AI BS, pointless Camel ads of yore, so-so books, fashion riots in 1943, return of the bathrobe jazz boys, a deeper dig into loren ipsum, maybe more, who knows?

 

My two cents about the latest AI BS

 A gallery, which I won’t name because they’ve already garnered far more publicity than they deserve, has adopted AI for all the wrong reasons (are there any right ones?); to make (ethically questionable) money, to create a cloud of controversy in order to elevate their image (that misfired), and because they could.

Should is a long, LONG distance from could in this instance.

I unsubscribed from their newsletter after reading their embarrassingly silly reasoning for what they did. I no longer care what they show or don’t show in their white cube; they are arts non grata in my mailbox, and, I hope, in many others.

This was Artificial Inanity at its zenith. So far. (shudder)

The following link will mention their besmirched name; so be it. Here’s the travesty. Link.  

 

A nutty 1935 ad full of dress-up folks

It’s the back cover of a 1935 Popular Science magazine from which I sometimes find ephemera for my collage work. (Take a look at (LINK) for about 100 of those 8” X 8” art pieces.) 

Anyway, these so-called outdoor people all luuuuve Camels; first, there’s a Hoot Gibson-like rider of the purple range who values the “Value!” He wears a Halloween outfit and holds a Camel in the same hand that appears to be harboring a huge blunt. He’s leaning as though falling, and smiling. Baked?

Then there’s Helene, horsewoman, who digs the “Mildness!” The hand holding the cig appears to be missing a pinky.

“Healthy Nerves!” shouts Bill Horn, former “gold cup winner.” He steers holding goggles in his steering hand, an odd choice. But hey, one hand is free to hold a Camel to steady those nerves.

And, finally, commanding half the ad’s real estate, is Erwin, who lauds Camel’s “Flavor!” when he’s tired after a day of engineering Boulder Dam. Note Erwin’s jodphurs and lace-up high boots, not de riguer for dam guys, but Erwin just likes getups, much like that lead-off rancher. Maybe he got ‘em from Helene.

I looked up the agency for this brilliance but could only find Ted Bates responsible for 1940’s items like “Camels got a nice ring to it,” after he left Bates, Dorland & Wood in 1939. Oddly enough I was at DFS Dorland for a short time, until they became someone else, taking me right along with them.

Disclaimer: my team never dressed people up in Halloween costumes. BTW, all of the outdoor people in this ad totally ignore the question asked them: “Is this fact important to you?” (“Fact” in the red box being that Camels are made from more expensive tobaccos.)

 

  Old books I’m reading, or no longer reading

Some good, some not. Better than paying new book prices for a collection of words. Where is the Great American Novel hiding?

 I’ve bought some new books but they seem like just words. It’s like their agent told them, it’s time you got back out there. Your plumbing needs updating. That’s what Marlon Brando’s agent told him when he sold him on his part in Missouri Breaks. An aside: Brando insisted on wearing white doe-skin in the movie.

The costume designer told Thomas McGuane, the screenwriter, “‘You tell your friend Brando that we’re in Montana, and any­thing that weighs 300 lbs and is covered in doe­-skin, they throw on the ground and brand.’”

The pile of old books. They aren’t stacking up so well. From the top (and I’ll just do one-or-two-liners on them) Some, I won’t get back to, some I’ve read before, some are new to me. All old.

1.   Tim O’Brien’s July, July. A reunion book. Not great—stopped reading when he brought in a dwarf as a device. I’ve nothing against little people; I just don’t think they should be ill-used.

2.   Klosterman’s A Decade of etc. Mostly music essays—I abandoned this one at toxic heavy metal. Not bad though.

3.   Dr. HST’s Hey Rube. Sportswriting by Hunter. He can write anything and it’s good, lively, kind of crazy. Dated by long ago sports events. Signature Gonzo, though.

4.   Proulx’s Bird Cloud. I found her Barkskins unreadable, same with Accordion Crimes. This better be more like her.

5.   Jim Harrison’s Collected Ghazals. Good—I just read 2, maybe 3 ghazals a sitting. Why ghazals I don’t know, but with that Harrison strength.

6.   DFW’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. I didn’t read this back in the day—must say I’m glad it surfaced.

7.   Hersh’s Dark Side of Camelot. Pretty good, though I’m tiring of “background” filler and old pols. Let’s get to it, Seymour.

