The 3rd Quarter

6 Days a Week

2012-01-24T06:16:00.005-05:00

Six days a week, I get to start the day off from my home office, where I catch up on email, RSS feeds, and world, local and personal news online. I am usually up a little, sometimes a lot, before dawn.

I always keep the lights off and open the blinds. The computer screen and the street lights outside are the only illumination. As dawn breaks the room gets gradually brighter until it is full daylight.

Buses, cars, and pedestrians pass by outside, rushing to where they have to go. That's not me. Well that's me one day a week, but not today.

My day will have me out and about, doing things, working. This time right now is a nice bit of me time. Four days a week, usually just before I fix myself some breakfast, my wife comes in for a kiss before she heads off to work.

It's 6:22am. It's still dark, but that will change. It always does. It is about ninety minutes to a kiss. The kiss doesn't change.

Time to catch up on some news.

Brains!

2012-01-23T20:26:00.008-05:00

Brains!... it's what's for dinner.

I went to Bells Market (link includes reviews from crazy people), a really great Russian super market here in Northeast Philadelphia, for their really great prepared salads and some produce. It's not too much of a detour when I'm driving home from Hop Angel.

Walking in, I noticed a big weekly special sign in the window advertising ground pork. The sign was quite effective in that I wound up buying ground pork, something that wasn't on my list. Score one for old school marketing. Take that Twitter!

It took me a few days to decide what to do the ground pork or maybe just to remember that I had it in the frig. I remembered that I liked making stuffed peppers, which usually use ground beef. This meant going to another closer by produce store to get some bell peppers.

I had some crazy wild rice that was in pantry for a couple of years, using that in place of white rice, which I don't keep in the house anyway. It cooked up black. That rice worked out really great in the peppers, adding a nice added texture to the meat stuffing. Next time I might try black beans instead of rice.

The nice thing about a popular dish like Stuffed Peppers is that there is no end of different recipes on line. I looked at quite a few, taking things I liked from each, such as cooking up onions with the ground meat.

I remembered how much I liked the cheese on top, but how it just putting it on top limited the amount of cheesy goodness for each pepper. I mixed a little cheese into the stuffing mixture. It was the right amount.

I paired it with some Brussels sprouts, that were cooked using a proven winning recipe. A very nice and hopefully healthy meal.

Idea for a New Website

2012-01-23T20:04:00.003-05:00

I'm thinking of creating a new social media Website. The deal is we'll get insane people to review businesses. We won't pay them and consider the reviews our intellectual property.

"BAAHHHH NEEDS MORE CATS!"

"They had other customers there. "

And the hook is you really have a screw (or more) loose to do reviews.

Update: Someone told this site already exists. It's called Yelf or something like that.

Today's 3six5

2012-01-04T10:10:00.002-05:00

The3six5 is a blog I have been following almost since it started. Basically it's 365 days, as told by 365 different people in less than 365 words each. This is only third year, so I don't know yet if they are skipping a day this year. We will have to wait until 28 Feb and see.

Anyway... I wrote today's post.

Marty and I were hanging out in the MGMT Bunker last night as I was finishing the post up, so I had him proofread it. He laughed once which was a good sign (I'll take all laughs whether with me or at me). Later after it was submitted and we were sitting at the bar, I showed the final published version to him on my phone. He told me that I shouldn't be angry at those people that ask me that question. Great timing buddy! The point I should have made better is that nobody who asks me that knows how I feel, since I always smile, appreciate the kind thoughts behind the question, and answer politely and sincerely.

The Bears Discover Planking

2011-10-25T14:52:00.000-04:00

The bears tend to be a little behind on Internet memes, but they discover them, they go all in.

Maureen isn't pleased with their planking. As me, I find it mildly amusing but figure it doesn't really impact me much.

Agatha Christie - Reading the Dame Part5: The 1960s

2011-10-15T17:39:00.004-04:00

Reading the Dame Part5: The 1960s

This a continuation of my series of posts about my project to read all 79 Agatha Christie mystery books in order of publication (more or less). As usual, this is not just summaries of Christie’s work but also my middle-aged thoughts inspired by reading (or in some cases re-reading) these books.

The other parts of the series:
Reading th Dame Part 1: The 1920s
Reading the Dame Part 2a: The 1930s
Reading the Dame Part 2b: The 1930s continued
Reading the Dame Part 3a: The first half of 1940s
Reading the Dame Part 3b: The second half of the 1940s
Reading the Dame Part 4a: The first half of the 1950s
Reading the Dame Part 4b: The second half of the 1950s

I’m starting to hit the home stretch now. With her down to only publishing one book a year, I’m knocking out the decades much faster and the frequency of my posts are increasing.

I believe I have read almost all of these before, since they were the most current (about as old as me) when I originally started reading her books back in my teens. Being the most recent at the time, they were also more numerous and readily found at the library.

I wrote this post over several months. When I set it up with all of the books for the decade, I started writing what I recalled of the ones I read previously. Some I updated as I reading them and then I came back and wrote more everywhere. So the tense shifts from past to present and then back. For that I’m sorry, sort of. I think it sort of works, so I’m leaving it this way.

For this segment Agatha Christie is in her 70s. Her pace is now a single book per year. Her life and places of residence revolve around her writing schedule. She is still in solid form, though showing her age. She’s an old lady who doesn’t quite get the present day.

“Vouchsafed” makes an appearance or two, as do pinc-nez.

1961 The Pale Horse
This an interesting one. Mrs. Oliver is in it, but Poirot isn’t. Instead this time her friend is a 30something archaeologist who is writing, or trying to, write a book. The archaeologist stumbles on a what seems to be a murder for hire business. Murder for hire by witches. It sounds really out there but Christie makes it all work. A good read.

While Teddy Boys, like the Bright Young People from the 1920s, make an appearance, this book is fairly timeless. The mystery is sort of mostly solved before the ending. The ending while surprising to me shouldn’t have been.

As usual the single protagonist gets paired off by the end. Another good one.

1961 Double Sin and Other Stories
This collection of short stories, starts off with the title story, which dates from 1929, and features Poirot and Hastings. It’s a bit of a disappointment to fall back through time. It was even more disappointing that Double Sin is an especially poorly executed story. I had little idea what happened and didn’t care enough to go back over it. Even the title of the story, Double Sin, is pointless. No wonder it didn’t make it into book form until 1961. The real mystery is why they picked this story, easily the weakest in the collection, to be the title story.

The second story, The Wasp’s Nest, is from 1928 and in very much in style of her 1920s short stories. It’s also a weak one and not surprising to have been omitted from being compiled in book form for so long.

The third story, The Theft of the Royal Ruby, dates from 1960 and it’s pure gold. Poirot, Christmas, an English country house, a murder, missing jewels... it’s all of Christie’s themes and motifs in the one tightly wrapped little package. If you wanted to give someone a brief introduction to Agatha Christie, this story would be it.

The Dressmakers Doll, from 1958, is a bit of supernatural, something Christie never really did much of, or did well. That didn’t change with time. Not bad but not great either.

Things pick up again with Greenshaw’s Folly, from 1957. It’s a well executed Marple story.

The Double Clue is a Poirot/Hastings story from 1925. It’s rather good but suffers from being in the same book with later, much better stories. in comparison.

The Last Seance, from 1926, is another supernatural story rather than a mystery. As I mentioned above, she never did these well. Rather well written and readable but quite unbelievable.

And then back to the 50s with 1954’s Sanctuary. Another super solid Marple story; it brings back a lot of characters and places I should probably remember from past books but didn’t really.

The juxtaposition of old and new stories here really shows how much Christie grew as an author. So while the older stories do a great job of illustrating that, they do sort of extra suck in comparison.

1962 The Mirror Crack'd
We left 1959 with a Poirot book, since then there was a Poirot-less Mrs. Oliver book, and a collection of short stories, so we are due for a Marple.

Miss Marple here is feeling her age, which is in her 80s at this point. Not allowed to garden and forced to have a very tedious live-in companion,. Miss Marple is not having the time of her life. Lots of characters and places from past stories are mentioned. Some I remembered, some I didn’t.

I recall when this came out as a movie in the 80s with Elizabeth Taylor; I didn’t see it. One of the characters seems to have been sort of based on Liz Taylor, so you have to give Liz credit for being a good sport. After I finish reading this, I’ll see if I can Netflix the Liz Taylor movie through the Wii. (I didn’t, but maybe I will now that I’m rereading what I wrote a few months ago).

We saw the Mystery version of this a few months before I read it, but I might have drifted off during it. I needed Maureen to remind of the ending. Turns out it was pretty faithful to the book.

1963 The Clocks
I recall reading this one in high school over summer break. Maureen and I saw the Mystery version last week. It was a particularly good adaption. The TV version takes place before World War II, while I sort of recall the book taking place in the time it was written (1963). It will be interesting to see if the book is closer to my memories of reading the book 30 years ago (Jesus, 30 years?) or closer to the TV version I just saw. Definitely closer to my memory but quite different too. I may have lumped it together with an other book from the 60s or 70s in my memory.

Turns out the Clocks was set in then present day. Maureen was surprised that all of Christie’s books took place in the then present time. That just seemed natural to me reading them, but in retrospect, setting some of them in the past would have let her have some fun with Poirot as a younger man in Belgium.

It is also odd that with all the traveling she did and of all places she set her novels and short stories, none ever took place in Belgium. It’s as though she never even visited there. I know she wasn’t a drinker (neither beer nor the harder stuff), but besides great beer, Belgium has chocolates and waffles too.

1964 A Caribbean Mystery
This was rare late Christie that I hadn’t previously read. Miss Marple’s successful writer nephew and his wife send her to the Caribbean for a holiday. As usual, it’s not good to have Marple around since someone gets killed. And as usual then someone gets it as well.

An interesting read. Now that Christie in her 70s, she obviously isn’t getting around as much. Her vacations which later become scenes for her mysteries become less exciting.

After being less obvious of the last few decades, class still plays a part in this one, as one character, a valet/nurse, is generally snubbed by most of the rest of the characters, including a widow who’s working for the same boss as a secretary. She considers herself superior to him even though she is treated as inferior by pretty much every one else staying at the resort.

Definitely an interesting mix of characters, and good plot.

1965 At Bertram's Hotel
This is rare, back to back Marples. This time her rich writer nephew and wife send her to a hotel in London. They wanted to send her to a seaside resort, but she requested a London hotel she stayed in as a girl, if it wasn’t too expensive and it still existed. Surprisingly the hotel still existed and even more surprisingly it hadn’t really changed at all. Maybe too surprising.

I read this one long ago and it sort of stuck with me. Bertam’s is a very expensive hotel. I was a poor student at the time and a pricey hotel seemed very exotic. I had yet to stay at a pricey hotel, and this book sort of colored my expectations for a Ritz or Plaza style hotel for over 25 years. So it was a little odd, rereading it now, after all these years and few nights in a couple of pricey hotels (which don’t really suit me anyway).

As I was reading this book, it occurred to me that, our Miss Marple never worked a day in her life, and usually had a servant. How amazing that England could have supported such a large number of gentle people who were, to be honest, very useless for so long. Over the 40+ years of Christie’s work so far, this class has had to finally start taking care of themselves. Or have a rich nephew.

An old man mentions The Beatles in a list of confusing present day things.

1966 Third Girl
The note in front says I read this 19 years ago in the summer of 1982. That would have been between my junior and senior years of high school. I started work at Chuck E Cheese that summer and went to the swim club that my family was members of. I probably mostly read this book there. I don’t remember any of it.

Rather a good read and I figured out most of it. The plot held together well.

Again an old man refers to The Beatles but in rather confused way. I was a big Beatles fan at the time as was wondering if they would get a mention in an Agatha Christie book of that era, and they did.

1967 Endless Night
This is rare late Christie that I hadn’t previously read. Maureen and I were supposed to watch the Mystery version of this one, but it may have gotten deleted for space before we watched it.

I am about 3 chapters in and this book is pretty fascinating. She writes this book in the first person from the point of view of a 22 year old working class male. At the time, Christie is 77 a year world famous author and a Dame of the British Empire. This should be an utter disaster but three chapters in, it’s utterly believable. At least so far.

So how did Christie write so believably as 22 year old man in 1967? It made me wonder how old her grandson (and eventual sole heir) was at the time. It took a little googling. An archived People Magazine article has Matthew Prichard the grandson as 34 in 1977, which means he was born in 1943, which made him around 23 when she was writing the book. I suppose Christie must of chatted a lot with Matthew and/or his friends. Maybe reading all of these Agatha Christie mysteries has taught me to both figure out the questions and find possible solutions.

A little more googling.... oooo this is neat (well at least to me, hopefully you will find it interesting too). Matthew Prichard was asked by something called “The Browser” to choose his favorites of his grandmother’s books. His first pick was Endless Night. He says:

The book is about three young people; my grandmother was well into her 70s when she wrote it. As a young person myself in the early 1960s, I saw more of my grandmother than at any other time because I was studying at Oxford, not far from where she lived and worked at the time. I used to take my friends to see her, often for Sunday lunch, and I think I even took my first girlfriend. She didn’t seem like an old person at all. She was always interested in what we were doing and fascinated by our relationships with each other. She never judged us.

There are, fortunately, no characters in Endless Night that she ‘copied’. But she does say somewhere in the book that it’s all about relationships. To me, it’s an astonishingly modern and human book. To write about people 50 years younger than herself was a tour de force.

I am a good detective! Anyway the full article is here.

Prichard says his grandmother had a good sense of humor. This is frankly surprising as her books are devoid of any real laugh out loud humor, unlike say Dickens or Twain who remain funny in print to this day.

1968 By the Pricking of My Thumbs
I remember this one. It’s a Tommy and Tuppence story, and it was my introduction to these characters, who by this point are in their 60s. At the time, I wound up reading The Secret Advisory shorty after, when Tommy and Tuppence make their debuts as 20somethings. Experiencing the characters at such different stages in their lives so close together may be what really endeared them to me. Catching them later in their 40s (pretty much my age now) when I read N or M? for the first time as part of this project was fun too. After not having any news of them since, I look forward to rereading this one. All is recall of it is that I really liked the characters when I read it high school.

Now that I’ve read it, it has held up. Not Christie’s best work, but solid.

1969 Hallowe'en Party
I recall reading this one back in the 80s. Maureen and I just watched the Mystery version. When I started this post in late June while reading Double Sin, looking at my spreadsheet of Christie books and when I read them, I estimated it would take 3 months to get around to reading this book. I finished it in late September. My reading speed seems rather constant.

When I first read the book, I just assumed hallowe'en was the English spelling. Doing a little Googling, the spelling difference seems to be more due to time than nationality.

Not a bad one. Mrs. Oliver and Poirot again. The TV version wound up being very similar to the book.

Two kids die in this one. I read somewhere that Stephen King regretted having the dog kill the kid in Cujo and that he wouldn't do ever that again. Christie had no problem killing off kids in her books.

A Lucky Escape

2011-09-13T07:03:00.002-04:00

I met Maureen for a Restaurant Week dinner at Amada last night. I got there early to check out the temporary Greenhouse exhibit at the American Philosophical Society, but it is closed on Mondays, so I was just ambling around leisurely until it was time to show up at Amada. It was a little after 5pm, when the work day ends for most people with normal jobs.

The large insurance company I used to work for is located in that part of town these days. As I was walking (ambling) I passed a woman who looked a lot like someone I used to work with oh so many years ago. She looked much older. I was thinking of saying something but let her pass by instead, leaving the past the past.

Later as I was sitting on a bench another former coworker, or someone who looked like a former coworker passed by. He must have 30+ years in at that company now. He seemed "old" when I got hired there at age 23. He wasn't a great boss which may or may not be why I especially didn't want to be recognized this time. It wasn't a problem; to him I was just another guy sitting on a bench reading. I allowed being out of context work to my advantage.

At Amada, we were seated near their private room where a very large party overflowed out of the room and into the area around us. A guy in suit with three ID badges on it was acting the host and greeting people. I mildly pondered the mystery of why he would have three photo ID badges of various sizes on a single clip on his lapel. Like Prius guy, it is a mystery that I will never know the solution to. Another thing I have to live with.

The private party of business people seemed such a dull thing to attend, but the guests seemed to be happy - Amada can easily do that to you. I felt extremely thankful that I was able to make my escape from the Fortune 500 business world over 17 years ago. Pretty much any day that I'm not in a cubicle is a good one.

I went to a Chamber of Commerce business card exchange once in recent memory. It was boring and strange and I didn't know why I was there. I suppose I'm a businessperson, probably even more than most businesspeople, but I'm definitely not a suit. At least not anymore. I'm free.

The host eventually took off his suit jacket. I was worried that he was going to have existential crisis. If your three photo IDs are on your jacket and you take it off, do you still know who you are? It turned out not to be a problem for him. Maybe the big glass of wine in his hand helped.

RIP Awesome Cargo Shorts

2011-08-26T11:01:00.004-04:00

My favorite pair of cargo shorts had their last wearing yesterday. They've been a little ratty but acceptable for a year or two now. At that point they went from being dressy to ultra-casual.

I'm a dude; I can get away with that, at least up to a point. From my wife's perspective they probably stopped being acceptable four years ago, but being the saint that she is, she didn't say anything. She will likely be happy to read this posting.

They were the perfect shade of stone grey to go with pretty much anything I care to wear during the summer. And they had the requisite cargo pockets. The Agatha Christie Project (check prior posts for more info) made me appreciate cargo pockets even more; books fit great.

I bought them off the Abercombie and Fitch website about 8 years ago if my memory and calculations are correct. I would have been about 38 years old. Most of Abercrombie's stuff for is for frat boys and not really for me at this time of life, but they do have some acceptable stuff for middle aged people too.

