On the 1st of July I encountered one of my all-time favorite examples of Detroit iron, a battleship of an automobile we readily recognize as the 1964 Lincoln Continental replete with standard-issue suicide door and dressed in Steve McGarrett black-on-black.
And check out the miles of gleaming chrome on this slab-sided, rectilinear beauty! Your eyes do not deceive you, that is the Jeep Main Battle Tank parked alongside for purposes of scale; The 2009 JGC is 16' long whereas the '64 Conti casts a shadow that is more than 18' in pavement eclipsing and gravitational warping dimension. The paragon of cool who made the mid-1960s Continentals cool for me was not Matthew McConaughey but rather Dean Martin.
Mere days later back at The Ranch we celebrated Independence Day with a cake decorated in an appropriately festive style:
Yes. It was very good. The frosting was an inch-thick.
Foraging in the local grocery I discovered this example of marketing ingenuity:
Pizza and Topps baseball cards?! These are two of mankind's greatest inventions. How could it have taken so long to combine them? Why, it's like chocolate and peanut butter! Nachos and cheese! Tony Orlando and Dawn!
This summer saw the spectacle of two national political party conventions that nominated, without question, the worst two major party candidates in the 200+ year history of this Republic. Quoting Joseph de Maistre, "Every nation gets the government it deserves." God help us all. C-SPAN, at times, was wall-to-wall with its own inimitable variety of convention coverage. This was the highlight for me:
And guess who was seated in the Presidential box seats, right next to Betty Ford? That's right! Tony Orlando! [Fast-forward to the 1:11:15 mark for proof.]
Mid-July saw the headliner in the 14-year old TDS MINI Cooper Mobile Tactical Unit begin to sag.
This was remedied immediately.
Following the incident last summer when the TDS MINI Cooper Mobile Tactical Unit was rear-ended by a distracted (texting while driving) college student, the MINI's AM radio reception has been reduced to negligible. As such, I now find myself being subjected to the vagaries of FM broadcasts (or turning the blasted thing off and enjoying the peaceful serenity of engine roar and tire hum). Even so, assorted matters of the FM world found its way into my text messages. Here is an exchange from July 21 started by Claudio:
All that Big Randy ever wanted was for us to know that he cared.
Eight days later was this Kuertz-initiated exchange ripped from the display of my Android Galaxy S8000:
It's unclear whether "Giddy" was a typo, a nefarious interpretation from auto-correct or a veiled anti-Prog Rock shot at Gary Lee Weinrib from Kuertz.
We celebrated the July birthday of my youngest niece Maria with a family dinner at the Hueston Woods Lodge which has become oddly popular with both nieces. Well, it was planned as a family dinner but as this text exchange with Lou reveals, there was to be a non-blood relation feasting with us:
Turned out the young man conducted himself respectfully. He even attempted to pay for his own meal.
Among the gifts I presented to Maria was a stuffed Minion:
I created a small photographic journal of the Minion's journey that afternoon.
This Olympic summer saw the coincidental arrival of a flock of white doves which daily paid a visit to The Ranch. Sometimes as many as 8 or 10 at a time, they were difficult to capture all at once. Here was an attempt from July 28th:
And two attempts on August 12th:
I spent some late nights this summer conducting covert operational missions in the Jeep. Of course, this gave me the opportunity to monitor a wide assortment of satellite transmissions. The night of August 4 was a particularly superior example (presented here in chronological order):
It may be heresy to say, but I've come to think that Ozzy's "Shot In The Dark" is his best effort. It's probably heresy to say anything favorable about Oz.
On the 12th of August I was tasked with conducting a humanitarian aid mission. Little Maria needed dinner before going back to her school for an evening activity and so the cavalry in the form of Mr Heavy Artillery and the colonel were summoned.... and by the colonel I mean KFC!
My nieces and I have brainstormed the next interwebz/social media billion-dollar idea; a website where users may post only blurry photos that would otherwise be deemed useless and deleted. We're going to call it "Blurx" as a mash-up of the terms "blurry" and "pix." Blurx!
I was out late, again, on the 15th but on that night the satellite transmissions were unremarkable save for this all-time classic:
On or about the 16th we in SW Ohio were graced with an annual visit all the way from The Bay State of Mr B's brother George. For one night only, The B Team was augmented by a fourth member:
Photographed in Mr B's kitchen late at night are, from left to right; Mr Heavy Artillery, Mr B, Uncle George, and Lou. If you suggest we should, collectively, go easy on the pasta you'll have the worldwide collapse of the Italian restaurant industry weighing on your guilty conscious. Mangia!
