American Graffiti.

After I wrote about video rental stores last week I ended up feeling like I addressed the subject too quickly, or maybe too late, because something came up that reminded me of another brick-and-mortar establishment that’s also headed the way of the dodo: the office supply store.

It started when my wife needed a stapler for a project she was working on and let’s go ahead and get all the Office Space references and jokes out of the way. We have a stapler somewhere but couldn’t find it so I went to the office supply store and, while I bought a cheaper black stapler they did have a red Swingline stapler and I was seriously tempted by it even though my wife doesn’t look, sound, or act anything like Milton or even Stephen Root. And neither one of us is ever likely to set our office building on fire, although this has been me on many occasions:

Source: Tenor

And maybe that’s why, in spite of the fact that this is on a blog, I’m very much still an analog guy in a digital world. Most of my writing starts as handwritten notes in paper composition books that I also decorate with stickers and pictures I cut out of catalogs, magazines, and junk mail. I always have this idea that, if I’m ever stuck for something to write about, I can use the pictures as a prompt, and yet what I write never ends up having anything to do with the pictures. I fill the right-hand page and use the left for shorter notes like, “I know what a kit is but what’s a caboodle?” and jokes I’m sure I’ve heard somewhere, like:

“I’m thinking of writing about the pursuit of a great white whale,” said Melville.
“That’s a novel idea,” his publisher replied.

And the office supply store is my main source for these composition books. Or was. It’s going out of business now, which I guess means I won’t be able to stock up in the fall when they have their back-to-school sales.

Sure, I can order them online like so much other stuff but I’ll miss the immediacy of being able to pick them up. And, because the office supply store was having a going-out-of-business sale, I picked up a bunch. The woman checking me out asked, “Is this all you’re getting?” and I remembered that I had to go back and get a stapler.

I should have gotten the red Swingline model.

Source: Tenor

Source: The New York Times

I remember my first visit to a video store. The VCR craze was just taking off and little independent stores were popping up all over the place. Independent, yes, but each one was the same: cheap carpeting and cheaper wood panel walls lined with empty cassette boxes. This was early enough that there were separate sections for VHS and Betamax, although the latter was still much smaller. I checked out Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the 1931 Dracula with Bela Lugosi. The store’s policy was rentals were due back in two days which was almost enough time to watch all of Star Trek but that’s another story.

Other, bigger video stores opened, in some cases swallowing the smaller ones, and some of the people behind the counters became curators who’d comment on selections and recommend other titles, especially if they got to know you. Or not. When I was in college there was a tiny video rental place two blocks from my dorm. It was in the middle of a neighborhood and I think the couple who owned it lived upstairs—a bona fide Mom and Pop operation. They never took any notice of what I rented, and any way their collection was oddly eclectic and disorganized with Eraserhead shelved next to a Three Stooges anthology shelved next to the 1931 Dracula with Bela Lugosi. 

But then came DVDs and with it those services who’d mail selections straight to your home so you wouldn’t have to make a special trip to the video store or worry about a title you really wanted being out of stock. And no more late fees. I didn’t realize it at the time, though, but I missed handing tapes over to a person who might say, “Hey, if you like Barton Fink you might want to check out Blood Simple if you haven’t already.” Recommending one Coen Brothers film for another may not have been much of a stretch but still it was made by a person, not an algorithm. And there was the simple pleasure of browsing, reading the description of a movie on the back of the box, and thinking I’d give it a try only to wonder why no one had recommended Cinema Paradiso to me before.

So I really envy the New Yorkers who’ll get to go back to Kim’s Video & Music, a place whose collection sounds even odder than the one I used to visit in Evansville, and which, after its closing, made the journey from New York to Salemi, Sicily, and back again. Now it’s reopened, inviting customers to come in and browse again. Video rentals are free and if you got rid of your VCR a long time ago you can rent one of those too. 

There’s so much nostalgia in the idea of a place where you can go and browse, especially without your browsing being recorded. Sometimes when I’m scrolling through the seemingly limitless options available just through the few streaming services we have I wonder what I’d find if a computer program weren’t feeding me options based on my viewing history, what I might check out if one thing I came in looking for was out, even what I might find if there were still Mom and Pop places. 

Well, at least there still is the public library where I can browse and, and it has a seven-day lending period which is almost enough time to watch the director’s cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Here’s my tribute to the decline and fall of a local Tower Records store, and while music is a whole other genre that place did have a video rental section with a lot of movies and staff who knew them all and were handy with recommendations. It’s the personal touch I miss.

