May 24, 2010

Passport Photos and Dog Shit

Dear Hank,

You may think this an odd title for today’s diatribe but let me explain. As you know, I’m not much of a drinking man; at least not before 5 o’clock. I admit sometimes I go on the Atlantic Time Zone, which gives me an hour headstart and, on special occasions, I’ve even gone to the New Foundland Time Zone, which gives me a start time of a half hour earlier than the Atlandic; but, other than that, and with the exception of a special day like Sunday or Monday, “you ne’re catch me wid a dink in me hand laddie”, except of course in stressful situations - like today. Let me explain.

Okay, this morning I had two things I wanted to get done first thing. One was to apply for a new passport and the other by now I’ve forgotten. I can go 55 miles up the beach to the Post Office in Kitty Hawk and apply for a passport there or, as the man at that post office was nice enough to tell me, I can do it on-line.

Terrific.

Go on line to state.travel.gov and look up passport. They have a form you can fill out right on line. Terrific.

Except, it never comes up. You can download a blank pdf in no time. After you read the website a bit you realize all the on line form is going to do is allow you to type in the spaces rather than use a ball point pen and hand print; you’ll still have to print the form out after you’ve filled it in. Okay, so I print out the blank form. There are four pages before you get to the form explaining who can use it and how the government is reducing the amount of paper it uses. Then you get to the two page form. No problem.

Except, they want a picture of you, two copies, 2” square, head only, no hat, no dark glasses, head no bigger than 1 3/8”, white background. Okay, get out the old tripod, side mount the fancy camera, put white pillow cases on the picture behind the sofa so you have a white background and boom, all set.

Except, the camera wants to auto focus on the area behind. You have to half press the camera so it focuses. I decided to hold my hand in front of the camera at about the distance I wanted to stand to take the picture and half depress the shutter button so the camera would auto focus. Then press the button and wait for the self timer. Of course, you guessed it, I had to turn the camera on, find my glasses so I could see the little icon which meant self timer, press the button not hard enough so I stood grinning like an idiot for thirty or forty second until I realized the thing wasn’t going to take my picture - by then I think it was in sleep mode but eventually I got a picture. It looked terrible. Light was bad. Sometime the flash went off. I didn’t want the flash because it created a shadow; but how do you turn it off? Who knows? I knew at on time but no longer. It’s nothing simple like a thing that says “flash off.”

Except, I can never get myself focused, centered, smiling (so I don’t look like a killer), with the light right. Eventually, I ask my wife to come take the picture and it’s beautiful. Now, all I need to do is print it. We have an HP 5180 printer, which is perfect for the job, and about the only thing we use it for is printing pictures. I turn it on and am ready to print.

Except, the printer says three of the cartridges need replacing. I’ve learned a thing or two about hp printer cartridges. They have a chip in them and it keeps track of how long the print cartridge has been in the printer. After it has been in there a certain period of time it tells you that you need a new cartridge, even if there is ink in the cartridge. But, and here’s the big secret, if you replace the cartridge with another cartridge and then another, you can put in the original cartridge and it will no longer remember it and how empty or full it is; or so I read the last time I looked into this topic. But before I did any of that I decided to try and force my way through the “easy to read” display panel on the printer and see if I could force my will upon it, (hark ye gods!) And you can!

Except, after pushing the button saying you realize using the printer without enough ink in it could void the (useless) warranty and after selecting the photo and choosing the kind of print you want (they even have a 2” square passport size - way cool! huh?) and having to say “go ahead and print I realize I may not have enough ink” it tells you it is starting to print!

Except, it never prints. The display window say, “Starting Printing.” Must be complicated because after eating lunch it hadn’t started. I decided to try replacing the cartridges. There were three that hp claimed needing replacing. In an innovative strategy hp decided to not tell you what needed replacing in English, or any other language, but rather show you little colored blobs and let you guess which colors they wanted you to change. I got black. But red turned out to be light red and blue, I forget was it light blue or dark blue? After switching out dark red, excuse me “magenta”, the little printer display still showed magenta as being a problem; switch out light red and the little blob went away and it printed the picture - yeah!