These shorts were top quality; they served me for 8 years. And they got pretty heavy use, being one of favorites. As I get older I appreciate less being more and am willing to invest in good clothing that I really like that will last.

Another part of being a dude is attachment to clothing that we like. The inevitable passing of beloved article of clothing is always a minor deal for us, especially if we have had them for years and live in a four season area. With the change of seasons, it's like rediscovering an old friend every year when the weather changes. I had seven seasons of rediscovery of this part of shorts.

Unlike some dudes, I accept when it's time to retire some clothing. Good bye old friend.

As I write this, I am wearing what is now my new favorite pair of cargo shorts. They are still in the dressy stage. Hello new friend.

2011-08-14T17:29:00.001-04:00

If your thrills have become regular, are they even thrills anymore?

Last Night's Spam

2011-07-12T10:38:00.004-04:00

Some of the directed spam I get is so moronic, it angers me. This was sent from a @verizon.com account.

Dear The Grey Lodge Pub

"Dear The Grey Lodge Pub", so personal. I feel warm and fuzzy already.

Customers are the life blood of every business... what are you doing to develop and maintain an effective and profitable relationship with each and every one of them?

What am I doing? Facebook, Twitter, daily blog updates, monthly emails. Some idiot from Groupon asked via spamming phone call if I marketed my business. I went off on her. How effing insulting. Do I market my business? Eff you, look at our effing Website and then ask me that question. How about I call you and ask you idiotic questions? Anywho back to iZigg.

We are iZigg, the most powerful brand in Mobile Marketing.

So powerful they don't even have to use @izigg.com for their emails.

We own the most popular short code in the business, 90210.

Yes, a TV show from 20 years ago. So relevant and powerful.

At iZigg, we are showing businesses like yours how to use our service to generate a return on their advertising investment of as much as 2,200% and more... simply by employing a strategy that employs a tool that is used by almost 300 Million people in the USA every day.

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Many refer to it as “a text.” We call it “Instant Personal Communication.”

Many refer it as a "turd". We call it "Personal Smelly Mud".

Give it a try to see how it works…

Text - KillerBBQ to 90210 on your cell phone.

Do it now! Actually I would advise you not to, there's a catch.

When you sent the text “KillerBBQ” to 90210, 2 things happened.

1) You got an automated response that we created in our “Mobile Auto-Responder.”

2) We added your cell phone number to our KillerBBQ VIP List.

What?!?!? I just opted into your farking list? You didn't warn me that was going to happen.

At this point, we can now communicate to you and every other customer on our “KillerBBQ List” with special offers and deals via “Instant Personal Communication.”

Oh look Dylan just sent me an "Instant Personal Communication"! I wonder what he and Kelly are up to. No wait, it's just spam.

Just think, you can literally keep in contact with every customer who opted in to your own keyword at 90210. This is the most effective business generation and customer retention tool available today.

The most profitable business is repeat business. It is said that even a 5% increase in customer retention can increase business profits by 25% to 125%! With iZigg Mobile Marketing, you have the power to maintain a relationship with every one of your customers at the push of a button.

If close personal and profitable relationships with your customers is something you want in your business,

Just think, you can literally spam your best customers' cell phones and have them pay for it.

They have a word for those sorts of relationships: "abusive". And nothing says "personal" like mass texting,,, oops sorry, mass instant personal communicating.

I invite you to watch this short, 10 minute video that will reveal this method in detail and change the way you market to your customers forever.

No thanks.

Why Do So Many Paul McCartney Solo Songs Suck?

2011-07-11T06:12:00.001-04:00

I was out somewhere last weekend and Paul McCartney's Jet came on the in background. Click below to refamiliarize yourself, if you dare.

This song quite sucks. Not the over the top WTF suck of Wonderful Christmastime, but sucky none the less. ("WTF suck" - I like that). The song even starts off sucky. "Jet, woo hoo woo woo JET!" - woo that's deep.

And then we get "And Jet, I thought the major was a lady suffragette!", which comes out as was a lady sufferaJETTT!!!! It wouldn't be so bad, but that line appears four times in the song, so just when you forget how damn annoying and insipid it is, it comes back to remind you, and then remind two more times.

The song Jet does have some good qualities, the music and background vocals are really quite good. So it's a mixed bag, which is pretty much the story of McCartney's solo work. For every great song, there is a stinker, often even in the same song. Which annoys me because being a big Beatles fan, I want to be a Paul McCartney solo fan, but I can't because so much of it sucks.

To end up on a positive note, here's a Paul McCartney solo song that is pure gold. I love the trumpets on it. I could listen to this song over and over for hours. With the exception of the somewhat forced title track, Tug of War is a McCartney album with no clunkers. The clunker being Ebony and Ivory, a song that seems good but doesn't hold up to repeated listenings, or maybe even the second listening.

Anyway to end up on a positive note, hit stop on Jet*, if you haven't already, and play Wanderlust.

A little bit of trivia, Wanderlust was the boat on which Paul recorded the album London Town, and on which there was one of Paul's many high profile marijuana busts. Captain says they'll be a bust.

Maybe this gives us a clue, could it be the reefers that make Paul write so many sucky songs? I'd argue that it could be the opposite, that maybe Paul isn't smoking enough. The Beatles, it is told, smoked pot like crazy while recording Rubber Soul, the CD (and English LP) version of which is my favorite Beatles album. Maybe Paul should write and record all future albums in Amsterdam.

* If you were like me, you stopped Jet at the second lady sufferaJET.

South Broad Street Hike

2011-06-27T22:28:00.005-04:00

Last week or so, I was at an afternoon ballgame and was meeting Maureen in town later that night for a dinner and play. I had 90 minutes between the game and meeting my wife, I so hiked up Broad Street which would take about an hour, giving me 30 minutes to chill out in Rittenhouse Square.

Street hiking is a hobby of mine that I really enjoy. South Broad is one of Philadelphia's main streets and is the backbone of South Philly. I've been in a car on South Broad quite a few times, but haven't really walked much of it, until a week or so ago.

The best way to see anything is on foot. Click below to see some of what I saw. My various thoughts are in the captions.

Conclusion: South Broad is rather strange. It's very South Philly but has pretty much none of the landmarks that have made South Philly so legendary and cool. It's a neat walk, but most of the other number streets to the east would probably be more interesting.

The pictures, with captions, are here.

Reading the Dame Part4b: The second half of the 1950s

2011-06-27T21:08:00.002-04:00

Reading the Dame Part4b: The second half of the 1950s

This a continuation of my series of posts about my project to read all 80 somethin

g Agatha Christie mystery books in order of publication (more or less). As usual, this is not just summaries of Christie’s work but my middle-aged musings inspired by reading (or in so

me cases re-reading) these books.

The other parts of the series:
Reading th Dame Part 1: The 1920s
Reading the Dame Part 2a: The 1930s
Reading the Dame Part 2b: The 1930s continued
Reading the Dame Part 3a: The 1940s
Reading the Dame Part3b: The second half of the 1940s
Reading the Dame Part4a: The first half of the 1950s

There are only 5 books in the segment. She has downshifted to publishing just one book a year, a frequency she will keep up until her death, which still almost 20 years way. For this segment she is between the ages of 65 and 69.

As usual my text for each book will discuss the book itself as well as other observations and memories about the book that are not necessarily related to the story.

1955 Hickory Dickory Death
As I read the first page, I felt I had read this one before. Looking at my note inside the front cover, I see I read it back in May 2005, almost exactly 6 years ago, just a few months before my 40th bir

thday. In May of 2005, Maureen and I were living on Passmore Street. I had been working at the Grey Lodge for 11 years and was still taking the el to/from a part time job two days a week. It’s interesting to think about how some things have changed and others have remained the same for me in these 6 years.

Thinking back after reading just the first two pages, I am recallin

g the story and some of the characters. I recall liking this book. It will be interesting to see how I feel after reading this one again.

This is a neat one. It takes place in a hostel for students, many of them foreign. The characters are very well drawn and the plot is very well woven. Having now read this three times, I still have a high opinion of it. Christie has gotten much nicer in her old age. Whereas in the 1920s, the characters would have mildly offensive stereotypes, here the foreign characters are pretty respectfully done.

She focuses again on young people here as she did 3 years earlier in Murder with Mirrors. The young folks here like to go on hitchhiking trips with nothing more than can be kept in a rucksack. Quite a change from her early works, where everyone traveled with heavy luggage.

1956 Dead Man's Folly
I recall reading this one while in hi

gh school and determining that a folly was a gazebo sort of structure. In this one Poirot is called down to a country estate by mystery writer Mrs. Oliver, a recurring c

haracter. With her woman’s intuition, she suspects something is wrong, and it indeed it is. Mrs. Oliver’s husband has yet to mentioned. All we know is she eats apples, writes mysteries, and changes her hair style a lot. This continues the trend of her reoccurring characters being underdeveloped.

Once again set on an English estate. This estate had been bought by a wealthy man and restored its pre-war glory more or less. The former lady of the estate has been reduced to living in the lodge by the front gate.

Young folks, international students with rucksacks again play a part. The mystery is well constructed and had me guessing right up to the end.

1957 What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!
I am almost through this one with Miss Marple. I have only the last chapter let to read and I still can’t figure it out totally. I have a good hunch as to who the murder is, but no motive for the original murder.

She returns to the English country estate again but with a 1950s high taxation twist. This time, the estate is surrounded by a city that has grown up all around it. It’s semi-dilapidated, with no butler, no house maid, just two village women who came in part time, one ancient gardener, and a spi

nster daughter to act as housekeeper.

Well developed characters and a well constructed ending that had me guessing until the end.

1958 Ordeal by Innocence
A rich woman was murdered. One of her five adopted children was convicted of the crime. He died in jail before he could be cleared of the murder even evidence finally comes out 2 years later. Everything was settled but now everyone is under suspicion again. And with the trail cold, they may all remain suspect forever. Christie remains at the top of her game on this one. . A good number of well developed characters. A plot with a very satisfactory ending. As with many Christie stories there is a happy romantic ending, except in this case three happy romantic endings.

This is neither a Poirot nor a Maple mystery.

1959 Cat Among the Pigeons
I recall reading this one in June of 1982. I was an 8th grader about to graduate, about to put 8 years of St. Jerome’s grade school behind me. It was the final week, classes were done, exams were done. School that week was a leisurely limbo with lots of downtime for reading. Besides my personal memories (which may or may not be accurate), all I remember of this book as I write this before re-reading it is the title and that Poirot is in it.

Now that I’ve read it, turns out I did only remember the title. Maybe I started reading it when I was 13 but got bored and didn’t finish it. At 45, it easily held my attention. As I look back on 40 years of Christie books read over the last 22 months, it’s amazing how many I remember. I would have thought they would start to run into each other.

Christie had mentioned people listening to the radio several times over the years, but this is the first time television gets a mention. She even mentions it twice. I was wondering when this ubiquitous device would become ubiquitous in a Christie story.

I have read 63 of 79 books. Onto the 1960s.

Cool... Like Lee Marvin

2011-06-14T19:07:00.007-04:00

Sorry for not posting in a while. I'll try to get back into the writing groove.

This is a picture of Brother Christian, from Abbey of Christ in the Desert. His Abbey started brewing beer about a year ago. Bro. Christian, the face of their brewery operation, was in town for Philly Beer Week last week.

He was at The Grey Lodge Pub for Abbey of Christ in DesSert, when we had all three of their beers on tap and Chef Eric made a trio of beer cakes, each utilizing a different Abbey of Christ beer.

Bro. Christian was in town last year, when we had our first Scoats-less beer event at The Grey Lodge, as Maureen and I were in Austin that week. So while he was familiar with The Grey Lodge, it was my first time meeting him.

He remembered The Grey Lodge and our window wall that opens up, which was open on his first visit and last week too when he was there. He asked me if some of the employees worked here for a while, since he thought he recognized some of them from last year. I told him that most everyone has been here at least a year, and some have been with me for 17 years.

While very friendly and personable and extremely mindful, he was a slightly aloof, not due to pretense, but from not really being fully part of this world, living for the last 30 years in a monastery in New Mexico that's 15 miles down a dirt road.

It didn't take long for me to realize that he was a really cool guy (he even takes a cool picture). The thought "cool like Lee Marvin" came into my brain. Which was surprising as this is not a thought I thought I would ever think. Lee Marvin never really appeared on my radar. I can't even name a single movie he was in. It's not a very common phrase, only producing two Google hits. Bro. Christian's isn't a youthful rebellious cool, but a middle-aged I am who I am, who are you kind of cool.

I mentioned "cool like Lee Marvin" to Maureen the next day. I'm pretty sure it's a thought she never thought before either, but she dug exactly what I meant.

It's easy to know what's cool when you're younger, and it's easy to know what's not cool for a middle aged man. It's rare cool and middle-aged intersect. Lee Marvin may be the answer; whodda thought?

Bonus Story: Buddy Handry told me this one today. Jim Noone was wearing an AC/DC t-shirt. Bro. Christian, who has been in the monastery for 30 years, asked him if that was a band. And I thought I was slightly cool for not knowing who Lady Gaga was.

2011-05-22T09:31:00.002-04:00

Reading the Dame Part4a: The first half of the 1950s

This a continuation of my series of posts about my project to read all 80 something Agatha Christie mystery books in order of publication (more or less). As usual, this is not just summaries of Christie’s work (especially as that was just getting repetitive) but my middle-aged musings inspired by reading (or in some cases re-reading) these books.

The other parts of the series:
Reading th Dame Part 1: The 1920s
Reading the Dame Part 2a: The 1930s
Reading the Dame Part 2b: The 1930s continued
Reading the Dame Part 3a: The 1940s
Reading the Dame Part3b: The second half of the 1940s

There are 9 books in the segment. Though several are compilations of short stories, this is still a sort of a productive spell for her, For this segment she is between the ages of 60 and 64.

As usual my text for each book will discuss the book itself as well as other observations about the book that are not necessarily related to the story.

The 9 books in this segment were read between February and April 2011, which seems to be faster than usual rate for me.

1950 A Murder is Announced
In 1950 the bar that would become The Grey Lodge Pub opened its doors for the first time on Labor Day Weekend. The Phillies went to the World Series for the first time in a long time (and wouldn’t return for about 30 years). Television still doesn’t really exist. The world would really start changing soon, but not yet.

England is still experiencing wartime rationing and Christie uses this and the change in village life after WWII to good effect here. I mostly figured out the mystery. A very satisfying read.

1950 Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
A bunch of short stories dating from the late 1940s back to the 20s. Curiously the stories appear to presented in reverse order of publication. There are a few stories with one-off characters, two with Marple, three with Poirot, and one with Satterthwaite. I suspect this will be Satterthwaite’s last appearance.

Hastings is a narrator of one of the Poirots (they go that far back). In that story Hastings narrates “After completing an elaborate outdoor toilet, we set off for Netherall Road”. They were in Poirot’s rooms in London. I know toilet can mean basic washing up and personal hygiene. Knowing all of that I can’t fathom what “an elaborate outdoor toilet” in 1920s London could possibly mean. It seemed to have no bearing on the story and remains a mystery to me. I didn’t even try Googling “outdoor toilet” since I know outhouses would be the only result.

In one of the older stories, Christie comes back to pince-nez. Since 1920 Christie’s characters, if they were noted as wearing glasses, always wore pince-nez. I remember reading Christie as a teen who had barely passed a couple years of high school French deducing pince-nez were earpiece-less glasses that pinched the nose to stay on. By the late 40s Christie had stopped mentioning pince-nez. Before then at least one character per book had worn pince-nez. As of 1950, she has yet mention modern eyeglasses.

1951 They Came to Baghdad
Christie returns to a theme she mined well in the 1920s, a young couple find themselves in the middle of a global domination conspiracy. The difference is Christie sets it up with real mastery and subtlety. The year is 1950, WWII is over and the Cold War has begun. The book sets off with several very well developed characters separately making their way to Baghdad, where the president of the USA is to meet with communist leader. This book really excited me as I started reading it and the pieces of the story were being laid out. After the really great build-up the ending felt a little rushed and anti-climatic. And I am not fully sure that the plot holds up but it is a great read.

Eyeglasses are mentioned here yet one character does wear pince-nez.

1951 The Under Dog and Other Stories
After reading a book set in 1950, I found myself with a collection of Poirot stories written in the 1920s but not published in book form until 1951. It’s good to have Poirot back after several non-Poirot books. Christie’s 1920s upper class bias unwelcomingly appears almost immediately. It has been very interesting to watch Christies snobbery slip away as the years and novels have worn on.

1952 Mrs McGinty's Dead
Poriot is asked by a police inspector friend to look into a closed case of murder in a small village. The inspector isn’t sure he got the right guy and wants to be sure before the execution in three weeks. This is another great and satisfying read. The characters are well developed and the clues are there.

My edition of this book was published in the late 1970s right after Christie’s death. Many of the Christie paperbacks I got from the library then were published at that time and had similar covers. There’s a circle of with Poirot’s head on the front cover at top center. The back cover is black, containing some boilerplate text in white and a blurb about the particular book. At the lower right is a picture of Poirot with “HAVE YOU READ CURTAIN? IT WAS MY LAST CASE...” To this date, I have yet to read Curtain, despite seeing mentioned on the back of all those paperbacks I read in the late 1970s/early 1980s. I have always saved Curtain as the last Poirot book I would read. That day is coming. It won’t be very soon, but it’s coming. Actually the last Marple book (which I also haven’t read yet) was published after the last Poirot book, so Curtain won’t be the last Christie book I’ll read, but it does remain the far off end of the journey. As I write this in April of 2011, after reading 58 Christie books, I am 19 books away from Curtain and 21 books way from goal.

I started this one in Philadelphia and finished it in Munich.