8.   Mark Arax, West of the West. Essays, well-written, mostly SoCal, mostly…okay.

 

  Zoot Suit Riots, June 1943

This is the old pachuco hand tattoo—it has since become more graphically intricate, but all signify la vida loca and a latino, latina brotherhood, sisterhood.(Link to explanation)

I was five and wouldn’t  have known a pachuco from a patchouli plant but encountered the former as a teen. Anyway, pachuco was both a gang name and a style for Mexican/American youth, a subculture often characterized by zoot suits, a flamboyant mode of dress featuring pegged pants that ballooned from the ankles and wide-shouldered, long sports coats (“drapes”) topped off by a porkpie-like hat with a much wider brim than most porkpies of the day.

Here’s a link that shows the style. Edward Olmos…vaya! Impresionante! Talk about style.

It was, and is, cool to the extreme. And it was outlawed in Los Angeles; the zoot ban remains on the books today. Why? Dumb old laws, go figure. You can buy a new custom zoot suit at (Link)

Long story but, some zoot suiters made fun of some sailors on shore leave. More sailors got together and attacked zoot suiters. Booze was involved (ain’t it always in mob-think?). Injuries ensued. The police arrested the zoot suiters. Racial deal. How could U.S. sailors do any wrong in war time? Etc. (BTW I dig sailors, my dad was one)

Anyway, it was never forgotten. Here’s a link to a recent zoot riot memorial cruise—no words just many fantastic Latino-made lowriders and rods. Again, vaya!

 

 

We called it Greeking

Back in the old days of yester when we did layouts by hand, we actually had to know how to draw. And the better the layout, the more realistic it had to look, like a finished ad.

We indicated type with lines but that didn’t quite fit with a well-rendered layout. So we laid in Greeking. Nonsense words that looked like type. Then, the press-type sheet people got wise and sold us sheets of different sized Loren Ipsum in a variety of faces. We’d lay that down on our nicely rendered layouts and it confused some clients at first. “What language is this?”

Anyway, if you’re interested in how Loren Ipsum got its start, here’s the link.

 

The Bathrobe Boys are back, better than ever

Kubla, the jazz guys who do covers like you’ve never heard.The last we saw of them (May blog) they were in shower gear, not sure why, but maybe to emphasize freshness. That they are. Here they are again, with a Marvin Gaye song in which the trumpet talks, actually talks. These guys are magic, each and every one. The Link is here.

 

That’s it for June. Happy World Cuppage (FIFA, why fleece your own?) Don’t dig soccer? UFL is worth watching, really is. And it’s baseball season. (I tried out for Folger’s back when they had an apostrophe, got cut doggone quick, too. Had to get a job that summer. I delivered groceries in the store’s new 1955 Ford station wagon with automatic trans. Not a bad job, that.)

Ooxxoo  G-Man

No tariffs on my art, website traffic is up, artflation is down, bathrobe funk at its best, a book, Amtrak rules, and much more—

 Traffic is way up on this site

 I attribute that to one thing: the relatively new collage art page. That’s good as I want folks to see the new art; beyond that I haven’t a clue as to how to sell it. So far, sales have happened through the comment box and those have been people I know and they send checks. (Thanks, people I know!)

The main site always gets a healthy bump when the blog comes out, and it’s always the same—the number of those who signed up for it and a few more who check it out due to Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Here’s the collage art link in case you haven’t been there or wish to return.

It’s lagging behind as I haven’t yet sent the newest batch over for still photography. Some are on 1950’s road maps, others have topo maps as backgrounds. Even a 1960’s era The Village Voice is the bottom layer of another. And a 1935 Popular Science provides the backgrounds for several, as do the current Cherokee weekly newspaper and a very old KC phone book.

I use coins, crypto, currency, stamps, tokens, old ephemera and photos on many, plus oils, acrylics, and dyes for what I call the energy signature, an ever-present personal abstract device that I hope gives each piece some drama and power, and a base for the coins and interest items that often make an ironic statement all their own. (BTW did you know that Bitcoin ATMs just declared bankruptcy and withdrew all those machines? Link That’s part of the narrative of some of these collages, technofads like NFT’s, Crypto, AI)

 

Music Break

 Bathrobe casual redefines relaxing yet very crisp jazz, a Stevie Wonder cover that just had a refreshing shower. The crowd is worth watching; the gent with the long pony tail is in an entrancing trance and the short-haired guy who just joined him has his own moves. Oddly, many folks in the crowd don’t seem to notice the band or anything else. But the band, I think you’ll agree, is so worth noticing. Wowsers. Enjoy. Here’s the link.