Except, the print came out all bluish. That meant that either red or yellow in the printer was no good. So I replaced yellow. So now I’ve replaced all the cartridges. At what cost? I don’t know, the cheapest I’ve seen the colored six pack is 36 bucks and that’s not including the black. I guess I’m into the printer for fifty or sixty bucks minimum and probably more like 100 to 120. What a great idea to have individual printer cartridges! And to have time expirations on them! One cartridge was expired as soon as I put it in. Yeah!

Except, we don’t know if it’s a problem with the printer that’s making everything blue, the camera, or the original photo and its environment. We, I’ve now got my, wife working on this with me, decide to take a photo using the small digital cameras we have (as opposed to the big fancy one that went all bluish). The small digital (Olympus A10) is one of those “no I’m not going to take the shot just because you asked me to” cameras. Today, it’s remarkably cooperative.

Except, the picture in the viewer isn’t the picture you get. I’m off-center. Repeated shots have me jumping around in the picture: a little left, a little right, etc. Find the waterproof camera. The waterproof camera is an Olympus W10, and unlike it’s fancy cousin, it takes a picture when you press the button! I like waterproof cameras because they are dustproof and therefore won’t jam on a grain of sand if you stick it in your pocket. (Actually, it takes three grains, but that’s another story.) I looked in my briefcase, my other briefcase, the car, my study, upstairs, downstairs, in the car again, in the briefcase, on top of the dresser. My wife looked too. The camera had disappeared. We got my wife’s iphone and took a picture. Everything was great.

Except, she couldn’t print it because she didn’t have the driver on her machine. She went to hp to get the driver. It took forever to get the driver and when she did everything was fine.

Except, in their downloading of the driver they unloaded a whole application for seeing photos and, extra bonus, they didn’t download the driver!

When my wife plugged in the camera it downloaded all the photos in the camera to her computer, not that she wanted all of them but she didn’t have a choice. But, now she couldn’t print the pictures because she still didn’t have the driver!

I went looking for the waterproof camera again. It has several advantages over other cameras we own, notably, fewer options. The options it does have are ones you might want to really use; and, here’s the amazing thing, it actually takes a picture when you hit the button! Unlike, it’s fancy cousin the A10 that will refuse to take the picture and not tell you why (“j’en ai se quoi” I think monsieur you need more quoi.) - piece of shit. In fact, that’s what we call that camera. Where the hell could the waterproof camera be?

I go out and look in the car. No luck. However, I note that I’ve stepped in dog shit. No doubt the shit my wife warned me about last night. (“There’s some poop near the driveway.”) Not to worry it’s now on my shoe and on the driveway in neat little footprints. I come back in hop on one foot to the sink, wash off the offending shoe and toss it in the tub.

We try taking pictures again with the little digital. The background is showing up so I remove the picture with covering and hope the speckled background looks white enough for the photo. I’m near the end of the sofa; if I could just stand where the sofa arm is. I move the sofa. No good, I move the sofa back and stand on one leg. Perfect!

Except, printing from my computer, does not have the passport option and one has to spend, I know from experience, three to four hours, figuring out the settings and the paper and the ink and the size - before you get something close to what you want.

I figure out how to put the memory card directly into the printer. I’ve learned earlier that I can’t make the picture smaller. I can zoom in, but not out. Not to worry, the picture looks good, I print it. It’s off center: not in the preview, not in the camera, just when I print it. Nice!

I look for the waterproof camera again, taking a bag outside to pick up all the dog poop I can while I check in the glove box of the car for the camera. No luck, I give it up for lost and do the best I can with the next set of pictures off the digital. Remarkably, one of them actually works. Now, all I need to do is fill out the form.

Except, the form has you attach one picture. But they want you to give them two pictures. What are you supposed to do with the second one? No information. I realize I’m on the verge of getting very violent and ask my wife to see if she can find what to do with the second photo. Hidden in the bowels of the information it says to put it loose in the envelope you are sending in along with your payment. Okay.

Except, they don’t tell you what the payment is. You have to go to another page on the website to get that and then they don’t have an option for “price of passport.” It’s either a “card” or a “book.” Okay, turns out a book is a passport. How much? Price given, great.

