2 Blowhards
http://www.2blowhards.com/
en-us2010-07-26T09:41:27-05:00An Announcement
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/07/an_announcement.html
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friends -- You imagine it can't happen to you, and then it does. Here's why 2Blowhards disappeared: Our webhost, who'd given us impeccable service for eight years, made a wee goof. He put the backup disk on the same machine as the disk this blog (and various other websites) were on. It was only to be for a few weeks, while he prepared to move the backup to a super-secure offsite location. What were the chances of anything untoward happening during those mere few weeks? Then the motherboard fried, and it partially overwrote all of the disks on the machine, originals and backups alike. Poof went the blog, as well as its backup. The damage was so severe that it looked like there'd be no recovering any of our work whatsoever. We had a few anxious days, believe me about that. A lot of heroic work from specialists, though, finally turned up most of our content, enabling us to put 2Blowhards back online, even if minus several months' worth of recent postings. Our webhost swears on a stack of O'Reilly computer books that he'll never do anything so foolish as to put a backup disk on the same machine as the original, ever again. But our unexpected hiatus gave Donald, Friedrich and me a chance to evaluate where we stand vis a vis blogging. For a few weeks we wanted nothing more than for everything to return to normal. Then, as more time passed, our feelings started to change. We compared notes. We've been running 2Blowhards for a long time. How much did we really want to continue? What we finally decided is that 2Blowhards has reached the end of its natural lifetime -- and that, because of this, we're retiring the blog. We'll be keeping 2Blowhards online for a while (maybe even several years) as an archive of our work, but we won't be putting up any more new postings. I'll leave comments open for a few weeks, but I'll be closing them down soon after to keep the blog from turning into a spam-magnet. Friedrich and I first started posting here back in 2002; 2Blowhards was one of the very first of the cultureblogs. (Donald has been blogging with us since 2005; several other writers have contributed as well.) Our shared conviction was that the public conversation about culture was 'way too restricted, and was in dire need of being bashed around. The choke-hold that the official class -- the pros, the profs, the critics, the editors, the journalists, often the artists themselves -- had on how the arts were talked about and thought about drove us crazy. The opinion-making class would have you believe that there's only one -- or at most only a few -- ways to be a respectable, informed, and legit culturefan. Baloney to that, we felt. As we knew from experience, there are innumerable ways to enjoy an interest in the arts, as well as uncountable worthwhile ways to...Michael2010-07-26T09:41:27-05:00What Salinger Read
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/01/what_salinger_r.html
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- As many readers know by now, author J.D. Salinger died yesterday. And many readers have read Salinger. Even not-so-lit me read "The Catcher in the Rye" when I was too young to really understand all the East Coast stuff it inhabited. Speaking of reading preferences, what were Salinger's? Roger L. Simon comes to the rescue with this anecdote. Key passage: My encounters with Salinger happened when I was a Dartmouth student (1964). The already reclusive Salinger would appear on the campus occasionally, usually to make a stop at the Dartmouth Bookstore to stock up on books. (He lived some twenty miles off in the town of Cornish, N. H.) When he was around, word would go out to the artier types at the college and we would slip over to the bookstore and, well, stalk the famous writer, I guess you could say. By then he had published Franny and Zooey, among other works, which we greatly admired. But many of us were puzzled that the majority of his purchases were mere mystery paperbacks – Dorothy Sayers was one of his favorites. Undergraduate snobs, we had expected Dostoevsky or Camus. This deserves further comment, but I'm not equipped to deliver. Are you there, Michael Blowhard? Anyone? Later, Donald...Books, Writing and PublishingDonald2010-01-28T21:00:19-05:00A Disappearing Book Genre
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/01/a_disappearing.html
Books, Writing and PublishingDonald2010-01-28T12:22:35-05:00Recession Snows Tahoe Under
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/01/recession_snows.html
