Podstruck

You’re on your own today. No bloggifying for me. I’m having too much fun — if by “fun” is meant dazed comulsive repetive non-productive activity — playing with my new iPod Classic. I am Podstruck. So I’m just going to insert a drawing I’ve already posted. It’s a nice one. Stare at it for full minute:

This picture from ‘04 or ‘05 was for Lifeway Publishing. I picked a drawing that exudes brooding menace because one of the cool things you can do with these new (i.e. post 2003) iPods is watch video and I’ve downloaded some Soprano episodes. It’s like watching the TV through the window of the neighbor’s house, but with better sound. I loves it.

Veni, Vidi, Podi

How DO they do it? When we bought our first 3 iPods back in 2003 (they were 10, 15 and 20 Gigabytes respectively) they didn’t just look moderne; no, they looked as though they had dropped from the future through a wormhole in the space/time continuum. Recently, though, they have succumbed to hard use and (perhaps) questionable musical tastes. And now, as we eagerly rush back into our MacRoom after a quick trip to Target to exchange a swipe of plastic for a BRAN’ NEW SILVER IPOD CLASSIC, they look… look… old. How?

They are still exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them, and they still are as cute as an unopened pack of menthol cigarettes to a Catholic High School girl, and they are still encased in that same well nigh indestructible top-secret material the Feds used to trap Gort the Robot, but now, all at once, they look old.

Okay, it’s true the screens are monotone… but, no, no, that couldn’t be it, because even with both gadgets turned off the new purchase next to the old is Buzz Lightyear next to Woody. Our beloved super-jazzy über-Jetson Space Odyssey beam-me-up resistance-is-futile tomorrowland personal-jetpack iPods suddenly look like the Victrola in the “His Master’s Voice” RCA trademark. It’s not the color screen; it’s something else. Fairy dust. Steve Job’s aura. Voodoo. Something…

Well, whatever it is, it’s permanent, right?

Up Cripple Creek

I had hoped to gambol with you today, readers, but you’ll have to go it alone. A torn Posterior Cruciate Ligament has left me — when mobile — hobbling, or — when immobile — with left leg elevated.

But isn’t the Internet wonderful? In the not so distant past, if I’d hurt myself in this way, I would have said, “Oh, the back of my knee really hurts!” Then I would have iced my knee, put my leg up on a stack of pillows and gulped ibuprofen. Now, thanks to the Web, I can say, “Oh, my posterior cruciate ligament is torn!” Then put ice on my knee, put my leg up on a stack of pillows and gulp ibuprofen.

The Internet also enables me to turn my misfortune into a learning moment for you. Gather ’round, readers, and I will tell you about ligaments.

This is a drawing which I did three or four years ago for that fine magazine dedicated to fit Americans: American Fitness. The article was about how to get in exercise while business travelling, but I have adapted the picture to illustrate this, my temporary disability. Carefully follow the arrows as they lead away from the legend “Posterior Cruciate Ligament”. You should end up at the back of the running man’s knee. Now, if you were to snip away the fabric of his suit trousers, make an H incision in the skin behind the knee and spread apart the flaps, you would see his left posterior cruciate ligament. That’s okay. It’s nothing to be ashamed of: we all have posterior cruciate ligaments behind each knee. They prevent our lower legs from wandering off.

All right, I see you are becoming restless. Enough education for one day. Run along and play. Mind you don’t hyperextend your knees! Go now. Shoo.

In Verlare Veritas

So which is it? Are we as a species becoming stupider because the Web has shortened our attention spans to only what can fit on a screen — and even that “info-snack” is getting abbreviated to “LOLs,” “BRBs,” and “WTFs?” Or is it the other way around: Are we, in some group-mind way, getting smarter because we can at a whim Wiki up Thomas Paine’s graduation photo and because we can carry around whole smarty-pants libraries on PDAs or Kindles™? I’ve read both arguments lately on the Web — but I don’t know the answer: the articles were too long to finish reading, so I looked at I Can Has Cheezburger? instead.

