Category: Culture

Starring On The Antiques Roadshow

Well, not really; but it makes for an intriguing post title.

In my post Made In America, I mentioned that I had once appeared on The Antiques Roadshow. A reader commented:

"Michelle, you have teased us and now you must produce — what is your Antiques Roadshow experience?"

A couple of years ago the show filmed in San Diego. A coworker had been asked to attend the taping by a friend who had won two tickets to the show. The coworker was unable to go, knew that I loved the show, and asked her friend if I could have the ticket. Friend said yes, so off we went.

Continue reading “Starring On The Antiques Roadshow“

Starring On The Antiques Roadshow

Well, not really; but it makes for an intriguing post title.

In my post Made In America, I mentioned that I had once appeared on The Antiques Roadshow. A reader commented:

"Michelle, you have teased us and now you must produce — what is your Antiques Roadshow experience?"

A couple of years ago the show filmed in San Diego. A coworker had been asked to attend the taping by a friend who had won two tickets to the show. The coworker was unable to go, knew that I loved the show, and asked her friend if I could have the ticket. Friend said yes, so off we went.

Continue reading “Starring On The Antiques Roadshow”

Tattoo You… and you, and you…

TattooReuters reports that practitioners of the art of tattoo are beginning to sense a sea change.

Tattooing just isn’t as fun as it used to be. It seems like every suburban kid wants a tattoo as soon as they are out of braces. And worse, it has become a staple among soccer moms and cubicle jockeys across the country. The town where I live (republican territory, dry county, population around 30,000) now has several large tattoo parlors. Tattoos have become mainstream, which poses a problem. Part of the allure of tattoos, at least in the U.S., has always been that they were seen as non-conformist, a little dangerous and always cool. They are now so commonplace that it is no surprise to see one on your babysitter.

Long-time tattoo photographer Charles Gatewood of San Francisco said:
"It (tattooing) is so popular that it has lost some of its magic. It
was like a club, a secret society and family. Now it’s gotten
commercialized, co-opted and watered down … in the opinion of some
people."

You can almost hear the sadness, the disillusionment. This state of affairs has also led to a kind of one-upsmanship among tattoo-ees. To get even a second glance nowadays, your tattoo must be exceptionally; large, vulgar, psychotic, stupid, so-cryptic-that-even-you-forget-what-it-means (pick one).  It’s basically the same thing that’s happened to music.

My problem with tattooing (for me personally) is that there is no "undo" command in the drop-down menu.
Imagine going into a store and seeing a hat you really like. It’s a great hat, a bejewelled and richly embroidered skullcap. You go to try it on and the sales-guy informs you that this is no ordinary hat. If you put this hat on your head, it will never come off. Ever. You love the hat. It’s the coolest hat you have ever seen. The inner conflict is almost palpable, ain’t it? And for good reason. What if this hat doesn’t look as cool to me in thirty years? How will I explain it to my grandkids? My employer? Sure, I can always cover it with another, bigger hat, but what if I just want to stroll bare-headed in the park?

This is my tattoo conundrum: Anything important enough to have permanently engraved on my skin turns out to be too important to trivialize by reducing it to a fashion statement. If Jesus is important to me, then I will try to imitate his behavior, not have him drawn on my calf.  And besides, it’s really not fair to the true fringe element in society. The "mainstream" keeps getting wider and wider, pushing the real fashion rebels farther and farther out into the jungle. To get noticed now you need a face full of hardware, or implants on yor forehead, or any number of other absurd "modifications".

So, in sympathy with frustrated bikers everywhere, I beg you, please don’t get that Tweety-Bird on your ankle. Refrain from purchasing that tribal butterfly back piece. And definitely take a pass on anything written in a language that you can’t read yourself. You could be getting someone’s shopping list permanently embroidered on your flesh.

Cracking Spines

One sure way to end a promising friendship is to crack someone else’s spine.

Well, yes, putting someone in a wheelchair tends to be a relationship buster, too, but that’s not what I have in mind. I am referring to borrowing a person’s paperback book and destroying the book’s spine through ruthless handling:

"I had a rude awakening my first year of college when I discovered these book guidelines [of the proper care and treatment for paperbacks] weren’t universal: there are creasers [of book spines] and non-creasers. I worked in a used bookstore for a few summers, so I brought a number of books with me to my dorm. One of my roommates was a creaser. I didn’t mind as much when she was reading the used books, but she treated new books the same way. Oh, the horror! It got to the point where I would hide my new books in drawers or under my mattress or pillow so she couldn’t get to them."

