Wednesday

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31
Aug 22

Pedaled downtown it was great, 8:30 on a Wednesday night

I am running out of ways to vamp for this demolition project. No big updates on the Poplars Building today. It is amusing, a few people on social media have marked the occasion — one gentleman flew his drone over it — but no one is lamenting the building. One of the best, and kindest mentions, is from what’s left of the local paper, which called it “a city landmark with countless, shifting identities.”

Now they’re just shifting rubble.

The saddest part of all of this, truly, is what’s happening to the local paper, which has never been in that building, but it is similarly being pulled apart.

Anyway.

The late nights begin again for me. It was a 6 p.m. production, which wrapped at 8 p.m. today. One production and two shows down, 41 shoots and 72 shows to go.

I’m exhausted already.

But I did get a nice evening view of the sun streaming into the building at one point.

We wrapped everything up and I rode my bike back to the house in the last bit of the daylight. There was less traffic, meaning I got to go faster, and I did the whole trip — including three stop signs, six red-light intersections, a roundabout and a left turn — without putting a foot on the ground.

I’ve done that three times now, so I need a new goal. Please submit your ideas.

Time for a few more songs from the Monday night rock ‘n’ roll show. The headliner was Barenaked Ladies, and because they were the main attraction I’m stretching this content a few more days.

This song, Enid, is 30 years old. And the band genuinely looks like they still enjoy this one. Huge hit in Canada.

It was their second single, and off their debut album. Their first single was a cover of a Bruce Cockburn classic. That same year, and also from their debut album, they released Brian Wilson. Here’s the beginning and end of that Monday night performance, because I enjoy the search for a coherent mesh point.

Brian Wilson covered that song, by the way. How cool is that?

More music, and perhaps some other interesting stuff tomorrow.

books / cycling / IU / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Same same
24
Aug 22

Same same

This was Wednesday, which felt like Thursday, because I thought Tuesday was Wednesday. When I finally came to grips with that and adjusted for chagrin, it made the entire day feel like … Tuesday. Which, just great.

But at least Thursday, tomorrow, will seem a surprise. Even if today, and yesterday, just seemed a repeat. A repeat of every other repeated day that repeats itself. I had one meeting that was more deja vu than meeting, another that was much the same. The same things were resolved as the time(s) before.

I’m even watching the same shows. It’s a weird loop out of time, a long running loop with no end possible. And it’s only a Wednesday. Of August.

There’s one brief moment where my bike points west in the morning, and the sun has cleared the trees and there’s nothing in the road and the pavement is clean and I can take a shadow selfie.

In the evening as I ride back to the house I see different shadows. I’ve been meaning to take a different sort of picture here for some time now, but this one seemed to work in a different kind of way. I like the lines. They, too, repeat.

In between, at the office, the view of the destruction of the Poplars Building shows two good days of scraping. Not sure where the now familiar big orange has been moved to. Maybe there was a more pressing job, or they just moved it out of sight.

But there are some smaller, and no less impressive, heavy machinery tools out there rearranging the debris. I’m hoping they get to that elevator shaft or service core, or whatever it is, soon. In my imagination it’ll crumble like potato chips, or take an intricate and futuristic solution. These are the only possibilities I can picture. It’s empty and air, or a re-discovery of something impossibly strong from the mid-20th century table of elements. The rest is more of the same.

Back to Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization. In the third section he’s finally got to Ireland. And after a very light summary of ancient Celtic texts (which read as hilarious, in parts) Cahill quotes Lord Kenneth Clark’s documentary, Civilisation.

So that’s a 1996 pop history book quoting a 1969 BBC2 series. Still resonates. Maybe they were onto something. Or, perhaps, we haven’t found a better understanding. How could we? We’re in the same paradigm.

cycling / IU / music / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on And it is only Tuesday, somehow
23
Aug 22

And it is only Tuesday, somehow

Yesterday, the rear wheel on my bike started rubbing on my brake. I didn’t notice it during my ride from office to the house, but when I walked my bike inside. The wheel wouldn’t make a complete rotation. When the wheel isn’t true, there’s only one thing to do.

Drove to the office today, then, and carried around a bike wheel. So I braced myself for having to find a bike shop that wanted to take on the job. Fortunately there’s one just across the street from our office. And when they opened, at noon, I walked my wheel into the shop. Ran into someone I knew, who noticed that I seemed to be missing part of my bike.

