Thursday, May 30, 2019

Improvised playthings

When I was a kid we had a collection of Lego bricks. (Lego comes from Denmark, where people are imaginative.) This was before it came in kits for you to assemble a complicated thing.  We only had sets of bricks of varying sizes, in four colors, with a few accessories like wheels and a swivel, and you could make them into whatever you could think of.  Very stimulative for creative growth.

One of the things we did with Lego was build vehicles and launch them at each other demolition derby-style.  And I eventually got the idea of building a Lego gondola and sliding it out on the clothesline like a cable car.

We had some other building toys like Meccano, but it was Lego that really captured my imagination.

Monday, May 27, 2019

Obituaries

I remember a moment in The Sopranos when Grandmother Livia was using a magnifying glass to read newspaper obituaries!

Ever had the experience of reading of someone's death and thinking, "I thought he was already dead"? You'd be surprised how many celebrities have reached 100, like actors Olivia de Havilland and Kirk Douglas, and the wartime singer Vera Lynn. (Bob Hope just made it to 100.)

I remember in Grade 3 when the teacher told us that Coco Chanel had died. (I'd never heard of her.) I also remember reading in the newspaper about deaths like Betty Grable and Frederic March and Bud Abbott.

British newspapers like The Guardian have some really good obituary writers.  In America writing obituaries seems to be, pardon the pun, a dying art!  When The New York Times reported Nelson Rockefeller's death, their obituary had a classic passage: "He was a patron of the Museum of Modern Art, entered it in a fireman's outfit when it caught fire, and founded the Museum of Primitive Art." It's one of those unintentionally funny lines, like when California governor Pat Brown said about a flood, "This is California's worst disaster since I was elected governor."

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Playing cards

Did you know that all four queens in a deck of cards are portraits of Elizabeth of York, the niece of Richard III who married Henry VII and ended the Wars of the Roses? (Cards have changed very little over 500 years because gamblers are a superstitious lot.) And did you know that the name "bridge" comes from the Russian word for auction?

Some years back I went on a cruise from New York to Montreal.  One of their many activities was bridge.  One afternoon I decided to try it.  I would have been happy in the beginners group, but they already had a full four so I got put in the more experienced group, not that I cared.

There were a man and a woman supervising the games, which in this case meant that they seemed to be spending all their time with the beginners.  But why should I care?

I wasn't that good at the game compared to the others, who were a bit old and tactless.  Anyhow, we were playing one game and I bid two diamonds, then my partner bid two hearts.  When it was my turn to bid again, I passed.  Suddenly the female supervisor said, "You can't do that!" Well, it wasn't like I'd bidden seven no-trump in the first round...

Then the male supervisor took an interest in our game.  I was the dummy, so I laid out my cards for all to see.  If he'd said, "Want to know what I would have done?" I'd have answered, "Sure, tell me." But he simply launched into his advice, saying, "I would have bid clubs." 

I got annoyed and said, "Did I ask for your advice?"  Now that got him mad!  He went on about how this was a supervised game and they were supposed to advise us.  But what bothered me was the impression that they were getting involved just to criticize me.  Bridge experts are dicks!

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Taxes

Ever see the movie Dazed and Confused?  It's a comedy about high-schoolers at the end of the school year in 1976, which was the bicentennial of American independence.  My favorite line was the high school teacher saying, "Let's not forget what we're celebrating here--a bunch of white male slaveowners didn't want to pay their taxes!" It's a funny line because it's partly true...

In 1984 Walter Mondale ran for U.S. president, promised to raise taxes, and lost badly.  That doesn't mean he was wrong to do so.  I think that he did the right thing in the wrong way:  he shouldn't have waited till the convention to make the promise, and he should have been more specific about who'd pay more.

Jesus Christ said about taxes, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," and I guess that's as good a justification for taxes as any.  The government prints the money, so it gets to charge user fees for the people who use it, like tolls to pay for highways.  Americans have convinced themselves that they're overtaxed, but they actually pay lower taxes than in places like Europe.  

Taxing and spending is what government does!  I think that they should create a carbon tax--global warming is for real--and a tax on speculation and currency exchange.

Friday, May 10, 2019

My earliest memories

My earliest memory may be of a tire swing hanging from a tree with water sloshing around the bottom.  Another early memory is that next door there were three French-Canadian boys, the youngest being Rene, but we called him Weenie.

I remember a lot of smells from when I was very young.  One was of popcorn from when we went to the movies.  Another was the diesel fumes from a bus.  And several were from the year we spent in England when I was about four.  Visiting Britain years later, I recognized the smells of coal smoke, greengroceries, butcher shops.

I remember some TV commercials from my early childhood.  There was the Ajax cleanser commercial showing an armoured knight on a horse, which scared me. (Trailers for westerns also scared me.) And there was this commercial for Hands-up Harry, a gunfighter you'd shoot at.  You could shoot off his guns and his hat, and if you hit him just right his pants would fall down!

When I was little, we had a lot of Classics Illustrated comic books.  One was of William Tell, but the only thing I remembered was this moment when a man carried a woman out of a burning castle. (It also had a brief story about the pirate Jean Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans.) Just the other week I read that comic again for the first time in about 50 years, and my memory was right--it does have the man rescuing the woman from the burning building!

Sunday, May 5, 2019

Something stolen

I got mugged once.  I was about thirty and waiting for the bus.  This big guy came along and asked for money.  When I said no, he cuffed me and got really threatening, so I ended up giving him all $42 I had on hand.  The only thing that really bothered me was that my sister questioned my judgement. (She felt that I was too careless with money and should have run away or something.) Well, she wasn't there, was she?  My father said he would have done the same thing, but I'm still not sure if I want to be like my father.

I remember that when we visited Prague in the Czech Republic my father's pocket got picked.  It was a group of three guys working together on the subway train, who bumped into us at the same time coming from different directions. (I noticed an older man who seemed to be their mentor.) My father had his wallet in his back pocket and that's what they took.  My own wallet was in a safer position.

One of the saddest movies I've ever seen is the Italian movie The Bicycle Thief.  Directed by the neo-realist Vittorio de Sica, it's about a man whose job depends on his bicycle, which gets stolen, so he and his son go on a search for it.  Very well done, but I don't think I could see it again.

Friday, May 3, 2019

Bells

Time for a joke.  Yo Momma so poor, I pressed her doorbell and she said "Ding dong!"

Remember the children's fable "Belling the Cat"? It's about how the mice decide to put a bell on the cat so they can hear him coming, except that nobody's crazy enough to try and put it on him!  When I was little, I saw a book with the title Belling the Cat and Other Stories, and I thought it was about a cat called Belling!

Do you know where the word "dumbbell" comes from?  When you exercise with a dumbbell you make the same motions as when ringing a handbell, except that you don't make any sound doing it.  So the word comes from "mute bell." I like learning about the origins of words.

Does anyone remember the song "Ring My Bell"? It came out in 1979, part of the last gasp of disco music.

Have you ever heard the carillon bells at the Metropolitan Church on Queen Street?  I used to go to a Board Game Meetup where I knew an actual carillon player called Gerald. (He's played that one, and Ottawa's Peace Tower carillon too!) In one game we had to make predictions twenty years into the future, so I predicted, "Gerald will be playing the carillon in Hungary!"