 

  And then there’s Deaf Man Vinyl

 Have you ever wanted to own a record store? Well, this gent tells you how in a very effortless, entertaining, easy-to-take way. I found myself hooked on this by happenstance, and watched all 25 minutes of it. I don’t do that often. Here’s his link.

Usually there’s far too much padding and BS in these things and I flee about a minute in. It made me wish this guy was closer than Georgia so I could just stroll in and say hi.

Oh, and if you have time or inclination, here’s another record guy with the 20 most requested records of all time. You might have some big money vinyl sitting around—take a look at (Link).          

And this: do you have this Elvis Costello record? Interesting story here. Link.

Booooooaaarrd!

 Train trip. Amtrak rules. (Yes, it does, and yes, there are some.) This is a fun few minutes that’ll prepare you for a low-stress trip in a long swaying view-tube that goes clickety-clack and shows you bucolic countryside like you rarely ever see it anymore. People wave as you pass. Cows look up, mid-chew. Some cars are reserved for quiet. Some for other stuff. Seats are wide. Leg room is abundant. Well, take a look. Here’s the link.

 

A book for the ages

Annie Proulx wrote it so you know it’s good. But it’s also, by turns of pages, sad, instructive, unflinching, embarrassing (but only if you’re human), scary as hell, and so important in these declining days of our taken-for-granted planet which shows unmistakable signs of imminent decrepitude and a few million years without human habitation. Or destruction.

Whew. Sobering and necessary, if, indeed, it’s not too late already. (It is, in some areas) Read Fen, Bog & Swamp, A short history of peatland destruction and its role in the Climate Crisis. (Link)

And this: Since 1950, the world’s population has increased 200%. What’s this mean for deforestation due to more cropland? For food? Raging wildfires? For drinkable water? For disease? For weather violence? Sorry, but it’s serious. Anyone glued to the tornado warnings in Kansas and Oklahoma the last couple nights might agree.

 

I leave you with The Stroll

I might just have to learn this. F won every dance contest she ever entered so I’ve got a heck of a teacher…could be a funny video coming up.

I mentioned strolling a couple of articles above and it stuck in my mind; here’s THE Stroll on American Bandstand, 1957. I was in college then, too old for such shenanigans, but we had our own versions. Alas, we were never this cool in Junior High. (Link)

(Caution) The Diamonds song, The Stroll, will stick to your brain’s innards like Gorilla Glue. I hum it daily. And that line about the candy store—anyone remember tiny waxlike coke bottles? You’d bite the top off and swallow the sugary liquid inside. I bought those things and smuggled them into class. Why? Who the heck knows. Awful stuff. Dentists loved ‘em.

 

 

See you in June, God willing and the creek don’t rise. Enjoy the rest of May. Stroll through summer and be kind to your planet—make a move, anything, to conserve or at least not deplete, to mitigate. Soften the shocks of change. How? Read Fen, Bog & Swamp. F and I are planting tomatoes. Seems like the right direction. That, and rethinking the giant carbon-and-CO2-emitting crypto mine planned for the north pasture. (Sorry, not that funny.)         

Xoxo, truly.  G-Man.

Silos are for farming, poetry month has its control freaks, dressing up for biking, what’s your OPS, take me into the ballgame and much more…

  Corporate Jargoneers

Circle back to this, low-hanging fruits…then leverage that dang silo, if you have the bandwidth…

It was a rant. A long one. I dumped it because who really cares. It contained all the circling back, leveraging, silos, swim lanes etc etc ad nauseum and I do mean nauseum. In the end I didn’t want to tire you with this perversion of communication—I want you to come back for the next blog, and the next one. You’re friends. Advertising, an otherwise decent profession, seems to attract these jargonistas and I wish I’d been ready for one who asked me if I had any bandwidth about 15 years ago;

“Oh, you mean the difference between the upper and lower frequencies in a continuous band of frequencies? If measured in units of hertz? I don’t think so. Have you consulted IT?”

But no. I just said “Huh?”

My great-grandfather was wont to say, I’m told, that if a person used profanity it simply meant that person was illiterate.

He might have modified that statement to include Corporate Jargoneers and their BS inventions as well.

  

Poetry Month

April. Stuff turning green out there. Overnight. Budding. I’ve spied bees on the warmer days. No hummingbirds yet.