Fortunately for the continuing validity of the second part of our species’ name, other sources of wisdom besides Wikipedia are still available. Most notably, here in Elmhurst, IL, there’s the big sign outside of Verlare Cleaners:

It updates weekly, which is just enough time to chew on the last aphorism and digest it, but not so long an interval that there’s any danger of our little community’s regressing to savagery. I wish I had a better example to show than this photo I snapped yesterday. The proverb on display is atypical in that it is simply flat-out wrong. It more usually tends towards the Delphic. We get things like, “The ladder of success is not made of glass.” Sayings which sort of throw a monkey wrench into your mental workings because for half a second you almost buy it.

It has become a kind of parlor game with Lizzie, Mary and me to try to out-Verlare Verlare by making up proverbs which come as close as possible to making sense without actually crossing the line. It’s not so easy as it sounds; the danger of actually saying something meaningful is never far away.

You doubt? Try it yourself. Here are some examples to get you started:

• It only takes five letters to write “SMILE.”
• Your future is already someone’s yesterday.
• To dress for success, walk a mile in its shoes.
• A friend is just an enemy you haven’t met yet.
• The ladder of success has many rungs, but only two vertical pieces.
• When you point the finger of blame, keep your hand in your pocket.

You’ve Got Me Under Your Skin

Today Nice Work inaugurates a spanking new business venture:

Atherton Tattoos!

The entire Nice Work body of work is now available for your prison, gang, armed forces or piratical identity needs! We’ve been practicing off and on for, oh, a month with a sharpened knitting needle and Pelikan™ Blue Fountain Pen ink and we’re pretty sure that we can provide you with some accurate reproductions of Kevin Atherton’s fine illustration on any sufficiently broad, hairless and numbed expanse of your skin.

How Do You Get an Atherton Tattoo?

It’s easy! All you need to do is flip through the ATHERTONPIX CATALOGUE of Kevin’s many droll drawings and, with trembling finger, point mutely at which of his creations you’d like to take with you to your grave.

Who Will Touch You?

Nice Work’s stable of tattoo artists have has been culled with ruthless severity from the thousands of applicants who answered our ad in Soldier of Fortune. Under the expert supervision of Vician Placement Services, they’ve been carefully rehabilitated, detoxified, trained in rudimentary social skills, washed, shaven, dressed and unchained to give you the finest tats available this side of three inch plexiglass.

Can a Tattoo Ever Be Deleted?

Some of you, the timid minority, balk at the permanence of body art. We at Nice Work are more than happy to address your concerns. “Are we stuck with our tattoo forever?” you ask. “Suppose we change our minds. Can the image be removed?” you further ask. You tug at our sleeves. You follow us around. You blubber and babble incoherently. We turn abruptly and bark, “Be rid of your tattoo, sir? Change your skin, madam? Why, become a Hindu, if you are not one already, you importunate wretch! Then in your next life you can come back as unmarked as a hen’s egg, for all I care. Now good day to you!”

Our rates are competitive. Our back room is dim and hosed down weekly.

Call Atherton Tattoos today!

Movie Review: Gawun Baby Gawun

We lost two of the 24 hours we’d gained from not seeing any of this weekend’s movie offerings by watching the DVD of Ben Affleck’s atmospheric adaptation of the Dennis Lehane thriller, Gone Baby Gone. But we gave up those two hours without regret, getting a kick, as we did, from the vicarious squalor. Casey Affleck, last seen capping Brad Pitt, plays a squeaky Bostonian private investigator who looks into the abduction of a four-year-old girl by a kidnapper who, he learns to his surprise, “works for cheese.”

It turns out, “Cheese” is a nickname for some Haitian drug guy. So, Casey goes to talk to Cheese and… Oh. You wonder why the caption is in French? Well, I’ll tell you: Even though we curse like longshoremen around this place, we mostly curse like the better sort of longshoremen who utter such imprecations as “By Goom!” and “The devil you say!” But Gone Baby Gone’s dialogue, a non-stop pummelling of our ears by impolite verbal intensifiers, left us slaphappy. Nice Work would spare you that onslaught — the linguistic equivalent of being trampled by a stampede of middle schoolers — and so we have changed it from English, which was about 90% Sout’ Bahst’n Swayer Wuds, to French, which makes anything sound elegant.