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Our get-out-of-Seattle-in-winter effort is into its final phases. That is, we're in the Lake Tahoe area for Nancy's annual ski week. I never skiied much and quit before I bailed out of Albany, NY to return to the Seattle area. So she skis and I try to keep busy doing other things. Today those "other things" involved driving down to South Lake Tahoe/Stateline to buy a few needed groceries. While there, I checked out the commercial scene. Two or three years ago, the place was doing well, if appearance was any guide. Now, that same casual yardstick suggests that times are hard. In the "village" by the big Marriott on the main drag, something like half the retail spaces are vacant. Nearby, things don't look so bad, but vacancies seem greater than last year which was worse than pre-recession. I then drove over to Harrah's and did a walk-through of the four big casinos on the Nevada side of the state line. Two of them -- the Montbleu and the Horizon -- didn't look healthy. Some restaurants were closed "for the season" or otherwise simply shuttered. The slot machine zone of one casino struck me as sparsely populated -- by machines as well as gamblers. Harrah's and its sister (brother?) casino Harvey's seemed in better shape. Perhaps that might be due to the comparatively deep pockets of the Harrah organization. Even so, a small Harrah casino for non-smokers called Bill's was closed (it never struck me as very busy in past years). Skiing is an expensive hobby, so it stands to reason that it would be affected by the current recession which is lengthy as well as deep. Had the recession been shorter, perhaps more tourist-related businesses would have survived. For what it's worth, what I've been seeing here is the strongest evidence of the recession that I've experienced thus far. On the other hand, I haven't visited Detroit and similar places since before the 2008 crash. Later, Donald...Politics, Economics, EducationDonald2010-01-26T19:21:58-05:00Forever Young
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/01/forever_young.html
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Now that Michael Blowhard has willed me the Top Banana role here at 2B, I whine from time to time that posting reinforcements are more than welcome. Last week, longtime reader Rick Darby passed along the following thoughts. * * * * * Forever Young May your heart always be joyful, May your song always be sung, May you stay forever young, Forever young, forever young, May you stay forever young. — Bob Dylan The pace is picking up. “My” generation is dying off. I put quotes around “my” because it doesn’t necessarily mean exact chronological cohorts. Rather, people whose work affected me when I was young, or at least a lot younger than I am now, and left a lasting impression. It’s hard to imagine them aging, impossible to comprehend them dying. They and I will always be in the 1960s or 1970s when I think of them. (That’s not so long ago in my mind, although for young adults it’s the Pleistocene Age.) Just this week, two people I never met personally but with whom I connected with emotionally passed out of this life. The first was Kate McGarrigle, one-half of Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Their first album floored me when I heard it in the early ’70s; some 35 years later, it still does. Practically every track on the album sparkles. They were bilingual “English” girls from French Canada, blessed with splendid voices, individually and in harmony. I’m not sure which songs were written by which sister (the sublime “Heart Like a Wheel” is credited to Anna), but they were synergy in action. Kate and Anna released other albums over the decades. While they were of uneven quality, and none in my estimation surpassed that original effort, the craftsmanship was always there. They continued to offer consolation to those of us who were immiserated as popular music sank to ever-more artificial, and often cretinous, levels. The other loss this week that affected me was the detective novel writer Robert B. Parker. I believe I discovered him by way of his first book, The Godwulf Manuscript, about the same time as the sisters McGarrigle swum into my ken. He created the tough, wisecracking detective Spenser who was to Boston what Hammett’s Sam Spade was to San Francisco and Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was to Los Angeles. Parker has his detractors, and I agree with some of their reasons. After the first few novels, the Spenser series started to roll off an assembly line -- still entertaining enough to be good company on an airplane ride or for light reading, but successive titles did not grow in depth over the years like Ross Macdonald’s, for instance. But it was thrilling enough to my young self to learn that the Raymond Chandler tradition was alive and well, and the snappy dialogue probably influenced my own style, as it undoubtedly influenced many others. (I’m not, of course, saying I imitate Parker or comparing myself to him...MiscellaneousDonald2010-01-25T20:12:50-05:00Opening Soon: Psychic