That was a keen diagnosis of the problem. My colleague was not, however, interested in fixing the problem, or hearing my considerable repertoire of bicycle puns. But the bike shop was willing to take on the job. (This isn’t always a given.) The young man at the front desk warned it might take a while. They are busy. Start of the school year and all of that. But they had the thing fixed before the day was done. It just needed a new spoke and to be re-trued.

It was a spoke they put on a few years ago. I remember then that the shop manager gave me a line about how long spokes last. This is going to happen, so don’t be so hard on yourself or your wheels, basically. All but two of the spokes are original, though, and today he had to repair his own work.

I assume I hit a bump awfully hard. So he’s having to repair my damage to his work. Most importantly, and happily, the problem is fixed and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. I can ride my bike again tomorrow.

Quitters.

Their raising their efforts at razing the Poplars Building. Suddenly, they’re getting close to being halfway through of pulling down the apartment-turned-dorm-turned-administration building.

At least on the top. There’s an impressive mound of rubble just out of our view here, and it seems the destruction of the lower part of the building will be done separately. But earlier today someone was on the roof hosing down the debris. Talk about drawing the short straw.

This Spin Doctors record came out in the summer of 1996. It was their third record. The first one had the songs you got sick of from heavy radio play. The second flopped — it only sold two million records. This one was a return to form, and provided a nice bridge of their pop sound and their blue eyed funk.

“Pocket Full of Kryptonite” was quintuple-platinum in the early 90s. And that form comes up here in songs like this, even if the record was never going reach that kind of prominence.

Here’s another example from the same Spin Doctors vein. But, hey, by this point they could make music and go to the mall (I remember reading that somewhere) which was impossible for them just a few years before.

Maybe a little anonymity isn’t a bad thing, musically speaking. One track here became a sitcom theme, and featured in a few commercials, but the project as a whole got a lukewarm reception from contemporary reviewers. It also received precious little airplay — probably why I picked this up as a radio station giveaway — but there’s some fine musicianship here. Bassist Mark White and drummer Aaron Comess have always made this whole band come together, whether you were listening or not.

I played that song a lot. It’s one of their old live show staples, with a weird ambiance when you consider the band, but I think I lived in a house made of magnetic tape and vinyl when this came out. Probably no one I knew liked this record, so it didn’t get much play around people, but I enjoyed it for what it was. And it had a bit of attitude, in a suburban, blue-eyed funk sort of way.

This is the not-so-hidden track, and it gets panned, but only because we hadn’t reached the Biz Markie renaissance yet. Biz sounds perfectly natural and happy in this mix, and anything that makes him happy should make most people who listen to music happy, so give this one a spin if you’re still here.

They also put out three more records after this, the last one in 2013. They’re still performing, as a three-piece. There are eight shows through early November on their website as of this writing, and their social media is still active. And, I bet if you run across them on a 90s station you’ll still sing along.

IU / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Plant a fortune cookie
17
Aug 22

Plant a fortune cookie

We had Chinese late last week, and late last night I ate the last of the fortune cookies. For one thing, they don’t keep very long. The plastic doesn’t seal in the freshness. You’d think, for people that purport to tell you the future, they’d be on to that little problem. For another thing, the cookies that I had last week, two of them, had no fortunes. They were just … cookies.

This happened to my great aunt one time and the family members she was dining with convinced her that this was an ominous way to end her meal. No fortune, no future, and all that. It was very upsetting and they all laughed.

Well, I wanted fortunes. And to get these cookies out of the rice drawer.

We have a rice drawer. We also have a tea cabinet, what about it?

Anyway, we had three cookies remaining, and these all had the important little paper bits inside. One of these is more important than the other.

The solution is my philtrum? Then what is the problem? The fortune says “a problem.” Not “the problem” or “all of your problems” or “your most recent problem,” just “a problem.” What is the problem!?

Maybe I was better off not having those fortunes the other day. I was certainly better off with the other cookies. Less than a week later and these were already going stale.

I wonder how that works. They all came from the same box. (I’ve seen the backstage magic at our local restaurant. You used to think there was someone back there hammering out these fortunes for each person, somehow they knew what you need. But, no. It’s just a guy reaching into a big box, knowing the fortune you need, and pulling it from the middle or, for special, hard luck cases, the back left corner. “This is definitely a back left corner sort,” is probably a thing that guy thinks once or twice a shift. I am forever jaded and ruined by the mysticism of the fortune cookie process.)

Let’s turn to the Poplars Building.

Yes, please turn to the Poplars Building, said the peanut gallery.

Not sure that was necessary …

Anyway, the failed dorm turned failed sorority house turned failed hotel turned longtime administrative building for the university is coming down. Eventually. The big crane hasn’t done much in a few days now, as you can tell.