GET THE STORY.

I can relate to this writer’s sorrowful tale. I first became aware of the phenomenon of creasers when I was in high school. I had so many new and used paperbacks that I could have opened a used bookstore in my bedroom, and all of the books I bought new still appeared to be new. One day I was chatting with a girl in my science class — the teacher was otherwise occupied 😉 — and discovered she shared my love for romance novels. I recommended a book I’d recently bought and offered to lend it to her, an offer she snapped up.

I lived to regret it. The book I gave her to read was brand new. The book I received back was thoroughly trashed, to such an extent that I doubted it was the same book. Perhaps it was petty of me, but that budding friendship withered.

I’ve heard the various justifications for spine-cracking: It demonstrates love for the book; like the Velveteen Rabbit, the book becomes Real; breaking the spine makes the book easier to read. I don’t buy it. I can manage to flop on a couch, soda in one hand, book in the other, snack nearby. The book will be thoroughly read and loved, but escape the experience unscathed. On the rare occasions that drops of liquid touch the pages, I dry them out carefully. I remove any crumbs from the pages before turning a page. In other words, you can love your books and still respect them the next day. You can leave them fit for someone else to love.

Moral of the story: Creasers can lend books to non-creasers without worry, but non-creasers would be well-advised to interview potential borrowers about their reading habits.

Unbroken!–Live

Like most folks, I s’ppose, I listen to albums (yes, I still call them "albums") over and over again, learning every note of the songs (if not every line of the lyrics).

Every so often, tho, I start hankering for a new album to inject into my mental, musical universe.

Unfortunately, I’m kinder picky. Not everything tickles my fancy. Even in genres I know and love, I don’t like a lot of what I hear. I imagine that’s the same for everybody.

But every so often I encounter a "breakout" album–something that, after hearing it a few times (or even just once) I totally get into.

On my recent trip to Kentucky, I encountered such a breakout album, titled Unbroken!–Live by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

I’ve been a fan of the Dirt Band for some time, but I’d never heard the side of them that’s presented on this album before. Up to now, I’ve been listening to their own studio albums (like Symphonion Dream) or their multi-way collaborations (like the different volumes of Will the Circle Be Unbroken), but I’d never heard a recording of one of their live shows.

Unbroken!–Live gave me that chance. The album is a 2-CD recording of a performance they gave at Doc Severinsen’s Showplace in OKC way back in 1984 (despite the fact the album was only released in 2003).

WHAT A TREAT!

The Dirt Band’s stage presence is amazing. These guys Know What They’re Doing. There is a huge amount of technical skill that they put into the performance, a wonderful selection of tunes, a great deal of showmanship, and a surprising amount of humor (a.k.a., "humour" for our friends over The Pond).

Now, any time a buncha technically-proficient guys get together with electric guitars, banjos, fiddles, and harmonicas to deliver hard-drivin’, toe-tappin’, foot-stompin’ upbeat music, I’m all up for that, but this performance was something really special.

The genre selection includes classics from Rock, Surf Music, Rockabilly, Bluegrass, Country, and Cajun, as well as intriguing, little-known tunes that you probably haven’t encountered before.

I was impressed by the way the band handled the introductions to some of these. To introduce certain songs they’d play an altered version of the melody that wasn’t immediately recognizable until, in a moment of recognition, it suddenly clicked into place what they were playing.

This was done particularly effectively in the build up to the Cajun classic "Diggy Diggy Lo," in which an unrecognizable version is played while the artists gave a patter introduction to the song, explaining that it is the song of two bayou lovers who fell in love for life. You have no idea what they’re building to until the speaker announces that these two lovers are known by "two mystical names." As soon as he identifies the first mystical name as "Diggy Diggy La" you immediately know what the song is going to be (assuming that you know "Diggy Diggy Lo"), the crowd cheers, and they kick right into it.

This kind of slow-reveal ain’t the only expression of showmanship that the band displays. As noted, there’s a lot of humor. This includes both comments they make to the audience and even some of the songs themselves. For example, they have a filk of "Help Me Make It Through The Night" re-written as "Help Me Make It Through The Yard" (the story of a guy crawling home after an all-night bender).