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/01/opening_soon_ps.html
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- The title of this post is approximately what I read on what appeared to be a professionally painted canvas sign on the back, freeway-facing wall of a new strip mall someplace between Vacaville and Sacramento California. Maybe this is nothing new to you. For me, most of the psychics I notice seem to be in residences in transitional (residential-to-commercial) neighborhoods. Perhaps you've seen them: a house with a sign in a front window featuring a drawing of a hand and a short slogan with the word "Psychic" prominently displayed. The closest I ever got to psychic stuff was many, many years ago when my grandmother read tea leaves for a cousin of mine who was really anxious about finding herself a man (I don't remember what the leaves said, but ten or so years later she did get married). This means that I'm clueless regarding (1) what comprises the clientele for psychics and (2) what psychics actually tell those people. But that forthcoming psychic shop in the new strip mall intrigues me. Is that a sign the psychics are getting enough business to go mainstream? Please advise. Later, Donald...MiscellaneousDonald2010-01-24T23:20:51-05:00Bye-Bye LA
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Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Los Angeles' 2010 week of rainy winter weather is almost over and so is our stay in nearby Malibu. Once I download photos to one of my computers, I'll conjure up some pix-posts. In any event, it's evaluation time. In the past, I've made it clear that I haven't been a Los Angeles fan. The reason probably has to do with the short-term nature of previous visits -- having a hotel as the base of operations, putting in a lot of freeway time and frustration getting from attraction to attraction or sales call to sales call, and the rest of that kind of drill. House-sitting isn't quite like being an actual resident, but it does provide a different slant than the hotel-centric visit. So does being here 3 1/2 weeks rather than three or four days. One distortion from full residential mode is that we went out and visited places every day, something regular folks wouldn't be doing. Another variation from the norm is that our roost was in a nice part of town -- a part so nice we couldn't afford to live there. Shaking and stirring the above, I have to say that we enjoyed LA a lot more than anticipated. There is plenty of culture here, interesting places to visit and nice scenery. Finally, this week aside, wintering here is nicer than wintering in Seattle (which, in turn, is nicer than wintering in large chunks of the USA). Later, Donald...MiscellaneousDonald2010-01-23T01:53:04-05:00Mighty Kingdom Far, Far Away
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Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Not long ago I bought a book by Philip Matyszak with the charming title "Ancient Rome on Five Dinarii a Day" (Amazon link here.) It' a pretty painless introduction to life at the heart of the Roman Empire circa 200 AD in the guise of a travel guide. It even includes some Latin phrases that might be of use, for example: Scorpio sum -- quod signum tibi es? (I'm a Scorpio -- what sign are you?). One passage that particularly intrigued me was this one on page 67: The Romans do know of China. Chinese records speak of a visit of merchants from the emperor An'tun (probably Antonius or Marcus Aurelius), but trade between the two empires is done through intermediaries. Can you truly wrap your mind around the idea of a distant kingdom or empire about which you know almost nothing, yet that rivals yours in scale? My problem is that no such thing is possible in today's world and hasn't been for hundreds of years. It's simply not part of our life-experience. When I was a kid, there might have been a few undetected tribes someplace in the Amazon basin or New Guinea, but even that smidgen of geographical and cultural ignorance has been eliminated. One might raise the matter of civilizations on planets of distant stars, but these are presently hypothetical and not real as China was in Roman times. Later, Donald...MiscellaneousDonald2010-01-22T01:54:43-05:00The Harder They Fall
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/01/the_harder_they.html