So I’m a bit of a numismatist, or, as my wife sometimes puts it, I’ll spend money to buy money. Technically that’s what anyone who invests in the stock market also does, although they’re hoping the money they spend will get them even more money but for a lot of coin collectors we don’t do it to build interest—we do it because we think coins are interesting. Mostly I collect foreign coins because I like the variety and I like the way the coins make me feel connected to other places. Also sometimes countries produce interesting commemorative coins, like Croatia which just produced a Dalmatian coin:

Source: Croatia Week

Back when I spent cash a lot more regularly I’d find an occasional Canadian or even British coin in my change, and once I even got a coin from Bermuda out of a vending machine. What path did these coins take that they found their way to me? Foreign coins also tend to be cheap, at least here in the United States. One of my main places to buy coins used to be flea markets. I’d find booths where dealers had various U.S. coins selling for anywhere from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars, and they’d have a cardboard box in the corner of foreign coins, going at a rate of four or five for a dollar. Sometimes I’d find a genuinely valuable coin—a Canadian toonie, a British pound, or a Euro, and I’d say to the seller, “You do know how much this is worth, right?” And they’d hold out the cardboard box and say, “Take a few more.” I guess that was because most of the time I was the only person buying their foreign coins.

And then I just heard about this extremely valuable $20 bill:

Source: Kottke

I’ve often heard about printing and minting errors in currency and how they can make a coin or bill worth so much more than face value. The $20 bill was found by a college student who got it out of an ATM and went on to sell it on eBay for $10,100.00 in 2003, although really the most amazing thing is a college student held onto a $20 bill. It was last put up for sale again in January 2021 and sold for $396,000.

The funny thing to me is there was probably a trail that could trace it back to its point of origin. Not the single bill but, from its serial number, it would be possible to determine the exact day, maybe even the time, it was printed, the other bills it was bundled with, when it was shipped to the bank that owned the ATM, and even when it was loaded into the machine. It made that long journey but it wasn’t until one person looked at it as a single bill that anyone ever stopped to think about what it was really worth.

Earlier this week I had a doctor’s appointment. No big deal—just a regular checkup so I could get some prescriptions refilled. I have to see the doctor in person because at least one is a “controlled substance” and I asked him if there really was a black market for it and, if so, what was the street value? He laughed and said he didn’t know, then added, “Anyway, before I refill your testosterone, why don’t you go hang out in the beanbag corner and listen to my demo tape of Pink Floyd covers?” But that’s another story.

He also said he wanted to draw some blood and I said, “So that’s why you’ve got a red pen,” and he told me to watch it or he’d make me listen to his receptionist’s Bauhaus cover band. Then I went to the lab and while the nurse, a really cool guy with tattoos covering both arms, was getting everything ready he and I started talking about butterflies.

“They’re amazing creatures,” he said, “and people really just don’t appreciate caterpillars, you know?”

Yes, I knew exactly what he meant, and I agreed with him. Caterpillars can do damage to plants, but they’re also fascinating, and fun to watch, and everybody loves butterflies—which are also important pollinators.

“I’m just amazed by what goes on inside the chrysalis,” I said.

“Yeah!” He got really excited, but then calmed down enough that I barely felt it when he stuck a needle in my arm—a true professional.

I hated to leave but we both had work to get to. Then on my way home I passed what looked like an abandoned trailer. One side was rusting, but this was the other side:

It’s in a neighborhood that’s been steadily gentrifying for over a decade. What was once a rundown apartment building is now a climbing gym, and an abandoned factory has become a cluster of hip restaurants. It’s good and bad—sort of like the caterpillars and the butterflies, although, so far, most of the older businesses and older residents have been able to stay. The new businesses are taking up spaces that were empty.

It just surprised me, after the discussion of butterflies, to see something that was so metaphorically on the mark.

It might have been the drugs kicking in.

Mushroom kit, Day 2.

My wife surprised me with a really thoughtful and creative gift: a couple of Back To The Roots mushroom kits: a regular oyster mushroom kit and a pink oyster mushroom kit. The regular oyster mushrooms started growing and erupted from the box while it was still in transit making that kit useless, and, in spite of their “promise to grow” guarantee the response from Back To The Roots when that happens is “They were eager to grow so sorry!” The pink oyster mushroom kit was at least still good to grow. Still, much as I hate to say it, it gets a mixed review.

Let’s start with the not so good: according to the enclosed instructions the mushrooms would start growing within six days. Day seven would be “decision day”, when I could decide where best to place them for optimal growth: warmer temperatures, more light, and plenty of air flow would make them grow faster with richer color and bigger caps. In fact they were so eager to grow I’d say they were really ready to harvest in less than half that time. I plucked them on day six, and even then I think I let them go too long. The first ones to sprout were getting pale and woody, and the ones closest to the base were starting to rot.