Okay. So Casey goes to talk to Cheese and Cheese. naturally, swayers at him in, but at least he swayers in Haitian. He tells Casey something really vulgar which comes out in French like this:

There, that’s not so bad, is it? Anyhow, vie does indeed become dure for the hapless Cheese. Before too long, le Fromage est mort.

Casey eventually figures out the crime and the culprits and all that. Good thing, too, because I sure couldn’t. I was led astray by all the red herrings, and not just because they were your usual red herrings. No, they were m***** f***, g*****, s*** h****, Skippy P*****t B****r, m***, l****, f****, f*****!, c****, d****, j******, c*** a***** red herrings. I couldn’t think straight with all the word shrapnel zinging past my ears.

Warning: A sizable number of citizens get bloodily murdered before the credits roll. Mostly none that you’d miss much, but, still… Double Warning: To represent the depravity of the characters, many of the scenes in Gone Baby Gone are set in stupendously squalid interiors. Makes a fellow glance about at his own housekeeping a little apprehensively.

Nice Work gives Gone Baby Gone three stahs. Following the letter “F.”

One Extra Day

A lot of movies to not see this weekend. Me, I’m not going to see 10,000 B.C., or Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or Baby Mama, or Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, or Iron Man, or Made of Honor, or The Forbidden Kingdom, or Son of Rambow, or Speed Racer, or What Happens in Vegas. In fact, I’m going to let both Iron Man and Speed Racer pass by unseen twice.

That makes roughly 24 hours of extra life to enjoy. An entire day! What a wonderful gift! I shall spend it plotting mischief…

What I Look Like

Many of you have inquired, “What do you look like?” A not unreasonable question, at least not when posed by readers of this blog, but disconcerting when asked in person. I don’t know how to answer people who ask me that when standing right in front of me, but for you, my faithful readers, I found a nice portrait.

I admit it’s not a recent picture, but what writer — actual or bloggual — ever has a current photo by his name? Allow me this innocent vanity and I won’t comment on your age-inappropriate t-shirts and baseball caps. You’re looking at a detail of a lively picture by Benjamin West dramatizing General Wolfe Dying on the Plains of Abraham at the Battle of Québec in 1759. The inexperienced surgeon (in black) is futilely attempting to save the boneless General by using a pillow case to staunch a through-and-through cannonball wound the size of a Crenshaw melon. You see me on the right with my comrade-in-arms, Snacker — I’m the one in front with the flowing hair. We look distressed because we are too late. We have brought, in our cupped hands, Wonderful Healing Frogs that abound along the St. Lawrence River. They might well have revived General Wolfe if the bungling ministrations of that young medic had not already settled his hash. I’ve put on a bit of weight since posing for the tableau, and I’ve switched sides in the conflict, but the likeness is still pretty good, so if you meet me on the street, in a cavern, or outside the ruins of an ancient temple, you need only glance at a printout of the picture to know who it is who glares at you.

Cardboard Boxes

We’re making the shareholders of Container Store a tad happier this quarter: It’s cardboard box time again. I don’t mind buying and folding and taping all these boxes. No, it’s selecting which items to put in those boxes that makes me feel as if time itself were something else to pack.

But this painful triage of property evokes a pleasant memory: Years ago, sitting with Mary on Oak Street Beach early one summer morning reading aloud from Basho’s Back Roads to Far Towns (aka The Narrow Road to Oku, or Narrow Roads to the Deep North). I’ve never forgotten Basho’s rueful comment on the burden of gifts. Here are four different translations. Plus a song lyric. Plus a scribble.

