American Graffiti.

About halfway through December I went to drop off some glass bottles and jars at the recycling center. It still feels like it was a year ago because even though we’ve started a new year there’s always an adjustment period. Every year when I go back to work after the holidays and I have to initial and date things it takes a few days or even a few weeks before I remember that it’s a new year and by the time I get it down there are only about 350 days left in the year which sounds like a lot because it is.

Anyway I noticed that someone had tagged one of the big glass bins, which isn’t unusual—there always seems to be at least one tag on one of the bins at the recycling center. Most of them are sloppy and not very creative or interesting but this one caught my attention because it seemed so fitting.

I can’t say whether Ecology is a regular tag around town. I haven’t been out collecting graffiti as much as I usually do and the tag hasn’t shown up in my Nashville Graffiti Instagram feed. Maybe it was someone making a statement about why those of us who were there recycling were doing it in the first place. It reminded me of when I was in fourth grade and once a week we’d watch a news show aimed at kids. At the end of each show they’d read letters from kids about various current events and the teacher, who was really cool, encouraged us to write letters. One week the show had a segment on recycling. Most weeks I just waited for the news to be over so we could get to Book Bird, but at the end of the segment the anchor asked, “Do you think recycling is important?” That really fired me up and I wrote a letter about how the Earth’s resources are finite and that we’re ultimately dependent on recycling. It was heady stuff for a fourth grader and I don’t think I was especially eloquent, but the teacher really liked my letter and she mailed it for me.

It never got read on the air but, hey, at least I’m sharing it or at least the gist of it here.

On a similarly ecological theme here’s a picture of Crawling Lady Hare by the artist Sophie Ryder that I took one night at Cheekwood. It’s a large, haunting work during the day but even more striking at night when it seems even more alive and you don’t see it until you’re right next to it. I thought I’d shared it before and I probably will again because I’m all about recycling.

This is not Boxing Day. It probably is if you’re in Britain and since the British invented it I guess they can say when it is and when it isn’t, although the British don’t get everything right, but that’s another story.

Traditionally Boxing Day has been the day after Christmas and the name may come from the tradition of putting out an alms box, or it may come from the tradition of giving postal workers and other messengers a Christmas gift since even they get a break on the 25^th, although postal workers come around so regularly it seems to me it shouldn’t be that hard to give them something before Christmas and not some post-holiday leftovers that were probably gonna be thrown out anyway. When I was a kid I’d run across references to Boxing Day in things I read and assumed it was the day everyone boxed up their decorations. For some of us on the distaff side of the pond there’s a superstition that Christmas trees and other decorations have to come down before New Year’s Day, although then they miss the revelries of Twelfth Night, but that really is another story.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, which the British also invented, in a small town where they’d ford their oxen which now has me wondering if the plural of boxes should be “boxen”, Boxing Day is the first weekday after Christmas—which means technically we’ve still got the weekend.

Source: gfycat

Anyway here are some random graffiti pictures that I took last year that I’ve never been able to figure out how to use so this seemed  liked a good time to for unboxen.

Source: Bored Panda

Christmas is generally a pretty jolly holiday but it wasn’t that long ago that it was a time for spooky stories told around the fire, which makes sense. Historically when Christmas came around it was cold, dark, and everybody had to stay inside, so it’s nice to know some things haven’t changed. And a lot of seasonal traditions come from pagan celebrations of the solstice,and while most of the pagans I know aren’t scary people the gradually diminishing daylight as we approach the shortest day of the year. The ghosts in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol are part of a long tradition, one that also gets a nod in Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas In Wales when he says, “Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver,” and for me no Christmas is complete without Scrooged. Doctor Who even got into the act with several Christmas specials culminating in Voyage Of The Damned in 2007 and the joke that everybody but the Queen was getting out of London until the holiday was over.

When I was a student in England Halloween was barely acknowledged, but at Christmas we had a costume ball, which was apparently more traditional, and I think we should embrace that on this side of the pond if it means two times a year when we can dress up and tell scary stories.

So I loved reading a story of a woman who got a series of notes from a “Karen” neighbor that her gargoyle statue was “not appropriate”. And of course it escalated quickly and hilariously with more decorations being added and “Karen” threatening to report the display to the local homeowners’ association and the mayor.

