More to the point, why the heck hasn’t he built one of these, instead of resorting to his usual can-crushing method, which is to spread a bunch of them out on the driveway and drive over them with his Bobcat?

Nod to Sullivan’s Daily Dish for letting me see this.

Reading obituaries makes me sad. This, of course, is not an unexpected result of that particular activity. However the reason they make me sad is probably not the reason you think they might.

No, what actually saddens me about obituaries is how rote and mechanical they tend to be, how they take all the depth and complexity and richness that is a human life and beat it down to something resembling a job application. The meager handful of standard-issue bullet points — birth and death dates, names of parents and spouse(s), number of children, a note of military service (if any), positions held in the church (common in Utah obits), and maybe a mention of a well-loved hobby or career — do nothing to convey the flavor of the deceased person. I guess that’s more the job of the eulogy than the obituary, though. The obit is simply an announcement, and you have to go to the funeral to get some substance.

Still, it seems to me the final public summation of a person’s lifetime ought to reflect at least a little of the deceased’s personality, their philosophy and basic attitudes, their sense of humor, their resilience (or lack thereof) in the face of the life’s challenges, the adventures and experiences and preferences that defined them and that actually meant something to them. Every once in a blue moon, when somebody is willing to pay the exorbitant cost of an extra few precious column-inches, you’ll see something like that. And those exceptions to the general rule tend to linger in the memory… at least in my memory. For example, I still recall an obituary I read years ago, when I was in college. I didn’t know the deceased, but her obit made a big impression on me, for a number of reasons. She wasn’t much older than myself, for one thing; when you’re in your early twenties, hearing that somebody from your age cohort has died tends to really grab your attention. It’s profoundly unsettling to have mortality forcibly demonstrated to you at a time of life when you feel effectively immortal. Another thing that stood out was that this person had obviously written her own obituary — she’d had cancer, if I remember correctly, and had the time to prepare and see to the details herself — and I don’t recall that I’d ever seen that before. She’d been a very good writer and done a fine job of saying her farewells beautifully and eloquently. And of course, she’d been a fellow Trekkie, and had framed her thoughts around the familiar themes of that media franchise. I no longer remember exactly what she wrote — I wish I’d thought to clip this one and save it! — but I remember that she hoped her human adventure really was just beginning, and that she would be able to continue exploring the universe in some fashion. I remember getting a tight feeling in my throat as I read this stranger’s final statement because I understood so clearly what she was feeling, and I knew that had I ever actually met her, I would’ve liked her. I remember hoping that, when my time eventually and inevitably comes, I could have such a personal and effective send-off.

I still hope for that, actually, even as I fret that my grown-up life just isn’t that interesting, and that my bullet list of accomplishments isn’t long enough. That I wouldn’t like my answer to Jim Morrison’s famous question: “Did you have a good world when you died? Enough to base a movie on?”

But I digress… as I’m wont to do. Sorry about that.

I bring all this up because I’ve encountered another of those remarkable obituaries like that one I read back in college. This one has been floating around the various social media subnets this week, but I’m going to repost it here in case you’ve not seen it elsewhere. Again, it’s for someone I didn’t know, never met, never even imagined… until I read a few paragraphs that paint a vivid picture of a man who was funny, crotchety, contrary, sly, and entirely human. A man who lived a good life, a life worth mourning the loss of, even as we rejoice in its colorfulness. I don’t know if he wrote this obit for himself, or if it was done by a friend or family member. I don’t even know if it’s at all true. Regardless, it’s a real joy to read. And like any good movie trailer, it makes me want to know more about its subject… a man named Harry Stamps.

[Ed. note: I’ve edited this slightly to cut out the logistical details. If for some reasons you want to read it in its entirety, you can find it here.]

Harry Weathersby Stamps, ladies’ man, foodie, natty dresser, and accomplished traveler, died on Saturday, March 9, 2013.

 

Harry was locally sourcing his food years before chefs in California starting using cilantro and arugula (both of which he hated). For his signature bacon and tomato sandwich, he procured 100% all white Bunny Bread from Georgia, Blue Plate mayonnaise from New Orleans, Sauer’s black pepper from Virginia, home grown tomatoes from outside Oxford, and Tennessee’s Benton bacon from his bacon-of-the-month subscription. As a point of pride, he purported to remember every meal he had eaten in his 80 years of life.

