Consecutive sleepovers with two friends of Daughter, which means odd sounds from upstairs: an anvil dropping; the screams of someone being drawn and quartered; long silence punctuated by gales of laughter. The last one can be explained by the stuttering Netflix video; they’re drinking bandwidth from three phones.
I’m half-watching a movie that looks to be good, but it’s 2 1/2 hours long, and I feel compelled to write something or do something for the first half hour BECAUSE IT’S 149 MINUTES LONG. The older I get the more I believe there isn’t any movie that needs to be that long. Unless it’s, say, “The Longest Day,” which A) warns you and B) has subject matter that ought not be compressed for the sake of moving keisters in and out of the theater. Perhaps it’s the medium in which I work; at the newspaper we cut cut cut down as hard as possible lest a video stretch beyond 3 minutes.
Because people twitch after a minute. They look at the scrubber and think “there are two minutes left that will keep me from watching the other minute of a three minute movie.” They know there’s not an explosion because you would have led with that, or at least a part of it. So what are we doing here? C’mon. There have been nine 12 second-GIFs uploaded on my twitter account since I started with this thing. MOVE IT.
I suppose it’s a good sign that movies are 2 hours and 30 minutes long. There’s hope.
Saturday: mulch.
This much mulch.
And more. Thirty bags in all. Five were dumped on the steps to go on the front of the hill; ten were set aside for filling in blank spots; five were assigned to fill in the planting area at the bottom of the hill; ten were placed along the boulevard to go around the hostas. They filled half the boulevard. So I have to go back for more. Fifty total for the weekend. FIFTY BAGS. Good thing they were having a sale. Did I mention we got two evergreens? Because my wife moved the plants from the front to the back and that left a gap. Since they didn’t go in her car, I had to remove 20 bags and drive back and get the evergreens, and bring them up the steps, which is like doing the lambada with a porcupine.
I was all set to say more but around 9:30 I heard my wife call after the dog, because the back gate was closed but not latched. I have made a point of telling everyone in the household to make sure the door was latched. This lesson was supposedly learned on Friday night, when Scout ran out because the gate was closed but not latched. I found him blocks away; a neighbor had him. I figured this would be a good lesson for all, since we do not want to lose our dog.
Well, he got out again, and after an hour of walking and driving and calling and whistling it's off to Kinkos at 11:30 to print off some fliers.
Usually he goes north after the rabbits. This time he went
UPDATE $%*^*#$% He went south, but then he went north. Because wife came back saying he'd been seen, or at least heard, in the interconnected maze and warren of lawns two blocks north, and she'd gotten the assistance of some nice people who have dogs and were walking the dogs who were not lost BECAUSE THEY KEPT THE FENCE DOOR SHUT and they helped her for a while, but she had to give up because she's been on her feet all day weeding, and running, and walking around the lake and could walk no more, so I went out and did two circuits in the dark with my police flashlight, waving around a bratwurst and calling his name, which sounds like the sort of thing they're doing in Ireland in celebration, sorry for that but it just sounded like a fargin' metaphor - I mean it's not often a fellow says "I walked around waving a bratwurst and calling his name" and it means exactly that and nothing more - but then my phone rang, and daughter did the whole emotional Lassie-comes-home thing and I trudge back, thinking TWO. HOURS. OF. THIS.
Dog collapsed on the floor and a half-hour later is still panting. He's been running for two hours. I prodded and stretched and palpated to make sure he wasn't wounded; he's just exhausted beyond the tolerances for his design.
Here's the other fargin' thing: I quick made up a flier, because you have to post the fliers for the final act of hopelessness, and printed one out and everything was GREEN. This would be fine if my dog was from FARGIN' OUTER SPACE and had TENTACLES but he is not green, so in the middle of worrying about this and getting all verklempt because I had to go through puppy pictures to find something useful (all the shots are oh-my-widdle-puppy pix, few are useful for fliers, but at least I make a point of shooting the dog at dog level, so the flier doesn't have a picture of a dog blob shot from above with flash in his eyes) I have to RECALIBRATE THE PRINTER, which tells me it's doing fine, thanks for asking sport, but it's tad low on magenta and that's great because my dog is ALL MAGENTA and I wouldn't want the picture to reflect anything else but his FARGIN' MAGENTA QUALITIES.
Turns out the printer heads might need cleaning and that is modern life: your dog runs away and you find yourself cursing the printer heads because now you have to go to Kinkos, and the guy behind the counter, who is the guy who drew "2 AM after Memorial Day duty," and hence not high on the institutional totem pole, runs off your copies and maybe feels bad for you but in this line of work you get this, you get this a lot, and maybe he'd better harden his heart against getting too involved in what people have to print in the middle of the night.
But I didn't have to go to Kinko's and so he didn't learn the lesson. He will, some day. It comes with the territory.
A big ad for the fine artists of Victor:
America, meet your favorite cellist!
Wikipedia has an odd way of describing his career: "On April 3, 1933, the newly installed Nazi regime dismissed him from his position at the Berlin Conservatory due to his Jewish origin. He moved to London along with Goldberg and Hindemith, where the trio recorded Beethoven's early Serenade in D major for string trio, Op. 8, and a string trio by Hindemith, for Columbia."
Seems as if there's more to the story than that. Oh, that Schelomo? This is that.
Get this: "died aged 39 due to complications during surgery for hemorrhoids on May 25, 1942."
It's skirt-lifting good:
It's like she's fanning a toot, but in the most lady-like fashion.
We had this in our house, but it was the good shampoo, which meant it was never used. Except, perhaps before Mom and Dad went out for an anniversary dinner. And then the results were sprayed solid with Aqua Net. I remember the smell - but couldn't describe it. Except to say it was Lustrous.
Looks like ice cream on a lettuce bed:
That is not a green you want to see in your ice cream. Ever.
Sealtest was founded by Vernon Hovey. His sons ran the shop after he expired; Kraft bought the brand in 1993. It's not only still around - they haven't changed the logo a bit. Smart.
Death row for minnows, in other words.
"Rarin' to go " means wriggling off to certain death.
Can't tell you much about the company, except that they were located at 1531 W. Main Street in Louisville, Ky. That's what this site says, and they have a picture of the old factory.
The site today: pity.
I suspect the dog's mouth was . . . highlighted.
Did anyone find it odd that the same company that made pet treats made spices and mustard?
For a while in the 50s, everything had a -rama suffix.
I remember those Pyrex pots; those were the signs of a fine kitchen. You'd made it into the solid middle of the good middle class when you had one of those.
NEW OLD
We never saw her face, which suggested she was hideous. She chased dirt, though! And dirt . . . ran away? Anyway, sunshine suds: when you want to think your cleaning potions are made of butter and urine.
Next week - well, I'll just leave you with this.
That's a natural, instinctive connection. More Elsie next week? Stay tuned.