Source: Bored Panda

Source: Bored Panda

I’m pretty sure having a neighbor with no sense of humor is as scary as it gets.

Because Star Wars came out when I was a kid I collected all the toys. And I mean all the toys. My parents were pretty generous in indulging my obsession with everything Star Wars-related so Christmases were big and predictable. I had the Death Star playset. I had the Millennium Falcon. Amazingly I had Boba Fett’s Slave 1, something no other kid I knew had—most of them were amazed it even existed. And I had all the action figures. So of course when I saw this I laughed for an hour:

Source: Entertainment Weekly

And then because my brain can’t leave things alone I started thinking about it. I haven’t seen The Mandalorian—I’ve matured to obsessing about other things, but this stayed with me. For one thing I thought how, even when the original Star Wars came out if there had been flaws like this in it most of us wouldn’t have noticed them because, no matter how obsessive we were, we still had to see it in the theater. We couldn’t pause, rewind, or watch it again—unless we could stay in the theater, and most of us had to go home.

Jeans Guy has been digitally erased now and I’m kind of sorry he’s gone. A lot of work goes into making any show or movie—and I’m speaking from a very little bit of experience here. One summer when I was in college I helped on the production of a documentary about a local homeless shelter. Mostly I carried gear but I also operated sound equipment and got a chance to learn a little about editing. It was an extremely low budget documentary so the work that went into that was nothing compared to what must go into making an FX-heavy science fiction drama.

And no matter how good special effects get we still have to willingly suspend disbelief and it’s not a bad thing to have the occasional reminder—to borrow a line from another show’s theme song, repeat to yourself it’s just a show, I should really just relax. Some directors have even put deliberate “mistakes” in their films to remind us that we’re watching something artificially constructed. For example there’s a scene in Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool in which a mic dips down into view. It looks like a mistake but was probably intentional.

These mistakes can even be inspiring. Like the toys that allowed me to create my own Star Wars stories a mistake can make a film more “real”, more tangible–some special effects artists have said that seeing how the effects on screen were created, realizing that was a job, helped them find a career they love. It’s probably a stretch to say Jeans Guy is living the dream, but at least he’s probably working in a field he’s really passionate about.

I sold all my Star Wars toys and assorted paraphernalia a few years ago, but now I really do want a Jeans Guy action figure.

It’s been several months since I’ve gone looking for graffiti, mostly because I’ve been staying close to home, but I was running an errand and happened to spot this sign nailed to a telephone pole. Telephone polls used to be covered with photocopied signs advertising local music shows. That had declined even before current events caused the cancellation of most live performances in the area; I think the internet became the preferred way for bands and their venues to get the word out. I remember seeing one of those signs once announcing a performance by a young musician and someone had written on it, “Go so you can say you saw him when,” which was ambitious and confident and I thought, wow, I hope he really does have success someday even though the odds are against it. It was quite a message, and even made me want to go to the show. I didn’t. In fact I’ve even forgotten who the musician was, and it’s been long enough that his star may have risen and, for all I know, fallen. I hope he’s doing well, though, even under the current circumstances which are making things hard for all musicians.

Anyway there was something really great about seeing a sign with a single, simple message. It was so great I had to stop and pull over and take a picture of it. So I could do more than just say I saw it.

There’s a story that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey, not the bald eagle, to be the national bird of the United States. When I was a kid some people told it to me to say they thought Franklin was goofy which I never believed. He was obviously a very smart guy who flew kites in thunderstorms, wrote an essay called “Fart Proudly”, and not only invented the Franklin stove but had the foresight to name it after himself so he could make money off of it forever. Other people told me they thought it made sense because wild turkeys, unlike their domestic counterparts, are pretty smart birds. They haven’t invented stoves or written any essays about farting but in 1940 they figured out how to brew their own bourbon and more recently discovered a free buffet over at River’s World, but that’s another story.