Except, they don’t tell you who to make the check out to, at least not next to the cost, which would be helpful. Finally, we find it. I say we because it took two of us. Did I mention that my wife has downloaded a driver so she can print to this printer from her computer, except, the software they download is an application for looking at pictures not the driver for the printer - nice!

Okay, so we are both in foul moods. I had planned to get this in the mail today, which means to the post office by 3:00 p.m. which is the time the mail truck picks up all the mail for the day - express, first class, regular; it all gets picked up at 3pm.

It’s now 2:50 and I still have to fill out the form. I’ve printed it. I have to fill it in. I get it all ready and head off to the post office. It’s 3:30. Just as I come into the parking lot; I see the mail truck pulling in. I race to the counter give Margie my money and we make the truck! Just before leaving the house I think to check my briefcase again looking for the camera. I look in a pocket I never have used but once, and there she is! So with the found camera, the dog shit picked up, and the package in the mail in time for the mail truck pick up; it’s been a pretty successful day!

Tomorrow? Oh, I plan to put back the picture that was on the living room wall, throw out all the useless cartridge packages from hp, and put away the tripod.

So, you see. I’ve got a lot to do.

later,

Time to have a drink.

Well, truth be known I already had three writing this up.

Annnnddd I dunna cure, care, who you tell!

later, (oh, I already said that, sorry.)

Later, (whoops)

Bryce

The 100 Most Influential People

May 13, 2010

Dear Hank,

Once again we have been slighted and I frankly don’t understand it but in some ways I am thankful. I’m talking about Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” issue. It does not appear we are in it. How they could have missed us - again - is startling. I realize now that I should have expected it as they sent no reporter to interview me, no photographer, and I assume the same is true for you. I had hoped to be able to pine loquaciously about my own success, the fate of the world, and what others could do but I guess that will have to wait for another year. Who was on the cover you ask? Well, Lady Gaga wearing some metal thing poking out from her sternum which I would think all the porn shops would want to sell as the latest in titty torture devices; Bill Clinton, looking very pale and physically diminished. (Has anyone considered that perhaps he and Tiger need those extra marital call them what you will to stay healthy and vibrant?), and Didier Drogba.

Yes, that’s right Didier Drogba is on the cover of Time Magazine. Who is Didier you ask? Well, he looks to be black with a German first name (is that sur or is that the last name - can’t ever keep that straight), with a African tribal or Eastern European Slavic type last name, and he appears to be a soccer player. This is a fold out front cover so on the inside outer flap (as opposed to the inside inner flap where time runs some three page ad) there are two other guys: Tim Westergren and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. No, I don’t know who either one is but looking at what Westergren is wearing (subtle light brown plaid sports jacket, blue jeans, brown wing-tips, open collar dark blue brown maroon shirt) I’m guessing netpreneur/startup/venture capitalist who has made several shitloads of money. Luiz blah-blah-blah da Silva? Blue suit, salt and pepper beard - mainly salt, arms folded smiling - no beaming - a guy, I think, I may have read about somewhere - probably an Italian politician or South American writer I’ve never heard of. What else does Time promise? Sarah Palin writing about Glenn Beck. Now, that’ll be inspiring - you betcha! (wink, wink)

Back to Didier, why him? What did he do? and who cares? It’s a sad state of affairs. I try to go to the grocery store on a regular basis to keep up with the headlines on the magazines at the check out counter. Of course now that the magazine that had those wonderful headlines like “Aliens at an RV Camp” folded; it’s not as interesting. Things like “Kate is pregnant again!” and “The Shocking Truth about Patty” kind of pale. Besides most of the time I’m left to wonder who these people are. I only hope Didier makes it to the cover of one of them soon so I can know more about him.

Someone’s at the door. I gotta go.

Bryce

May 10, 2010

re: John Leland, More Kerouac, the criticsß

Dear Hank;

I’m still on this Kerouac thing. I’ve been reading Why Kerouac Matters by John Leland. The guy does a good job, no, a great job, of distilling the essential Kerouac. I’ve read two reviews of his book by critics. One whined because he didn’t make clear, according to the critic, the differences between the original 1951 version and the final 1957 version that got published. The other critic spent more time talking about why he liked On the Road then he did talking about the book he was supposed to be reviewing. His main complaint was that Leland used titles of chapters that he didn’t like.

