It’s supposed to be 71 today. And it is supposed to snow over the weekend. What we call in these parts Third Winter. First Winter is the November - Jan 1st phase; second winter is the hard patch up to False Spring, after which we get Third Winter. We fall for it every year.
Anyway, it’s been a busy night and I am hard up against it with deadlines. I warned you about this week, did I not? Okay then.
One of the necessary elements of a grounded life is the knowledge of what existed before you showed up. While looking around for some things today - can't remember what - I came across an old photo of downtown. I can't reproduce the whole thing, because I have to clear the rights. But a good Minneapolitan should be able to fix this location exactly:
Citizens of my age will know where this is, and what this was. There are at least five things that trigger a memory or opinion. But most people now have no idea, I fear - and that’s normal. It would be great if everyone had a layered appreciation of time and history, the everyday details that are no longer part of the culture, coins in denominations to small to be useful.
I'm going to do a piece on this for the paper, but I'll let you know what the street looks like today:
There's only one building that survived. I remember almost all of this, the then, the now. I think I’m going to do a piece for the paper about this particular image, and how the most ordinary shots say more than composed or arty takes.
Haven't got a lot of Webshite Detritus this month, but only because I haven't clipped a lot. The level of kreptitude has not declined. It's still swollen feet, and this:
We expect to see a video of a big . . . tire, maybe, dislodged when the . . . tractor snapped in half, as they are wont to do. Since this is happening in the woods, we wonder: did the man tell the village that his tractor snapped in half? And then they laughed so hard they cried?
They reset and retooled:
Probably a 47-page story with no ending that has nothing to do with the tractor, written by AI.
Which brings us to this Studio Ghilbi controversy. Everyone and their neighbor started doing AI art in a particular style, running famous photos through the program, sharing the results with friends and followers. That's because they are fascists. You may or may not find this argument persuasive depending on your ability to detect fascism in everything. I tend to think "art, controlled by the state, concentrated on a specific, narrow, political and cultural objective" is fascist, and "letting everyone make whatever they want, regardless of skill or quality" is not so fascist.
However, fascists - you know, like the guy in charge of Argentina who's nationalizing all the industries and whipping the entire country towards the worship of the state - are using it to get points across and illustrate their viewpoints. Also, it pillages our cultural history, and that's bad.
A tremendous storm flattened all the houses in the neighborhood. I saw it on close-circuit television, and it wasn't so much the houses were destroyed with that they were imploded into small little squares. I figured that the important landmarks of downtown would be destroyed as well.
I was relieved and gratified to find that they were not. I was walking around in some grand ceremonial hall with great tears of gratitude that it had survived. Turns out my home was spared as well - we were supposed to get some renovations done anyway so I figured that the people who were going to work on our house would help us with repairs, even though they’d be very busy with all the other houses. We would have first dibs, though, since we had contracted with them previous to the storm.
The AI illustrator seemed to think this was a whimsical children's story. This is horrible stuff.
It is not, however, fascist. But we'll get to that next week.
LANCE HAMJAW vs.the shady DP:
He goes full Penguin in a heartbeat. At least the Penguin of the recent TV show.
This year we're going back a (gulp) half century. Remember, just because they were low-charting in the top 250 doesn't mean they didn't rise up the next year.
Ten years after its founding and a considerable amount of time after its hits, the Classics IV return. Note: Classics IV Featuring Dennis Yost. Says Wikipedia, in a very Yosty band bio:
The name "The Classics" came from the Classic drum set Yost owned. He was known in the Georgia/Florida area as the "stand-up drummer" because he played standing.
Clever lads.
More:
After the release of "My First Day Without Her" in 1975, Yost disbanded the group and returned to Florida to pursue fishing and the flooring business.
In 1977, Yost returned to performing on the Holiday Inn circuit, this time simply under his own name or "The Classic One." (He lost the rights to the Classics IV name.) The same year, Eaton got a job on Jacksonville's computer system in 1977 and later on worked for the City Hall. As of 2008 he was a professor at Florida Community College.
Yost died aged 65 from respiratory failure on December 7, 2008, the 40th anniversary of the entrance of "Stormy" into the Hot 100's top 10.
Anyway, that's it for now! Thank you for your visits, and I'll see you Monday.