1952 Murder with Mirrors
This one features Miss Marple, who at a friend’s request accepts an arranged invitation from the friend’s sister. All three went to school together some 50 years ago. It takes place on an estate near London that has been turned into a school for juvenile delinquents. This a good story and ending is pretty much as I expected. Once again, strong well developed characters.

Spectacles are mentioned and one character wears pinc-nez. No one vouchesafes.

My copy was published in 1973. It’s very 70s. The front cover has curves and pinks and oranges. The cover has a picture of middle aged guy in a suit, a young blonde nestled with a long haired guy holding a gun, and Miss Marple who appears to be adjusting a thermostat. The long haired guy on the cover seems to be trying to make this book from 1952 seem to be from 1973 and new rather than 20 years old. It was a very strange cover but actually one of the best. Usually the covers are particularly uninspired.

I read this one in Munich and Bamberg Germany.

1953 Funerals are Fatal
As my copy of this book is part of a hard cover triology, trying to travel light, I didn’t pack it for the Germany trip. Leapfrogging over it, to read when I got home. This is a great read. Many characters, all very well drawn, and still stick with me despite have read two other Christie books before writing this summary. A great mix of characters, old and young, rich and less so. Christie also finds some novel ways to use Poirot.

1953 A Pocket Full of Rye
The note inside tells me I read this in July of 2005. Maureen and I also watched a TV movie version in the last few years. With all that, I didn’t remember who did it. Christie is still at the top of her game here. Solid characters, well places clues, and Miss Marple herself is the right balance. I thought the murder was someone else, but was satisfied with the reveal.

My copy is a grey market one that I likely bought in the 1980s at a book store in Center City. The front cover has been ripped off. Rather than make retailers send back unsold copies for credit, the publishers have them mail back just the cover, saving on shipping costs. The retailer was then supposed to dispose of the remainder of the book. However these coverless copies would find their way into stores to be sold 2 or 3 for a dollar.

I read this one in Bamberg and Munich Germany, finishing it up here in Philadelphia.

1954 Destination Unknown
Neither Marple nor Poirot appear in this one, which is a sort of Big Four meets The Man the Brown Suit throwback. Big Four and The Man the Brown Suit are two of Christie’s first novels, written when was in her early 30s. Destination Unknown was written 30 years later. The theme of the well funded global clandestine conspiracy is back though a bit less improbable and less sensational, both of which make for a better read. The global conspiracy is combined with the well described exotic locations of Brown Suit. I definitely want to visit many of the exotic places Christie used a backdrops in many of her books (South Africa, Morocco, Egypt). I wonder how much they have changed in 60 or 90 years and how many of the old hotels still exist. Maybe that’s a future project.

Reading the Dame Part3b: The second half of the 1940s

2011-01-24T23:33:00.001-05:00

Reading the Dame Part3b: The second half of the 1940s

This a continuation of my series of posts about my project to read all 80 something Agatha Christie mystery books in order of publication (more or less). As usual, this is not just summaries of Christie’s work but my middle-aged musings inspired by reading (or in some/many cases re-reading) these books.

The other parts of the series:
Reading the Dame Part 1: The 1920s
Reading the Dame Part 2a: The 1930s
Reading the Dame Part 2b: The 1930s continued
Reading the Dame Part 3a: The 1940s

Christie is in her mid 50s at this point. She has slowed down to about 1 novel per year. At this point as a professional author, she was probably limited by her publisher to just one book per year to maximize global sales per novel. Whereas a less popular author could muddy the marketplace a little bit since his/her potential audience would be much smaller. I believe Stephen King ran into this problem in the 1980s.

She also didn’t have to work as hard at this point. In the 20s and 30s, she was writing as much as possible to make money. I wrote this sentence after only reading the first of the six books in this section, it will be interesting to see if this slower pace results in increased quality replacing quantity. The answer turned out to be yes, less quantity did equal higher quality.

It took me two months to read the six books that make up this segment. That’s pretty fast reading on my part. I guess I had a little more downtime with the holidays plus we went to Vegas for 5 nights for Maureen’s 40th birthday (which became six nights). To my knowledge I had only read two of the six previously, which puts me below average. For whatever reason the books from this segment weren’t as available to me when I was younger. Or didn’t interest me enough to check them out of the library.

1945 Sparkling Cyanide
Another WWII era novel with no acknowledgement of the war. Christie again plays around with the structure of what a mystery novel can be with this one. It starts with various people thinking back on a tragic night, sort of a Rashomon thing (or whatever the Shakespeare original that Rashomon is based on, King Lear maybe. If you want to know, you can Google it).

More rich people.

Col. Race reappears for this one. As someone who thought I knew Christie’s work very well, it is interesting to see how major of a character he was, and often he recurred. That said, he is not the most interesting of characters. Sort of cool, but like Poirot somewhat underdrawn. Inspector Kemp replaces the retired Inspector Battle. After finally developing Battle into a real character in Towards Zero, she retires him. It’s as though she liked her detectives to be underdrawn.

The story has a very clever ending. Though I’m not sure it really holds up upon closer thought.

1946 The Hollow
Wow this is Christie really firing on all cylinders. The set-up is much the usual, a doctor, an actress, old money rich people, a country estate. It should be old hat by now, but she finds a lot of freshness. The characters are extremely well developed, their motives are interesting. The ending is rock solid and ties back to the beginning. Very tidy bit of writing. This was another first time read for me, as was Sparkling Cyanid.

The other title this one went by is Murder After Hours, which makes no sense to me in relation to the story.

This is the second book in a row that has an unfaithful husband who ultimately realizes how much he loves his wife. I know Christie’s second husband married his reported longtime mistress after her death. I will definitely need to read a biography about her when I’m finished this project.

1947 The Labours of Hercules
I recall reading this one during a Christmas break when I was in high school. Poirot decides to retire again and to take on a few select cases to end his career. The rub is that he will only accept cases that recreate his mythical namesake’s labors, the Labors of Hercules. It also allows Christie to do that trick she loved where she gets a novel length book from a bunch of loosely connected short stories.

The collection of related short stories format doesn’t make for a tightly woven novel, but Christie does a great job turning the laborious constraint into some clever stories with a modern twist on the ancient lore. Some of the stories are easy to figure out, some are surprise endings.

Drugs play a part in at least two of the stories. Drugs were a frequent theme in Christie’s work from the 1920s. Would seem as though a different generation of English upper class society rediscovered drugs in the 1940s, especially cocaine.

1948 There is a Tide...
According to my note on the inside cover, I read this book in July of 1982, almost 29 years ago. The receipt still inside shows I paid 50 cents for it used from the now long defunct Marlo Books in the Roosevelt Mall.

This book has moved with me 4 times and only has now been read a second time. While I mostly like having a collection of books, it does seem a little silly to have carted this so little used object with me for almost 30 years. I often think about the nature of “stuff” and how much of it now is getting obsolete, in this case with the advent of e-books. I doubt I could get the electronic version of this for 50 cents again, or for free which I did by merely taking it off my book shelf. I expect someday there will be a Netflix of e-books where you pay a monthly subscription and get to have three e-books out at a time. When that day comes, I suspect I will get rid off most of my books, without much angst or sentiment. Just like how I disposed of my LPs when I moved to CDs, and got rid of cassette tapes when I finally got a car with a CD player. My collection of VHS tapes is still taking up space in my house, but I suspect I will get rid of those fairly soon. The conversion of entertainment media from space taking objects to electronic nothingness is very liberating. I embrace it. With everything being available electronically on demand, less is more and better.

I didn’t really recall any of the story after 29 years. This is another stellar work by Christie. Poirot is brought into this one that features rich folks who have their meal ticket cut off. It’s very firmly set at the end of WWII, with the English equivalent of a WAV or WAC returning from war overseas to her farmer fiancee who was exempted from service to keep growing food. Ration books are mentioned.

All of the clues are there, but I didn’t put them together correctly. A very satisfying ending to the mystery even if I didn’t solve it. The romantic ending is a bit shocking though.

1948 The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
Based by the copyright years listed in the front, this book is a collection short stories that had been published seemingly at a regular clip over 20 years. Unlike other collections of short stories, this one has no overarching theme that lightly connects all the story. This trick of Christie’s really wasn’t all that great and is not missed here. Various mysteries, all very well told, with some that really stick with you after reading them. Poirot appears in the last story, but otherwise the stories all feature one-off characters.

Interestingly none of the stories have real sense of a place in time. Twenty years made no difference in the setting or telling of the tales. This is not a knock, just something I only just realized. Anyway this is Christie in top form, a great read.

1949 Crooked House
This one is also very firmly set at the end of the War. A couple who met overseas while in military service reunite after the war in London and become formally engaged. Ration books are mentioned. Once again the setting is rich folks living in a big house. Christie’s ability to mine this same vein while keeping things interesting and readable is extremely impressive. All new characters for this one; all are very well fleshed out. The ending was a surprise to me. There were at least two glaring clues, and I missed them.

So this ends the 1940s. She was born in 1890, so she spent this decade in her 50s. She published 15 books in those 10 years. Late middle age shows her remaining at the peak of her mental abilities. Writingwise she is at the top of her game.

Now having read all of her World War II era output, her lack of references to the war, with the exception of the Tommy and Tuppance novel early in the war, becomes clearer She had worked as a nurse and pharmacist in London during the war. World War I was hell on the troops, stuck in the muddy trenches as modern war machinery made continued use of long established “military science” a pointless bloodbath. World War II while still horrific for the soldiers, was also very much a homeland war in Europe with civilians bearing the brunt of bombings on a daily basis. It makes sense that Christie living the reality of war day and night would escape in her writing to a time without war.

Onto the 1950s...

30 or So Songs of Xmas #27

2010-12-26T19:16:00.001-05:00

I don't know if the Trans Siberian Orchestra does anything except Xmas music. They do seem to have that down though.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #26

2010-12-25T08:24:00.002-05:00

I was listening, more like enduring, the comprehensive Motown Xmas album yesterday. It seriously sucks.

Then this song, Deck the Halls by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, just played. It is the polar opposite of suck. There is much to like about this one.

I must have had this on my hard drive for years since just hearing the opening notes automatically makes me happy and puts me in the Xmas spirit.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #25

2010-12-25T08:09:00.003-05:00

Today's is Christmas Baby (Please Come Home) by The Raveonettes.

Back in day Christmas songs often sort of sucked. U2 covered this song I think for a benefit album. U2 didn't really do anything with it and it was sort of I like(d) U2 and it's Xmas, so it's OK.

Flash forward to now with this Scandinavia act really doing something with this song.

15 Minutes Later Update: The U2 version is now playing on my computer. Their version really grew on me over the years. It's a still a little cringe worthy in parts but is overall rather solid.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #24

2010-12-24T16:17:00.002-05:00

Well it's Xmas Eve and I haven't made it up to 30 Xmas songs of note. But I still have a few days until new years.

Today's is Fairytale of New York by the Pogues.

I woke up this morning on Xmas Eve thinking of the line "And the bells were ringing out, for Christmas day". So I'm glad I didn't cover this one sooner.

While not the more cheerful song, it is technically a Christmas song. It's an great song with an equally great video. And that is Matt Dillon as the cop.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #23

2010-12-20T22:04:00.002-05:00

Dean Martin's version of this song is buttery. Or do I mean velvety. Either way, I like it.

30 or so Songs of Xmas #22

2010-12-20T19:48:00.001-05:00

Bright Eyes is one of those acts who gets a lot of critical acclaim, but I just don't get at all. To me it's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Which is why I was shocked after listening to this song for the first time to find out it was Bright Eyes. I guess that counts as a Christmas Miracle.

This version by Jim Reeves is the standard. Maybe.

Jim Reeves sort of sounds like a male Patsy Cline. Obviously not vocally but the phrasing and background music. I don't know who wrote this song (well I do now), but the stanza with shoppers and their packages is great modern Christmas imagery. I love it. Interestingly Reeves doesn't sing on that part.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #21

2010-12-20T16:43:00.001-05:00

I have never really listened to The Band. Nor have I really given Bob Dylan's double album with them much of a listen either, although I've owned it for years. I'll have to rectify that in 2011. Does that count as a new years resolution?

30 or So Songs of Xmas #20

2010-12-20T05:31:00.006-05:00

"Said Santa to a boy-child" that is such a strangely awkward line. And the boy-child wants a guitar and the girl-child wants a doll that wets itself. This song is so wonderfully dated.

Although this is obviously from the 1950s or 60s, I didn't hear it until the 1990s. Chuck Berry couldn't break the limited playlist of AOR, though the Keith Richards 1990s revival of this song did. But it's alright now.

I've gotten a little behind in posting again, so I knocked out four posts today because I woke up too early. They are scheduled to appear throughout today.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 19

2010-12-15T10:37:00.002-05:00

Today's make-up is Christmas Day by Dido.

This song reminds me of the sort of old folk song that Bob Dylan and Sting are both able to revive so well. The Web is really good at providing lyrics, but terrible at ID'ing the author . While this song seems old, it may well be an original by Dido.

This song has been on my computer for a few years now and I always sort of just half listened to it. Today it grabbed my full attention, and it's now on my Xmas song sort list. Great lyrics, excellent vocals, and cool Xmasy arrangement in the background.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 18

2010-12-15T08:13:00.001-05:00

I seem to have gotten behind a few days so I'll try to post more than one song for the next few days.

This one, a very, very fine one, is Christmas Cheer by the Roddies, a Philadelphia based band that I never heard of before this morning. I hope to hear more them.

Reading the Dame Part3a: The first half of the 1940s

2010-12-14T09:40:00.003-05:00

This a continuation of my series of posts about my project to read all 80 something Agatha Christie mystery books in order of publication (more or less).

The other parts of the series:
Reading th Dame Part 1: The 1920s
Reading the Dame Part 2a: The 1930s
Reading the Dame Part 2b: The 1930s continued

Reading the Dame Part3a: The first half of the 1940s
It is interesting (to me anyway) to note that Christie manages to publish about 6 books during WWII. The rationing imposed by the war didn’t fully end until 1953. Considering how hard WWII affected the UK, it is rather remarkable that the British printing industry still was able to function pretty normally during the war.

Christie published nine books from 1940 to 1944. It took me about 3 months to read those nine. My previous post, which covered 1935 to 1939, saw her publish 13 books. Those 13 books took me 5 months to read. As of November 2010, I read 42 Agatha Christie books since starting the project in August 2009.

1940 Sad Cypress
This is an interesting read. A woman is being tried for murder and Poirot is hired to try to clear her. It is narrated by a unknown third party who refers to Hastings’ later response when Poirot tells him the story. The idiotic Hastings is not missed as narrator. A little out of formula for her, but it really works. Well written. Another one I hadn’t read before.

1940 An Overdose of Death
This is another really good one. Poirot’s dentist is killed in his office. A quite involved but satisfactory plot. This another vaguely familiar one where I may or may not have read before.

1941 Evil Under the Sun
Another one I hadn’t read before. Poirot is back again. A good plot with well drawn characters. I read a lot of this one a really long train trip to and from Montreal Canada. Apparently World War II has not yet started . Surprisingly this one takes place not in an exotic sunny local but on an island resort in England.

1941 N or M?
I don’t think I read this one before but I may have; 30 years is a long time ago. Tommy and Tuppence are back. WWII is full swing. Their twins, now adults, are serving in the war effort. Tommy and Tuppence being middle aged (45 for Tommy, a little less for Tuppence) are frustrated at not being considered fit to help. Being Tommy and Tuppence they wind up getting involved as unknowns sent by the government to uncover the enemy from within at a sleepy seaside town.

As a person of 45, which is the supposed theme for this blog, it is interesting to see Tommy and Tuppence (who poses as a two time widow) in their mid 40s in 1941. We hear today how 50 is the new 40. I sort of poo-poo that as BS. But I may well be wrong. Tommy and Tuppence in their mid 40s are treated like modern day people who are in their mid 50s. Maybe 55 really is the new 45.

At the end, Tommy and Tuppence adopt an orphaned 2 year old. So maybe 45 actually is the old 45.

There are definitely a lot of good bits in this book.

1942 The Body in the Library
After a string of ones I either hadn’t read or didn’t recall reading, there’s one I remember the title. This one is a real throw back with a body found in a large country house, blatant contempt for the lower classes, and people getting their money the old fashioned way - by inheriting it. There is also no mention of the war and youthful men are still around. I must assume this was written or mostly written before the war, with the topical Nor M? getting pushed ahead of it. A good read with well developed characters. Christie continues her break from Poirot with Miss Marple being the lead, though she doesn’t appear until the 2nd half. The reveal does feel like a little bit of a cheat since we aren’t fully let in on the all facts. Adding to the retro feel, after a decades long absence “vouchesafed” returns for it’s once per novel appearance.

1942 Five Little Pigs
Poirot is back. This is a good and interesting one. Poirot is hired to solve a mystery that took place 16 or so years earlier. It all fit together, though the end does feel like a bit of a cheat. Once again no mention of World War II.

1942 The Moving Finger
I remembered watching this on Masterpiece Mystery, though I have no idea who the murder was in it. Even after reading the book I don’t remember how the movie went. Though I do have a habit of nodding off towards the end of them. I think I take after my mother that way. This is was a good one and all of the clues were there. Christie now seems to be alternating between Poirot and Marple. Once again the war gets almost no mention. One of the main characters has come to the small to town to aid in his recovery from injuries suffered from a plane crash, but it is not made clear if that was as a civilian or as a soldier. If as a solider, he seems to be completely discharged from service. Despite constant socializing with the locals, the war gets no mention at all in the town.