At least the second critic did eventually get around to saying that Leland captured what Kerouac was trying to do and say. The first critic seemed to have missed the point altogether. Leland gave a great critical analysis of On the Road and he put it in a framework which explained what Kerouac was trying to do with his writing. Some things were a stretch, maybe; but he got me thinking about Kerouac in new and different ways that made me realize some essential things about On the Road that I had missed and not thought of before.

So why are these guys critical? Is it that its cooler to be critical? Is it like The Bridges of Madison County to say how trite rather than saying the book sounded genuine and real even if, like a new born baby “it just happens every day”? (quote the Rolling Stones, Mother’s Little Helper.)

What Leland has pointed out is that the book is told in parables with book end images of what being on the road is like; that the book is built on a jazz rhythm, beat and sound with the story looping back to tell the same tale but with variations. Leland points out that although Kerouac wrote the final draft in 20 days he had been working on it over three or four years. The book is about energy and jazz and growing up.

If I could find a way to contact John Leland I’d tell him good job and tell the critics to go “f” themselves.

Yours,

Bryce

May 6, 2010

re: Kerouac, Whitman, Merry Pranksters, Hip-Hop

Dear Hank,

I’ve been reading and, as you know, that can be a dangerous thing. I picked up a book call Why Kerouac Matters. As you know Kerouac wrote On the Road, an epic tale of traveling across America after World War II and before the Interstate Highway System. As the author of Why points out the story is much more than a travel log or a good tale. It is the distilled teaching of Kerouac and what he was trying to tell people. In a time when people were trying to get a job and settle down he was on a quest. He was growing up and On the Road tells of that journey.
He finished the book in 1951 after working on it for several years. The final draft was done in scroll form that is to say he mounted a roll of paper and typed on a manual typewriter. In this way he didn’t have to keep putting in new sheets of paper. What I didn’t realize was that the book didn’t get published until 1957: 1957, the birth of Rock and Roll, of Elvis, the DA, the hot rod. Although Kerouac was a depression age child of a working class father and mother his book was introduced in another era and was taken, along with James Dean and Marlon Brando, as part of a new page in the epic American tale. Kerouac thought he was rediscovering Whitman’s America Leaves of Grass and all that. He was not rebelling like those in the late 50’s; he was trying to find his place in the world that made and did stuff. He rejected the work a day world of the management briefcased ad man. In 1957 the two biggest selling books were Peyton Place and The Man in The Gray Flannel Suit; they are bookends of each other: one tells the tale of suburban bed hopping and the other the lament of a washed up salesman, a person who worked all his life and for what? That is the question Kerouac raises in On the Road.
The foil in On the Road to the protagonist Sal Paradiso (i.e. Kerouac) is Dean Moriarity who in real life was Neal Cassidy. Neal Cassidy ended up driving the Merry Prankster bus in their epic journey across the continent to tell everyone about LSD which ended on the west coast and started the hippie movement. One of the people on that bus was Ed McClanahan who wrote The Natural Man, which extends the American vision yet again.
James Burke in his book and PBS TV series Connections pointed out that when Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured America in the early 1800’s, said that America was in a race between its vitality and its decadence. I think he was right. And Whitman and Kerouac and Woody Guthrie and the others I have mentioned were trying to chronicle, praise and rediscover that America which they envisioned it to be. Yes, that’s a circular definition but it is what they did. They told the story and the tales of their America and painted it on a larger canvas that more could connect with.
Why people still read On the Road is that it still resonates. It still has something to say, to teach and that is what makes it a classic American tale.

I gotta go,

Bryce

May 3, 2010

re: I get Mark Rothko

Dear Hank,

I got Mark Rothko. I finally got him. Mark Rothko was a twentieth century painter who is famous for making paintings of large black rectangles. I always looked at them and said, “So what?” But this time, for the first time, I got it. I got what he is all about.

Rothko didn’t always paint black rectangles he was known earlier in his career for his bright colors but once again they were rectangles. Typically, the canvasses were vertical rectangles with a horizontal rectangle painted in the upper two thirds of the canvas.

When Rothko moved to the darker painting he kept the same compositional elements: the vertical rectangle that makes up the whole canvass and a second rectangle horizontal on the upper part of the canvas.