Mushroom kit, Day 4.

Mushrooms are funny things—in the wild they need just the right conditions to appear. On the How I Built This podcast the founders of Back To The Roots, who tell a great story that’s well worth listening to, say they had trouble with their early mushroom growing. So their instructions really need to explicitly say “Your results may vary”.

That also applies to the amount. They promise “3-4 servings” per crop. I ended up with less than two ounces, barely enough for one serving, and even though it was an early harvest there were no signs of new growth. Kits are also supposed to be able to produce a second crop but in this case it appears to be one and done. They also need to drop the words “guarantee” and “promise” from their website given how their customer service shrugs off complaints, which is why I won’t go back to Back To The Roots.

Mushroom kit, Day 6. Harvest time.

Now to the good: it was fun watching the mushrooms grow, especially since they grew so quickly. Overnight or even after a few hours I could see dramatic changes in size and shape. And the mushrooms, sauteed in butter, were really tasty. The biggest ones turned crispy and had an almost bacon-like quality, while the small ones were chewy and really absorbed the butter well.

I get that home growing anything is hit-or-miss, which is why any food lovers who want to try cooking with oyster mushrooms would be better off buying them at a store, if you can find them, or foraging in the wild. I know that’s risky, but so is spending at least twenty bucks on a mushroom kit that may or may not produce anything. And, as I said, the mushroom kits were a thoughtful and creative gift. I’m fascinated by mushrooms and I really enjoyed what worked. I’d even like to try growing more and there are a lot of different brands out there. Next time I’ll try one of them.

Back in 2009 the artist Kseniya Simonova won Ukrayina Maye Talant–or, in English, Ukraine’s Got Talent with a dynamic sand painting. Here’s a description of it from The Guardian:

Here, she recounts Germany conquering Ukraine in the second world war. She brings calm, then conflict. A couple on a bench become a woman’s face; a peaceful walkway becomes a conflagration; a weeping widow morphs into an obelisk for an unknown soldier. Simonova looks like some vengeful Old Testament deity as she destroys then recreates her scenes – with deft strokes, sprinkles and sweeps she keeps the narrative going. She moves the judges to tears as she subtitles the final scene “you are always near”.

There’s nothing I can add to that, really, except to say that it’s tragic that Simonova, like more than a million other Ukrainians, has probably been forced to flee because of a senseless, brutal attack on her country. But here’s another of her works from February 2022, and her description:

This sand story is about men, it’s called «Heroes» and tells a simple thing: heroes not only fight or are on war… heroes are among us, in everyday life. They heal, build, save, repair, cook, draw, create…. and not only. Real heroes are those who can help. For example, a husband who helps his wife at home, in the kitchen. Or plays with kids. The one who shares love. The one with alive heart and soul.

Source: WebCanvas

So a friend sent me a link to WebCanvas saying, “You’ll like this. It’s like graffiti but online.” Well, okay, but isn’t that sort of what the whole internet is? We take it for granted now and social media sites have homogenized a lot of our online interactions—which can be added to the long list of reasons they’re terrible—but even from its earliest days the internet has been a space, albeit one bound by certain technological limits, where people can express themselves creatively. I even remember when it was harder to use. Websites usually had some pictures and a lot of text and you could do a lot of scrolling. A 1999 article from The Onion, “Dean Cain Fanpage Last Updated 8/14/96” was funny and also reminded us that even if we had a website updating it could be a slow, tedious process.

I also remember when you could read articles on The Onion without being bombarded with ads, and also when certain websites would bombard you with pop-up ads, and when some sites had annoying “frames”, but that’s another story.

Then people started getting really excited about “the Web 2.0” that promised to be more open, more interactive. Blogging became a big thing, and suddenly, instead of being mostly static, websites were not only updated regularly but people could comment, share thoughts, get into conversations, get into fights. A 2015 article from The Onion, “Man Wistfully Looks Around Website He Hasn’t Visited For 30 Minutes”, was funny and reminded us how quickly things were changing.

WebCanvas, for reasons I can’t quite explain, seems like a throwback to the early days of the internet. I think a lot of it is the scrolling, and the MS Paint quality of a lot of the artwork. I thought it would be fun to add something of my own to it. You can post over other peoples’ work but I purposely moved around to what seemed to be an empty space. Then I created an account and, well, went to MS Paint and did a quick picture of my own.

This is the mostly empty space but I liked the neighborhood.

And this is my picture. Done in MS Paint, of course.

And my login failed. I tried a dozen times or so to get in, tried resetting my password, and even tried creating a new account. All of it failed. And that was the biggest flashback to the old internet yet: it’s hard, if not impossible, to get in and update it.

Anyway here’s another flashback.