1944 Towards Zero
I remember reading this one before and really, really liking it. I read it again and again really, really liked it. Inspector Battle, who has been a supporting character since the 20s, is the main detective here. The characters are well developed and the book is very well paced. This is really Christie at her finest. You (and I) would think that this point, I would be really jaded of having just read Agatha Christie mysteries for the last 15 months. Surprisingly I am actually enjoying them more than ever.

Again no mention at all of the war. In fact it seems not to exist. People travel freely overseas without concern.

1944 Death Comes as the End
This is a strange one. It’s Christie’s only historical novel, taking place in ancient Egypt. This book was laborious for her to write and while not laborious to read, it’s not really all that solid. Ancient Egypt doesn’t really hold much romance for me. So all the work of creating the historical scene didn’t really do anything for me. Maybe in the future, my new knowledge of everyday ancient Egypt will be very useful for me, but I doubt it. The story was very suspenseful all the way through. I didn’t think the ending was very fair though. There really weren’t enough clues.

Christie never tried to write another historical novel, which was a good thing. I am bit surprised to find myself missing Poirot and London and Poirot’s comfortable existence. Hopefully he will be in the next novel.

Yet another wartime novel where WW2 isn’t mentioned at all, but at least this time there’s a valid reason. A little Googling reveals during WW2 Christie worked in London as a nurse and pharmacist, while publishing 12 books. Maybe she saw enough horrors of war, that she didn’t want to think it about any more than she had to.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 17

2010-12-11T11:06:00.001-05:00

Today's song is by The Christmas Song by Adam Arcuragi, who used to live in Philadelphia but has move 8 times since then. I'm not sure what this lyrics have to do with Xmas even after listening to it a dozen times, but I like song.

If the embedded thing below doesn't work, you can listen to the song on MySpace. That should be a direct link.

Find more artists like Adam Arcuragi & The Lupine Chorale Society at Myspace Music

30 or So Songs of Xmas #16

2010-12-10T15:31:00.001-05:00

Picking 30 great Christmas songs is hard for me. Which reminds of a line from a song I was going to include at some point anyway.

Today's song is Bob and Doug's 12 Days of Christmas. I remember from my high school days staying up super late on Saturday nights to catch SCTV, which came on after Saturday Night Live. SCTV was a Canadian show, and Bob and Doug were originally created as a farce to fill 2 minutes of required minimum Canadian content for Canadian television. The skit became popular and wound up on the US version as well.

Bob and Doug eventually resulted in a comedy album (which this track is from) and a now classic movie. The cartoon version must have come much later.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #15

2010-12-09T15:26:00.002-05:00

Today' song is Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses.

This is another one of those perfect Christmas songs, which is especially surprising because nobody can name a single other Waitresses song.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 14

2010-12-08T16:25:00.002-05:00

Today's song is Silent Night by Enya.

Enya was an act that was rather popular in the mid 90s. Although front by the seemingly eponymous Enya, it was a three person group. This song is an excellent representation of everything they did so well.

Enya may still be active. I don't know. I lost total interest after a few albums. As great as their sound was (and it really was great), there is only so much of it any one person needs since they didn't seem to really evolve any. I'll try to listen to some later day Enya later to see if this a fair assessment.

Either way, this is a great version of Silent Night, maybe the best ever.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 13

2010-12-08T07:27:00.004-05:00

Today's (well yesterday's as I'm a day late) song is Christmastime is Here Again by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

Charles Schultz's Peanuts is an enterprise that lasted way too long. Retiring while on top, like Bill Waterson with Calvin and Hobbs and Gary Larson with Farside, hadn't really been done yet. With The Grey Lodge Pub, I hope I end my run while at my peak and try something new rather than suck a great thing dry and have people say "yeah that place used to be good". But rather than dwell on Charles Schultz and Peanuts' decades long crappy end run, today we are going to remember back when Peanuts was at its prime.

A Charlie Brown Christmas is older than I am. That seemed normal to me when I was in grade school, but is now a little hard for me to believe. A Charlie Brown Christmas was the very first notable children's Christmas TV special. Young or old you have to agree that A Charlie Brown Christmas is an masterful production. Solid story, a little humor, and a solid ending. It's the music that really pits over the top.

I remember buying this CD back when I was 25 (20 years ago) and feeling very cool to be into the retro jazzy soundtrack from a touchstone (oooh big word) of my youth. What an urban hipster I must have been back then. Now a days everyone is nostalgic for their youth and it doesn't feel "cool" to like this anymore. Currently cool or not, this is a great album, and it brings back lots of childhood holiday memories and always puts me in a wonderful holiday mood. It wouldn't be Christmas for me without the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

Turns out I somehow picked a YouTube Vince Guaraldi Trio mix, so I've been listening to four songs from A Charlie Brown Christmas as I write this. Who could ask for anything more?

Bonus Video (Song Count Stays the Same)
Turns out you can ask for more, because it also turns out there's a super cool video for Matisyahu 's Miracle. The live version is a few days back, so the song count stays the same.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #12

2010-12-06T06:20:00.000-05:00

Here is another blast from the past, Greg Lake's I Believe In Father Christmas. This song perfectly captures the ennui that often accompanies the holiday season.

I was never into Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I can't even name a single one of their songs, so I am always mildly amazed at how much I love this is delicate, lovely song.

Here's an interesting interview to sort of explains why is the only Greg Lake song I am familiar with.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #11

2010-12-05T06:14:00.000-05:00

This is another blast from the past that still lives on. The Kinks' Father Christmas was one of few Xmas rock songs way back in the day. It was a great song then; it's a great song now. It rocks, it's got xylophone and a bit of a message. Pretty much a perfect song.

Stylewise this video is sort of the worst of the early 80s, or the best if you liked that sort of thing.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #10

2010-12-04T06:49:00.002-05:00

It's hard to pick just one song from the Kingston Trio's Xmas album. I really look forward to breaking out this CD every December. This a very interesting album because they found a lot of holiday songs that to this day are still pretty uncommon.

The song on this video is a bit weak, but that just means you should acquire the CD or the audio files.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #9

2010-12-03T17:34:00.002-05:00

This one is a Hanuka song which I've only known of for exactly a day now, thanks to Steveo Hawk.

Matisyahu is an orthodox Jewish reggae musician. Yes you read that right. This is a cultural mash-up that really works.

Now Jews don't have to settle for that annoying Adam Sandler song. If anyone wants to expose me to a great Ramadan song, I'm all ears.

Steve and I noted that there a lot of similarities between Orthodox Jews and Hipsters, and you might be seeing more about that someday soon. We also suspect Matisyahu's guitarist celebrates Christmas.

30 or So Songs of Xmas #8

2010-12-02T17:26:00.001-05:00

I'm a day late, but this is free so probably not a dollar short.

There is something so right about surf rock Xmas songs. Here we have The Ventures andRudolph the Red Nose Reindeer with a little I Feel Fine mixed in.

The Ventures' Christmas album is another MUST HAVE for any holiday music collection.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 07

2010-12-01T07:24:00.001-05:00

I downloaded an alternative Christmas compilation last year. Like I need more Xmas music on my hard drive. Most of it sucks and probably won't be on my hard drive come Xmas 2011. "Keegan's Christmas" by Marcy Playground though is a real keeper. It's a really great little song.

Since this is an original song, here are the lyrics so you can read along if you want. Hell sing along too if you want.

Lyrics | Marcy Playground lyrics - Keegan's Christmas lyrics

Reading the lyrics really made me appreciate how much talent the lead singer has. I heard of Marcy Playground but never heard any of their stuff before. I'll definitely be checking out more of their work.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 05 & 06

2010-11-30T08:10:00.006-05:00

Today has two featured songs. Fountains of Wayne released a two-song Xmas CD single right after their debut CD. Original rock Xmas songs were still somewhat rare back in those days. Both songs are great (though Man in the Santa Suit is better), so why choose?

This reminds of how annoying CDs were back in the day. You'd have to pop this in for two great songs, then take it out and pop in another. Even with a 5 disk changer, you were changing CDs too often. Being able to manage a giant playlist from my hard drive is way better. Sepia-toned days of youth my ass!

I wonder what Fountains of Wayne is up to these days. Guess I'll go do some Gooling. Catch you tomorrow.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 04

2010-11-29T07:56:00.004-05:00

Today's song is probably a perfect song. I don't think it could be better in anyway. The arrangement is absolutely brilliant. Ella's voice is like bittersweet honey (if such a thing exists). Pure perfection.

I originally encountered this song on a so-so jazz Christmas compilation CD back in the late 80s.

The album is song is originally from, Ella Fitzgerald Wishes You a Swinging Christmas, is a must have. If you don't already have it, go buy it now! The whole album is a joy and almost as good as this song.

Swinging is Ella's secular Xmas album; she also has/had an album of religious carols, which is really dry and no fun. I listened it twice about 20 years ago and haven't touched it since, except to move houses three times. Maybe I'll give it another go this holiday season.

Painting the Third Floor (Everything is Borrowed)

2010-11-28T20:51:00.002-05:00

I have been in a super productive spell for a few months now. Besides working the two places, I have been cleaning out three years of shit from the MGMT Bunker, blogging, and painting my third floor. I also manage to be a good husband and have an active social life. I know these spells of hyper-productivity don't last, so I'm enjoying riding the wave.

My house was built in the 1890s. The roof the house is gabled in several ways and the third floor has a lot of angles. The third floor was been pretty much untouched except for some 1970s era plywood paneling. I spent almost two years renovating the house before we moved in a bit over three years ago. I left the third alone until a couple of months ago.

Painting the third floor has been a project. 2 gallons of primer, 5 gallons of white paint, and I've just started on the 2nd gallon of black paint for the floor. The white and black give the space a very modern minimalist feel, which is somewhat odd to me since the space hasn't really changed in over 100 years.

One of the albums I've been listening to while painting is Everything is Borrowed by the Streets. Many people have lived in this house before me. Probably still more will after I've gone. The house is just borrowed. I'm painting it all the same.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 03

2010-11-28T08:10:00.003-05:00

This Xmas audio treat, Bob Dylan's It Must be Santa, is only a year old. Not all 30 or so will be moldy oldies from a middle-aged guy's sepia colored youth. At least one is a newer one by a senior citizen. So we got that going for us.

Bob Dylan is the eternal enigma. Even the biggest Dylan fan will admit that Bob has dropped some real clunkers. But now and again Bob will pull out yet another masterpiece. When it was announced Bob would be releasing an Xmas album, there was very good cause to expect it to fall into the clunker category. Being Dylan fan, I was cautiously optimistic.

This song and video are the very definition of masterful. After 50 years of doing this stuff, Bob knocks it out of the park. I dare you not to smile repeatedly while listening to this song and/or watching the video. Even Dylan haters love it.

Back to Bob's Xmas album, it's a mixed bag. Right this second, I'm listening to Hark the Herald Angels Sing and it's pretty painful. I'll be Home for Christmas has started off bad but Bob is finding a sort of Louis Armstrong thing in his voice and it has gotten more interesting. The Little Drummer Boy is a pretty basic version in a light traditional Dylan sauce that works very well. Earlier in the album, I really liked Do You Hear What I Hear, which is one my favorite carols (and one I didn't yet have a version of in my collection of several hundred Xmas songs). Bob does it justice. There's more to that album, but
I'm done writing.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 02

2010-11-27T08:50:00.003-05:00

I'm blogging one my favorite Xmas songs every day until New Years.

Today's song is Carol of the Bells, a techno version by DJ Demonixxx.

Back in the old days of widespread dial-up Internet, the early 2000s, there was a certain file sharing service. I'm usually a first mover on new technology, but I poo-poo'ed Napster when it came out. Why would I want to listen to music on my computer? My computer was slow and buggy enough without trying run music in the background. My stereo with multi-disk CD player was in the same room and always on anyway. A few computers and kick-ass speaker computer system later, I now pretty much only listen to music through my computer.

When a non-techy 21 year old talked Napster up, I finally decided to check it out. Since most folks still used dial-up, the selection was mostly single songs rather than whole albums. Searching for Christmas music, I found this gem. That service made collecting music much easier. It was great for obtaining stuff you knew was out there but not commercially available. Due to the limitations of dial-up, buying music on CD when possible remained the easier and better option.

I tried finding other DJ Demoixx stuff a few years ago, and couldn't, leading me to think it was a one-off, long forgotten thing. So I was very pleasantly surprised to find this song on YouTube this morning. I probably had been searching for Demoixxx with a third x. Google search is smart enough to search on what I want rather than what I type; that's probably a good thing. Turns out DJ Demonixx is still around, living in New Orleans. And Demonixx with two x's is much cooler than with three.

30 or so Songs of Xmas # 01

2010-11-26T08:28:00.004-05:00

It's the day after Thanksgiving, so it's time to start cranking out my collection of Christmas Music.

Back in the day, the early 80s, Christmas rock music was hard to come by. There wasn't much of it, and what there was wasn't available in stores. You would have to wait until an Xmas song you wanted came on the radio and you had to have your cassette recorder ready to tape. Jeez talk about primitive. Music collecting back then really was about the hunt. And the good thing about music collecting is that you can listen to it, rather that just have a useless possession.

By the 90s, some Xmas songs wound up on singles or on greatest hits albums. So you actually could possess the music, but playing it around the holiday was extremely laborious.

How it's the 21st century and I have 100s of Xmas songs on my hard drive. All in the same folder. No labor at all to play them.

I'll post one my favorite Xmas songs every day until New Years. Hopefully I can find each on YouTube, which would take care of any copywrong issues.

My first pick is Sting's version of I Saw Three Ships.

Sting has his share of duds as a solo artist; this sure ain't one of them. I really,really love this song, especially the percussion. The whole sound is really different. Caribbean maybe?

I really like this song despite its seemingly stupid lyrics. There were several YouTubes of this song. I picked one with lyrics (which don't seem to match up 100%, but it's good enough for our purposes here, already created, and free).

Three ships? I guess that's a reference to the holy trinity, but that seems to be stretching it. It could be a reference to the three magi, but they didn't travel with Jesus, they traveled to him. So pretty much the title and overall theme are questionable.

And then there is the line featuring "The savior Christ and his lady". Jesus never married, so who is his lady? I guess that would have to be Mary, but when is your mother ever called "your lady"?

Think about that if you wish, but enjoy the song either way. I do.

iPad Will Not Save Struggling Media Companies

2010-11-01T07:09:00.002-04:00

I just read an RSS item about a Hip Hop magazine that had stopped publishing a while back, due to publishing costs and decreased advertising, was returning as an iPad store item. It's surprising that so many people still don't get it. Magazines were very essential at one time, but now with a practically infinite number of Websites available 24/7 and updated all the time, there is NO NEED FOR MAGAZINES.

It was like we were starved for information and we had to wait for the regular (weekly or monthly) meal. Now that we can eat whenever we want until we are stuffed, so who needs (or wants) the big meal?

I may be an old foagie but after checking RSS feeds and numerous Websites everyday, the last thing I want to pick up is a magazine or newspaper. I'm full. Plus I have already read or will read the content of the newspaper or magazine on line anyway.

Reading the Dame Part 2B: The second half of the 1930s

2010-10-02T20:56:00.002-04:00

Reading the Dame Part 2B: The second half of the 1930s

When I first starting writing this it had been about 3 months since I last updated my Agatha Christie project progress. Reading the notes I've been taking on each book, Murder in Three Acts seems such a long time ago.

Last night I walking to a couple from Baltimore who were up at the Grey Lodge for an Authors A'Plenty event. They actually think me doing this is cool (cheers to them for having such a broad interpretation of cool). While mentioning I had read a lot of those Christie books as a youth and was now rereading them as an adult, and the differences between reading them in the 1980s and reading them in 2010 (such as being able to find out what a Continental Baldwin is), I also realized that I have doing this project for a year now. When I mentioned using my buddy's laptop to Google Streetview the address of a then chain coffee shop and finding that the coffee shop is still there. I had a clear memory of sitting on that sofa in Ocean City Maryland reading The Secret Adversary, and thinking I wonder if that coffee shop is still there. And being 2009, I had the tools at my disposal.

So I have read 32 Agatha Christie books in about 12 months. At that rate, I should be done this project (and able to read other fiction) sometime in late fall of 2012.

The latter half of the 30s features two Christie most famous books Death on the Nile and Ten Little Indians/And Then There Were None. She is in her late 40s here and really in her prime.

(1935) Murder in Three Acts
Ah, one I haven't read before. Satterthwaitte reappears, as does Hercule Poirot.

One of the lead characters, Sir Charles, a retired actor (of the stage), is a quite well fleshed out as a character.

We finally got a tiny bit of backstory on Poirot who tells Satterthwaite that we was born into a large poor family and had to make his own way in the world. He entered the police force and worked his way up, gained some renown, and finally retired. The war happened, he was injured (I suppose as a citizen not as a soldier) and then left Belgium for refuge in England (which was the set-up for the Mysterious Affair at Styles, Christie's first book. He solves the rich woman's murder and then becomes a celebrated and highly paid personal detective for rich people. He has now made his fortune. Still no mention of any wife or children.

I was actually getting jaded of the project before reading this book, but it, and the ones after, have been so good, I'm back fully committed. In her mid 40s, Christie is really firing on a cylinders. She has also improved greatly as a writer.

(1935) Death in the Clouds
Wow another one I haven't read before. Planes, still a novelty, were featured in two other Christie books so far. P and H take one to France in The Big Four. The salary man looking for adventure takes on in Mr. Paker Pyne, Detective. A good mystery involving a blow pipe, which comes back to haunt her. She really didn't research how large a blow pipe is, and how impractical it would be to have one on a plane.

One of the characters takes something called a Continental Baldwin out of his suitcase. 20 years ago, just what a Continental Baldwin was would have been a mystery. Was it a fancy pen? A portable typewriter? Or something else entirely? Even reading the whole book gives no context cues. Now thanks to Google, I know it is or was a schedule for trains in continental Europe. That's something even if you had a whole library at your disposal 20 years ago that you would unlikely be able to discover. Though I guess since it was a book, it might, might have been the card catalog.