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Consider: Barack Obama, Teddy Kennedy, Tiger Woods and, oh yes, Ingrid Bergman. And think about what was known long ago in the days of Greek theatrical tragedies and surely long, long before that. Namely, success reinforced by adulation can make the almost inevitable fall harder than it might have been otherwise. These thoughts are with me as I draft this post on the first anniversary of the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States. A year ago, Obama was treated in a number of media outlets as a kind of reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln and/or Franklin Roosevelt. I recall a few digitally modified images morphing him partway into one or the other of the two iconic presidents. The outburst of enthusiasm and high expectations for Obama was reaching the point where some opponents wondered if such Obama-worship might be a form of religion. Today Obama and his program are in serious trouble. He is "under water" (pundit-speak for below 50 percent approval) in most opinion polls. His party has now lost three important elections: the governorships of Virginia (a Republican, but recently leaning to Democrat state) and New Jersey (a strongly Democrat state) and yesterday a senate seat in Massachusetts, practically a Democrat fiefdom. A number of reasons are being advanced for this fall from grace, most having plenty of merit. But I wonder how much the adulation and lack of contsructive criticism by that "watchdog" media of a year ago contributed. It wasn't the most important factor, but still.... Media coddling helped make golf star Tiger Woods' recent windshield splat an 80 miles-per-hour affair rather than a 10 MPH matter. I haven't paid much attention to Woods, but from snippets I've read, he was a far rougher character than his media image suggested. Moreover, this was known in the professional golf fraternity for a long while. Woods' name is Mud for the short run. His golf skills probably will not harm his career on the links, but his "clean" image is destroyed and income from endorsements will probably be diminished for years. Perhaps Woods would be better off today if his public image had been more in synch with reality. Nowadays, transgressions of movie stars are proclaimed every week by gossip magazines and tabloid papers in racks near sup ... * * * * UH OH!! Rich Rostrom pointed out in an email that the comments link wasn't activated. I checked, and by golly it really wasn't -- for some reason unknown to me. So I fixed that, and then the last part of this post got zapped. (So that's how it feels to get bitten by a snake.) Herewith is a rough reconstruction of the last part: * * * * From the 1920s well into the 50s movie studios had stars and other performers under contract. Part of the deal was that the studios handled public relations to protect the stars' images, unlike now where stars are basically...MiscellaneousDonald2010-01-21T01:46:19-05:00Maazel Tov
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Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Okay, so the title to this post can't possibly be original. And I'm writing about music, about which I know almost nothing. But the nature of blogging is that bloggers tend to write about what they encounter on the Web or in daily life. Yesterday, we ventured to downtown Los Angeles and the Walt Disney Concert Hall (designed by Frank Gehry -- I'll have photos and an article about it one of these days) to witness the Los Angeles Philharmonic and guest conductor Lorin Maazel. The program began with a suite from Der Rosenkavalier followed by The Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome (the latter including singing by Nancy Gustafson) by Richard Strauss. After the intermission was the Second Symphony by Jean Sibelius. We went because my wife wanted to see the Disney and soak up some culture. "Arts buff" me was thinking that, for the price of my ticket, I could buy three classical CDs of my choosing to pop into the trusty little Bose in our living room while avoiding the stress and hassle of navigating a downtown LA I hadn't visited in more than 20 years. The main attraction for me was seeing Maazel conduct. The gent is pushing 80 really hard (his birthday is in March), yet was energetic enough for the 90 or so minutes he was on the podium. Actually, Gustafson proved a surprise attraction. She's in her early 50s and, as Salome, was wearing a slinky, semi-see-through gown: Bravo! quoth me. Oh yes. The music. I'm not a huge Strauss fan. We saw his opera Elektra a while ago, and I didn't care for it much. The two pieces Maazel conducted were okay, but I wouldn't buy a CD of them. The Sibelius was a waste of my time. Plenty of different sounds, but save for the last few minutes, no sustained melodic thrust. I never cared for Sibelius' work. But as I mentioned, I'm pretty ignorant of music, so do pile on in Comments if you wish. Later, Donald...Music, Dance, etc.Donald2010-01-18T21:40:48-05:00Destination Pasadena
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/01/destination_pas.html
Art, Architecture, the Econ of ArtDonald2010-01-16T18:05:01-05:00Regional vs. Nationwide