 

The women in his life were numerous. He particularly fancied smart women. He loved his mom Wilma Hartzog (deceased), who with the help of her sisters and cousins in New Hebron reared Harry after his father Walter’s death when Harry was 12. He worshipped his older sister Lynn Stamps Garner (deceased), a character in her own right, and her daughter Lynda Lightsey of Hattiesburg. He married his main squeeze Ann Moore, a home economics teacher, almost 50 years ago, with whom they had two girls, Amanda Lewis of Dallas, and Alison of Starkville. He taught them to fish, to select a quality hammer, to love nature, and to just be thankful. He took great pride in stocking their tool boxes. One of his regrets was not seeing his girl, Hillary Clinton, elected President.

He had a life-long love affair with deviled eggs, Lane cakes, boiled peanuts, Vienna [Vi-e-na] sausages on saltines, his homemade canned fig preserves, pork chops, turnip greens, and buttermilk served in martini glasses garnished with cornbread.

 

He excelled at growing camellias, rebuilding houses after hurricanes, rocking, eradicating mole crickets from his front yard, composting pine needles, living within his means, outsmarting squirrels, never losing a game of competitive sickness, and reading any history book he could get his hands on. He loved to use his oversized “old man” remote control, which thankfully survived Hurricane Katrina, to flip between watching The Barefoot Contessa and anything on The History Channel. He took extreme pride in his two grandchildren Harper Lewis (8) and William Stamps Lewis (6) of Dallas for whom he would crow like a rooster on their phone calls. As a former government and sociology professor for Gulf Coast Community College, Harry was thoroughly interested in politics and religion and enjoyed watching politicians act like preachers and preachers act like politicians. He was fond of saying a phrase he coined “I am not running for political office or trying to get married” when he was “speaking the truth.” He also took pride in his service during the Korean conflict, serving the rank of corporal–just like Napolean, as he would say.

 

Harry took fashion cues from no one. His signature every day look was all his: a plain pocketed T-shirt designed by the fashion house Fruit of the Loom, his black-label elastic waist shorts worn above the navel and sold exclusively at the Sam’s on Highway 49, and a pair of old school Wallabees (who can even remember where he got those?) that were always paired with a grass-stained MSU baseball cap.

 

Harry traveled extensively. He only stayed in the finest quality AAA-rated campgrounds, his favorite being Indian Creek outside Cherokee, North Carolina. He always spent the extra money to upgrade to a creek view for his tent. Many years later he purchased a used pop-up camper for his family to travel in style, which spoiled his daughters for life.

 

He despised phonies, his 1969 Volvo (which he also loved), know-it-all Yankees, Southerners who used the words “veranda” and “porte cochere” to put on airs, eating grape leaves, Law and Order (all franchises), cats, and Martha Stewart. In reverse order. He particularly hated Day Light Saving Time, which he referred to as The Devil’s Time. It is not lost on his family that he died the very day that he would have had to spring his clock forward. This can only be viewed as his final protest.

Sounds like the sort of man to whom I’d like to say hello every morning as I slip onto a favorite stool at a comfortable neighborhood greasy spoon. The sort who’d have a different issue to discuss or story to tell every day… and for whom I’d be willing to be late for work, because it will surely take several cups of joe to get through it all. The sort whose life would make a decent movie, Jim Morrison.

I hope someday someone will say the same of me.

(Hat tip to Talking Points Memo.)

There’s a fresh-smelling breeze wafting in advance of an approaching storm.

Crusty, freeze-dried piles of old snow look like tired men slumping their shoulders as they release themselves into widening circles of moisture on the sidewalk pavement.

My iPod somehow knows to dredge up some Grateful Dead as I stroll past the storefront where the Cosmic Aeroplane used to be, decades ago.

And all this puts me in mind of the young man I used to be and somehow lost track of.

I miss him.