Leaves me kinda breathless…

How the owls and squirrels made it through that horrible fifty below zero stretch I don’t know, but they did. The same squirrels that tease my dogs by acting as if they don’t notice them, then leap onto their tree at the last split second. Inspiration.

Poetry. Read some. Write some. I recommend Ada Limon. Kooser and Collins. I’m re-reading Leaves of Grass by grandmaster Whitman.

It has been suggested, to honor Poetry Month’s 30th day, that you carry a poem in your pocket, to share. Here’s a link with all the info on that. Warning: it’s gotten rather top-heavy but there are some fun ways to participate. For my part, I’ll recommend George Bilgere’s daily site which is now habit with me; he shares a poem he likes, daily, and then comments on it. I never miss his poem a day all year, mainly for his wry comments. (Link) Maybe it’ll become your habit, too.

Happy Poetry Month.

 

A Primer on Motorcycles

Dennis (I don’t know his last name) is a Morgan dealer in Colorado, and every now and then I get his latest offerings of new and reconstituted Morgans. Beauties. Unaffordable, I’m sure. But, this time he sent a couple of items on The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, a cousin, no doubt, of TROG (The Race of Gentlemen).

First, I’ll share the style guide for this; it’s short and informative. (Link)

And, then, the ride itself which has raised millions for men’s health. 60M so far. There’s a fun video and info. (Link) The event is in May, and male or female, you are invited. It’s worldwide. Get them scooters tuned up and ready. Looks like a blast.

Then there’s TROG. Everyone should know about this. (Link)

 

Here’s some Life Advice

I chanced across this nugget a week ago and it lightened my day considerably. Lorem ipsum always does. I won’t say who did this “oops” because they are usually quite proper—and it wasn’t an April Fool’s item either. It was well after that date. So I googled it.

(“Based on available information, there is no evidence that (shall remain nameless) published "lorem ipsum" placeholder text as actual life advice on purpose.”)

But I loved it. And embrace it as wholeheartedly as I do all Internet Life Advice.

 

Speaking of Jargon

When did MLB sportscasters start using the term “OPS,” anyway? I heard it when F was driving me somewhere yesterday, and she quite nicely allowed me to listen to sports talk on 610. For once they weren’t assessing the trades and salary cap difficulties of the KC Chiefs, but discussing the Royals.

The guy kept mentioning the OPS of a certain player and I asked her to ask her phone what the heck that was. No intelligible answer from Siri.

I do listen to the occasional game on radio when in the car and am able to translate the sounds and the commentary into a pretty passable mind picture. I get into it. The lulls, the action, the broadcaster’s comments on the batter, always interesting. And there’s a quickening of pulse when I hear that unmistakable “Craack!” (Go, Salvy)

Anyway, OPS. I looked it up. It’s Lorem Ipsum to me, but here ya go: I’m sending you to Wikipedia (Link) because there are so many explanations out there that it’s kind of dizzying. OPS is a reachy initialism for On base Plus Slugging and it basically combines a player’s ability to reach base, with their power, with a league-average OPS usually between .700 and .750. Good luck. Bring a calculator.

 

  Gasoline downer

The price of gas has brought more lowlifes out of the woodwork; they are now drilling tanks and stealing gas (Link) creating a triple whammy; first, the empty reading on your gauge when you thought you had half a tank. Second, you’ve got just enough to get to the gas station, but when you fill, it runs all over the concrete. Third, insurance costs. IF they take care of it. But with deductible, probably not—there goes a grand for repair.

 

Lifeguard!

Didn’t mean to cause a funk with that gas item, just beware is all, and wary.

This’ll lift your spirits. Lifeguard stations with color and panache. A Miami architectural firm designed these delightfully quirky towers for your “Life’s a beach” pleasure. Let’s see; got a good book, sun block, RayBans, Yeti cooler. Think I’ll set up over by that magic mid-century little pastel house. (Link)

 

  Playing the slide shovel

And that’s it for April. I will leave you with music. My advice to myself, when all else is confusing, leave ‘em with music. Here’s the offering for now: it’s the video for the saying, “That guy could play a shovel.” Here’s the link. He’s got a handle on the slide action, too.