We barely managed to reach Soka Post Station that night. My greatest trial was the pack I bore on my thin, bony shoulders. I had planned to set out with no baggage at all, but had ended up taking along a paper coat for cold nights, a cotton bath garment, rain gear, and ink and brushes, as well as certain farewell presents, impossible to discard, which simply had to be accepted as burdens on the way. (Translated by Helen Craig McCullough)

The pack of things on my bony, thin shoulders was giving me pain. Setting out with nothing but what I could bear myself, I carried a stout paper raincoat to keep out the chill at night, a cotton kimono, raingear, something in the way of ink and brush – and various things given me as farewell presents and therefore difficult to dispose of. It was the traveler’s dilemma, knowing them a hindrance and unable to throw them away. (Translated by Earl Miner)

What I find most trying is carrying my belongings on my thin, bony shoulders. I set out thinking to travel light, in only what I was clad, but I needed a durable paper coat to keep out the cold at night, a cotton kimono, rainwear, and such things as ink and brushes. Then there were various farewell gifts I could not refuse and cannot very well throw away, so these are burdens I shall have to bear. (Translated by Dorothy Britton)

Thin shoulders feeling packs drag. Body enough, but burdened with a set of kamiko (extra protection at night), yukata, raincoat, ink-stick, brushes as well as unavoidable hanamuke, etc., somehow hard to let go of, part of the trouble in travelling inevitably. (Translated by Cid Corman — this is the one I read on Oak Street Beach. People in the know say it’s a lousy translation, but I’m not in the know, so I like it the best.)

Loudon Wainwright III — Cardboard Boxes

I’m gonna go to the supermarket,
I’m gonna go to the liquor store,
I’m gonna get me some cardboard boxes,
You know what them boxes are for,

We’re gonna move,
We’re gonna move

Give it to the Salvation Army or the Goodwill,
We got so much junk it’s a joke
Wrap a knickknack in some old newspaper
I know it was a present, but the damn thing broke

Ask Nice Work

My dear readers, the Nice Work Mailbag is stuffed to overflowing with your questions, comments and gnomic utterances. I read every word — though not in order — and love to hear from you, but time constraints make it impossible to live much beyond the national average life expectancy of 77.1 to 80 years. So I’ve turned over the task of answering your many queries to my good friend and colleague, Dominico Bartelomeno.

Dominico Bartelomeno Answers Your Queries

Dear Nice Work,
Are there monkeys in Hawaii? I ask because I am going to Hawaii and I fear monkeys.
Signed,
Poteet Canyon

Dominico vi risponde così:

Scimmie in Hawaii? No, no. Bene, suppongo che forse ci sono animali domestici ed esemplari del giardino zoologico, ma scimmie natali? No, no. Non avete niente temere. Sia a facilità, quella piccola.

Dear Nice Work,
While I was undergoing kidney dialysis last Presidents Day, I saw a terrific movie on the monitor they provide to make the dull hour pass more quickly. I can’t remember anything about the movie except there was a circus performer with no arms who threw knives at his wife with his feet. Can you identify this fine film for me?
J. Tupper

Dominico vi risponde così:

Ah, sì! Avete visto il film, Lo Sconosciuto con Lon Chaney come “Alonzo senza l’armi.” Che cosa è errato con i vostri reni?

Dear Nice Work,

In 1998 I was leaning on the rail of a Staten Island Ferry crossing over to Manhattan. I remember I was eating a hot dog with sauerkraut. My attention was seized by the sight of a beautiful young woman at the bow of the ferry crossing in the other direction. She was wearing a flowing white dress and carried a white parasol. My heart skipped a beat. She never looked my way; never noticed my frantic waving. Since that summer day I don’t suppose a week has gone by that I have not thought of that lovely vision. Can you tell me: who was that lady?

Lovesick in Tompkinsville

Dominico vi risponde così:

Annabella Fiorenzi

Dear Nice Work,

I need to impress my in-laws. Can you tell me a great recipe for BLT’s?

Can’t Boil Water

Dominico vi risponde così:

Eh, bene, è quasi troppo facile. “La B” corrisponde a pancetta affumicata. “La L” corrisponde a lattuga. “La T” corrisponde al pomodoro. Metta questi tre articoli fra le fette di pane. Forse un poco mayonaisse. Siete bei, ma così molto stupido!