crude futures

When is a door not a door?

—When is a door not a door?

—When a door is a jar.

—When is a door not ajar?

—When the door is closed.

—When is a door a jar?

—Think of a dead mouse. The corpse is tucked into a mouse hole in somebody's kitchen. The mouse hole is then barricaded with a jar full of red lentils pulled from the cupboard. The next morning, the jar of lentils is rolled away by several other living mice to reveal an empty tomb. The mouse corpse has vanished. Hallelujah: the door is—or was—a jar.

[buzz-buzz]

—Hang on, let me turn my phone off.

—…

—Have you ever clothed a door?

—I once put a pair of pants and a T-shirt on a door, yes.

—I've done that. In my case, it was a sweater and a skirt.

—We've both done it, then. I had to carve the door to get the pants to stay on right.

—Have you ever loathed a door?

—Yes, I've hated almost every door I've encountered.

—Is there such a thing as a modest door? Would you agree that doors are immodest?

—I'm not sure. A door wearing pants is no longer naked, but I'm not sure whether every door is immodest. What do you think?

—I think every door is immodest.

—What about a locked door?

—A locked door is coy.

—What about a clothed door?

—It's like Rita Rudner says.

—What does Rita Rudner say?

—She says we're all naked under our clothes. Under its clothes, the clothed door is naked.

—Ever toast a friend?

—You're asking me about the anti–drunk driving billboard, right?

—Yes. Did you ever toast a friend?

—We're talking about the billboard where it's a giant photograph of a flaming wrecked car, and the caption asks, "Ever toast a friend?" Meaning: Have you ever gotten drunk, climbed into your car, and smashed into the driver's side of your friend's car, causing his car to burst into flames and burn him to death?

—That's what I'm asking. I'm asking about the billboard we'd occasionally drive past on the outskirts of Sandusky around 1993 or '94.

—No, I've never burned a friend to death by drunkenly smashing into the driver's side of his car. I have never toasted a friend in that way.

—I didn't think you had.

—If I'd done that, you'd know about it.

—Probably.

—I have, however, lifted a glass of alcohol to honor a friend. I've done this many times.

—Everybody does that.

—Not frequently enough, in my opinion.

—Your opinion?

—Yes.

—When is a door not a door?

—A door is not a door when the door is just a piece of wall that has been painted to look like a door. A trompe l'oeil door is not a door.

—In cartoons it is. In cartoons, a door painted on a wall will sometimes work like a door.

—Right, like when someone is being chased…

—Yes, someone is being chaste, and he paints a door on a wall and then runs right through the painted door. But when the chaste person's lustful pursuer tries to run through the door, the door doesn't work anymore. The pursuer just slams, cockfirst, into the wall.

—So the pursued and the pursuer are now separated by a wall.

—Yes, and the wall enables chastity. By physically separating the characters, the wall frustrates the lustful impulses of the pursuer and the pursued.

—What else do you believe?

—I believe that facts are facts. You can disagree with a fact, but the fact will not care. Facts don't feel. Facts don't care. Facts don't live active lifestyles.

—I disagree. I believe a fact must live an active lifestyle. I believe a fact must work hard to stay in shape. Historians are the personal trainers of facts. Historians do the work of keeping facts on an active workout regimen. They sweat the facts to the oldies in order to keep the facts in shape. The facts must remain as attractive as possible for as long as possible. The facts must always work to attract new suitors.

—I see what you mean.

—Facts must be sexy. Facts will attract suitors, but the suitors will always die. That's why the facts must work very hard to stay in shape: so that they will never stop attracting new suitors. When you tell me you believe that facts are facts, I couldn't disagree more. The one thing you believe most is the one thing I disbelieve most. I cannot overstate how wrong I feel your belief is. Your belief is stupid, I think and I feel.

—You've convinced me that I'm wrong. I now believe nothing. Or not nothing. What I mean to say is, I now believe one less thing.

—That's the spirit.

—What's the spirit? When is a door not a door?

—It's a trick question. All I can say right now is that I'm really feeling my mortality.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

John Runyon: Last year, we made custom-printed tees with “UNFINISHED BUSINESS” written big on the back. This was after two straight second-place finishes at State. When we won State, someone pulled out a fat black sharpie and everybody crossed out the "UN."

Judith Morning: That's cool. My favorite tee-shirt slogan, for runners, is "Run Like You Stole It."

John Runyon: Cool.

LOL blog #1

These two things made me laugh aloud today.

1.


2.


1. screen capture via internet.
2. from "Razzle-Dazzle Riddles" by Giuliano Maestro (Clarion Books, 1985).

Rightly rejected cover concept for Lucky Peach 4, the "American Food" issue

This was my rejected (and rightly so) cover concept for Lucky Peach no. 4, the "American Food" issue....

The poop is faux — a tasty extruded smoosh of chunky pb & Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup. The whipped cream is real.



In other news, the spandex USA bodysuit will appear on this other cover coming soon.

c. b. bundle

Richard Rerfect

Welcome back to Crude Futures, where it's always the internet.

