Infiniti sent me, and presumably a few thousand others, this:

Here’s a closeup of the copy:

Well, that certainly sounds promising, eh? Let’s look inside!

Sigh. Ohh-kay. Won’t be rushing out to get my drivers license today.

(Yes, it’s posted a wee bit early again.)

I decided my Goog hat is lost for good, so I went out to find a new one. I’m not completely happy with this one, but it’s pretty cool. It’s a replica of a 1960 Havana Lions cap. Since I married a Cuban I think I can get away with it.

But geez, don’t try to talk baseball with me.

I left it around here somewhere I swear. I miss it. It has sentimental value – I got it at the Guggenheim while visiting the witty and erudite Ken Goldstein. Here’s a picture.

I hope I find it.

Listening to the coverage of the tornado storms of late April 2002, I was put in mind, as I am every time I hear coverage of tornadoes, of my experiences on the evening of April 3, 1974. I was eight years old. The map above links to a very large and detailed version; here are some photos.

Over April 3 and 4 of that year, the largest outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded swept across the midwest. 127 tornadoes were documented during this outbreak. My family lived in West Lafayette, Indiana, the home of Purdue University. My parents had dropped me off at the apartment of a classmate for babysitting, as they had some sort of engagement that night.

As I remember it, shortly after they left, the weather became very gloomy, and the clouds took on the extraordinary grass-stain green that I still associate with tornado weather. The apartment we were in had no basement, and it made me quite anxious. We’d gotten used to retreating to the basement of our house during the regular tornado watches that are a feature of spring in tornado alley.

I have a memory of looking out the second- or third-story sliding glass doors that led to the balcony of the apartment. Silhouetted against the evening sun beyond the cloud deck, the shafts of no less than four tornadoes danced and writhed in the distance, the fingers of a giant hand reaching from above. I have no idea if this is a legitimate recollection or something that I later inserted into the memory. The map above appears to record only one track through Tippecanoe County. However, the NOAA records also refer to tornadoes with multiple funnels, and to one in particular that went through Tippecanoe County at 4:50 pm.

There were at least three small children in the apartment. We were pretty scared. Indeed, I think the experience of being without shelter and separated from my parents was profoundly traumatic for my sister. For the rest of her life she had a true phobic reation when exreme weather watches would occur. I think, however, that this did not really take root until a few days later.

A colleague, or perhaps a graduate student, of my dad’s was living, with his prtegnant wife and maybe another child, on a rented farm in rural Tippecanoe County. We’d been out to the farm several times the previous summer. The tornado or tornadoes I was watching destroyed the house in which these people were living. As I recall, my father’s colleague was away, possibly at the event my parents were attending, and his wife went to the basement, as instructed by the weather alerts.

In the basement, she was huddled down, when suddenly, she felt a dripping or spitting. Looking up, the entire house had been removed from the foundation. I don’t recall the details of their story. But I do recall standing on the sodden soil, looking down into the hole in the ground that was once a basement. We went out to see the damage as a family.

In my adulthood, I’ve long been a fan of what they refer to as moderate climates. Do I miss the snow? Nope. Do I miss the tornado watches? Nope. Do I miss the incredible humidity and heat of the midwestern summer? Not at all.

It’s interesting to note, however, that among the tornadoes which struck this past week (the last week of April, 2002) was an F5 – the strongest grade – in Maryland, the first that a storm of such ferocity has been recorded in Mayland. For more info, here’s a NOAA article on the storms.

UPDATE, July 2020: Apparently I have, for years, had a late-80s vintage bluegrass song about the outbreak in my vast collection of tunes.

Dry Branch Fire Squad, 1987. “Oh! What a Storm”.

This Saturday night Vivian and I had dinner with Adam, Spencer, and Sarah at Spencer and Sarah’s place. Dinner was delicious grillins: salmon, portobello mushrooms, prawns, and asparagus, with chocolate dipped strawberries, pears and cheese, and a lovely salad.