After an infuriating last-second ambush by an account manager led to me working late on Friday night (he caught me returning from the restroom at two minutes to quitting time!), I spent a good part of the weekend pondering how I could obtain that life of leisure you hear about. I never did come up with anything that seemed workable, but William Faulkner certainly had it all figured out:

…the best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it’s the perfect milieu for an artist to work in. It gives him perfect economic freedom; he’s free of fear and hunger; he has a roof over his head and nothing whatever to do except keep a few simple accounts and to go once every month and pay off the local police. The place is quiet during the morning hours, which is the best time of the day to work. There’s enough social life in the evening, if he wishes to participate, to keep him from being bored; it gives him a certain standing in his society; he has nothing to do because the madam keeps the books; all the inmates of the house are females and would defer to him and call him “sir.” All the bootleggers in the neighborhood would call him “sir.” And he could call the police by their first names.

 

So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

Sounds about right to me. I can certainly verify the bit about blood pressure, frustration, and outrage. Now, if only I could find a brothel in need of a landlord somewhere in the Salt Lake area… hell, it wouldn’t even have to be a landlord position. I’d be willing to be the ladies’ handy-man, like Paul Newman in The Sting. I could fix a carousel, I think…

(Quoted passage from a 1956 interview with Faulkner published in the Paris Review. Via Andrew Sullivan.)

Having ridden through the Great Harmonic Convergence of 1987, the Y2K non-event, the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider, and more predictions of the Rapture, Armageddon, cometary impacts, magnetic-pole inversion, rogue planets, and other pseudo-scientific woo-woo stuff than you can shake a stick at, I was never remotely nervous about this whole Mayan calendar end-of-the-world thing that was supposed to happen today. I find it hard to believe that anyone actually was — I mean, come on! Some centuries-dead culture only laid out their calendar so far ahead before their civilization collapsed, so we here in an entirely different culture are supposed to seriously worry about the Earth exploding or whatever? Ridiculous. But I guess there are nervous types out there who are always looking for an excuse to freak out about something. These are people who don’t get that the world is always going to hell in a bucket, and always has been, for every generation of humanity stretching all the way back to the Cro-Magnons who worried about their kids consorting with those thick-browed Neanderthals in the next cave over. I know the whole “Keep calm and carry on” thing has become a tedious cliche, but like most cliches, there’s a real kernel of truth at the core of it. So the next time people tell you the world is coming to an end, take a deep breath and tell yourself you’ll believe it when you see the Death Star looming in the sky overhead.

Of course, my disdain for this nonsense wouldn’t prevent me from wearing a t-shirt with this cool design on it, if I could find one:

And if nothing else, the whole Mayan Apocalypse thing did give rise to some amusing memes and miscellaneous netcrap. Here’s a classic:

And this (best imagined, I think, in Comic Book Guy‘s voice):

And here’s my favorite summation of this whole event:

However you’re spending your end-of-the-world day, hope you’re having a good one…

I’ve noticed a lot of changes with my body since my various ailments were diagnosed back in February. The most apparent is the fairly dramatic weight loss I’ve mentioned before. Yesterday, as the first real snow of the year started coming down outside, I dug out my box of sweaters and sweatshirts to see if I could still get away with wearing any of them, already knowing that the majority would be getting dropped on the donate-to-charity pile. Items that fit perfectly only last winter — or were even a little snug in some cases — now hang off my shoulders and billow around my torso to a degree that I can hardly comprehend. One pullover, in particular, made me look like a 10-year-old playing dress-up with daddy’s clothes. Or like a flying squirrel, if I raised my arms.

I’ve had that experience a lot over the past few months. On the one hand, this change is very gratifying. As near as I can figure, I now weigh about what I did when I graduated from college two decades ago, and who can complain about that? I’ve even discovered that a few very old garments I’ve held onto over the years as mementos fit me again. For example, I found a sweater vest that I must’ve bought around 1985 of thereabouts; the tag indicates it came from Jeans West, if anyone remembers that very ’80s mall clothier (your number-one source for parachute pants). I never thought I’d ever get back into this one… but it turned out to fit so well now I’m thinking about starting to use it again!

As much fun as that sort of thing is, though, it’s also weirdly disconcerting. I almost feel as if I’ve switched bodies with someone else. Could I really have once been so large that those giveaway clothes fit me? If clothes I’ve worn for so very long don’t fit me anymore, am I still really me? And if I’m not, who am I? I certainly haven’t regressed back into the me I was in 1985, just because I can wear that Jeans West sweater vest again. For one thing, that guy from ’85 could live on Ding Dongs, 7-Eleven nachos, and red-cream soda; if 2012 me tried that, his blood glucose would explode and he’d probably land in a diabetic coma. Drat the luck. I miss shitty 7-Eleven nachos.