(1935) The ABC Murders
Hastings and Poirot are back again. This time though Hastings explains that he was in England to personally look after some business for six months due to the bad economy while his wife remained in Argentina looking after the ranch. Poirot has moved from the Sherlock Holmes style rooms at a lodging house to a modern apartment building. Poirot seems to allow Hastings to stay there. Hastings remains pretty much an idiot. It still remains unclear why Poirot and Hastings are friends.

I have a memory of reading this as a teenager at the swim club during summer vacation. It was bit fantastical, but I seemed to have liked that as teenager.It's still rather fantastical, but I like that less now that I'm older. Still a good read, and rather well plotted, but a little far fetched. Like The Big Four (1924), I liked this one way more the first time around.

Christie was really cranking on cylinders at this point. Plots are solid, characters are well made.

(1936) Murder in Mesopotamia

This one is set before Murder on the Orient Express, explaining Poirot's presence in that part of the world. This is a good one utilizing Christie's trips to archaeological digs in Iraq. It was one of these trips that she met her second husband, Max. The characters are well crafted.

(1936) Cards on the Table
In this book, a rich weird-o invites four detectives and four killers to a bridge party. Unknowing to them, he "collects" killers. He invites the detectives to appreciate his collection. He winds up dead during the party. The detectives are Poirot, Colonel Race (making another appearance after a decade), Superintendent Battle (a bit character in loads of Christie books both with and without Poirot), and Ariadne Oliver, a female mystery writer who is based on Christie herself. It's a good read.

(1937) Poirot Loses a Client
I don't recall reading this one before. Great premise: a letter gets mailed to Poirot months after the writer has died. Was the writer paranoid or was she murdered? Great mix of characters and a somewhat complicated but believable plot. Hastings is back. He seems to have moved back to England permanently and has his own place and owns a car. His wife isn't mentioned.

(1937) Murder in the Mews
Another that I hadn't read before. I have learned that a mews is a street of stables. One of the row was converted to a residence (cars are displacing horses rapidly here) and the occupant is found murdered. Poirot winds up being involved.

(1937) Death on the Nile
I saw the movie in the theater way back in the day but never read the book. The copy I have is a slightly fancy paperback, but normal shape, not the oversized version, with lots of empty pages to make it look classier. It even has a forward by Christie where she says the book is one of her favorites.

It's a great book. Well drawn characters, great motivations for the characters, and a great plot. Colonel Race is back as well as Poroit. The movie made me want to take a cruise down the Nile some day. The book still makes me want to.

(1938) Appointment with Death
A week before reading the book, Maureen and I watched this on Masterpiece Mystery. For some reason Masterpiece/BBC usually radically rewrites the plot when converting a Agatha Christie book to a movie. Not merely combining characters to make a novel fit into a 90 minute film, they go as far as to switch detectives, change eras, switch murderers, or keep the murderer and switch motives. I don't get why they would do such a thing. On the plus side, it means that any I've watched on TV won't ruin the book for me since they are so radically different.

The book takes place somewhere in the Middle East, a day or two's drive out of Jerusalem. I imagine there are highways now and it's much quicker to get this impressive place.

(1938) A Holiday for Murder aka Murder for Christmas
I read this one during the 1993 Xmas holidays, which seems appropriate back then. I was working the cubical job and had 5 years in by that time, which meant 3 weeks of vacation per year. If you took 4 days off between Xmas and New Years, with 1/2 days, holidays and 4 weekend days, you could be out of the office for almost two weeks. Nearly two long, wonderful, amazing weeks, spent mostly at home. It was a great time to start and finish a novel. One bad thing about working for yourself, you don't get almost 2 weeks of no responsibilities. I do get a little time most days to sit and read in my garden though, so as with most things, it's a trade off.

The book still had/has a holiday greeting to riders from SEPTA. I left it in there as a time capsule. I remembered the story, but not the ending. The ending was a mild surprise to me, but it seemed very fair that I could have guessed it.

(1939) Easy to Kill aka Murder is Easy
I read this one before. Christie takes a break from Poirot here. Christie in prior books, as fictional mystery novelist Mrs. Oliver, complains about her foreign detective. She was also known to mention dislike him in interviews. Strange should she should have written so many Poirot books in a row if she disliked him that much. The one features a middle-aged former policeman who has retired and returned to England after years in the Malay Straights. This is another really solid one. Clues to the murder are well placed but not too obvious. Well paced.

(1939) Ten Little Indians aka And Then There Were None
Another break from Poirot. I remember reading this one for high school English class. It was one of the few books I actually read for that class, yet somehow I passed all the test and the class. The others I bluffed/guessed my way through the tests. It was a quick fun read back then. It still is.

(1939) The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
Back in the day writers could make a good buck writing short stories. This is a collection I assume of previously published short stories featuring Poirot, Parker Pine and Marple. Good stuff, a quick read. One of the rare ones I hadn't read before.

Sorry that this was pretty dry post.

Tuesday 10am, So Far so Good

2010-09-28T09:56:00.004-04:00

Actually it's only 9:59am.

I got up this morning about my usual time, 6:30am. Caught up with Facebook, browsed my subscribed feeds in Google Reader, made myself a light breakfast, which I read in front of my computer while reading my daily links via the My Morning Coffee plug-in for Firefox... pretty much my usual morning. Nerdy and boring but it works for me.

I had done all that, and was presentable and out the door by 8:45am. I had an appointment at the oral surgeon for 9am. I could have drove, but I like walking, especially since the office is only a mile or so from my house. The receptionist who sat me in an examining room asked me if I had the day off. I said no, I was working a double shift. Which is true, I have today planned by the hour, sometimes by the minute up to 9pm. I have many tasks at both businesses to do plus some personal errands before that. I thought of being my own boss, I looked down at the comfortable clothing I was wearing and would be wearing all day and thought of the Beastie Boys line "the truth is I'm exactly what I want to be".

My mouth has healed well and I'm ready for a new tooth to be done by my regular dentist. Dr. Kaye's office is extremely efficient and they had me in and out in about 13 minutes. The walk home was equally as pleasant as the walk up. I really like living in a walkable neighborhood. I like the inefficiency timewise of walking and the non-hurried pace walking provides, though since it adds some exercise to my day, walking might be considered very efficient. And I even had a few minutes to sit on my front porch.

At this stage of my life, I am not really into material stuff. The less the better, but my post-Victorian house brings me a lot of pleasure. I live in an unglamorous but safe neighborhood and my house didn't set me back much. It's my middle-aged man house and being a middle aged man I really like it. It has all sorts of things I was looking for including an open front porch and a decent sized back yard for gardening

I sat on my porch for a few minutes contemplating my landscaping efforts, the very comfortable wire/resin wickerlike furniture I got a sweet deal on and was sitting upon. I contemplated that I hadn't really sat on the porch much this year, having spent lots of time out back now that my efforts have resulted in a very nice garden. I thought of the juxtaposition of my front porch on a noisy busy street and the quiet solitude of my garden out back. I remembered how much fun it was hanging on the front porch last summer with lots of friends after Tanconellis and thought we should have a porch party before the weather turns.

I contemplated the unsociable cat that has been hanging around the house for a week or two now who took way too long to notice me. He/she finally saw me, came in for a closer look and then took off. I thought on being at a stage in my life to have all that and be able to enjoy it. I thought about my wife and how I wouldn't be happy living here alone without her.

Now I'm in my home office, catching up on email, and knocking out the first draft of this blog. Next I'll work for an hour on the somewhat involved project of restoring my garage windows. Then a short nap then off to the Grey Lodge and then to Hop Angel where I have a long list of things to get done.

The truth is I'm exactly what I want to be, and where I want to be.

Delaware River Heritage Trail

2010-08-07T17:57:00.022-04:00

A little while back, 2008 - 2 years ago, they opened more parkland here in Northeast Philly along the Delaware River north of Rhawn Street.

The first part of this park was created in the 1990s. It served to connect the Pennypack Park Bike Trail out to the river and as a large recreation area. It was mostly acres and acres of playing fields with a path along the river. It was a good place to park your car and unload your bike to for the trail. Unless you were a bike rider or had a softball or soccer game there, you probably never went there. It was nice but there wasn't much real there there.

Two years ago they opened the new part which is to be part of a trail going down the east coast of the USA. So the rail will eventually go up to Trenton and down to Wilmington and onward in both directions.

A year ago, a minor big news item was a couple of bald eagles set up a nest in the new part of the park.

Today after a lunch of Steak and Eggs with Marty and before heading up to my parents house to fix their computer and install their home theater system, I decided it was finally time to check out the new part of the park. And it was en route too.

The new part has been open for about 2 years, but for various lame reasons I didn't make it there until today.

Wow. The new part is amazing. So much untouched land. It's all wetlands and meadows, which makes for a very interesting and pleasant stroll.

It's probably about a mile from my house. I can't believe I hadn't bothered to come here before now.

I only encountered two people there. Both were middle aged. A guy sitting on a bench in a really neat grotto near the river and a middle aged guy on a bike. So there's the tie-in with the theme of this blog. It's something middle aged people like.

Northeast Philly has a reputation as an uncool and lame place to live. This miracle is right here and hardly anybody knows about it.

I won't be there daily, but I'm going to try to pop in whenever I am passing through and have some time to invest there wisely.

As this trail gets longer, Northeast Philly will become a nice place to grow older. I look forward to eventually walking or riding for dozens, maybe hundreds, of miles on it.

Picture 1: Where old path meets new.

Picture 2: The fence that served to end the old trail is now open.

Picture 3: A very pleasant place to sit near the river.

Picture 4: Wetlands view from the pleasant spot of Picture 3.

Picture 5: A big bug on the path. I saw butterflies, birds, but no eagles.

Picture 6: Where the trail now ends (for now). Eventually there will be a bridge that should connect up to the park and hatcheries at Lyndon Ave.

Picture 7: Marker.

Pictures 8, 9 and 10: Turning back now. Meadows. I saw wildflowers and trees and all sorts of native plants.

Picture 11: The fence from the other side, with a view of NJ on the other side.

Garden Post #2

2010-06-19T10:24:00.004-04:00

I am usually a restless fidgety sort of person. It's in my genes. My father is that way as well. I am quite surprised by how much I enjoy sitting in my garden, just sitting there contently doing nothing, like a dog or cat just sitting... happily. Unlike a dog, I usually keep my tongue in my mouth while I'm sitting there.

I occasionally get up to sweep some of the junk the dogwood tree is constantly dropping into the mulched areas. Sometimes I'll pretend to read a book, but for most part I just sit contentedly.

This picture of the back seating area is about a month and half old. The hydrangea behind the chairs is much larger now. The hostas have really taken off as well.

I added this seating area in April. It's connected to the first seating area on the other side of the dogwood tree. Most of the day, it's a nice shady spot. Various species of birds can usually be heard singing; squirrels do weird shit. It's extremely peaceful.

This seating area, which quickly became my favorite, is as far from the house as possible. While sitting there, it occurred to me that is area is contrary to what has been the modern outside seating arrangement for the last 50 years, which is a deck or concrete slab immediately off the back of the house that looks out onto a sea of grass. Sooner or later, I intend to have a porch built on the back of the house; I suspect this spot will remain my favorite sitting spot. We shall see.

Garden Post #1

2010-05-09T11:12:00.009-04:00

One of the things I most love about being in my 40s is my garden. I bought my middle-aged man house when I turned 40 in 2005. I worked on the 100+ year old house for two years before we moved in.

The yard was a project that had to sit on the back burner. That gave me several years to plan and several years of being a little frustrated at the unrealized potential. Last year, 2009, I finally got the chance to work on it properly. It has become my personal green oasis and I do my best to spend at least a little time sitting in it every day.

Rather do a very long post on the garden, I'm going to do a series of shorter posts about various aspects of it. Gardening is definitely a middle-aged thing, so it fits right into this blog. Today's post is the intro to the series and a quick before and now comparison. This post is a bit dry and boring. I think they will get better after this intro one.

The top picture captures the back 2/3s of my yard as of May 2010. My yard is a big one for the city, measuring 25 by 64 feet (I know because I plotted out on a grid last spring before beginning work). Things are green but the growing season is only just beginning.

Here's what it looked like in 2005 when I bought the house. Here's the same angle today (more or less). I have been converting it from underused space that required weekly mowing to a very utilized space that requires little work to maintain.

Reading the Dame Part 2A: The first half of the 1930s

2010-05-08T19:27:00.002-04:00

Reading the Dame Part 2A: The first half of the 1930s

In a prior post, I wrote about my project to read/re-read all of Agatha Christie's mystery books in order (I think I can pass on her pseudonymous Mary Westcott romances; there's enough romance in the Agatha Christie mysteries. Also after I finish about 80 full length Agatha Christie books, I'll need a long break from her).

While Agatha Christie could weave a very tightly plotted tale, it's becoming clear she wasn't a really truly great writer. She doesn't stick with you like Hemingway does (kind of like a rash), or sneak up on you like Twain, or just frigging rule like Steinbeck (man, that guy could write). She's clear and concise and extremely readable, but her writing is somewhat stiff. There is no real voice there and her writing is devoid of humor. Maybe it was her upper crust English breeding, though Aldous Huxley definitely wrote with what could be called a voice. The words do not dance nor sing; the characters rarely linger in your memory. I don't want to imply that she was a bad writer, she indeed was a quite good writer; just not great. This lack of greatness is probably how she was able to kick out so many books.

OK, onto the books. She published 9 books between 1930 to 1935. As before, some of the comments are about the book, some about me reading it when I was younger and re-reading it now as a forty-something guy, some are about 20th century fiction reread from a 21st Century viewpoint. Some are completely pointless.

(1930) The Murder at the Vicarage
Christie's 1930s output starts off with The Murder at the Vicarage. This book marks Miss Marple's first appearance. For those who don't know, she's a spinster from a small village. Her deal is that you can learn about people without being well traveled by observing village life. This knowledge can be used to solve mysteries.
Tuppence of the Tommy and Tuppence books was the daughter of a vicar. The difficulties of a vicar's household keeping servants due to not being able to offer a competitive wage is revisited here. While most of the book is set in a vicarage, quite a bit of it happens at a country estate.

Another really solid effort with a tightly woven plot. I read this one before, sometime in the 1980s. I forgot enough to not remember who done it.

(1930) The Mysterious Mr. Quin
Next up was a collection of short stories, The Mysterious Mr. Quin. This is an unusual book as it features the quite mysterious Mr. Quin, who appears time and again in Mr. Satterthwaite's life. Quin, is Mr. Harley Quin, aka Harlequin. I have any a passing familiarity with the 5 or 6 historic stock classic clown characters of which Harlequin is one. I don't want to know either. I could very well look it up, but clowns are creepy.

I had read this one years before when I was in my teens and it quite stuck with me. Way back I read that Kevin Smith (aka Silent Bob) named his daughter Harley Quinn. While he most definitely named her after a comic book character, I immediately thought of this book.

In each story, Saiterthwaite stumbles on a mystery and Quin shows up at the right moment to guide Saiterthwaite to the solution. When I was younger the mysterious Mr. Quin, who acted all mysterious and seemed to know all, was quite cool in a Racer X sort of way. Now I believe that a Harlequin is some sort of clown and I'm a little creeped out. Now that I'm older, Satterthwaite is the more curious character. He is an quite rich old bachelor who is more like a busybody old maid. He travels in the richest circles, and he also travels in the artistic circles as a patron of the arts. Satterthwaitte isn't as douchey as you might expect, but he's not especially likable either. He seems like the character Christie was destined to create. He has reappeared in a book in reading right now, but that will have to wait until the next installment of this series.

Saitterthwaite gets a back story. He was going to propose to a girl at Kew Gardens, but instead she tells him about another guy she's crazy about. He then spends the rest of his life as a bachelor. This makes the lack of backstory on Poirot after numerous books even more curious.

Satterthwaite's typical year is described as being in London for the social season, going to the Riviera in the winter, coming back to London briefly before making a tour as a guest at various country homes. He also would spend a few weeks in Scotland every year (doing what isn't explained). Satterthwaite has a Rolls Royce and a chauffeur to drive him in it. Which gets me thinking of the logistics and economics of the whole thing. Is the chauffeur on salary year round, or only during the driving through the country house visiting season? My guess is the chauffeur would get a day rate and has to fend for himself during the winter. Satterthwaite gets his own room (sometimes a suite) when he visits the various country estates. I guess those "great houses" must also have had spare servants rooms for servants who came with the guests. So if Satterthwaite stays a week before moving on, what does his chauffeur do during that time (and is he still getting the same day rate)? I image some of the time is spent cleaning and polishing the car, but that's probably only an hour a day. What about the rest of the waking day? Spent it at the village pub or playing cards with the other servants? After the Agatha Christie reading project is done in a few years, I'll have to find a book written from the perspective of the servants.

The perspective of the leisure class in the travels is interesting in a how the other 1/2 of 1% lives sort of way.

This was a good read, but I liked better my first time around. I lived too much to be particularly sympathetic to the leisure class.

(1931) Murder at Hazelmoor (also known as The Sittaford Mystery)
A little ways in I realized I had read this one before. I definitley didn't remember who did it. Towards the end of the book, there was a clue that struck up a lost memory. I remembered who and how. Or maybe I just figured it out with my brilliance. You probably suspect the former, but we'll never know.

Hazelmoor is yet another really good read. Lots of interesting characters and some interesting plot twists. While the murder happens at a named country house, at bit of action also takes place at a pub, which was quite interesting to me being a publican.