It's Friday night at 10:37. Katie has been asleep for over half an hour. I'm tired. I've been out of the habit of blogging for years. The house is a disaster. The blog is a disaster. The comment system has stopped working. Why can't people comment on Crude Futures posts anymore? The reason is unclear. Time has passed, and web-based interface shit should not age poorly. Surprise! It has aged poorly. What is the excuse? There is no excuse. It's a blog -- dust and rust don't live here. Try to imagine an oxidized blog post. It's not reality. Pixel patina? Absurd, like asking Google Maps for the street address of Photoshop. Jeeves: Where can Siri and I find an open, affordable Adobe Photoshop in my area at this hour? Time has passed; so what? Why should the blog care? Here at Crude Futures we're just as green and pink and white as ever. Welcome back to Crude Futures, where it's always the internet. Firefox, you haven't aged a bit. Firefox, please look at me when I'm talking to you. Is your back forever turned?



I've lost access to the master blog account. TypePad [i.e. this blog's software platform --ed.] now requires a full email address for logging into the blog, whereas it used to require just a username. The sole effect of this login paradigm shift is, for me, very simple: I now have zero access to this blog's master-account tools, whereas I used to have full access. I'm posting this blog post from my "parentally controlled" junior blog account. Suffice it to say: this is a bullshit situation. And "so typical." Typical of what? Typical of the sucky wake of the forward march of technology. 2012 don't care about 2004. 2004? Good for a joke. Things weren't as developed. I was in my twenties. I wasn't a dad. I can hear the ghost of Steev's laughter in these halls right now; I can hear Steev laughing at my tendency to quickly and firmly criticize technology. And I can take the laughter. The joke is on me: the updated blogware has worked an un-wonder. Ha ha: I'm emotionally involved. Ha ha: I'm an old grump. Ha ha the choice is easy: keep up or don't.



Harumph. Things here at TypePad have changed; why have things changed? (No good answer.) Why change what was working? This blog's backend always worked great from 2004 to 2008. I feel as though I have returned to my old home and found the front door's lock changed — a free service; an unwanted so-called courtesy. Why was the lock changed? This has always been a decent neighborhood. Nobody ordered a free lock upgrade. The old lock was great. I love my old key; I knew just how to jiggle it. Nobody called the locksmith. I've crept around back and have snuck into my old home through an unlocked window. The house is empty and quiet. Everything is just where I left it. Helloooo?



Molloy is crying.

Let the book into your heart

META: enter scanned man, enter light / exit right, W'rofta Neverneverland, Clem Snitch, Frem Feg, "Sometime let's connect for coffee and Connect Four sometime", At times like this I rake a single leaf, meaning of "acronyms as a whole", meaning of AAAW acronym, TAFG = Total Aggression Fight Gear, TAFG = The Addams Family Gold (pinball machine), Molloy cries and screams for he is a baby, Alton's getting a new doyt [dart] gun this weekend; he scored this dart gun the old-fashioned way: he earned it.", kim chee can be constructed from apples instead of cabbage according to David Chang's Momofuku Ssam bar restaurant, homophone = "to scratch a beard itch" = "to scratch a beer ditch", remember the guy who says "his elevens are up" in Life Stinks? I do., Ebert disliked Dark Shadows, Manohla Dargis selected Dark Shadows as a NYT Critics' Pick while including this withering assessment in the review: "Mr. Burton’s talents can make him seem more like a production designer than a director..."; chooler, trupt, refner, clefyod, Grifty Shades of Ray, nuptials (pron. "numptuals") to numb-tuals, Kaboodle the whole kitten = the whole kitten Kaboodle, a fire ladder is like a liar but fatter, an elephant's tusk is like a public telephone's musk (redolent), a robot grave is like a go-bot rave, "a well fellow's a swell fellow", a turtle shell's a surta hell (to some), In San Francisco we're never a frog's hop farther from one fog shop or another (or its mother/father), a furry corpse becomes a curry by force, bink bink and the song, Daniel Clowes art exhibit Wexner Center 2014 Columbus Ohio whoowhoo, Rendgarment & Tendfield LLC, Laundersweep & Sweatblood LLC, Gulpwater & Choka LLC

Biff Wig (state I)

Prices for this T-shirt start at $31.30

Noah's Ark Playset with Knife and Batmobile

Yesterday in the mc-µller household:

Who Killed Hats? Let's Put On Our Thinking & Swimming Caps, Dive Into History's Personalized Ocean, and Check it Out

Stop. Flash back a hundred years to 1912, when this picture was taken. Every man wore a hat back then. Boys, or pre-men, wore caps — a kind of junior hat. This is a socialist political rally in Union Square in Manhattan. (The photographer's motivation? Unknown.) There may be a bare head or two in this crowd, but I think those heads are women's. Do you disagree?



