I wrote an article for Emeco chairs, and got paid in Philippe Starck.
Loved that. We got two matte finish, vintage-stye Emecos, the regular kind you see on Blue Bloods (and every other cop show) in the interrogation rooms (goldfish bowls), and two chrome-shiny Starck designs with solid backs. All classics, one established, one more recently dropped. They came, Fedex to farm, two to a box and the unboxing was an occasion. Wish we’d have filmed it—it would have been a first, the precursor to all of today’s many unboxings. What wasn’t I thinking? Coulda woulda.
Starck’s stamp. Not for interrogation rooms…
The agency that contacted me was in Long Beach, CA and the job was one of those enjoyable interludes in among the car brochures after I’d left LA; I got several of those fun gigs from out there. One was for motorcycle duds. Another was naming a financial institution. A pet food. A car. I’d come up with fifty at a time, send ‘em out.
I did that at work too, in KC, and an AE accused me of using a program. There was no such program. It was a word association thing in my head that was probably spurred by my fiction and poetry writing. Anyway, it worked and it worked fast. I put it to use many times over the years. These days you’d plug it into Chat-something and say, “Give me fifty names for a new Toyota EV.” Then pick one after a minute or two. But you wouldn’t get the good ones that way. Only anxiety, sweat and forehead lines get you those. Human stuff.
The Starcks. Freddie and I have always treasured these original and later-designed Emeco chairs and they are firmly seated in our top tier of collectibles. Now here's an article about Philippe’s newest hotel. I didn’t write it, so we won’t be staying there any time soon, but we’ll always have The Chairs.
The hotel article (Starck, man—what a designer!) (Link)
Show of hands; how many of you are Bear aficionados?
The Bear, created by Christopher Storer for FX on Hulu. Jeremy Allen White stars as Carmy Berzatto
Yikes, a bunch. I’m a little hesitant to say I’ve never seen it but I stick pretty close to Netflix for better or worse. I’ve followed Bear in print and on trailers so I’m not completely blanked on it, and I find the main guy, Jeremy Allen White, quite fascinating. Bear may not have been the resounding success without his charismatic presence, but who can say?
The show seems to be based on high anxiety and kitchen craziness in the restaurant business, and its popularity stems from relatability of viewers to that and the vagaries of small business in general. They think. Stir in a brother’s previous suicide, BIG unresolved debt, a staff in revolt, a kitchen in bad need of repair, pressure-cooked pain and trauma. Plus the fact the main guy had to leave a Michelin-starred ristorante. Relatability? Okay. Better than a rock fight I guess. Much better, judging by its popularity.
The interplay of various actors like White, Molly Gordon and Calvin Klein have served up unmatched kitchen and on and off-screen chemistry and a big win for FX. Think I’ll watch some and fast forward the harrowing parts.
I was born under the Phillips 66 sign and August is my birth month
What sign are you? Stop? Slow? Conoco?
The 12th. Leo. 87 years old and counting. My sign? Phillips 66. I worked at a couple of them and learned a lot. At great expense I bought the sign, a five footer, and it may be the very sign I worked under in Fulton, MO and/or Kansas City, MO just north of Waldo on Wornall. (Mine is 5 ft high and drilled for neon—the neon is gone, but I could have it re-neonned for a price. The sign itself is almost mint.) This sign adorned some ad agency office walls of mine.
What I learned, working under the 66 sign:
I learned rural gas stations present challenges city ones don’t; like digging corn cobs out of bumpers and stuck under gas lines when the vehicle is on a rack.
I learned scorched coffee tastes the same in both rural and city stations.
In Miller’s 66 in Fulton, MO, we ended each workday with a cold sixpack. I learned most bosses don’t practice this.
Rudy, my best friend and 66 co-worker, and I had hot rods in a college town. That saved us from the “cake-eater” label as we Westminster students were called. That, and a free oil change for a townie now and then. Especially a badass townie.
My first real love girl friend was in a car driven by her father in the KC 66 station. She kept pointing at imaginary spots on the windshield I was trying to clean. We both broke up at that. Her father said, “You know that greaser?” What I learned: many fathers are less than sanguine about daughters’ boyfriends.
I learned that spark plug gaps were important on my rough-running 1949 flat-head Ford. Then I learned how to clean and gap ‘em. That made for better days.
Books & Biases
Eleven of ‘em. And eleven more on the way. All poetry except Corrigan’s. Coming: Padgett, Brainerd, several Collins, others…
I’m leaning way into poetry this time around. Some oldies/goodies by poets I know. Some not. I’ve always liked Merwin and Collins, plus I’ve been exploring some new (to me) poets with quite mixed reactions.
I‘m discovering biases. I’m not comfortable with rhyming poetry anymore; it smacks of diluted meaning and shoe-horned metaphors at the cost of a conceit. No one can do Frost like Frost. Or poems that take up 30 pages (Carter). Or poems that repeatedly bring up the poet’s birthright (Pinsky). These are just a few. And copies of recent “Best,” again I take issue. The Great Unwashed out here should be consulted about what’s “Best.” Quite different from “expert” choices.
And the stack above is just the tip of the bookberg; Amazon informs me I have eleven more coming, mostly used, as I’m not one of the elite. Nor Prime. They include several of Collins’ back books, Ron Padgett, Brainerd and more. They’ll come next week as I invoked later-date free shipping on any I could.
Corrigan’s book (the only non-poet in the stack) (Link) is 30 years’ worth of teaching and reading Gatsby and it’s, in a word, astonishing. I did read the annotated version of TGG, then, immediately read the novel (not annotated) again and it was instructive, as is Corrigan’s book, “So We Read On…How The Great Gatsby came to be and why it endures.” I endorse this book wholeheartedly. It’s so well-written and boasts a bunch of notes and a fat index. Plus “WHY.”
This blog got out of hand
Don’t click on above—it’s a screenshot and just here for pictorial reference. To listen, click on link below…
The blog. Sorry it’s so long. I just get wound up about things. So, what follows is sweet if not short. Well, short, too as I won’t put so many words on it. Music. (Link)
(Note: Yeah, Springsteen has a version. Flat. Sung in “Ain’t I cool” and phoned in, in my opinion—this one is by far the best.)
That’s all for now. Best to you good people. Have some fun in August. oooxxx G-man.