I wonder how long that small piece can hang on so precariously. Of course, it’s probably eight feet tall, and securely held in place by the best adhesives the 1960s could muster … (Back when men were men and who knew what was really in the chemicals!)

Anyway, Elvis stayed there one night. He did two nights worth of concerts and skipped town on the hotel on his second night. It was not fit for a king.

And, today, yes, a carrion bird was circling overhead.

I watered the flowers this evening, just to show you some flowers. These are things my lovely bride has planted in the yard. These are in the front. I did not photograph the side yard, for they were in the shade of the evening by then. Photography is all about timing.

Look at those delicate little water drops on those delicate little flowers. I even kept the water on low, so the mists would fall delicately.

I suppose I was just so with them, because annuals already have a curious mix of the next few months. First, the trim of beauty! Then, the grim reality of their demise.

This wasn’t intentional, but just now I discovered in the final third of May Sarton’s “Plant Dreaming Deep” she is discussing mortality, and toiling in her gardens, and the two are at once alike, and dissimilar.

That is what the gardener often forgets. To the flowers, we never have to say good-bye forever. We grow older every year, but not the garden; it is reborn every spring.

That overstates the case for annuals, anyway. Some of the things in our little flower beds will grow back. Some will bring extra weeds from far away lands we know not how. But those little flowers, well, it’s hard to think about frost in August, but this is how I annoy myself and it’s been a mild August, besides.

Those little petals don’t know it, but they’ll flash their brilliance until the browning edges become all I can see and even the water droplets — when you remove all the books or training or years of experience or directions on the seed packet, it so often comes down to just good, simple water — won’t be able to distract my eye.

It is an odd thing to contemplate mid-August, I’ll grant you, but sometimes the moment is overlooked. This moment, being fleeting, winter always being on the horizon. Sure, the grass was cut just the other day, and I’m a little warm even as I type this, but it is in my mind, winter, even if it wasn’t in my fortune cookie.

Especially because it wasn’t in my fortune cookie. Those things are never accurate. They just grabbed by the handful from a box.

But that one in the middle, though …

cycling / IU / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on They didn’t just stand there and wait
10
Aug 22

They didn’t just stand there and wait

Here’s a bit of my bike ride to the office this morning. It was gray and not overly warm and somehow that made everything seem a bit slower and quiet. Maybe just knowing the quiet is coming to an end, and that far too quickly, made it seem like a quieter morning.

Classes start the week after next. This is the last big, deep breath before the regular routine returns.

I rode my bike back the same way this afternoon. For just a brief moment, one of those idle lower brain thoughts that makes it to the surface around the filters, I thought the same people I saw this morning might be there this afternoon. How neat to see them all again.

They weren’t, of course. Because they are elsewhere in the Truman Show.

When they get around to remaking that, they should go the real psychological thriller route. And if that’s somehow informed by Groundhog Day, and grounded in really normally inscrutable things, more the better, and more unnerving.

Time for our daily check on the Poplars Building. Built in the 1960s as an off-campus dormitory, but failed in that role and as a sorority house. Also as a hotel. And a “research and conference center.” It’s last duty was as administrative offices for the university. (The pool was filled in and became Human Resources.) Some 400 people could work in Poplars.

This month it is being scraped to death.

They made some good progress today. If you use the window rows as metrics, they’re getting one or two of those each day. Given the way it was built you have to think they can hold that pace pretty consistently. What we can’t see are the lowest parts, obscured here by the parking deck.

It is interesting, but I’m not terribly interested in walking over there and breathing in that stuff knowing, as we do now, about old building materials in the air.

Anyway, the deck is staying, but also being rehabbed. They waited until this summer to do that, rather than anytime in the preceding two years when almost no one was parking there. But, now, of a sudden, the parking lots are full, and the deck is closed “until the fall,” we’re told.

Anyway, the Poplars Building is going to be a green space for a time, until such time as someone has the time to figure out a better thing for the space.

I’m sure that fellow wasn’t on the path this evening because he was catching up on The Daily Show. He looked like a Daily Show guy, didn’t he? In that brief glimpse you saw of him? Daily Show guy, definitely, right?

There’s a needle to thread in comedy like this. Probably two or three needles to be threaded, each with smaller eyes. But The Daily Show had 10 good minutes.

I’m guessing the comic work will be better this week than in subsequent weeks. Legal processes just aren’t that funny. But this is pretty good, as is Trevor Noah’s impression of the former president’s stage style is informative.

And don’t call it a raid.

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