Once each in several of her books, Christies uses the verb "vouchesafed", which appears to be a synonym for "said". I remember this word from reading Christie as a teen. It was a new word to me. It didn't take much contemplation to back then decide it was a word that I didn't need to add to my vocabulary. Agatha Christie books are the only place I have ever seen the word vouchesafed. It made an impression on me, but I totally forgot about it until stumbling on it again (and again) as part of this reading/re-reading project. I never looked up the exact meaning of vouchsafe, but now that I'm typing this on a computer with access to the Web, there's no reason not to. Here's the definition, "grant in a condescending manner".

I rip on Christie's writing ability in the second paragraph above, but I really liked this one. This one has stick-to-you-ness.

(1932) Peril at End House
For some reason Hastings is back in England and taking a week long beach holiday with Poirot. No reason is given why Hastings is no hurry to get back to his ranch and his wife in Argentina.

Drugs, cocaine specifically, play a role in this mystery, which once again happens in a country manor house, though one that has seen better days.

At some point I got into the habit of writing the month and year I read a book on the inside cover. I read this one before, the note in front says "08/81", just about some 29 years ago. Wow crazy, so long ago. Even without looking for my notation in the book, from the title I remembered reading this one before. Strangely I remembered pretty much none of the story. Or maybe not so strangely as it has been 29 years. So I had read all her books from the 1920s before, except one. And so far I had previously read all 4 books of the 1930s that I have gotten up to. Before this project I was under the impression I had only read about 50%, maybe 60%, of Christie's 80 or so books. For Christie books published between 1920 and 1932, I'm running about 95% previously read.

This was another really good read. As usual the plot is well constructed. As usual Christie does a great job of parceling out clues and the surprise ending doesn't feel like a cheat.

(1932) The Thirteen Problems (aka The Tuesday Club Murders).

This is a bunch of Miss Marple short stories, interwoven into a novel, an old Christie trick that always worked well. The old bat solves them all. I think I partially read this one before, though it must have been a library book. I probably returned it without finishing it, maybe starting it on a school break.

It was a good read, but I found myself pondering the Miss in Miss Marple. I recall being a lad in the 1970s; for some reason my mother's side of the family seemed to know a lot about proper salutations and whatnot. Maybe that was taught in secretary school and most women knew it then. Unmarried women were Miss and married women were Mrs. Married or umarried, men over 13 were Mr. I recall being a Master until 13 when I became a Mr. Until then birthday cards from my Aunt and Nana were addressed to me Master.

I also recall sometime in my childhood Ms., pronounced "mizz" and which I had thought was spelled "Mizz", became newsworthy. It was explained to me that Mizz was for addressing both married and unmarried women, but why anyone who want to do that was unknown... some sort of women's lib thing. Looking back on that now, that must of been when the New York Times switched to Ms. from Mrs. and Miss, making Ms. newsworthy. Looking back now, I can see how that would have been big news. I like that here in the 21st century, the NYT still refers to everyone Mr. and Ms. As crazy as it would seem today to make a distinction between a woman's martial status, when the same isn't done for men, I can't see Miss Marple ever being a Mizz Marple. And you'd never dare call her Jane.

(1933) Lord Edgware Dies (aka Thirteen at Dinner)
I recalled reading this one (and a note in front said I read it December 1993) but I had little memory of it, so the ending wound up being a surprise. I have gotten pretty good at solving the mystery before the reveal, but Christie got me here.

Actors have made appearances as character in several books so far. In this one, the actors are mostly movie actors. At this point talkies have been around for a few years.

Another strong read, which percolates nicely and has a satisfying conclusion.

Several curious things here, Hastings again is the narrator, back in England and staying at Poirot's. Having seemingly taken up lodging there. No mention is made of Hastings wife nor his life in "the Argentine", though he does get suddenly recalled to the Argentine just before the last chapter. Still no backstory on Poirot.

The other curious thing is that Poirot, makes a mention of spending an afternoon involved in a case involving an ambassador's boots and cocaine smuggling. I went back and looked, and that was a Tommy and Tuppence case from Partners in Crime, which was published about 4 years earlier. Poirot does not appear in the published story. Did Christie get her detectives mixed up? Or maybe Poirot heard the story while hanging out at Scotland Yard.

(1934) Murder on the Orient Express.

This is one I hadn't read before. But I do recall watching the movie on video and finding it a little dull. Even worse I remembered whodunnit. It is one of those where you don't forget it.

This seems to only be the 2nd book so far that I hadn't read before. Curiously the other one, The Mystery of the Blue Train, also took place on a train. So that's 19 out 21 books so far that I had already read before.

I have been collecting books since I was teenager with the aim of eventually having a book lined study when I was adult. Many of the books were picked up used at flea markets or thrift stores, so I have little idea where (or when) most of the books came from. In the back of this book I found a bit of an envelope seemingly used as a book mark. It was addressed to Master Jeffrey Riley of Andalusia PA. So my brother and I weren't the only two boys getting mail addressed to us as "master". The post mark is from the 1970s. It's curious how "master" reappears after my thoughts on that word a couple books up.

The remembrance of the book lined study idea takes me back to a memory from college. For some reason I was in the office of one of my Philosophy teachers. His office had hundreds of books on wall mounted book shelves. He saw me observing that and asked if I was impressed by the number of books. I was actually impressed that he got the college to put up that many book shelves for him. I was 19 and been buying books for years at that point. Quantity of books didn't impress me as I knew how inexpensive it could be to amass quite a few. I did know what an ordeal it was to get anything accomplished at La Salle University (great faculty, but the non-teaching staff was terrible), so I was way more impressed with the book shelves. Rather than express all that, I just said "yes".

Once I got my own house, I discovered reading a book in a book lined room wasn't as romantic as it sounded, not in the least. Maureen and I have quite a collection of books. Technology has really changed everything, or almost everything. Turns out for me the content is more important than the physical object. Like music, I'd rather have them all in electronic form, but that getting them that way would cost way more than owning printed copies nobody much wants. Unlike CDs, books aren't easily rippable, so unlike our large collection of CDs, which will probably go away at some point, like vinyl albums and cassette tapes, our books will probably continue to take up space in our home for quite a while.

So onto the book. It was a very good read despite knowing whodunnit. I liked it. Unlike the movie, it was never dull.

Still no back story on Poirot, who winds up on the Orient Express after getting called back early from Istanbul, here called Stambul for some reason.

In Europe, Pullman (sleeper) cars were called Wagons-Lits. In the USA, the Pullman Company out of Chicago, built and operated the sleeper cars. They had some sort of deal with the railroads to attach the sleeper cars to the trains. Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits was the European copy.

(1934) Mr Parker Pyne Detective
I read this one before too. Mr. Parker Pyne is a retired government statistician who opens a business to help unhappy people. This one too is a collection of related short stories. It was a good read the second time around too.

Mr. PP is famous for his daily front page ad in the newpaper inviting unhappy people to visit his office, where he will solve their problems. This got me to thinking about the death of newspapers. Once they were the only means to reach the masses. News, classified ads for jobs or apartments or stuff, entertainment, ads for services, it was all there. The service ads were published daily waiting for someone to need a lawyer, doctor, plumber, whatever. All of those things were gradually usurped by other media.

This book had a real potential to be terribly dated with sexism and racism. Happy it isn't.

Parker Pyne winds up on vacation for the stories at the end of the book, where he winds up on the Orient Express. She got some mileage from that train trip.

(1934) Why Didn't They Ask Evans
I read this one before too. It features two somewhat young people in their mid 20s. One a titled daughter of a very rich man, the other a penniless 4th son of a country vicar who was aimless after leaving the military.

The heroine is a rehash of Bundle, Lady Whatever of Seven Dials Mystery and The Secret of Chimneys. She too is rich, titled due to the death of her mother, independent, doesn't work, and lives with her widower father. This reads like a Tommy and Tuppance book, which isn't a bad thing.

For one part, the vicar's son poses as her chauffeur. While the lady is staying at the country estate, the chauffeur stays at the local pub. His only duties are to be near the phone in case the lady wanted to be driven somewhere. So that answers the chauffeur mystery from The Mysterious Mr. Quin.

Plenty of twists and turns in the plot. A great read. Of course rich chick settles down with poor boy. I liked this one, but it left me a little cold.

I have 13 more books to read to get from 1935 to 39. I have two down. Next installment will be in a few months.

Reading/Re-Reading the Dame: Part 1 - The 1920s

2010-02-06T13:14:00.005-05:00

Reading/Re-Reading the Dame: Part 1 - The 1920s

In 1976, many of Dame Agatha Christie's 79 books were reissued in paperback after her death renewed interest in her. That was just about when I started reading from the adult section of the library. As a result her books were readily available and easy to find there, so I ended up reading a lot of Agatha Christie books as a teenager. I continued to read them on and off (mostly off) in the following years.

Last summer I decided to read all 79 Agatha Christie books in order of publication. This will be a multi-year project. I just finished the 12 books she published in the 1920s, which are about a 50/50 mix between novels and short story collections. It took me 5 months to read those 12. Quite a few of the books I collected cheaply over the decades from used book shops, thrift stores, yard sales, etc. The rest, one decade at a time, I have been buying used from Amazon for about $4 including shipping.

19 Random Thoughts
Here are some random thoughts. Some are about Agatha Christie. Some are about my experiences reading her first as a teen and now as a middle-aged man. I bolded them a little bit to hopefully make the whole mess a little more readable.

1) What strikes me now as a person of 44 years living in 2010 is how incredibly snobby the books are. Thanks to the modern wonder of the Web, I now know that Dame Agatha was the daughter of a rich American father (of the New York Piedmont Morgans) and an English mother. She was born upper class and definitely had an opinion of the lower class. All of the characters so far have been "gentlefolk" like her. Inheriting money or marrying into it being much more acceptable than actually earning it. With the exception of butlers and housekeepers (which are different from maids), the servants are almost always totally undeveloped as characters.

2) Regarding butlers, it is as though the Merchant Ivory movie The Remains of the Day (which is based on a novel by by Japanese-British author Kazuo Ishiguro) is based on the butler character in The Secret of Chimneys, who reappears in the The Seven Dials Mystery. The perfect butler is a gentleman's gentleman, who never shows emotion, yada yada. I had rewatched The Remains of the Day a little before rereading Seven Dials and Chimneys, so the similarities were really evident to me. You have to wonder if Ishiguro has read The Secret of Chimneys, and/or the wonder of the perfect English butler is just common fodder.

3) Thinking back, maybe even as a teen I was aware of the snobby tone, but didn't mind it. At Father Judge High School, the Oblates tried to mold us into young gentlemen. And I bought into the gentleman thing. As a teen I thought maybe I could join the rich club someday (which seems like such an unChristian thing to do). Totally like James Mason. In my years since I've mingled with the old money rich a tiny bit and I know it's a club I don't belong in, even if I had some money. I'm whitetrash from Northeast Philly. But I've very cool with that. I'd rather be that than snobby.

4) I suspect I probably wouldn't have liked Agatha Christie as a person.

5) Some of the things she writes would have made me a socialist if I was living in 1920s England. The rich never once pondered that maybe their accident of birth resulting in their much better and totally unearned lifestyle just might be rather unjust. They considered themselves heroic in being poor while waiting for a rich relation to kack and leave them their wholly deserved inheritance. The short story collection The Golden Ball is especially appalling from that perceptive. Many times in her 1920s writings she describes servants actions as being typical of their class.

6) Selected The Golden Ball story number 1: a daydreaming office worker wins a contest and buys an expensive car, which he keeps secret from his sensible fiancee. Due to a misunderstanding (apparently cars didn't need keys back then). He gets mixed with up a group of young rich people ("The Pretty Things" - coincidentally I had a little while before watched the movie Pretty Young Things, which is about young rich English society people in the 1920s). He of course has to return to his own class after the adventure is over, but he had the joy and honor of seeing the other side briefly.

7) Selected The Golden Ball story number 2: a spoiled young man lives with his rich uncle and works for the uncle. After being hung over and late to work yet again due to staying out late with other young upper class London socialites, the uncle throws him out telling him to seize "the golden ball of opportunity". After having the butler pack his things, he does that by hanging out with a society girl with a large annuity, passing her stupid test for a husband, and getting engaged. He seized the golden ball by marrying into money. Which he joyously throws back in the uncle's face. No sense of irony there.

8) Selected The Golden Ball story number 3: a rich man poses a butler to find poor gentlefolk to let live for free (with paid-for servants) in his many houses. Who else is helping the pennyless gentlefolk, a segment that has been forgotten by society? Once the family is once again living in style, the poor widow's son even stops dating a tobacco shop owner's daughter in favor of a girl from his own class. The butler reveals that he is really the missing rich guy and proposes to the widow. The lower class continue to live in their slums.

9) Hercule Poirot appears in 6 of those 12 books and he never gets a backstory. Why is this elderly man single? Did he never marry? Is he a widower? Is there a separated wife living elsewhere? Does he have children? It seems he never married. If so, why? Six books in and no answer.

10) Agatha Christie was a romance writer as well, having published several romances as Mary Westcott. Many of these 12 books are heavy on the romance. Don't worry, the young lovers always wind up with someone of their own class, even if it seemed that might not be so.

11) Agatha Christie was the mother of a daughter, but none of her heroines have children. I suppose being rich, her daughter was put in care of a governess and then shipped off to boarding school at some point, so maybe it was like not having a child at all. It is interesting that all of her heroines are single upper class young women, some with money and some without, but none are mothers. Not even a young war widow with child.

12) I remember really, really digging The Big Four whenever I first read it. It is an Ian Flemming-like world conspiracy story, very exotic. I also recall thinking after the long build-up, the ending was rushed and weak. On rereading it, I still think so. A little Wikipedia'ing reveals that The Big Four is a collection of short stories reworked into book form. It was released at the lowest point of her life when she was in need money. Later in a letter to her publisher, she refers to The Big Four as a "rotten book".

13) Two of her most likable and memorable characters, Tommy and Tuppence, appear in two books (The Secret Advisory and Partners in Crime) in the 1920s. I think they don't reappear until one of her final books in the 1970s, when they are in their 70s. it will be interesting to see if I'm wrong and they do reappear before then. Tuppence is pregnant at the end of the 2nd book, so I suspect not. (Wikipedia says they appear in 5 books, so it looks like they do. We'll see as the years and books go on). A neat thing to find out is that my wife really liked and remembered Tommy and Tuppence too.

14) I remember reading The Seven Dials Mystery which takes places at Chimneys, a country house, as a teen. I figured out that The Secret of Chimneys was the prequel. I never saw The Secret of Chimneys on the racks at my local library. Back in the early 80s, in lieu of a card catalog, the Philadelphia Free Library would print huge paper bound computer reports of its inventory, which were located in each branch. Chimneys wasn't available at any of the Northeast Philly libraries. It seemed that not all of her books were released in paperback, and Chimneys was one of those. For me it was the exotic lost Agatha Christie book. I had to put in a transfer request, which cost a quarter I think, to have a hardback copy sent to the Welsh Road library. I still had that sense of wonder when I finally obtained my own copy (in paperback) of it a few years ago. Reading the book was less magical this second time around. Still a good book, but less magic.

15) In the The Man in the Brown Suit, Christie does a great job of describing South African tourist attractions, especially Victoria Falls. And of course despite appearances the romantic interest ends up being a rich gentleman.

16) Of the 12 books, except for The Mystery of the Blue Train, I believe I had read them all previously at some point. I do lightly recall The Golden Ball, but I'm not certain. Maybe I only read a few of the stories. I believe there are many Christie books I haven't read yet; I'm surprised how heavily I had already covered the 1920s.

17) Paperbacks must have been a real technological marvel when they first appeared. Even now a paperback slips nicely into a jacket pocket, which must have been a design feature. While I'm waiting somewhere, I can either pull out my smart phone for entertainment or I can pull out the paperback. My phone is a lot sturdier though; the paperbacks need a good preventive application of tape to keep them functioning.

18) Some of the paperbacks I'm reading are older than me. That was normal when I was younger, now it's a bit of a marvel that they are still around. Conversely reading a paperback printed 40 years ago (that's a long time ago) and realizing I'm older than it is quite strange. On a plane to Denver, a woman next me noticed how taped up my book was and mentioned now that was an old book. I do have some old paperbacks, some that date back to the 1940s. This particular one only dated to the 70s; it was younger than me. To me it was one of the younger ones, so her friendly comment sort of made me feel old.

19) The narrator of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a doctor. He is well off enough to have live-in servants. It is interesting that the doctor and his roommate sister eat much better than what they provide for their servants.

So what was the 1920s. I'll report back after I finish her 1930s output.

Amateur Hour Again

2010-01-27T10:59:00.004-05:00

We at The Grey Lodge recently agreed to do a very high profile ad. I'm not spilling the details yet, but I'll say it's somewhere I never, ever expected to be able to advertise in. This is major league stuff for us.

Usually when a small company contracts to do an ad, the media company's art department helps with the creation of the ad. They have the in-house expertise that most small companies don't. The Grey Lodge, like many companies, started off very bare bones. I was president, janitor, and most jobs in between. I don't clean the bathrooms anymore, and am getting used to delegating things. We've been doing small print ads for years now. Sometimes I submit an ad ready to go. Sometimes it's a back and forth. I give clear direction and they do good work. This being big league stuff, I felt I should go with the professionals.

So I sent their art department some (mixed-case) text with our basic messages and some photos I had been working on for release 2010 of greylodge.com. I sent the text with caveat that while those were what we mostly had to say, it probably should be pared down for the ad. I offered to do a first version for them to clean up professionally. They said what I sent already would be sufficient. What they sent back was this:

I was having a rare bad morning last Friday and was in a mood when I got the email. I'm no advertising expert, but like all people today, I have been exposed to advertising since I was born. Thinking people from their lifelong experience know what advertising impacts them and what doesn't. I'll be blunt and say that ad is shit.

