from his six years working as an advertising director in Los Angeles. One story was about the aspergery guy who worked (and perhaps still works) as animation director for the Simpsons. The guy would go into a fancy restaurant and order a $600 bottle of wine and "the chicken," though he'd insist that the chicken not contain any peanuts, to which he claimed to be deathly allergic. When the waiter assured him that the chicken contained no peanuts, he nevertheless insisted on speaking directly to the chef, who would have to come out into the dining room. When all that was done and the chicken came out, he'd sprinkle it with peanuts he had hidden in his pocket and then freak out, flinging it to the floor and smashing the bottle of wine. Then he'd say, "Ah, I got you!" It was all, you see, a joke. "But that's not funny," Gretchen noted. Eric agreed, saying that the guy was a freak and a weirdo, but he did good work, so he kept his job at the Simpsons. As for Eric, he eventually rage-quit his job in a huff over the horrible way the woman in wardrobe was being mistreated by a douchey new producer. "You can't do that [rage quit]," Julianna said in horror (she used to work in Hollywood), "because you'll never work again." Eric agreed, saying, "I never worked again." This is because anyone with a history of quitting a production job cannot be hired by any production that is bonded (insured against failure).
Some time later, Peter came over and regaled us with the tale of the time he and some friends got arrested for setting up a (presumably drunken) blockade at checkpoint between West and East Berlin. He'd also done some crazy shit in East Berlin, where apparently one could travel freely with just an American passport. But if one left the Autobahn on the way from Berlin to West Germany, the local constabulary would take notice and trouble could ensue, particularly if one were driving a flashy red Volkswagen. There was a nerdy young man there (he looked to be about 19), and he kept making nerdy observations, such as the cliché that Germans are famous for their detailed record-keeping. He asked Peter at one point when all this Berlin stuff had happened, and Peter didn't want to say, presumably because it would date him. But he'd earlier let slip that this had all happened in the 1970s, the decade in which his companion Alison had been born.
[REDACTED]
I'd been sipping red wine for much of the party, but I was good to drive by the time the party wound down.
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