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Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- I'm still in the Los Angeles area, and enjoying it more than I had expected. We buy groceries at a chain called Ralph's. No Ralph's in Seattle. Must be a regional outfit, right? Well ... yes and no. It seems that some of the items on the shelves are house brands for Kroger, a Cincinnati-based company. Moreover, the grocery where we usually shop in Seattle (QFC -- Quality Food Centers) also sells Kroger-branded items. It turns about that Kroger, once a regional company, has tendrils all over the place as can be seen here, (scroll down for a list of "local" outfits controlled by Kroger). Nationwide company, regional brand presence: interesting formula. Banks also used to be tied to areas. In Washington, statewide at most. In Pennsylvania, to a home county and contiguous counties. In Illinois, even tighter geography. Nowadays, some banks have branches over much of the country. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; as a customer I find it convenient when traveling. When I was young [Oh, no!! Not that again!] there seemed be many local and regional products. Consider beer. I grew up with brands such as Olympia (from Oylmpia, WA), Rainier (Seattle) , Sick's Select (also Seattle), Alt Heidelberg (Tacoma) and Lucky Lager (Vancouver, WA) -- eventually drinking the survivors when I got old enough. Later, when traveling, I'd make it a point to drink a local beer. I recall being disappointed in Rhode Island when the bar only had Bud and no Narragansett. There were local food brands, too. And not just dairy products, which remain largely local. In my case, it was Nalley canned goods such as chili (the brand still exists, but is no longer locally owned), Frye's meat products and Buchan's bread. I'm sure you can come up with examples from your own past. Given all the consolidation we've seen in recent decades, are local/regional products a dying breed? Not necessarily. Many nationwide brands started locally, and start-ups are, almost by definition, local. Consider coffee houses. Yes, there's Starbucks, a local Seattle firm that now spans the globe, as they say. Yet even in Seattle one finds stores from regional chains such as Tully (Seattle) and Peet's (Bay Area). Strong in Southern California, Las Vegas and Oahu is an outfit called Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. The old regional beers are largely gone -- crushed by Budweiser and Miller -- but now local microbrews are sprouting. Modern communications, including fast, relatively inexpensive transportation, has indeed "nationalized" a number of products -- look at advertisements in old newspapers to get a feel for which products were still local at various times. But as I noted, local is far from finished. Later, Donald...MiscellaneousDonald2010-01-14T20:14:17-05:00A Cream-Pie for Rembrandt's Face?
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Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- This article in the Los Angeles Times (7 January, page D8) informs us that there's an art blog that spoofs paintings by posting alternative captions. It's called That is Priceless, and a link is here. Writer David Ng reports: [The blog] was launched in November by L.A.-based television comedy writer and producer Steve Melcher. Once a day, Melcher spotlights a well-known work of art -- usually a painting -- and gives it an alternate title. ... Since November, Melcher has clocked in about one post per day. He said he chooses works that tell a clear story: "I don't do too much abstract or Impressionist art because readers will have to stop to figure out what the painting is showing. I love Dutch art -- they always have silly things going on in their paintings." The writer said he often tries to tie a painting to recent news, a holiday or a pop culture event. I think it's a cute concept. But I didn't find the revised captions near the top of the stack as of this morning especially side-splitting. Of course, Melcher is a TV writer and I'm totally unplugged from the current scene thereabouts, so my reaction might be because I'm out of touch. Later, Donald...Art, Architecture, the Econ of ArtDonald2010-01-13T11:36:18-05:00LACMA Report
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/01/lacma_report.html
