Pete Lit

Just what the world needs, another...

Over at the Two Dollar Radio blog, Grace Krilanovich has some kind thoughts on bass players, both in general (" Guileless, a little bit mysterious, endearingly dorky; if they know what’s best for them they’ll be lurking in the shadows next to the drummer.") and the dual-bass band Dos of Mike Watt and Kira Roessler ("It’s a small music, origins stained with grief, and maybe a kind of romance too.")

If I was in a band (a big stretch, since I don't play any musical instruments) I'd definitely be the bass player. I don't have the pipes to be the singer or the charisma to be guitarist, and the coordination required to have three or four limbs operating independently yet still in sync that's required of a drummer is far beyond me. But I could probably (eventually) master playing the same bass chords over and over again, though I'd never be more than competent, nowhere near the league of Watt, Flea or Entwistle.

That subject line comes from a college-era memory that always gives me a chuckle. One of the record stores in Champaign, Record Swap, had a stairwell that was always plastered with flyers, primarily of musicians looking for bands, or vice versa. The one flyer that I remember best was from a bass player looking for a band, which had "BASS PLAYER" in bold letters and a picture of Jimi Hendrix. But the guy also added, in a wonderful bit of self-deprecation, several other words and a dialogue balloon, so that it looked like Hendrix was saying "Just what the world needs, another...BASS PLAYER." Priceless. If I had a band back then, I would have hired that guy on the spot.

Another camera joins the brood

 

Over the weekend, Julie was kind enough to buy me the charming little camera shown above - a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye from the 1960s. During my teens I had one just like this (a family hand-me-down) but I don't know what ever happened to it, so I was quite pleased to find this one. Not only is it in perfect condition, but it also came in its original box, with flash attachment, all nine original bulbs (the old-fashioned screw-in kind) and instruction booklet. The only thing missing from the box was (I'm guessing) the roll of 620 film that came with the kit (there's an empty cutout in one corner of the box, just the size of a film package). And I just learned you can still buy 620 film (technically, it's 120 film re-wound onto a 620 spool, for a premium price of course) so conceivably I could really use this one. We'll see.

The Brownie now enjoys an honored place on my shelf, alongside my Mamiya C33, Beacon and fold-up Kodak Hawkeye circa 1910s. I've just now realized that I never featured the latter camera here on my blog, but it's a charming relic in its own right. Maybe I'll post about that one sometime soon.

Epitonic returns!

This is wonderful news. When we went suburban in 2000 and I inevitably drifted away from my earlier indie rock mania, Epitonic helped keep me at least marginally current in my listening. Most of the music that I first discovered during the Aughts - especially Ted Leo, M. Ward and Death Cab For Cutie - was via Epitonic. I'm not sure I'll embrace the site quite like before - it was basically my soundtrack while I worked from home for a few years, and I can't stream audio or download at my current job - but it will still be nice to have it back when I need a fix.

Summer of Classics winds down

This year's Summer of Classics has been a mixed bag. I liked Things Fall Apart, but not enough to consider it a classic. I found The Red and the Black to be an endless slog through 19th century French society. I loved Leaves of Grass, though I had to set it aside after a hundred pages lest it consume several more months of my life - I'll return to it eventually, probably finishing it in several more hundred-page increments, but I think I've already grasped Whitman's points about freedom, the commonality of mankind, etc. My reading output has been lower (in terms of number of books) than past years, as this year's batch have been mostly longer works - including Stendhal's, which never seemed to end.

I'm now wrapping up the summer with a re-reading of O.E. Rölvaag's pioneer epic Giants In the Earth, which I'm enjoying tremendously. The book (written in the early 1920s) is pretty unusual in that it's by a Norwegian-American, is set entirely in America, and yet was originally written in Norwegian. That latter aspect was probably more common in the nineteenth century with the surge in European emigation, but the original translator's preface (from 1927) indicates that it was already unusual by the time of publication. It's a fascinating story about Norwegian settlement on the desolate prairies of South Dakota during the early 1870s. I'm 150 pages in and the settlers are just starting to acclimate themselves to their surroundings, though it's still summer and what will undoubtedly be a brutal winter still looms months ahead. I'm enjoying it so much that I'll keep right on reading beyond the end of August - with a mediocre or even average book I'd be sorely tempted to give it up and return to more contemporary fiction, but not with this one. Giants In the Earth is every bit that great, and even after only 150 pages I already recommend it highly.

Ted Leo goes Broadway

Ted Leo And The Pharmacists -
"Bottled In Cork" (Official Video)
from Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

Beauty. Favorite line: "He died because he didn't believe in the power of punk."

