Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Pair the Second: Sartorial Inscription Mentations

It’s been a busy day in Chuckleland, and the post I’d hoped to foist upon you before noon today now might - just might - get up before midnight.  In lieu of an off-color joke skulking in the corners of that prior sentence, I choose to offer my second “pair” posting in a row - a pair of pairs, rendering me vulnerable to a full house if you’ve got one.  Lacking that, enjoy this - I dare you!

A Pair of Mentations Regarding Sartorial Inscription, by Chuck L. Hutt

* The boy sat across from me, slouching on the plastic bus bench with the look of embarrassed boredom borne of maternal proximity - and indeed, his mom was sitting right next to him, with flabby biceps and an overbearing scowl.  The boy wore a red sweatshirt with white lettering, which I compulsively tried to read.  I’ve got to be reading this wrong, I thought.  Does his sweatshirt actually say, “PATHETIC”?  I abandoned all pretense of subtlety and took a nice hard gander.  Yes, his sweatshirt says “PATHETIC”.  What was his mother thinking?  There’s no way he was old enough to buy his own clothes, how could she OH! I see now: as the boy shifts in his sullen antpantitude, he reveals a few missing letters - two in front, one in the middle.

Not “PATHETIC.” “(GA)P ATH(L)ETIC.” Well then.  I guess that’s okay.  Carry on. 

* I leave the bus and cross the intersection the first of twice, to find myself waiting for my next walk signal next to the hand-out guy.  He’s in the ‘hood a lot these days.  A filthy man with matted chaotic hair, his skin is dark, stained darker from a sidewalk life.  He’s missing several teeth and his clothes are execrable: tattered jacket and pants that shine with grime, a once-red t-shirt hanging from his sunken chest, threadbare, shabby.  He’s learned a little English over the past few months; where once he’d stammer a perhaps-Tagalog jangle with his palms extended in supplication, now he asks for change in an English that’s weak, heavily accented, but at least intelligible.  Today as I stand next to him he’s asking again, dime or quatah sah?  He extends toward me a receptacle for my hoped-for generosity: a black baseball cap so dirty that its very blackness has been blackened.  I shrug my apology to him and he repays me with a jagged smile.  I notice the legend embroidered on the back of his outthrust cap - the name of a television show.  I wonder if he’s ever seen it.  I wonder if he even knows that it says “Lost.” To me, it seems entirely apropos. 

There you go then, chew on that in good health and from your blog to god’s ear.  Back later, but not later tonight, with another pair or so of whatever it is I seem to be doing here.  These are the jokes, folks.  I’m here all week. 

Monday, July 28, 2008

Pigmental Monday

The plan was to write something last night, but a load of DVR’d goodies got in the way.  Then I was going to write this morning on the bus, but that didn’t happen for reasons that I’m likely to make a subject of a subsequent post because I have my topic in mind and I’m not the sort to switch ruts on a mere whim.  I intend to share with you a pair of mentations on the general subject of color, and now I get to freehand it.  I do have a rather free hand sometimes, but it’s been a while since I’ve exercised it here.  Let’s see how much trouble I get into.  (dangling preposition: half-point off before I start.  Way to go, Chuckles.)

a) The hallway is done.  Our apartment has a somewhat unusual configuration for a city place, but still features a long hallway off of which most of our rooms devolve.  Since we’ve moved in, the hall has been a transitional space - not a place in and of itself, but a place between places, a trans-place.  Poorly lit, painted in the degraded tone of Navajo White, pocked from the various decorations sporadically hung there to brighten an essentially unbrightenable space (by ourselves as well as prior tenants in the 1980s), we’d pretty much given up on it as a habitable environment on its own terms. 

The solution: change its terms!  Two weekends ago I got a nice can of off-orange paint and a smaller can of cheerful white, and we painted everything but the edges and trim.  (for my peroration on the impact of painting a ceiling white, see here.) The change was significant, but incomplete - a ragged blot of washed-out grey still circumscribed our improvements and set limits to its impact.  So this weekend we finished by painting the walls right up to the edges of the ceiling and floor.  This moved the visual impact from a unmistakeable but crude enhancement, to refined completion.  Those strips of old dingy white that lined the tops and bottoms of the walls had not just been reminders of where we’d started, they were anchors to an aesthetically-impaired history of possibilities left unexplored and compelled vacancy.  By completing the process of filling the entire space with rich new color, we created a chromatic coherence that obviates all sense of the past. 

Now, looking down the hallway, I see something I’ve never seen before: the future.  It glows warmly in the ruddy morning sunlight; it reflects the wan illumination from the weak, garrish electroliers, making the most of the artificial light we’ve got.  There is a cleanliness and purity in the lines at ceiling and floor, and as the floorboards reach out into the distance, they seem to glow with possibility.  The hallway is no longer a trans-space - it almost transcends space.  We want to hang out in it now.  It’s a twenty-foot-long step securely in the right direction. 

b) I don’t write much about Kelly here; she’s not one of those who embraces the publicity of blogdom.  But when she does something extraordinary, I break that habit and let the world know.  When I met her in 1985, I had a semi-full head of nice brown hair, which over the years grew thinner and thinner, and greyer and greyer, till I just gave up on it altogether and started pateshaving.  It’s been about four years now since I’ve traded the hairbrush for the razor, and I don’t regret a bit of it.  However, Kel’s been walking this road by my side for just as long, during which time her dark-brown locks have remained very much as they appeared when I met her - in color, anyway.  This is because she took the time and trouble to make sure they got regularly tinted, just as soon as the first few silver threads appeared in the mix.  Without getting into details, several months ago she decided to put an end to the artificial stasis of her hair color.  She stopped dying, and let it grow.  For several weeks her hair was a bit, oh, split - personality-wise.  At the ends, it remained in masquerade, dark and homongenous, but as the roots grew out they revealed ever-lengthening strands of her own true self: a rich array of monochrome, black and white and silver, filiments at once glowing with absorbed light and shimmering with light reflected. 