The green logo on a green background, WTF?
All capital letters? It's ugly, and while technically readable is so jumbled, nobody would want to bother to read it. Nobody has to read your ad, you need to make it appealing so they want to. We are so overexposed to advertising, we ignore as much of it as possible. That text is definitely stuff I would ignore. Even if it interested me, it looks like a chore to read.
It's not even clear who the ad is for, "Grey Lodge" only being in the logo.
The largest thing is the phone number. We're a bar and restaurant; we don't really want people to telephone us. We don't have operators standing by, we have bartenders who are hopefully busy with actual paying in-person customers. We do however want people to go to our Website, which packed with info, and which people can look over at their leisure. Of all the things they choose to highlight, they pick our phone number?

After seeing what "the professionals" thought was acceptable, I decided to do it myself. I kept their layout, which looks good, but I expect is probably boilerplate for them. Below is my version. I spent about 8 hours on it, using only basic software tools. With more professional tools and experience, I could have done it much faster.

I was given some great ideas from friends. For the most part, they and I were on the same page. There are many good ideas that I couldn't use. I believe strongly that with ads, less is more. I think this ad finds a balance between less and more.

Where I Add the Conan/Leno Chatter

2010-01-16T09:48:00.004-05:00

It's not like this hasn't been talked about enough already, but my perspective as a 40something man who is mildly successful in his profession I think gives me something to add. Though you will be the judge of that. And it's the Internet, a few more words, more or less, won't make a dent in it. At least I hope not; if I broke the Internets, I'd never hear the end of it.

Jay Leno seems like a very nice, likable guy. A bit bland but nice enough for those who like that sort of thing. From the beginning my thoughts as a middle-aged guy were "man, Jay is being a dick". The video below shows he's also something of a pussy. Jimmy Kimmel really rips him several new ones and in Leno's own house! Though to be honest, I don't know what a better response to Jimmy Kimmel other than just sucking it up would have been. I really don't. I do know a wiser person wouldn't have been in that situation to begin with.

So NBC promises the Tonight Show to Conan O'Brien 6 years ago and time came to keep the promise. Instead of going out with a bang, going out on top, Jay decides he wants to stick around, so NBC gives him all 5 weeknights at 10pm to do a show that is sort of exactly like the Tonight Show. NBC did it out of greed, noting that the Jay Leno Show, while paying Jay very handsomely, is much cheaper to produce than 5 hours of dramas a week. Leno seemingly didn't do it out of greed. He is famous for saying that he has never spent any of his hundreds of millions of Tonight Show dollars. He still performs regularly and lives very large off that. A five night a week prime time Jay Leno Show was a screwing to Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show, which now had to compete with the Jay Leno Show for guests and viewers.

NBC didn't really care that Jay Leno Show wasn't all that successful. It was still more profitable for them than 5 nights of dramas. However their affiliates which make most of their money from the 11 o'clock news were very unhappy about the loss of lead-in viewers, and many of them threatened to show other programming. So NBC had to react. They tried to eat their cake and still have it, giving Conan little bit of a shit sandwich, though a shit sandwich that still came with a $20 million a year salary. Conan responded perfectly. He's the cool guy, smart and funny, while Leno is a failure and sort of a dick and now, thanks to Jimmy Kimmel, a pussy too.

What Jay Should Have Done
In hindsight, the best move would have been to go out on the Tonight Show with a huge bang, like when Johnny retired. Jay could still do his constant performing for senior citizens; I guess he tours old age homes, I don't know. His Tonight Show swan song should have been a giant must-see month-long event, going out on top, like a beloved champion.

At the time, the 10pm week-long show seemed like a worthy gamble for Leno. It was an interesting response to a now very different environment for network television. Of course if you are going from 5 nights a week at 11:30 to 5 nights a week at 10pm, it's not really much of a transition, not worthy of a huge bang. Maybe his leaving the Tonight Show was a big deal; I don't know. Leno bores me so I didn't pay much attention to it - I might be middle-aged but I'm not a senior citizen yet.

But hindsight isn't fair to judge by, though we can fairly judge the here and now. What Leno should have done when NBC pulled the plug on the Jay Leno Show was to go away gracefully - make some jokes at his own expense and then go home and jump around in his money. He had a good long run. He had nothing left to prove, let it go. He missed the opportunity to go out on top, but he could still retire with grace and class.

Now he just seems like a dick (and a failure and a pussy). Jeez man, you got the rest of your life, do something new. It's better to go out with them wanting more than to overstay your welcome. I'll shut up now.

Big Bidniz

2009-12-14T09:16:00.002-05:00

From today's New York Times,

In 1990, G.M. paid $600 million for half of Saab, and anted up $125 million in 2000 for the rest of the company, which has long commanded a small, loyal following in the United States for its idiosyncratic but stylish models.

Translation: This means in the 10 years under GM's influence, the value of Saab when from $1.2bil to $250mil, and that's not considering inflation. So either GM grossly overpaid in 1990, or that GM's involvement managed to destroy $950,000,000 in Saab's value over a decade. Which option reflects better on GM's management?

Showcase

2009-11-28T08:24:00.003-05:00

Local TV personality Al Alberts passed away yesterday. His show, Al Alberts Showcase, was a Sunday staple here in Philadelphia for decades. The show was basically a talent show for children, which made it wonderfully strange (Keep in mind this was before 500 channels and/or Adult Swim). Every year, each weekly show led up the crowning of "Little Miss Showcase".

I might start calling people "Little Miss Showcase". I'm old; I can do that now.

9 Days, 7 Barber Shops, Zero Haircuts

2009-11-04T10:41:00.007-05:00

I really didn't mean for this to become such a project. Though to be honest, for better or worse (probably worse), that is in my nature.

Two Tuesdays ago, I headed into work early to get my hair cut. I am in at 3pm on Tuesdays, so got there at 2:15. I walked from work to my normal barber. As I have found too often before, the lights were on, the sign said "OPEN" but the door was locked and he was nowhere to be found. I'd say 6 of out 10 of my attempts to get my hair cut by him have ended in me finding him not there. He doesn't have hours posted, so I have an assumed schedule for him based on hit and miss experience. Sort of like playing Battleship. I assume his hours to be Tue to Fri 11am to 4:30pm, Sat 10am to noon.

I don't even expect barbers to have convenient hours. I work shift work, so I can deal with businesspeople who think they don't need to keep hours where most people with jobs can actually give them money. God forbid they should arrange their lives to make it easy on their customers. And even with already low expectations, I am being consistently let down.

When I lived a block away, it was only about 3 minutes wasted when he wasn't there; now a trip there has to be worked into my work schedule plotted against his expected appearances at his shop. I decided after the last haircut, which took 4 visits to successfully find him there, the next time he wasn't there, I was giving up attempting to give him money.

So after walking there in the rain, he wasn't there. Getting wetter, I go to a barber a block away. I had tried to give this barber a go twice before when the other guy was MIA. Both times, this guy was out also. Maybe they have lunch together. This guy at least has hours posted, but same deal. Lights on, sign says "OPEN" but the door locked. This guy at least has a sign indicating he would be back at 2:55, but I had no intention of waiting in the rain for him AND being late for work. So I decide, screw both of them if they can't be around. I never liked playing Battleship.

As this is now a to do, I decide on some barber criteria:

I want to go to a real barber shop, not a hair salon. If I wanted to go a salon, I'd go to BellaLisa. I had complained about barbers earlier and Lisa said her shop did men's hair too. A hair salon should be a sanctuary for women to gossip and sit under hair dryers, etc. Men shouldn't intrude on that.
posted hours. These hours don't even need to be convenient, merely posted.
actually being open during posted hours. They don't even need to be open many hours per week, just be there when they advertise to be. I don't think this is too much to ask of a business that is open to the public.
facade that isn't an eyesore which reflects badly on the neighborhood.
preferably a shop with more than one barber. If a barber wanted a break or to take a day off, the shop could still be open, sort of like my doctor's office. You might not get your first choice of doctor, but there is one there. A single employee operation would be fine, if they were actually there at predictable times.
I would prefer a barber that is either walking distance from my house or from work.
an old fashioned barber pole would be nice.

That Friday I do reconnaissance of the neighborhood around my house. There are four barber shops near by. There was another but it closed (which was my first stop, or in this case stop zero).

The first stop takes me to a guy that has turned his living room into a barber shop. He has a good reputation. He has a sign; his hours are posted in the window. His house looks nice. I notice that he lists being open 6 days. I expect the hours are highly optimistic for a single employee business. I note that he opens at 9:30am on Saturdays.
There is a shop on the Avenue that I wasn't sure if he was still open. When I walk by on Mondays, the solid security grate is pulled down and there is no indication of any active business behind it. When closed up, it looks slummy. No sign, nothing. Anyway this shop was very close to the first one so I take a look at it on my reconnaissance anyway. Barber pole lights in the window (a plus), but no hours posted, and no sign that is visible once the ugly security grate is pulled down. No hours posted and being an eyesore means this guy is out.
The third place is a black barbershop. Rightly or wrongly I wonder if they cut white people hair. While not a beautiful business, it is acceptable. They have hours listing them as being open 6 days. It's promising.
The shop closest to me has numerous cheaply made signs on it including Barber Shop, Latina Musica, and Internet cafe. They have their hours posed. They are open 7 days a week.While not a beautiful business, at least it is an entrepreneur trying to make a go of it. As someone who started out with very little capital, I respect that.

Results:

Guy number 1 wins the reconnaissance, so I go there the next day, which is Saturday, at 11am. He is locked up tight. I check the hours in the window; yep he is supposed to be open. But he's not, so he's out. Been there done that. Ain't doing it anymore. He sunk my battleship.
No 2 was out for the reasons already noted.
Having failed on Saturday to get my hair cut, I give Latina Musica a shot on Sunday. They indeed are open as advertised. There is a young guy cutting hair. I take a seat. There are people lounging in the pica musica section speaking in Spanish and the barber and customer are chatting a little in Spanish. I comprehend little Spanish, but the language disadavantage doesn't bother me. If anything, it keeps things interesting. No one speaks to me for 30 minutes. As the barber is about to finish with the customer, a guy from the back asks me in English, what I want done. I say, a trim. He tells me the barber there can't cut with scissors and while another barber has been called, there it is not known when or if he will show up. He didn't want me to waste my time sitting there. I note that they had already wasted 30 minutes of my time and leave. So that's 3 down.
Walking into work Monday morning, I make a point to pass a corner rowhouse basement barber shop that I am aware of. There is a nice sign. It's before 7am, so I don't expect them to be open. The house is very well maintained. No hours are posted, so I give up on that guy too. I don't plan on playing Battleship to attempt to ascertain his hours of operation.
I gave the black barber shop a chance today, which is Wednesday. They were locked up tight at 10:45am; they supposedly had been open since 9:30am. So they are now out too.

So here I am day 9, still with long unruly hair. My options are to increase my perimeter or go to a salon. I will try a little more with perimeter expansion.

Conclusion: Barber shops seem to be the last bastion of small business suckiness. Most other small business categories where most of the enterprises suck have been given death blows by national chains with convenient and consistent hours. As a small business owner I know how hard it is, so I make herculean attempts to support small business. As a consumer, I see that it often just isn't worth it. As a small business owner, that pisses me off because it makes all of us small guys look crappy by association. It makes people think bigger is always better. Sadly it usually is. But when small business is better, it's usually way, way better.

Running a half decent barber shop really shouldn't be that hard. Find a store, get two chairs, hire someone to help, get a sign, pick some hours (at least 4 days, including a weekend and at least one evening), post the hours, make sure someone is there to cut hair when you claim to be open. Eventually buy a barber pole. Out of the numerous barber shops around here, why can't one figure that out? Why can't two solo guys, team up, share space and have convenient hours between them? It's mind boggling.

Follow Up: Billy Harztel, sitting on the better side of the bar, saw my Facebook post on his phone and commented on it when I got into work. The customers have been turning over since I got here, but my lack of barber success has been a reoccurring topic for the afternoon.

As well as good natured ball breaking, I got some tips. Craig recommended a place on Robbins (to be known as Chinese Barbers #1). Jeff told me some stories about the security grate barber and why he doesn't go there anymore. He said told me about Chinese Barbers #2 on Princeton Ave. Chinese Barbers #2 even have convenient hours, being open til 7pm every night. I'll be heading over there tomorrow.

Jenna the Hut

2009-08-11T11:36:00.006-04:00

I will probably regret writing this, as it seems really mean and snarky. Oh well. I'd rather regret what I did than what I didn't do.

So I'm in Food Basics last night. There's a minor commotion at the top of aisle two. A morbidly obese woman is propped atop one of those motorized scooter shopping carts some stores have for handicapped people. I unfortunately put on a few pounds after the double whammy of a torn hamstring and herniated disk a few years back, so I initially opted for compassion over disgust and judgment.

She's blonde, wearing a massive pair of overalls, her flabs overwhelming the scooter. I think I see a crowd of little people hopping around where flab meets scooter. I try not be rude and look away, so I'm not certain.

A Food Basics employee goes off in search of an item for her. She explains to his back that the scooter is too slow or she'd do it. She spots me and cheerfully asks if I have seen walnut oil "in my travels".

I really don't know what irritated me more: her extremely obesity (come on, at some point just stop eating), her whining that the free scooter provided for her was too slow, or that she expected a store called Food Basics to have walnut oil.

I responded to her by shaking my head, mostly to indicate no, but also as a sign of my almost utter disbelief. I then continued on my travels through the aisles of Food Basics. A day later, I remain unsure of what of that scene irritated me most, though I'm pretty sure it's the third one.

Here is a quickly drawn, crude and partially accurate rendering. In reality she oozed around the handlebar and basket, rather than flowing in the opposite direction. This way was easier to draw though. Hey, what do you want for free?

Feeling the Freedom

2009-08-09T15:18:00.003-04:00

Any sunny weekday where I'm outside and not trapped in a cubical, I really feel the freedom. It easily makes up for working all those nights and weekends.

Last Friday was one of those days. Incredibly beautiful.

I'm quite happy to be a Fortune 500 escapee.

You Don't See This Everyday

2009-07-11T17:05:00.001-04:00

No wonder Target is my favorite store.

Drexel Takes Ugly Parking Garage and Makes It Uglier

2009-06-12T17:03:00.003-04:00

Drexel University is known for the ugliness of their buildings. Recently they added a few more floors onto an existing parking garage. (This parking garage is part of the Tale of the Two Parking Garages but that's another story). I didn't think it was possible, but they made it even uglier.

The upper floors are clad in metal, remembling an overgrown afterthought air conditioning unit. It's awesome how it doesn't even attempt to coordiante with the existing part of the building.

Way to go Drexel! That's a great example of never settling for ugly enough when you can make it uglier.

Something for Everyone

2009-05-03T20:19:00.000-04:00

Voodoo Dolls & Childrens Books... something for everyone.

French Quarter, New Orleans, LA.

100 Yard Dash

2009-04-09T17:17:00.003-04:00

March 20th was a great day. My wonderful wife saw that Raphael Saadiq was appearing at World Cafe Live Free at Noon and signed me up for it. We didn't have an event scheduled at the Grey Lodge that night, so I didn't have a set time to be in, so I was able to make a nice 1/2 day of it.

At 10:30am, I got in my car and got on I-95 at Princeton Ave. Got off at Aramingo to go to the Port Richmond Target. They had what I wanted. In/out wham/bam, all was good. Got back on 95 at Allegheny. Got off at Girard. Parked near the Girard El Station. Took the El to 30th Street. Walked to World Cafe Live, arriving at 11:42.

Jeez Louise, Saadiq and his band kicked ass! It's very easy to blow off a free at noon show. It's in the middle of the day, it's on the other side of town and a pretty involved trip that time of day with traffic and parking and/or SEPTA, and it's not like I would be out of pocket. Man was I glad I'm not the sit around type. Because as I said, the band really cooked. They were really polished and everyone was all-star caliber. The songs had different on-the-road arrangements. It was a very diverse and fun wall to wall crowd, and we were all grooving out together in the middle of the day. It was so worth going to.

After the show, I walked over the river from West Philly to Center City. My first stop was DiBrunos where I picked up some cheese to take home, using up the gift card my sister-in-law gave me for Xmas and then some. After that I headed to Joe's Pizza on 16th for lunch. I was regular there during my cubicle days. The eggplant pizza was as good as ever. Got back on the El at 15th. I had considered heading down to Spring Garden Market when I got back to my car, but decided to head straight home for a nap instead. I was in bed by 2:30. Four full and fun by not furiously paced hours in the big city. What a great 1/2 day!

Time: 4 hours
Modes of transportation used: (3) Car, subway, foot.
I-95 Interchanges used: (4)* Princeton/Cottman Ave, Aramingo, Alleghany, Girard.
SEPTA Stations used: (3) Girard, 30th, 15th.

* If I had gone to Spring Garden Market, it would have been 5.

Another Item To Check Off the Bucket List

2009-03-25T18:11:00.002-04:00

Back in late 1990s, I noticed a Asahi lucky cat downtown in the window of a Japanese restaurant on Samson Street. I had already started my lucky cat obsession by that point. I owned a few and had named my Web hosting operation Lucky Cat Systems.

So how does this fit into The Third Quarter blog, which is supposed to be about being middle aged? Good question. Hopefully here is a good answer.

Back in the late 1990s, I was in my early 30s, still young. The Grey Lodge was starting to get noticed in our niche, but that really didn't impress anyone outside of the smallish but growing Philadelphia craft beer community. Craft beer was still a niche ignored by the major wholesalers, whom represented Anheuser Busch, Coors, or Miller. The Grey Lodge was just another little account and nobody really cared much about making us happy.