Boy's gotta have it.

Kölsch

One of the nice things about having a garage sale, or any other sort of clutter-purging, is unexpectedly discovering stuff that isn't clutter at all. Preparing for our garage sale of this weekend, I opened up a box in the basement that hadn't been touched in years. I assumed everything in there was junk to be sold, but was surprised to find a smaller box inside that contained the five glasses in the photo above. They're beer glasses, or more specifically Kölsch glasses, after the beer style native to the Cologne area of northern Germany. The glasses were a family hand-me-down from my cousin Bud in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who passed away during the late 1990s. We last had these glasses out on display in our condo in Chicago, more than ten years ago, but they were packed up when we moved and never re-emerged until just now. I knew they probably hadn't ever been thrown away, but still I always wondered where they were. Once found again, I cleaned them up and now have them on display in a cabinet.

The fact that they're Kölsch glasses has even greater meaning for me, given that Kölsch was the first real beer I ever drank (sorry, Heilemann's Old Style, you really don't qualify) during a visit to Germany when I was sixteen years old. In fact, the two glasses on the right - Küppers and Dom - are the two brands I remember consuming the most while I was there. So I'm doubly pleased to have these glasses again.

Of course, there's only one way to make these great-looking glasses look even better:



My local liquor store is pretty limited on German beers in general (the dudes in line in front of me were buying cases of Bud Light and shooters of Cuervo), and of course had no genuine Kölsch. So I went with Dortmunder Gold from Great Lakes Brewing (from Cleveland, Ohio), with Dortmund being as close as I could get to Cologne. Last night, after getting the garage sale remnants disposed of and myself cleaned up, I cracked one open, poured it in the Küppers glass, and had a wonderfully refreshing and relaxing time.

Opening Lines

"Bright, clear sky over a plain so wide that the rim of the heavens cut down on it around the entire horizon...Bright, clear sky, to-day, to-morrow, and for all time to come."
- O.E. Rölvaag, Giants in the Earth

"Click! ... Here it was again. He was walking along the cliff at Hunstanton and it had come again ... Click! ..."
- Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square

"It is 1983. In Dorset the great house at Woodcombe Park bustles with life. In Ireland the more modest Kilneagh is as quiet as a grave."
- William Trevor, Fools of Fortune

"The cell door slammed behind Rubashov."
- Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon

(A compendium of memorable opening lines of novels, updated occasionally as I come across new discoveries.)

"...unhurried, tawdry, expressionless..."

In the most recent Oxford American, William Caverlee discusses Elizabeth Spencer's short story "Ship Island", which is set in the Biloxi/Gulfport area of Mississippi, and specifically the Buena Vista Hotel. The essay itself (not available online) is interesting, but I was particularly struck by Caverlee's brief personal anecdote about the Buena Vista, from his 1960s-era visits as a teenage Key Club conventioneer.

Mostly, though, I stuck close to the Buena Vista, attending meetings and prowling about the place - which seemed composed of deep-shadowed colonnades and white-painted walls. Once, I walked by the hotel's swimming pool at nine in the morning, and five or six permanent residents - both male and female - looked up from their drinks. They were deeply bronzed, in their fifties or sixties, unhurried, tawdry, expressionless. I kept walking and they gave me no mind.

Bronzed, languid retirees idling around the pool, already drinking at nine in the morning. That image is just so vivid that it has me pondering the possibilities of a short story based on it - although, to my teenage protagonist, it wouldn't be a case of the poolside bunch "giving him no mind." Instead there would be some sort of confrontation, at least a mild threat of danger. I just haven't figured out the specifics yet. Having never been in that part of the Gulf Coast, I'm not sure my story would even be set there. But I do have vivid memories of swim clubs here in the Midwest from that era - replete with cocktail lounges - that might serve well as a setting instead.

Ben Tanzer is at it again...

My great friend Ben Tanzer has just published yet another book (his fourth overall, and second for CCLaP Publishing), entitled 99 Problems: Essays About Running and Writing. Inspired by Haruki Murakami's memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Ben's book is a lively account of his runs in various cities, during which he recounts not only the physical sensation of running and descriptions of his surroundings, but also his concurrent reflections on his writing-in-progress and personal life. Ordinarily I'd be less than enthused to read a book solely devoted to running (though in Ben's case I'd gladly read such a book anyway; such is fandom), but the way he weaves the running, writing and personal life elements together makes for a very brisk and entertaining read. Another winner from Ben's fertile imagination, and maybe the best thing he's written yet.

Like all CCLaP publications, the e-book is available on a Radiohead-style, pay-what-you-want basis, so there's really no excuse for skipping this one. Go get it.