And on Saturday, I took the boy out on a bus ride and to a playground and a puppet show, while Kel got her ends cut off.  By the time Z and I got home, Kel was back as I’ve not seen her in many years - unadulterated in her visual presentation.  Her hair is shorter than it’s been in quite a while, though still thick and full.  However, it’s a glory of tones from white to black and back again.  Unaltered by tints, it has a fresh, natural presence - not unruly, but individualistic.  The imposed sedateness of her longstanding dyejob has been excised and discarded.  Kel has always been a strong, independent individual, and her hair now reiterates that strength and individualism.  I’m really proud of her for taking on the change, and on a more selfish level, I like it better than it was before.  She’s gotten rid of the color, and in doing so, she’s brought back vitality.  Even when I was encouraging her months back to take the plunge, I hadn’t realized how great it would look. 

I could go on, but I really can’t.  Doings are afoot, and all that.  So just remember: color can add or subtract, but it is the viewer upon whom the impression is truly made.  So keep’em open and have a stimulating week! 

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

A Day that Will Live in Apathy: B’Versary 6

It has never really been either the best or worst of times - it was, in fact, consistently, historically, just “a time.” The day on which, in 1934, the first ptarmigan was hatched and raised in captivity, in Ithaca, New York.  The day of the 1946 Bikini Island atmospheric nuke test.  The day in 1957 on which KTVC TV channel 6 in Ensign, KS began broadcasting, and on which, in 1959, the 500,000th television was registered in the Netherlands.  “Like a Rolling Stone” was released in 1965.  1974: the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Nixon must turn over the Watergate tapes.  Paula Gwynn, 22, was crowned 21st Miss Black America on this day in 1989; Vince Coleman of the Mets injured 3 Dodgers fans by throwing a cherry bomb at them in 1993.  Barry Bonds, Gus van Sand, Linda Carter, Ruth Buzzy and Zelda Fitzgerald were all born on this day, though admittedly in different hospitals; Isaac Bashevis Singer, Peter Sellars, and Martin van Buren chose this day to shake off their respective mortal coils.  Some triumphs were celebrated on this day, and some terrible tragedies were suffered. 

And in 2002, a man with too many words and not enough shame launched the Chucklehut - a blog unlike any other, except for the many similarities it shares with most of them.  Predominantly in the English language, as bastardized by west coast hipsters and wannabe polymaths; lovingly crafted with plentiful ellipses and neologisms; chock full of chock and brimming with cybernetic enthusiasm, the Chucklehut has survived changes in hosting, domain, design, and sophistication.  Today, it represents the epitome of western culture and the apex of American thought.  For this, a nation weeps.  I invite you to join them. 

Today is blogiversary 6, the thought of which shocks and startles me.  Six years?  That’s almost a long time!  For those of you who have stood by me for the duration, of whom there may still be two or three, I proffer my humble thanks.  To the rest of you, I expostulate vituperative indecencies.  How dare you have missed my clumsy Blogger-based beginnings, my foundering coming-of-age posts rife with nascent adolescence, or my great series on stuff I found on the street?  For shame, cybersurfer - for shame. 

But I offer mitigation for your ignominy: below, please find my traditional Top 40 list for the year gone by less one.  From my blogiversary in 2006 till the same date in 2007, I have selected two-score posts that I objectively have determined sucked less than the others during that period did.  That’s not to say they’re good, though some are - but I can definitely say that they’re not as bad as the ones I left off the list.  I hope you enjoy them again, unless you hated them the first time around, in which case I hope you fall prey to a pernicious and embarrassing infirmity.  I don’t need you casting aspersions on this blog.  That’s what I’m here for. 

Without further ado, here are my Top 40 for 2006-2007:

major announcement
flashback; flash forward
plum tasty
fighting traffic
pet peeve
defending the faith
the SHHNing
laborious wrapup plus burger with everything
shrimpy and flaky
jogging my memories
the break
panning for gold
another stupid list
pandora’s box
freak yourself out vol 1: the bathroom nebula
silver spoons
there and back: a saga
aural history
burning impressions
begin the begin
begin the begin in medias res
begin the begin - finally it ends
merkan measures
brother’s keeper
eternal heart
keep it under your hat
his bus
all I need is a little direction in life sometimes
exhumation
A1: failing the grade
MLHB: the transiting
for those who feel
RASFMBT: RIP
bird brain
the bonnie booty rides again
manly rant: feather bested
view from the top
cutting corners
rivertrippin’ plus fruitylicious dancakes
from yesterday generally: y is the forth of july

And there you have it; do with it what you will.  Or vice-versa.  It’s the internet, man.  Anything goes.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope to have something new for your enjoyment sometime soon.