Category: This; And also that

I’ve been wondering lately how my kids will be affected by these times. How will it shape their view of politics and patriotism to go through their early years with an unpopular war, with a President so widely disliked and distrusted by people in both parties, one who seems to have, well, obvious contempt for the rule of law? What kind of people will an era like this breed?
Oh yeah, I realize. “A doi now,” as we used to say. It’s me. My gang. Folks born in the mid-to-late ’60s, with Vietnam and then Nixon on TV alongside Romper Room and the Electric Company. I guess, for better and/or for worse, times like these breed folks sort of like us.

If you’re making me a smoothie
don’t make the yuck face when you
look in the cup
right before you put on the cap
and hand me
the smoothie.

Third grader 1: [wistful] I love my new catch phrase.
Third grader 2: What is it?
Third grader 1: When I’m happy I say: “I feel happy inside.” When I’m sad I say: “I feel sad inside.”

I read a Vonnegut quote the other day worth sharing. This is from A Man Without a Country (Random House, 2005):

I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy to begin with.

And I’m not sure it was meant that way, but I find this idea comforting, the image of all us hopefully doing the best we can, but still basically looking around, trying to figure things out, once in a while going: “Sooooo…you’re saying if I push that lever, it makes the whoosie go off? Every time? Crazy!”
It reminded me of some advice I got from a friend way back in high school. At the time I was sweet on a girl who lived across the world. And I was bemoaning her across-the-worldness to him, and he said, “It’s not like she’s going anywhere.” By which he meant, mortality aside, she wasn’t about to jump the planet. She was still going to be here, looking up at the same moon, gripped by the same gravity. So what was the big deal?
OK. So (1) no matter our age, we basically just got here. And (2) until we die, here is pretty much where we’ll stay.
That works for me.

I was just getting quizzed by my kids about the tooth fairy, and her castle, and the fact that it’s 100 feet tall and 5 feet wide and only has two rooms — the main room and a bathroom. And my third-grade daughter asks, mouth full of toothbrush and toothpaste:
“Is it as I expected? Is her whole house made out of teeth?”

Not-so-astonishing fact #1: Actor Creed Bratton, who plays the character “Creed Bratton” on the hit NBC TV show “The Office,” is actually named “Creed Bratton.”
Really-quite-astonishing fact #2: Back in the ’60s, this selfsame so-called “Creed Bratton” was a member of the band “The Grass Roots,” best known for their hit “Let’s Live for Today.” Creed in turn was best known as “bandmember most likely to streak.”
Breathe. Just breathe.
It’s going to be OK.

I just learned that CNR passed away late last week. It’s been my long-held belief that if the aliens learn everything they know about humanity by watching Charles Nelson Reilly performances, they’ll treat us with great loving kindness.

Whatever did we see in Tekton?
There was a time — back in the early-to-mid ’90s — when we loved that font with a love that was shameless. We were puppies, licking the face of Tekton. Or perhaps Tekton was a puppy. And we let it lick our face for twenty, thirty, forty-minute stretches. And we didn’t even care that she had funky breath.
We put Tekton in our fliers. In our magazines. In our computer books.
Tekton for A-heads and running heads! Tekton for body text!
I remember going to parties where we all dressed up as Tekton letters. Everyone wanted to be the lower-case “t.” There were lower-case “t”s running around all over the place, getting drunk on “gin and tektonics,” taking whippets. It was crazy.
Now you look at ’70s fonts, for example, and no matter how dated they are, you can still understand their appeal — not just the nostalgic, looking-back appeal they have today, but the magic they must have had in the moment. You can picture someone in some 1976 font-mine wiping the ink from their hands, tilting their lantern toward the day’s work, and their buddy says: “that’s fat and freaky.” These were fonts with flair.
With Tekton, I don’t know. I mean, I remember that we felt that way. I was there. I have photographs. But I find myself incapable of recreating a mental space in which our response to Tekton seems plausible.
Did we burn out on Tekton — is that all this is? The way you can kill a favorite tune by overplaying it?
Does our perceptual shift reflect an innocence lost in this post-9/11 world — the ability to dip and swoon before a font that looks kind of like handwriting, but not really?
Or was it just that we were out of our minds?

Taking Place on the Windshield of a Moving Car, goes to this feller.

A site called idealog had a link to a beautiful collection of post-it doodles — the artist (Scott E. Franson) did one a day for a hundred days. Time well spent, sez I.