The guys in the band are clearly having fun on stage, and their personalities are much more in evidence than on a studio album. You get a much clearer sense of bandmembers as individuals as they make comments to each other during the songs and call each other by name as they throw different solos to each other ("Look out, Johnny! Play the fiddle!"), mix up who sings what verses ("Talk to me, Jimmy!"), make notes on what they’re about to sing ("I like this part!"), and report problems ("I don’t know how to get out of this!"–though they manage to do so flawlessly anyway).

The band is joined on stage by a couple of guest stars from a group called Doc’s Outlaws (connected to the place they were playing), and one of the guests (Rusty Allen) displays particular showmanship, using his role as lead singer on a couple of songs (notably the Bluegrass standard "Way Downtown") to set-up solos ("Toot that harp!"), ask for more ("Take two, they’re small!"), and speak of the amazing technical prowess we’ve just heard as if it were the product of a child prodigy ("Only thirty-five years old!").

The album also features a number of medleys (I wish they’d put CD track breaks between songs on these!) that are very successful. One starts with crowd-pleasing Rock classic "Runaway," moves to an awesome version of Rockabilly classic "Rave On," then into Rock standard "The Weight" ("Pulled into Nazareth…"), and finally into the band’s signature song, Country classic "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?"–a pro-faith song about wanting your whole family to go to

heaven. This time the song is delivered with a more upbeat tone than

I’ve heard them do it before, though it’s more raw and has less polish

than on a studio album.

Of course, on any live concert recording, there are imperfections. The mics aren’t positioned in the best way to catch crowd reaction (so you can’t really hear it when the audience is invited to sing along–an engaging asset to showmanship in a live performance but hard to pull off on an album). There are also a couple of mild bad words in one song ("Bowlegs") and another word in a second song ("The Battle of New Orleans") that counts as bad if you live in England, but in the digital era, you can easily make sure that your iPod never plays these songs for you if you don’t want.

There are also songs that contribute positive moral content, such as "Dance, Little Jean," which is a strong statement of the value of marriage, despite the difficulties it involves.

A special tune is the song "The House on Pooh Corner"–a celebration of childhood portrayed through the lens of Winnie the Pooh.

Another pro-morality song is "Face on the Cutting-Room Floor," which is about a talented young actress who goes to Hollywood to make it big. But when she discovers the moral price that must be paid for such success, it’s

Goodbye, Hol-ly-wood!
She’s leaving tonight, on a 2:30 ‘Hound–
sunrise on Sunset, she won’t be around.

(I like that part!)

All in all, it was a real treat to discover this album. Listening to it makes we wish three things: (1) I wish I could play like these guys! (2) I wish I could have seen them in concert night (or any night), and (3) I WANT the Song-Longer!

GET THE ALBUM!

Unbroken!–Live

UnbrokenliveLike most folks, I s’ppose, I listen to albums (yes, I still call them "albums") over and over again, learning every note of the songs (if not every line of the lyrics).

Every so often, tho, I start hankering for a new album to inject into my mental, musical universe.

Unfortunately, I’m kinder picky. Not everything tickles my fancy. Even in genres I know and love, I don’t like a lot of what I hear. I imagine that’s the same for everybody.

But every so often I encounter a "breakout" album–something that, after hearing it a few times (or even just once) I totally get into.

On my recent trip to Kentucky, I encountered such a breakout album, titled Unbroken!–Live by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

I’ve been a fan of the Dirt Band for some time, but I’d never heard the side of them that’s presented on this album before. Up to now, I’ve been listening to their own studio albums (like Symphonion Dream) or their multi-way collaborations (like the different volumes of Will the Circle Be Unbroken), but I’d never heard a recording of one of their live shows.

Unbroken!–Live gave me that chance. The album is a 2-CD recording of a performance they gave at Doc Severinsen’s Showplace in OKC way back in 1984 (despite the fact the album was only released in 2003).

WHAT A TREAT!

The Dirt Band’s stage presence is amazing. These guys Know What They’re Doing. There is a huge amount of technical skill that they put into the performance, a wonderful selection of tunes, a great deal of showmanship, and a surprising amount of humor (a.k.a., "humour" for our friends over The Pond).

Now, any time a buncha technically-proficient guys get together with electric guitars, banjos, fiddles, and harmonicas to deliver hard-drivin’, toe-tappin’, foot-stompin’ upbeat music, I’m all up for that, but this performance was something really special.

The genre selection includes classics from Rock, Surf Music, Rockabilly, Bluegrass, Country, and Cajun, as well as intriguing, little-known tunes that you probably haven’t encountered before.