Other things are different now, too. I don’t get headaches very often anymore, and when I do, they’re not nearly as intense as they used to be. I no longer suffer from heartburn, either, whereas I used to eat Tums by the fistful. And — this may be too much information, but what the hell — I’m not as gassy as I used to be either.

All of this is unquestionably for the better, even the weight loss, as weird and disturbing as it sometimes is to be physically larger in my mind than in reality. But there is one thing that’s different now that I sort of regret, and that’s my newly lower body temperature.

You see, for years I “ran hot,” for lack of a better description. The Girlfriend was convinced that I actually had a slightly higher body temperature than average, and affectionately referred to me as “her own personal space heater.” People didn’t believe her when she talked about how warm I was, so she’d have me demonstrate by pressing my palm to the other person’s exposed skin. This almost always resulted in a goggle-eyed stare of fascination as the sensation gradually settled in, like what happens when you sit in a patch of springtime sunlight pouring through a window. I used to think of these hot hands of mine as a kind of superpower, something I visualized very much like the image you see above. (That’s from an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, if you don’t recognize it.) I delighted in my ability to warm others on frigid winter days simply by taking hold of their hands. I was proud of this weird little quirk of my physiology. I certainly never thought it was a sign that something might be wrong with me.

In retrospect, I suspect it was probably a symptom of my (then) outrageously high blood pressure. And now that I’m on medication and my BP is down here on Earth where it’s supposed to be instead of halfway to the International Space Station, my superpower has vanished. No more hot hands. And to make matters even more unhappy, I’m far more sensitive to the cold than I can remember ever being in my life. I’ve found myself wearing cardigans and fleece jackets in settings where everyone else is in short sleeves, and Anne and I are finding it difficult to get the thermostat in the house adjusted to something we can both live with. I always used to find it odd that my grandmother was constantly complaining of the cold, even in the middle of summer. Now I think I know what she may have been going through. And while I look and feel better than I have in years, this damn temperature issue also has me feeling old… as if I needed any more reason to fret about that. I fear becoming a stereotypical geezer shuffling around in a sweater. I feel like I’ve genuinely lost something unique and integral to my identity. I’ll get over the clothes, but the warmth was literally part of me, and I miss it. Wish I could it back somehow without risking my health to do it…

A couple years ago, I ran across a neat little site called the Sci-Fi Airshow, which is predicated on the notion that the spaceships and other miscellaneous vehicles we remember from the movies and TV series we grew up on were in fact real. Supposedly, the shows themselves were fictional, but rather than faking everything with special effects, the producers either built or acquired actual spacecraft and filmed them in action. And now, this conceit goes, these old machines are in the hands of private collectors and traveling the world on the airshow circuit so the public can see them up close, take ground tours of them, and maybe even go for rides, just like the 1940s warbirds I so love.

In reality, of course, the Sci-Fi Airshow site is just an excuse for a guy named Bill George to demonstrate his formidable art skills and love of 1960s and ’70s sci-fi through lots of gorgeous, photo-realistic renderings of imaginary spacecraft sitting in real-world settings. (I love the irony of “proving” the existence of nonexistent things by using CGI, which is arguably less “real” than the physical F/X miniatures that embodied these ships to begin with!) But the pretense is maintained throughout the site, and Bill has obviously had a lot of fun cooking up “true-life” back stories for everything. For example, it seems that the Battlestar Galactica shuttlecraft sat neglected for years on the Universal Studios backlot tour, where it eventually became a home for drug-using squatters…

Anyhow, I saw this morning that Bill has really outdone himself with the site’s latest addition, a short film all about the Jupiter 2, the iconic ship from the campy TV classic Lost in Space. The tone of the video is a dead-on imitation of similar materials from real-world airshows, from the generic music and slightly-too-cheerful host to the cheesily dramatic title graphics to the inarticulate gushing comments made by spectators. One technical thing that caught my interest: when the video references the Jupiter 2‘s cinematic ancestors — the flying saucers seen in movies of the 1950s — what we see is not footage from those early films, but digital re-creations that manage to look simultaneously identical to and better than the original effects shots. The obvious explanation is that Bill didn’t want or could not pay to license authentic film footage, but I wonder if perhaps we aren’t meant to think these vessels were “real” as well, and we’re what we’re seeing is “behind-the-scenes” footage?  Or maybe I’m just overthinking it, as I’m prone to do…

