For The Good People Lost

In the past two years, I've attended five funerals and/or memorial services.

Is this the price of growing old? Funerals & memorials? Emotionally draining remembrances?

All of these funerals were for people who I would state unequivocally were good people, some of the best people I have ever been privileged to know.

And all of them died much too young, none of them being older than 57.

None of these people died from CoVid-19. 

I miss each and every one of them.

This past Sunday I attended the funeral service for a man I'd known for about 24 years. I was among close to 200 people in the small chapel. 

Two hundred people who had been touched by his gregarious nature, his kindness, his dead-pan humor, his sense of adventure, his commitment to his family, and so much more.

The world needs more people like him, not fewer.

In The Passenger Seat

Listening to the Mexican radio station on the way to the store

Because it's Jorge's truck and Jorge gets to pick the station

Heard a song with the word 'contigo' rhymed with 'amigo'

And I wondered where the singer and his friend were going

The world looks different from the passenger side

The world feels different when you don't have to drive

The world sounds different when you're just along for the ride 

The world is different when you don't care when you arrive

Jorge tells a story of a gorgeous girl he once knew

Back when he was working at a market near the ocean

Said it was the best time of his life and that includes his wife

Though I'm certain he'd never say that aloud if she was around

The world looks different from the passenger side

The world feels different when you don't have to drive

The world sounds different when you're just along for the ride 

The world is different when you don't care when you arrive

 

It's Not A Monster Truck, It's A Modified Truck

 

"Hey Man, cool Monster Truck."

"Uhm, it's not a Monster Truck. It's a modified truck.

"What? It sure as hell looks like a Monster Truck."

"Shows you what you know about Monster Trucks."

"How is that beast not a Monster Truck?"

"Well, for starters, the tires are normal, street legal off-road tires. Monster Trucks have like, 66 inch tires. Plus, it's actually a truck, not some tubular frame with four-link suspension and a rear mounted engine wrapped in a thin fiberglass shell that sorta looks like a truck." 

"Oh. Well, it looks like a Monster Truck, you know, old school Monster Truck."

"Thank you, I intended for the modifications to make it look like one of the original Monster Trucks."

"So it is a Monster Truck...?"

"No, it's not. It's an ordinary truck modified to look like a Monster Truck."

"Right. Can you take it off any sweet jumps?"

The House On Top Of The Hill

 

   Above is a picture of the Bates home, also known as the Psycho house, which was originally built as just a facade featuring the front and left sides as shown, as those were the only two sides needed for the original filming. 

   It was built on the Universal studios lot in California in 1960, then the home was somewhat completed (given a right and back side but no real interior) for the then-new Universal studios tour in 1964. 

   The four-sided shell of a house was dismantled in 1980 to make way for some other use of the hill it occupied on the studio lot. A close replica of the house (possibly using the dismantled shell?) with a few changes, (including a livelier paint job) was used as the beach house in the 1981 Chevy Chase vehicle Modern Problems.

   There have been sequels and remakes of Psycho that have made use of a partially or fully rebuilt Bates home - 1982's Psycho II used a partially rebuilt Bates home that attained a complete look via matte paintings, but 1985's Psycho III featured a fully rebuilt Bates home (it's the one seen in the first picture of this post).

   But the Bates home is not the actual subject here - the actual subject here is the house that purportedly influenced the design of the Bates home - said to be an Edward Hopper oil painting entitled House by the Railroad. 

   However, I cast doubt on that assertion. For starters the design used as the Bates house was fairly common - a popular Second Empire home design in the Italianate style with a Mansard roof - thousands of homes like this were built in the years immediately preceding the Civil War and for a few decades afterward.

  In my travels I've seen umpteen variations of the design, and many of those were far closer to the Bates house as seen in the movie than the one depicted by the great Edward Hopper.

   For example, the Bloom house in Trinidad, Colorado, built in 1882 and now part of the Trinidad Historical Society. 

   Not only does the Bloom house sit on a small hill that nearly duplicates every shot of the Bates house we see in the original Psycho, but the sloping sides of the Mansard roof as well as the ornamental cast-iron crestline that trims said roof is pretty much spot on (the Mansard roof seen in the Hopper painting features an odd onion bulge and recession to it, and no cast-iron ornamental trim). 

   The Bloom house has been used in other films, most notably as the rich man's house in Terrence Malick's 1973 masterwork, Badlands.

   The mood of the Edward Hopper painting may have had an influence on the direction of the film, but it is extremely difficult to imagine that painting was as direct an influence on the Bates home as is assumed by many film historians.

   But I could be wrong about that

   

 

Independence Day 2022

 

Mudflap Humor

 

Don't Want To Be An American Coward

Read his words the other day, his reaction to the ruling

Words of a selfish, self-centered cowardly idiot

Same ol' weak words of the recreant 

"F*ck America, I'm renouncing my citizenship. I'm f*cking coming here."

He had to make sure the spotlight was on him, that the cameras captured his anger and disgust

Because of course the only thing that mattered after the ruling was that his bile be spewed, and everyone bear witness

Unlike the courageous millions who knew that the ruling meant it was time to redouble their efforts, to stand their ground and dig in for a hard fight for their rights

He had to let the world know he was going to forsake that fight and the country of his birth to find greener pastures that wouldn't demand any effort on his part to secure freedoms

As long as the adulation of his fans and the cameras remained on him 

"There's just too much stupid in the world to go back to that miserable excuse for a country. Oh, I'm not kidding, you're going to get a lot of me in the coming days."

That's right Billy, let the anger flow, let it all out for your adoring public, let them know you have not the slightest idea how lucky you were to have been born and raised in this miserable excuse for a country

Know why there is so much stupid in the world Billy? Because of people like you who do nothing but cry when the world is not to their liking

Cry and run

This miserable excuse for a country was created by people who experienced injustice and refused to accept it and, instead of just whining about it, did something about it - at the risk of losing everything, including their lives

We won't miss you, as we prefer warriors who don't run when the battle appears to be lost, who never give up, who never seek self-aggrandizement for their efforts, who are committed to the fight for the long-haul, who know what it takes to not just demand inalienable rights, but make that demand happen

"F*ck the Supreme Court of America!"

There you go Billy, use your constitutionally protected right to self-expression to throw your fit - such inspirational gallantry...

You could have used that stage to let those affected by the ruling know that you were going to stand with them at the front lines of the battle to restore the rights that had been taken from them, but that would have required sticking your neck out, a little bit of unselfish valour

But you couldn't do that, no, that would not feed your ravenous ego at all

That would have been just too much like what the old white male forefathers of this country had to do to secure the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that you've enjoyed your entire fortune-blessed existence for your taste, eh?

The thought of having to put a little effort into freedom just turns your stomach, doesn't it?

Gutless coward