Late August brings with it the week-long celebrations revolving around that blessed day which saw the occasion of the birth of the baby Mr Heavy Artillery back during the Nixon Administration. The Old Master of The Turf treated me to a day at the races just as we've done for so many years - and decades - past. There was expensive bloodstock on the Saratoga track that afternoon and here was the view from my second row seat:
While there's no substitute for being on site for live racing at one of America's hallowed tracks, at this stage The B Team doesn't have need to see a single horse live and in person to enjoy ourselves. The Old Master and I poured over our Daily Racing Forms in a nearly empty simulcast facility:
I cashed a handful of tickets, The Old Master had a tough day at the betting window. One horse in the Form had a name which stood out in this historic year of Brexit like a brilliant beacon in the darkness of bureaucratic oppression:
Tempted though I was to put $2 on Nigel, my handicapping guided me elsewhere.
The next afternoon I took my winnings to Great American Ball Park for Big Red Smokeys and a GOFBW [credit: Marty Brennaman] at the hands of the hated L.A. Dodgers.
Handsome + Devil = Mr Heavy Artillery.
My Android failed to capture the stark contrast of light and shadow when a cloud passed over the ol' ball orchard [credit: Joe Nuxhall]:
The actual contrast appeared much more dramatic to the human eye.
Two nights later I returned to the Great American Tilt Yard with Mr B and we were treated to another losing effort from the Redlegs. As compensation, the atmospherics created by a setting sun and severe weather in neighboring Indiana were stunning:
End of times? Certainly for the 2016 Reds season.
On another late night at the end of August, Lou dropped me off at The Ranch and caught sight in his headlights the illumination of a most otherworldly scene in the backyard:
Photo credit goes to Lou and his trusty Android.
The calendar rolled over to September and one particularly long day at the office:
Driving home a few hours later the satellite treated me to a rare gem in the Rush oeuvre:
The next afternoon I enjoyed some lighter audio fare:
Guilty pleasure. It's Bond, what else can I say?
Another tricky day late the next night brought me the last US/UK Top 40 song from The Who:
The original title of the song "Athena" was "Teresa" and was named for actress Theresa Russell. Pete Townshend spent an evening of drinking and snorting cocaine with the actress and her boyfriend and found himself falling for her obvious charms. Pete's demo of the song about unrequited love lust was quite good but he felt it was too blatantly autobiographical and feared his wife would discover the truth of the matter (for reference see the lyric; "Was I a suicidal psychopath?") and so the song title was changed. Versions of the demo appeared on bootleg compilations and eventually found official release on Townshend's third installment of his Scoop series of double albums featuring assorted demos. I'm fanatical about the Scoop albums and played them endlessly throughout my high school and college years. The Scoop demos reveal just how thoroughly conceived were Pete's song ideas for The Who (and his later solo career). One thing that cannot be missed is the lightness, energy and joy that can be heard in the demos which The Who arsenal of atomic bomb drumming and machine gun guitar/bass guitar work often lost. The demo for "Teresa" is an obvious example. I'll link it here - in red, due to several F-bombs and one rare inclusion of the reviled C-word (yes, that C-word. Does it help to know that it's used in context as being a reference to Theresa Russell's boyfriend and not something else? No, maybe it doesn't) - and you can compare for yourself the difference in the two versions. The demo has a light, upbeat jazz guitar feel that possess a subtlety that The Who's version didn't feature. It begs the question, raised also by other Townshend demos, as to whether The Who recorded the better version or the best version that they might have otherwise? I'd rather not think about that.
Scoop 3, from which "Teresa" springs forth, is jam-packed with excellent Pete Townshend demos mostly from his later solo years (the first two Scoop albums feature more Who-era demos). Some of my favorites are:
I Like it The Way It Is (symphonic Townshend at his best and unreleased until long after his eventual divorce for evident reasons. Talk about self-destructive behavior and justification)
No Way Out (recorded here live with session musicians and later recorded masterfully but with less joy - odd considering the subject matter - by The Who in 1975)
Eminence Front (home studio exercise from the late 1990s of a Who classic from 1982)
Can You Really Dance? (B-side reject from the 1989 solo album Iron Man)
Poem Disturbed (late 1990s home demo interrupted by unanswered ringing phone from his then-mistress)
Man And Machines (another Iron Man reject demo)
It's In Ya (a bitter and hilarious response to a fan letters. Another demo recorded live with session musicians and then later in 1981 by The Who with less energy resulting in its being ultimately rejected).
The end of summer is commonly observed with the Labor Day weekend and I spent part of mine at - you guessed it - GABP.
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