I knew the Asashi lucky cat existed. It was a lucky cat holding a beer! I really, really wanted one, but I had no pull with the big wholesaler who distributed Asahi and probably never would. It was out of reach for a goofy nobody like me.

Asahi lucky cats didn't seem to ever appear on eBay, so I couldn't even buy one. Out of reach for a goofy nobody like me.

The 2nd picture shows the side of the box. "KEEP DRY". Good advice, cats hate getting wet.

Fast forward 10 or 11 years later to January 2009. The Grey Lodge's lucky cat, Wissinoming Winnie, has been a feature of our annual Ground Hog Day celebration for 7 years. The Philadelphia craft beer scene has grown exponentally. Through a series of consolidations, most of the local craft breweries are now with the big distributors. I somehow have become a minor figure in the local craft beer scene and The Grey Lodge is identified as a key account. (Now you'd think key accounts would be given nifty keys to wear around our necks. You'd be wrong. Yeah I was too. Hey I got the cat; I can live without the key).

Anyway back in January, I realized I now actually knew people at the Asahi distributor, who now also sold a bunch of the local micros, and they actually wanted to make me happy (being a key account and all), especially if it didn't cost anything. (It should be noted they definitely succeeded in making me happy).

I Google image searched "Asahi lucky cat" and emailed the image to my contact, asking if maybe they had one lying around. They didn't even recall having ever seen such a thing, but said they would look around. A week later they found one. I suspect it took a lot of digging It was probably under years of beer swag. Anywho it arrived this week and I noticed it waiting for me in the liquid closet last night. Within reach for a goofy sort of somebody like me.

As I get older I get less and less attached to possessions. However I am actually very happy to finally obtained this. Opening the box last night was like being a kid on Xmas day.

The moral for this blog is that sometimes getting older means sometimes getting to a place where you can make 11 year old fancies come to fruition. If you are lucky, you will still want what you can now obtain. I'm a lucky cat.

No Recipe: Italian Turkey Sausage and Eggplant

2009-01-22T19:11:00.005-05:00

With middle age comes the necessity to eat healthier. Which to be honest, blows. Not kacking too early doesn't blow (probably), so it sort of balances out (hopefully). I'm not trained in cooking, nor have I read too many cookbooks. But with age I have somehow gained the ability to throw stuff together out of the frig and pantry and make it come out quite tasty most of the time. Skill or dumb luck, I'm not sure which.

I had a package of Italian turkey sausage in the frig that I bought last week and needed to use or toss. I also had an eggplant I bought yesterday and a bag of red peppers from last week. Turkey is very low calorie. You probably already know that eggplant is a vegetable, not an egg, and I'm supposed to eat more of those, vegetables not eggs. The strangely named eggplant neither looks nor tastes like an egg. As vegetables go, eggplant can be pretty tasty. But that is usually after it has been salted up and fried in oil, which is at cross purposes of eating healthier.

I sliced the smallish eggplant into long thin strips. This was the most time laborious part of the meal preparation. It yielded quite a bit so I left the peppers in the frig. If it hadn't, I would have sliced the peppers into thin strips as well.

My intention was to try to treat the eggplant as though it was pasta. I'm not a big fan of pasta, mostly usually finding it rather boring. Not working in the fields, I don't require the calories of pasta. During one of my cubical enlistments, the company cafeteria had a weekly pasta bar where a guy in a paper chef fat would whip up pasta for you using a pan over a portable propane burner. Rather than boil dried pasta, he would saute up fresh pasta using a little oil.

I heated up a large handled wok-like pan, tossed in the eggplant, drizzling it with a little olive oil. After stir frying that for a little bit, I tossed in the sausage and sprayed the mess with some Pam (for some added oiliness with no calories). I stirred and fried until the eggplant was really soft and the sausages were both cooked through and browned. Time unknown. How ever long that took, it took. Somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes I expect. To my relief the eggplant really did look like wet string, just like cooked pasta.

If I had used the peppers too, I would have cooked them for a bit before adding the eggplant. My uneducated suspicion being that the peppers would take longer to soften.

I had two jars of tomato sauce in the pantry to pick from. I went with Classico Four Cheese. I turned down the heat and dumped the whole jar over the sausage and eggplant. Hey Zeus, the scent of the tomato sauce and the cheese was incredibly appetizing. Maybe eating healthy doesn't have to suck too much. I let that simmer for about a minute or two until the sauce was warmed up, stirring most of the time. I didn't add separately any salt or cheese.

Lunch was two smallish sausages with a little greater volume of eggplant. The combination of sausage, eggplant, and sauce was really tasty. The eggplant made a great medium for the surprisingly tasty jarred sauce. This meal was quick and I believe low calorie and pretty healthy. There is at least enough left for 2 to 4 more servings. Leftovers should microwave nicely and take almost no time to prepare.

I'm sure a nutritionist would recommend having a salad with it as well, but I didn't have any salad stuff in the frig. I do buy salad stuff often but it usually goes before it gets finished.

Comcast is Tired?

2009-01-08T17:09:00.002-05:00

Gotta love cameras on cell phones. This is from Comcast's Northeast Philly Service Center. Taken today.

I like how the tire is placed exactly in the middle of the sign. Very balanced. I don't really understand what the message is, but here's my guess. Maybe it means Comcast is tired. I hear being an evil empire can take a lot of you.

To my surprise, I left Comcast satisfied with the outcome of my visit.

It's not as good a pole dancing bear, but I don't create these scenes. I merely cameraphone them.

Pole Dancing Teddy Bear Spotted in the Wild

2008-12-18T18:18:00.007-05:00

While in Macy's today waiting for the big Christmas Light Show, we stumbled upon this Pole Dancing Teddy Bear. You never know what you will come across in the big city.

I like that the background colors seem very pornlike. The low quality of the cell phone picture adds a lot as well. I didn't rearrange anything. This is 100% from the wild.

The Big Book

2008-11-13T10:39:00.008-05:00

When I was working downtown in the 90s, I used to browse the discount area on the 2nd floor of Borders and pick up interesting looking books at very low prices. One of these was Van Gogh: His Life and Art by David Sweetman, which I picked up for $4 at some point (the price tag is still on the cover). It can be years between when I buy a book and when I actually read it. After I finish a book, I write the date in front. I finished reading the Sweetman book in August 1999.

In his book, Sweetman recommends Vincent Van Gogh (Studio Book) by Marc Edo Tralbaut. Sweetman describes Tralbaut was the ultimate authority on Van Gogh, having come to study Van Gogh as a grad student not too long after Van Gogh died. Tralbaut was in the right place at the exact right time, while most the places were still there and most of the people Van Gogh knew and painted were still alive. Tralbaut became good friends with Van Gogh's namesake nephew, who ran the Van Gogh Musuem in Amsterdam.

Sweetman tells a story of Tralbaut running to a subject from one of Van Gogh's painting 50 years after the guy posed. Tralbaut ran into him on a Paris stairway and recognized him! Obviously Tralbaut must have been the Holy Grail of Van Gogh knowledge.

The Big Book
In 1969, Traubaut wrote the large book that recapped his life's work of studying Vincent Van Gogh. It is an impressive book. Big, heavy, finely illustrated, and pricey at $75 in 1969 dollars. That would be over $400 in today's dollars. (Inflation Calculator)

Buying the Big Book
Of course I was intrigued, but by 1999, the book was out of print. My friend Cynthy, who owns a rare book business, recommended I check out bookfinder.com. Before the Web, I would have been SOL trying to find this book. Using bookfinder.com, without leaving home, I had dozens of copies to choose from, at a huge range of conditions and prices, from dozens of far-away independent book sellers. I picked a copy from a bookstore in Texas for about $30. $30 < $75 < $400.

A few days later, when I came home work, I found a large package in my door. I greatly appreciated the irony of using a modern day marvel, the Internet, to locate a marvel of older technology, a rare big book with the promise of much somewhat hidden knowledge.

Reading the Big Book
I treasured owning this book for many years, with the anticipation of eventually reading it and discovering its secrets. A couple of months ago, it was finally time to read the book I had such high expectations for. It started off a bit disappointing. Tralbaut was not a great writer. The early part is not only very dry, but is bogged down with pop-psychoanalysis, and some egotism on the part of the author. The middle bit is quite more interesting.

There are many old photos caught from the same vantage point as the paintings. Comparing them is quite interesting. There are also written and oral histories from people who knew Van Gogh, which are pretty neat. Tales from the Roulin family should be in the next pages, which I am looking forward to reading tomorrow and/or Saturday. Update: They weren't :-(

All of this was probably a lot more exciting back in 1969, before the wonder of the Web with its endless information laying out there, just there waiting for us to look at it from the comfort of home.

Final Analysis
While I am glad I read the book, it was pretty much a let down. I didn't feel I was peeling away lost knowledge from a big dusty book. It was much less detailed than I hoped. The pscyho-drivel lasted up unti the end of the book. Some of it seemed spot on, but some seemed like pure conjecture with the flimsiest of evidence. Maybe the back of a church is just the back of a church.

Now having read the book, I no longer treasure it as a prized possession. It is no longer the sacred tome. I think I"ll hold onto it a little while longer. I'm not ready to get rid of it, not yet anyway.

Todays' Googling
Trying to find a picture online of the book, I discovered that it seems they released it with at least two different dust jackets. This first picture is one that is replicated on the net in a few places. The second one, the bluish one, is the one I own. The first link is from a bookseller with a copy for sale.

Things Middle Aged People Like #01: Bird Watching

2008-08-17T17:51:00.003-04:00

This is the first in a series, Things Middle Aged People Like. Every so often, I find myself doing something where everyone else around me is my pretty much in my age group.

This morning I went on my first Friends of Poquessing Watershed Bird Walk, at Benjamin Rush State Park, which is at the very northern end of Northeast Philadelphia. It was a little bit of a drive, but traffic was light at 8:00am on a Sunday. I had the top down on the car, it was a lovely.

Sunday mornings tend to be prime time for noticing What Middle Aged People Like. I guess young people are sleeping in (hopefully having lived it up the night before). I remember those days, but now I'm lucky to sleep past 7am.

As readers may recall, I got into bird watching about 3 years ago when I turned 40. I bought a couple of books and have been pretty good at i.d.'ing various birds. Or so I think. I wanted to meet some more experienced people to make sure I wasn't kidding myself too much and to learn things I didn't manage to self-teach myself.

I hd been meaning to join the bird walk for over a year now. Finally I made it. I was one of 5 or 6 middle aged folks, plus one guy I'd classify as "old".* As usual with these things, everyone was very pleasant. It was a gorgeous August day. Brilliantly sunny, not that hot with a nice breeze. We walked for about 90 minutes, spotting birds and insects and a lot of butterflies.

I learned a little bit, met nice people, and was outside on a lovely day. While not exciting, all in all extremely pleasant. Being middle aged, I have to say I liked it very much. Excitement is for young people for who, not having been there and done that - again and again, exciting things are exciting.

So there you have it. If you are young, you know what you have to look forward to and/or dread. If you are middle aged (or old), it is another thing you might want to do. Life should be much more than just vegging on the sofa or sitting in front of a computer screen.

* When I'm old, I expect I won't mind being called old; I'm not bristling at being middle-aged.

I Haven't Seen That Before, Well Not Excactly

2008-05-07T16:58:00.006-04:00

Back Story: My middle-aged man house, aka The Ranch, I bought as a 40th birthday present for myself. (I asked for a house for my 39th birthday but nobody stepped up). The Ranch is on a main street in Tacony that is a hybrid, part residental, part commercial. I would have preferred a house on a side street, but I liked this one a lot, and so went for it. My side of the block is all residential, the other side mostly all commercial. My neighborhood was historically very white, but lately has become somewhat integrated.

The Actual Story: I have been trying to leave a trash can out front for people to use rather than toss their trash in my garden. Most grasp the concept. Except when the wind blows it over, it has been mostly successful. Today I am walking home, towards my front gate, when I see a middle-aged black woman I don't recognize throwing a bunch of trash into the can. I think, "Cool, that's what it's there for". I then notice she's muttering to herself.

Since she is muttering to herself, I look back at her. She has finished at the trashcan and continues southward a few paces. She stoops down at my next door neighbor's sidewalk and picks up a bunch of trash, continuing to mutter to herself. Rather than backtrack a few steps to my trashcan, she continues southward carrying the trash. The neighbor on the corner has a can out front too, so she didn't have too far to the next can. He keeps his locked to a stop sign. (Now I could put a stop sign in front of my house, in the middle of the block, but I think that would create all sorts of problems. I'll need to figure out a different solution).

The Mystery So is this woman a civic minded do-gooder who enjoyes cleaning up the Avenue and making the neighborhood a better place to live? There's a precident. There's an old woman in Frankford that Joan and met I when we did the Mozaic tile mosaic project. After watching this woman sweep up Frankford Ave. every morning, we eventutally talked to her. Well Joan spoke to her, but I was there. She seemed sane. The woman that is, and well, Joan too.

Or does this woman suffer from some mental illness in which the side effect is a compulsion to clean the sidewalk?

Either way, it's a good deal for Tacony. But I am curious.

Birds

2008-04-18T11:18:00.003-04:00

"I like... birds" - Eels

When I turned 40, through confluence of factors I became interested in watching birds. The variety of birds that come through Tacony never ceases to amaze me. I saw quite a few varieties from my porch on Passmore Street, but the backyard of the ranch is even better.

Last year I finally saw male and female cardinals. Last week, I finally saw a blue jay. Today I was standing outside, between trips from the garage unloading groceries, thinking that the variety of birds wasn't especially interesting a the moment. It was a great day for loitering in the beautiful spring morning, so I did, interesting birds or not. My loitering paid off though in more than just pleasant loitering.

My Peterson Field Guide to Birds of East and Central North America is pretty good at helping to identify various species. Google Images helped to confirm that today I saw a prothonotary warbler, which would seem to be about 1/2 mile from its preferred habitat. Wow is it yellow. I'm not used to seeing birds this vivid here in the city, but maybe I never really looked before. Who knows what I missed the first 40 years.

You don't have to be Smart to eBay

2008-03-30T18:10:00.003-04:00

Concerned that I was working too much, last December, I marked four Slow Down Weeks on my Google calendar for 2008 , one per quarter. A Slow Down Week isn't a week off, it's a week on but at 2/3s speed or less. Today is the last day of my first Slow Down Week of 2008.

One of the things I did this week, in lieu of the full normal overload of real work, was to clean up clutter around the house. When we moved in June, I set some stuff aside to sell on eBay. This is the week to finally get that stuff listed.

Two of the items I have had in my possession for a long time are a 1957 Silver Certificate, which turns out to be worth about $2, and a 1937 $20 bill, which seems to be worth $20, unless you are a stupid eBay seller. Someone actually listed a $20 bill with a $9.99 starting price! Three bids later, it is still under $20 with 15 hours to go.

Silver Certificates, something I never could understand why they existed, were news to my wife and we had a nice conversation about them. So the Silver Certificate actually turned out to some value greater than $1 for me and Maureen. She and I are now fully knowledgable on Silver Certificates. If you click this Wikipedia link, you will be too. Not surprisingly there is no Wikipedia entry as to why someone would sell a $20 bill for $9.99.

Looks like I'll be holding on to the silver certificate and putting the 1937 $20 back into circulation.

Going Scruffy for a While

2008-03-17T19:01:00.006-04:00

After about 5 years of solid service, my Braun razor broke. Having an old Braun as back-up I wasn't in a hurry to order a replacement. For the replacement, since this is something I use everyday, I decided to splurge on their most expensive one, the Braun 9595.

On Saturday, mid shave the backup razor developed a burning smell and then kacked. I ordered the new razor that day. While I splurged on the razor, I went with Amazon's super saver shipping, which means they delay shipping it for a few days. Not out of efficiency, but out of punishment for being cheap.

For the first time since I can remember, I will be going unshaved for an extended stretch. This is unlikely to become permanent since I have no desire for facial hair, not even for a hipster partial beard.

Maureen will be happy when the new razor arrives.

Update: Here is my Amazon review of the Braun 9595 Pulsonic Razor

Overconfidence

2008-03-16T08:29:00.002-04:00

In the 3rd quarter of our lives, some of us after many years of hard grafting have become somewhat successful, or in rare cases extemely successful. Hard earned success is one of the really fun things that can come with middle age. Success breeds confidence. Confidence, like all things in this existence, needs balance. On a personal level, overconfidence may not be as bad as underconfidence, but it can be really annoying to most everyone else. Case in point, Tom Cruise.

Note to self: never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever (quoting Tom there) do the double point thing, no matter how good I am feeling about myself.

Tom Cruise is obviously incredibly sincere in his pompousness, which makes him less of an asshat, but still an asshat.

Winter 8:45am Shaving

2008-02-26T08:53:00.002-05:00

I have office hours (like a college professor) at the bar on Tuesday afternoons. I usually get to start off leisurely from home before a long remainder of the day of bosswork and dart team membership.

I shaved later than usual today. It's cloudy so I could look out the eastward facing bathroom window instead of the usual blinding from the sun. Birds were really active flying about. Unhidden by the barren branches of winter, the 50 foot ancient tree across the street had a squirrel, bushy tail flittering, in addition to a variety of birds arriving and departing.

I became interested in birds and the mind-boggling number of species a couple of years ago, and have been a casual bird watcher ever since. It felt a very natural middle-aged thing to do. There were some nice close-ups of birds in flight from my 2nd floor portal as I stood shaving. I appreciated how the different species of birds had very different methods of flying.

Many things came together for that moment to happen and for me to appreciate it.

Update: It's 30 minutes later. Just left the bathroom, the sun is shining; it's mildly blinding; there are no birds at all now. Timing is everything.