Snap back to the present. Here's another rally, Union Square again. Manhattan again. Another photograph — in color, of course. This time it's an Occupy Wall Street demonstration. A hundred years have passed. Same place. Same kind of crowd, if you catch my drift, with all due respect. Same partially obscure/d signs on sticks, yes, but this time: hardly a hat. And again, the photographer's motivation is unknown to everyone — excluding, only perhaps, the photographer:



Skip back one more time. We're still in Union Square, still near the future home of a DSW retail outlet, and Emma Goldman, a brunette, is arriving by car. She's another socialist (this isn't an essay about lefties, it's about hats) and there she is, the only woman in a puddle of men. The meniscus of this puddle is composed of hats. It is safe to assume, knowing what we know, that the photographer who shot this photo was — if he was a man — probably wearing a hat.



So what happened? Why did midcentury American bros drop the follicle-topping chapeaus?

The turning point — or tipping point — most people might say, was John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Before Kennedy's inauguration, no Catholic president had uttered a single word, kissed a single woman, or drawn a single breath. Kennedy was, you see, the first president to be called by people — including himself — a Catholic. (You could look it up: every single president prior to Kennedy wasn't Catholic.)

Furthermore, all presidents up to and including Kennedy wore top hats on their first days at work. Older readers may remember, thanks to Disney's "Teariest Tophat on Pennsylvania Avenue" cartoon: Kennedy brought a top hat to work, but hardly ever put it on. Fashionistas say Kennedy was one of our most charismatic presidents. They say he made hats un-happen. They say that, chronologically speaking, after JFK, guys everywhere, even balding ones like astronaut John Glenn, went topless. Only one thing is for sure: when fashionistas speak, the quantity and quality of the listening is in constant flux. Who's to say who's listening, and how carefully, at any moment?



I am the son of an industrial fiberglass salesman. And my father, Sean McMullen (B.S., Ohio State, 1973), shares this theory with the fashionistas: "Kennedy didn't wear a hat — he hated wearing hats — so hats went out of fashion."

But it is here that my father's theory diverges from that of the fashionistas: "And the Supreme Court outlawed prayer in schools. This was in 1963. And all hell broke loose," dad posits via phone. He continues: "I'm at your nephew's birthday party. Do you want to talk to your mother?"

"Sure," I say.

"I trimmed some bushes in front of grandma and grandpa's house," mom says. "There was water in their basement, too, so Aunt Kris and I cleaned that up. I was happy to be there and help out. It's going to take a long time for grandpa to recover [from recent heart surgery involving a bypass and the replacement of two valves]; he's just really out of breath and having a hard time walking up and down the stairs."

My grandpa was born in 1925. My mom was born in 1951. I ask my mom: "Did grandpa wear a hat to work when you were a little girl?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so. Of course now he's obsessed with putting a hat on when he goes outside. If he goes outside for one second, he has to have a hat on."

"Why?"

"He has Actinic Keratosis — pre-cancerous lesions on his scalp. He had them frozen with liquid nitrogen by the dermatologist, and now he wears that hat — you know the hat — that white hat that he wears crooked on his head. He won't leave the house without it."

If I were the son (or grandson) of Allen S. Krulwich, a hat designer, I could tell you — from a son's (or grandson's) jazzy journalistic perspective — about Allen's theory on the decline and fall of the hat's happy hegemony.



The president who de-hatted America, Allen S. Krulwich thought, was Dwight Eisenhower.

Here's his logic:

In the 1950s — and this was one of Ike's grand accomplishments — he built a vast highway system across America. Interstates went up everywhere. Cities extended roads, turnpikes, highways, and suburbs appeared around every major city. People, instead of taking a bus, a tram, a train to work, could hop into their new Chevy or Ford and drive.

Before Eisenhower, many more people used public transportation. After Eisenhower, they used a car. That, Krulwich thinks, created the critical Head-To-Roof Difference.

A person of average height standing in a bus, tram or subway car has, roughly, three feet between the top of his head and the roof.



If he chooses to wear a hat, (which depending on the hat can extend his height 3 to 18 inches), there is still lots of room above him. So he keeps his hat on.

Now imagine the same person, sitting in the drivers' seat of his car. The Head-To-Roof distance is much narrower, so narrow that to stay comfortable, a man would feel it proper to remove his hat.



Until cars became the dominant mode of personal transport, there was no architectural reason to take your hat off between home and office. With Dwight Eisenhower's interstate highway system came cars, and cars made hats inconvenient, and for the first time men, crunched by the low ceilings in their automobiles, experimented with hat-removal, and got to like it.

Yes, there may have been other motivations; Kennedy had great hair; so did the Beatles, fashion was changing wildly at the time, some believe prayer in school was outlawed; but if we are looking for a president to blame — and Allen S. Krulwich, whose business suffered in the 1960s and 1970s — wanted to blame someone, I'm going to stand with him: I blame Ike, because Ike built the highways that created the cars that lowered the roofs that crushed the hats that changed the fashion that ruined the business that supported the Krulwiches.