Spence then treated us to three super-eight silent films: Charlie Chaplin’s early “Easy Street“, in what I believe to have been an untrimmed Blackhawk release of the film; the late George Méliès feature “Conquest of the North Pole“, which felt a bit choppy and I suspect was missing scenes by the time Blackhawk struck the print of it that Spencer has (real media clips: one, two); and what appeared to be an early seventies print of a film likely intended for educational distribution, “Apollo 11 Man on Moon”, which was as tersely subtitled as it is titled.

While I was unable to find a specific reference to this super 8 film on the web, I did find this interesting page on the Apollo era.

Spencer accompanied each film with an appropriate soundtrack; in the case of the Apollo film, he chose the complete “Lux Aeterna”, which was also employed by Kubrick in “2001: A Space Odyssey” in the scene in which the lunar monolith emits a loud radio signal in the presence of an investigative team of spacesuited Americans.

The film print was very faded, gone to oranges and reds, as color stock from hat period is wont to do, and additionally had the wear of many years on it. The footage shot on the surface of the moon itself is already of a grainy texture (the cameras and gear employed were primitive solid-state video gear, and the visual quality is rough, very primitive in appearance). Employing “Lux Aeterna” as the soundtrack of the film enhanced the odd, alien quality of the film: it was like observing a transmission from a culture of the distant past, lost down the ages.

Watching, it seemed truly impossible that less than forty years had passed since that day in July of 1969. For many years I had identified my memory of watching the moon landing on our 12-inch back and white television in Valaparaiso, Chilé as my first memory. Of course, the events we were watching occurred well within living memory. Yet, it seems as unlikely today as it did in 1947 that we will ever again see humans setting foot on the soil of other worlds. That is simply a shame, and a failure of the mechanics by which we maintain culture and commerce.

I’d intended to post these alongside the Burke Museum entry, but was behind on image processing. Forthwith:

The crushed van.

The Flash Gordon Laotian New Year’s Rockets.

A dino skelly.

Should you be so inclined, you may see more images of the pleasant afternoon here.

It’s been some time since I made a pilgrimage to the greatest bar in the Northwest, Bob’s “World-Famous” Java Jive. The Java Jive is a bar in a building shaped like a coffee pot. I was told, while on a visit there in the company of Alan and Charlie of thee Sun City Girls and the fabulous Chuck Swaim, that the building was intended as a speakeasy, but that prohibition ended before the building opened.

The ever-lovin’ Roadside America has this lovely page full of roadside coffee-pot buildngs, including a lovely full-color view of Bob’s Java Jive!

Lately, the denizens of the south Sound region have been able to partake of occasional punk-rock shows there, which is truly an inspiring prospect. Add to that the fact that this wonder of modern architecture serves Pabst, had a resident troop of monkeys, and played host to the Ventures back in the first salad days of Northwest rock, and you’re talking something special.

Multiply these facts by the song “South Tacoma Way” “Thrice All-American” by Neko Case, which ends with this stanza:

God bless California
Make way for the Wal-Mart
I hope they don’t find you
Tacoma

and when you realize that South Tacoma Way is the street that Bob’s Java Jive is on, you’ll be looking into bus fare.

Oh, by the way? The monkeys?

They really exist, although I don’t know if they remain there. One got out during the visit mentioned above, and the elderly proprietress chased it around the bar with a broom, yelling at it by name: “Billy, you get back in the closet! Git! Go on now!”.

Aaaaah.

A simple set of facts that interest me, and I hope you.

Last year, my household income was very much greater than it is currently. I’m not working at the moment, and I was last year. While our total aggregate income tax was quite dramatic, we still received a very significant tax refund.

This year we had a significant tax debt. Last year our refund was about 3 percent of our income for that year; this year we owed about 2 percent of our annual income. This is despite the fact that our household income this year was just about 60 percent of last year’s.

Thank you, Mr. Resident!