In 1967 he produced a series of black canvasses for a Catholic chapel in Houston. It was those painting that I saw yesterday in the Tower of the East Wing of The National Gallery in Washington DC. Many people who visit the East Wing miss the Tower all together. It’s accessed via a staircase off the upper floor of the museum. Many people walk by on their way to the next thing. Several years ago they had David Smith’s sculptures from his Italian exhibition up in the tower, which was a perfect place for them. Here you could see his works as he had laid them out in an old Roman amphitheater. Similarly, Rothko’s painting could be seen alone, as they had been in the chapel in Houston. When I came up the spiral staircase I looked at the painting and once again, as I have before when seeing Rothko, I said. “So what?”

But the Tower has another secret. There’s a small hallway off to the right from where you enter when walking up the staircase. It’s the hallway to the elevator. Oftentimes here you will find are preliminary drawings and explanations of the major work being displayed in the Tower room proper; sure enough, this time was no exception. A seven minute video gave explanation to the large black rectangles. It showed a picture from Life Magazine taken in 1951 of famous American artists. Besides Rothko, there was Jackson Pollock, William De Kooning, and Robert Motherwell. Harry Cooper, who narrated the piece and is the curator of the modern collection, explained that Rothko used the two rectangle motif with the larger rectangle painted so as to appear rough and showing the texture of the underlying canvas; whereas, the smaller horizontal canvas was painted to appear smooth. There was a contrast in texture and in color; albeit, slight.

Rothko was slipping more and more into depression and his paintings reflected this. There was another thing that Mr. Cooper pointed out in his narrative that struck a chord with me, a chord I had not considered before. He said that Rothko thought of painting as linked to feelings, music, and sensuality (and that’s not exactly what he said but that was my sense of it.)

I went back to the main room of the Tower and sat on one of two benches. I heard music: atonal, distant tinkling. I recalled hearing these sounds when I first entered the room on my way to the elevator hallway, but now I paid more attention. On one wall was an explanation about the music. A piece had been composed for the opening of the chapel in 1971. It was a choral piece in four parts, not a massive vocal oeuvre. Instead, it was subtle, and primitive. There were drone like qualities to parts of it. The music was meditative, quiet, everywhere and nowhere. It came and went. As I listened I looked again at the canvasses. I discerned that there were indeed two four-sided objects that made up each painting. I began to notice that the black of the paintings weren’t black in most cases, but subtle shades of brown, maroon, and black. The rectangles that had appeared to be sharp edged weren’t at all. The edges were ragged. Much like looking at an object’s shadow reflected on a wall with the light coming from multiple sources. There is no clear edge, only multiple shades of shadow.

At one point there was a soprano’s voice making sounds. I don’t know what exactly she was saying or singing. It wasn’t that distinct. It was faint. I had the impression it was a sound that moved through the room like that of a stereo recording of a train pulling into a station where you hear the sound coming from one speaker and then moving to another emulating the movement of the train as it came by you. But there was no Doppler effect, no change in pitch. I did have a sense of zooming, slow zooming. Moving my head from my right to my left I looked at the three paintings on the center wall. What I noticed was that only the center painting was truly black, and that was two tones of black. The far one had a brown horizontal rectangle and the other a deep deep maroon for its outer rectangle. The longer I looked the more distinct and apparent the colors became. The music changed at times. Sometimes it seemed to have the quiet zooming effect; at others, the sounds seemed more disconnected, as if the music was trying to help you focus your mind on the works in front of you and not on the music or other extraneous noises. Then there was a drone, but not one that forced your mind to concentrate on it, just enough of a drone to once again focus your mind on the paintings.

I looked at the two paintings on one wall and then the two on the other. Subtle, subtle differences and shadings, none of them black, all of them dark, different shades of dark. These are not happy paintings. Not sunny days in May as we had outside. These were paintings to ponder and brood with. Mr. Cooper said they reflected Rothko’s depression; maybe so, but I think more they reflected his attempt to show the more somber side of human emotion. That might be considered dark or depressed but it could also be more somber and serious. A quiet contemplative work, not light and bubbly. Art can be gay and uplifting, but can it not also be quieting? I’m sure Rothko would say of course.

Yours,

B