I was impressed by the way the band handled the introductions to some of these. To introduce certain songs they’d play an altered version of the melody that wasn’t immediately recognizable until, in a moment of recognition, it suddenly clicked into place what they were playing.

This was done particularly effectively in the build up to the Cajun classic "Diggy Diggy Lo," in which an unrecognizable version is played while the artists gave a patter introduction to the song, explaining that it is the song of two bayou lovers who fell in love for life. You have no idea what they’re building to until the speaker announces that these two lovers are known by "two mystical names." As soon as he identifies the first mystical name as "Diggy Diggy La" you immediately know what the song is going to be (assuming that you know "Diggy Diggy Lo"), the crowd cheers, and they kick right into it.

This kind of slow-reveal ain’t the only expression of showmanship that the band displays. As noted, there’s a lot of humor. This includes both comments they make to the audience and even some of the songs themselves. For example, they have a filk of "Help Me Make It Through The Night" re-written as "Help Me Make It Through The Yard" (the story of a guy crawling home after an all-night bender).

The guys in the band are clearly having fun on stage, and their personalities are much more in evidence than on a studio album. You get a much clearer sense of bandmembers as individuals as they make comments to each other during the songs and call each other by name as they throw different solos to each other ("Look out, Johnny! Play the fiddle!"), mix up who sings what verses ("Talk to me, Jimmy!"), make notes on what they’re about to sing ("I like this part!"), and report problems ("I don’t know how to get out of this!"–though they manage to do so flawlessly anyway).

The band is joined on stage by a couple of guest stars from a group called Doc’s Outlaws (connected to the place they were playing), and one of the guests (Rusty Allen) displays particular showmanship, using his role as lead singer on a couple of songs (notably the Bluegrass standard "Way Downtown") to set-up solos ("Toot that harp!"), ask for more ("Take two, they’re small!"), and speak of the amazing technical prowess we’ve just heard as if it were the product of a child prodigy ("Only thirty-five years old!").

The album also features a number of medleys (I wish they’d put CD track breaks between songs on these!) that are very successful. One starts with crowd-pleasing Rock classic "Runaway," moves to an awesome version of Rockabilly classic "Rave On," then into Rock standard "The Weight" ("Pulled into Nazareth…"), and finally into the band’s signature song, Country classic "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?"–a pro-faith song about wanting your whole family to go to
heaven. This time the song is delivered with a more upbeat tone than
I’ve heard them do it before, though it’s more raw and has less polish
than on a studio album.

Of course, on any live concert recording, there are imperfections. The mics aren’t positioned in the best way to catch crowd reaction (so you can’t really hear it when the audience is invited to sing along–an engaging asset to showmanship in a live performance but hard to pull off on an album). There are also a couple of mild bad words in one song ("Bowlegs") and another word in a second song ("The Battle of New Orleans") that counts as bad if you live in England, but in the digital era, you can easily make sure that your iPod never plays these songs for you if you don’t want.

There are also songs that contribute positive moral content, such as "Dance, Little Jean," which is a strong statement of the value of marriage, despite the difficulties it involves.

A special tune is the song "The House on Pooh Corner"–a celebration of childhood portrayed through the lens of Winnie the Pooh.

Another pro-morality song is "Face on the Cutting-Room Floor," which is about a talented young actress who goes to Hollywood to make it big. But when she discovers the moral price that must be paid for such success, it’s

Goodbye, Hol-ly-wood!
She’s leaving tonight, on a 2:30 ‘Hound–
sunrise on Sunset, she won’t be around.

(I like that part!)

All in all, it was a real treat to discover this album. Listening to it makes we wish three things: (1) I wish I could play like these guys! (2) I wish I could have seen them in concert night (or any night), and (3) I WANT the Song-Longer!

GET THE ALBUM!

Pet Peeves

Do you have a pet peeve that flares up in the most annoying places?  I usually encounter my pet peeves when I’m reading novels.  It’s probably because I do freelance editing in my spare time and wish I could whip out my editing pencil and mark the changes.  (Probably could, thinking about it, but then I’d have a book with editing scribbles.)

Since those editing scribbles would otherwise remain unread, I’ll share a few of my pet peeves here.  Any literary editors out there are free to take notes and incorporate the changes accordingly.