This got me wondering about turkeys and whether it was just a coincidence that they share a name with the country Turkey. In fact it’s not just a coincidence. The term “turkey” was originally used for a West African bird, the guinea-fowl, which was imported to Europe through Turkey and which looks, well, kind of like a turkey even though the two birds are unrelated. So when Europeans settled North America they called the large birds they found turkeys and the name stuck.  

Anyway it turns out Benjamin Franklin never suggested the turkey for a national bird. He really wasn’t happy with the bald eagle either, though he never said so publicly. He did, in a letter to his daughter, say,

For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly… Besides he is a rank coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district.

Fair enough, Ben. It was, in fact, the figure on the obverse side of the Great Seal of the United States with its eagle holding an olive branch in one claw and thirteen arrows in the other that set him off.

Source: Wikipedia

He said,

I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For in Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America… He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

It’s just as well he never seriously suggested making the turkey the national bird because he does make a pretty good argument for it and the other Founders probably would have taken him up on it and then we’d never eat them which would be a terrible thing because bald eagles are pretty gamey while turkeys are delicious. That’s why we don’t just have turkey on Thanksgiving. Every deli offers turkey sandwiches and turkey salad. Most stores and many restaurants offer turkey sausage and turkey bacon which I think don’t just taste better but are kosher to boot, not to mention ground turkey, turkey cutlets, and turkey burgers. In a sense turkeys have become our national bird. We’re absolutely stuffed with ‘em.

Ten years ago there was an outdoor exhibit of Dale Chihuly’s glass works at Cheekwood, Nashville’s botanical garden and art museum, which is one of those places you should see if you’re ever in the area. My wife and I went and it was fun—Chihuly’s works are weird and gorgeous and it’s amazing to think that they’re all glass. And it’s even more amazing that I used to know a woman in charge of installing art works at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and she dropped a Chihuly bowl and it broke and she just quietly said, “Well, there goes five thousand dollars.”

Anyway there’s another Chihuly exhibit at Cheekwood now. It’s not exactly new—some of the works are very much the same, but this time we went at night which made them seem very different.

Ten years ago the Fiori Boat exhibit was in the main pond at the bottom of the hill. Now it’s been placed in the reflecting pool next to the house and, well, it just seems too gaudy, too busy. The pond now has the Blue Polyvitro Crystals which is my favorite of all the works on display. Most Chihuly works are loud, over the top, even excessive, but the Crystals are quieter, almost subtle, casting an ethereal reflection.

Source: Reddit user LittleMissFirebright

When I was in high school I took a film studies class because my school had a really cool art teacher, and also VCRs and home camcorders were becoming so common and relatively cheap that if you didn’t own one you could check one out from the school and become an amateur home filmmaker. The internet was still a long way off at that time, but it was still fun.

And for the film class we were also assigned some more low-tech projects. For instance early on everybody in the class had to make a slideshow with audio, and because computers with high-res displays were a long way off—well, they were around, but weren’t all that common and pretty expensive—that meant we had to take regular cameras, take at least twenty pictures, get them developed as slides. The teacher then set up a slide projector and a screen and each of us would sit and click through our slides, sort of like what your Uncle Howard and Aunt Gerda used to make you sit through after their vacation trip to Duluth, although hopefully less boring and without as many pictures of Uncle Howard’s thumb, but that’s another story. The audio was provided with a tape cassette player.

Some of you are nodding your heads in understanding and some of you are laughing and if you’re in the group that’s laughing enjoy it because it’s not going to last. And, funny enough, that was sort of the point of my project. I took a bunch of pictures of wooded areas near my house and then I took a picture of a muddy field where all the trees had been cut down and developers had put up a sign advertising a new housing development with the slogan—I swear this is true—“A natural place to live.” My father drove me around the city and I took pictures of glass and concrete buildings and then we found some abandoned houses that were starting to collapse and I took pictures of those, and then I ended it with more slides of wooded areas. When I showed the pictures to the class I accompanied it with the song “Dreamworld” by Midnight Oil, since I’d seen them in concert the summer before.

It was heavy-handed and pretentious and I was extremely serious and dour about it even though the pictures were badly composed and there were at least a couple in there of my Uncle Howard’s thumb.

Still it was a fun project and it’s stayed with me, even if my perspective has changed. Yeah, now I laugh about it.