In any event, I have nothing but the highest admiration for Bill George’s talent and dedication to his fannish obsessions; this is truly cool stuff. Give the site a look, and watch the video below. Oh, and keep your eyes open during the vid for glimpses of other fan-favorite machines from vintage sci-fi, including that creepy robot spider-thing from Jonny Quest, the ANSA Icarus spacecraft from Planet of the Apes (seen here in its upright launch configuration!), and Star Trek‘s Galileo…

Do you remember me mentioning a while back that my buddy Mike Gillilan is a contributor to a car-news blog called The Daily Derbi? Well, a couple months ago, Anne and I were out for an afternoon cruise in my beloved old Ford Galaxie and, on the spur of the moment, we stopped to see Mike and his girlfriend. He took a few photos of my car while we were there, and then, a few days later, asked if I would mind him turning those shots into one of his Weekly Wallpapers for the Derbi site. Of course not, I told him; I’m proud of that old girl, and always happy to show her off. Then he asked if I would like to contribute some copy to go along with the image. Sure, I said, no problem. I did a little research on the history of the Galaxie line, mixed it with some personal observations on my particular car, and banged out a couple paragraphs for him. The end result turned out very well, if I say so myself. (I’m sure Mike would agree.)

His image and my words drew quite a few accolades, as well as a little boost in traffic for the site, so, to at last get to the point of this entry, I’ve been asked to join The Daily Derbi myself. Mike and the site’s founder, Chad Waite, both think my perspective as a lover of classic Detroit steel will add an interesting new flavor to the proceedings over there. I’ll be honest, I’m a little dubious of how well I’ll fit in — I’ve been doing my own thing here for nearly a decade, with no editorial oversight whatsoever, free to write whatever, whenever, and however I wish — but I’m game to give it a try. And I think writing about different subject matter in a different location may help break through some of the malaise I’ve been feeling about blogging lately. We’ll see how it goes.

My first solo post for the Derbi went up a couple days ago; it’s about an exhibition of vintage racing machines currently on display at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Give it a read here, and then have a look around the rest of the site. Feel free to let me know what you think…

Following up on an earlier post, I’m pleased to report that my lovely Girlfriend Anne did very well last weekend in the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes. But looking back, I don’t think I made it clear exactly what this event was. It’s an annual charity event held at Salt Lake’s Liberty Park; two laps around the park’s perimeter added up to 5K. It’s not a race, and it’s not timed (although I did, in fact, time her — more on that in a sec). It’s basically a pleasant morning stroll (along with a couple thousand other folks and their children and dogs) followed by some carnival-type activities in the afternoon, all for the good cause of raising money to research juvenile diabetes. But 5K — roughly three miles — is a pretty good walk for someone who wasn’t especially active up until fairly recently, and Anne was genuinely nervous the night before, wondering if she’d be able to make it all the way around or if she’d become exhausted partway, or get leg cramps, or otherwise end up feeling humiliated by the whole thing. She needn’t have worried. As I said, she did great… in fact, she and her friend Kathy got annoyed at the slow pace of the herd shambling along the designated path and decided to cut over to an adjoining sidewalk so they could go at their own pace. They completed their laps, plus cut back through the middle of the park to reach the official finish line, in just over an hour, well ahead of most of the other walkers. Sadly, I can’t tell you precisely how much over an hour, because I messed up on my timekeeping duties and accidentally reset the stupid stopwatch partway through. Hey, I recently bought a new cellphone and I’m not familiar with the stopwatch function yet! Anyhow, the total I calculated at the end was one hour and five minutes; I’m guessing the actual time was probably more like 1:10 or maybe 1:15. Still, pretty good… and Anne wasn’t winded or sore and in fact seemed ready to go around again! I’m very proud of her.

She did well on the fundraising end of things as well, starting with a modest goal of $150 and ending with $180. I’d like to personally thank our friends and coworkers who donated, and point out that the JDRF will still accept funds in Anne’s name for up to eight weeks, so if you didn’t contribute and you’re thinking you’d like to, it’s not too late! Just go here and click the big orange “Donate to Anne” button at the top of the page. She and I both thank you in advance.