  • Your grandmother’s sister is not your "great-aunt."  Just like your mother’s mother is your grandmother, so your mother’s aunt is your grandaunt.  Just as you are your grandmother’s grandchild, so you are your grandaunt’s grandniece or grandnephew.  Climbing up the family tree, your great-grandmother’s sister would not be your "great-great aunt" but your great-grandaunt; sliding down, you would be her great-grandniece/nephew.  And so on.  The male family titles take the same form.
  • Although the usage is common enough today, a woman in a historical novel should not be dubbed "Mrs. Catherine Lennox."  The title Mrs., according to historical protocol, was always used by a married woman or a widow with her husband’s full name.  That means she was  "Mrs. Nicholas Lennox."  If she was divorced, she combined her maiden and married names and became "Mrs. Granger Lennox."
  • I eagerly await the historical novel that takes note that the title "Ms." is not the invention of twentieth-century secular feminists, but has been dated by protocol historian Judith Martin (aka "Miss Manners") back to the Elizabethan period.  It fell into disuse when the title from which it derived, "Mistress," took on implications inappropriate for chaste women, married and single.  Once secular feminists pointed out that there should be a courtesy title for a woman to use with her own full name and that was not dependent on her marital status (as men have such a title in "Mr."), "Ms." was reborn.  (Secular feminists did get a few things right.)

There.  With that transcribed from my paperbacks to a blog, I feel much better now. 😉  Feel free to share your own pet peeves in the comments box.

Art and…

In a comment I made on one of Jimmy’s recent posts I made reference to the phenomenon of government funded artwork. This comes about when artists who can’t find support for their work go to the National Endowment for the Arts (or some similar body) and request funding. Oddly enough, though, even the government doesn’t want this art most of the time. The governemnt likes to spend money on socially relevant art, which has helped to give rise to the phenomenon I call "Art and…". You know…

Art and the Inner City

Art and Women’s Issues

Art and The Environment

Art and Bloody American Imperialism

… stuff like that. But here is the really interesting part; Normally the government still doesn’t want this art, they just want to write a check. They will pay the artists to produce it, but good grief, they don’t want to keep the stuff!

I don’t want to issue a blanket condemnation of all government funded art. There is probably some that does not cause optic nerve damage. My point is that the goverment funding of art, as it now works, only reinforces the notion that art has no intrinsic value, that to be important it must be political (liberal). This type of indirect funding has also led to the misconception that if you want to support the arts, you should donate to some kind of "arts organization". That’s fine, but if you really want to support the arts, just buy art!

This direct approach means that: A) you will be supporting art that you actually like, B) you get to keep the art instead of just view it for a bit, and C) your children will get to keep it when you die!

The goverment should stay out of the art business unless they want a portrait of some politician or a sculpture for the courthouse steps. It just makes good economic sense.

The Economics of Art

3_pearsSince this is economics week I thought I would introduce part of  the mission statement from my upcoming web page that discusses the inherent worth of (good) art. Unlike apologetics, art is something I know a little about, so I feel like I can discuss it with some small degree of confidence. Economics is a subject area of which I have no knowledge at all, so I am able to discuss it with even greater confidence.

In my mission statement, I make these assertions about the economics of art:

"So, art of any kind is objectively useless, and fine art in particular (as opposed to, say, cinema) is an anachronism. And yet, people still seem to need it. I think many people with the least interest in it probably need it most. Art is a mystery, like music or story telling (whatever form it takes). It is part of what makes us human. When I hear people talk about increasing art instruction in schools because it will boost test scores, I cringe. When parents want to play Mozart for their infants solely because it will make them better at math, I shudder.

(… )

Art (good art) benefits people in a way that we can’t fully understand. We need art, but we don’t know why. Part of the dehumanizing aspect of the industrial revolution (IMHO) was that ordinary household objects were no longer made by hand, but were increasingly mass-produced in ways that favored ease of manufacture over aesthetics, ease of use over beauty, and cheapness over everything.  I believe we have suffered because of this in a number of ways. A blank, artless existence simply is not good for the human psyche. We need beauty. When God created us, he put us not in a wilderness, but in a “garden”, a place where beauty is planned, ordered and tended."

The fact that fine art is objectively useless means that making a living by doing fine art can be a bit of a trick. Especially in times of economic downturn, fine art is rightly perceived as a luxury and takes a back seat to necessities. I do believe, though, that people need art, which is why historically wherever you find people, you find art.

And beer!

But that is for another post…