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Still in the Los Angeles area, still hitting museums. Saturday, we visited the Getty Villa, a modern version of what was in Pompeii, containing examples of ancient art. It's literally a long stone's throw from where we're staying. Problem is, it takes me a real effort to pay much attention to art from Greco-Roman times. The likely reason is that I'm most interested in arts that I can actually do, and sculpture (which is mostly what survived) is something I did little of. Today I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). With a director committed to modernism as well as the new building housing the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, it's not a place to see much pre-20th century painting. Actually, LACMA does have a number of good non-modernist works, but they're not emphasized. For example, their European Art collection is on the third floor of the Ahmanson Building (but the gallery's closed for renovation) and the modernist stuff is on the 2nd floor plaza entry level. Non-modernist American art is also on a third floor, that in the Art of the Americas Building; the main floor is reserved for special exhibits -- something about Persian rugs, currently, I think. This means you have to work harder to view traditional art than modernist art. The American Art galleries were open and I was able to check things out. There were nice examples of arts 'n' crafts furniture, a few California Impressionist paintings and an obligatory John Singer Sargent portrait. Also I spied a small portrait by Whistler and one by George Bellows that looks as if it might have been done by Robert Henri (no surprise) plus a mother-and-child by Mary Cassatt. What was a pleasant surprise was a large portrait of his wife by John White Alexander (see image below). The painting looks a lot nicer than this reproduction. It's painted thinly -- almost zero impasto -- though much of it is slightly sketchy with obvious brushwork providing a "painterly" effect without heaviness or drama. The plaza level galleries in Ahmanson have plenty of works by modernists of the 1910-1960 era, something useful for students interesting in seeing painting and sculpture by well-known hands. Having pounded on modernism and PoMo plenty on this bytes & pixels station, I'll spare you my reaction to what I saw in these galleries and at the Broad. Later, Donald...Art, Architecture, the Econ of ArtDonald2010-01-11T21:47:22-05:00Getting Lost in Big Cities
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/01/getting_lost_in.html
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Ever get lost in a big city? Or even disoriented for a few minutes? It probably happens to everyone. I have a fairly good sense where I am and how the surroundings are laid out. This is mostly because I try to get hold of a map and study it before entering unfamiliar territory. If nothing else, this prior knowledge alerts me when I begin to drift away from my mental picture of where I'm trying to head. This shouldn't be news to anyone, but it's pretty hard to get lost in grid-pattern cities. I should add that specific places might be a little hard to track down by address in Salt Lake City, Utah. (The Wasatch Mountains to the east make it difficult to get totally lost there.) You see, the street-naming system is partly based on the Mormon temple and major streets' relationship to it: "East South Temple," for instance. Street patterns based on cow paths or influenced by topography are where trouble can set it, especially in overcast weather or at night when the sun's position is of no help. Fairly flat cities with twisty streets and no tall buildings are the most trouble because there are few landmarks to help guide one. So what cities are the hardest to get around? Here are some of my "favorites." Stuttgart, Germany caused me trouble when driving. It's hilly, and hills and relatively flat areas determine how streets and roads are laid out. I wanted to head out of town to the northeast, but to do so it was critical that I make a certain street change. Despite having my wife holding a street map, I missed the turn and eventually exited to the south, which cost us a up to an hour of extra driving to get back on track. Bamberg, also in Germany, was difficult because we were trying to drive to a hotel in the center. But the presence of a river, pedestrian-only zones and one-way streets -- coupled with the fact that I had only a sketchy motel-brochure map -- resulted in 45 minutes of circling and circling until we finally struck the right route. Never try driving in Bamberg without a good street map. One year I had a terrible time trying to drive to our hotel in Montecatini Terme, Italy. I had been there a few years earlier, but didn't have a street map this time. The city has a large park-like area in the middle where health spas and related facilities are located, and the many of the streets are one-way. So, as I struggled to find the hotel, I realized that I was slowly working myself in the opposite direction. Once more, a high-frustration situation. As for walking, Venice in Italy gets the honors from me. For some reason I once wanted to walk from the train station to the Rialto bridge. Even though I had a map showing all the canals, streets, squares and...MiscellaneousDonald2010-01-11T19:10:31-05:00