  May the rest of your April be blessed. And the year, too. XXOOO G-man

 

 

 

 

 

Typewriters, pivoting to paint and energy, who’ll stop the rain, card-carrying Cherokee, Gloriously Galloping, music, and much more…

Pivot: from welding back to paint and flat art

This one has a doge coin in it…

So far there are 36 pieces, (#36 above) all 8” X 8”and they pick up where I left off at art school some sixty-five years ago, when I coupled collage with energetic painting that seemed to complement one another. They still do. More at www.wisesculpture.com (click collage art)(Link)

I’m excited about this latest direction and hope to find a venue where dozens of pieces can compete for a viewer’s attention in a white cube setting. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Due to the crossroads gallery closing (Hilliard) and the Santa Monica (Lambert) venue doing the same, I’m left to my own devices to present these pieces to a public here in KC. I have crappy pictures of all, taken on the fly with an iPhone; I’ll remedy this by obtaining professional services in-studio with proper lighting and attention to detail.

 

  Tipping Point: cheapo states.

 Ran across this Reader’s Digest article (Link) and was relieved not to be included statewise. You cheapskate states, (say that fast ten times) read and reap; dig a little deeper in those pockets. Tips were a main source of income for servers pre-covid, and even more important now.

When I was a busboy I chased down a diner who had left twenty cents by his plate (to the delight of his waitress) proclaiming in a loud voice, “Sir, you forgot your change!” Neither here nor there, it’s always fun to remember that Barbra Streisand is a rude, demanding diner with a reputation as a terrible tipper. Take a bow, New York state. In spite of that rep, she’s also known as a generous philanthropist.

 

  Cruising CCR brought back memories of the 60’s

 “Who’ll Stop The Rain” brought up a 70’s trailer of the movie by that name, (Link) starring Nick Nolte, who plays…Nick Nolte.

Still from “The Deep”…

I met the method actor in Omaha in the early 60’s’; he was doing soft time at home in an ankle bracelet after the FBI shut down his fake driver’s license operation and I was working on a bridge there. We had mutual friends. This was a year or so before he starred in “The Deep” with Jacqueline Bisset. I recall him as a charismatic and rather charming smartass.

That same summer I met my (now) wife’s father on the job in Ashland, Nebraska. He was a superintendant and a handsome devil, who, had he known I would later pursue his daughter, would have pitched me into the river. She deserved better than the likes of me, a common laborer. Still does.

Serendipity was high that summer. I married a neighbor/friend of Nolte’s for better or worse. Nolte movies laced in and out of the years; they still do. Anyway, here’s CCR’s “Proud Mary.” (Link)

The year of the Glorious Gallop

 Okay, I admit I don’t know exactly what Behance is (I first thought it was the uber-successful singer, but now I think it’s part of Adobe) nor do I quite get Glorious Gallop, but I really liked what I saw and read so far, and I think I want one (a GG set) even though it looks hard to play, like 3D chess, maybe. I don’t even recall where I saw this; I’m guessing a Communication Arts newsletter, for attribution? Maybe you can make heads or tails out of this cool article. (Link)

Card-carrying Cherokee

I covered up info that isn’t germane to this article…

 And a beauty at that, my wife.  Her dad was half, making her a quarter and, therefor eligible for the tribal rolls. It’s always been official, and now there’s picture I.D. so she can vote in tribal elections. A native Oklahoman by birth, her proud ancestry is a straight line back to Wilma Mankiller, the first female Cherokee chief.

When she drove over to Lawrence, KS with her papers, she met the present tribal chief, Chuck Hoskins, a progressive sort who has led with vision, strength and an eye to tribal sovereignty, focusing on healthcare and economic development. He was elected in 2019 and reelected in 2023. Proud heritage, laminated I.D.

 

The last word on typewriters

I love ‘em, so had to include this Link. I hope you find it as interesting as I did. (I have some antique typewriters gathering dust and no value or equity, plus a Selectric I used to write on in the days of White-out mistake cover up. Tom Hanks, Sam Shepherd and Dominic Scalise. (Scalise wrote this great Substack piece.) Thank you all. Clickety clack, dinngg!

 

So goes the March version of this windy blog; I hope you liked some of it.

See you in spring. XXOOO g-man

 

 

 

 

 

$16 million for your thoughts, no January blog, West Wing, February blues, a book, much more…

The weather outside is (still) frightful

Brrr. Hope you all kept warm during that last thing.  And it returned with more frigidity. Colder than a banker’s foreclosure smile. Than a well-digger’s shovel. 20 below wind chill. We kept the inside water running at Wise Acres; better a higher water bill than burst or frozen pipes. Been there.

Warming trend coming…along with the water bill. Not complaining.

Cabinet doors to sinks were open, still are. Frozen pipes avoided so far. The sump pump discharge froze up, so waited until a relatively warm(er) day to free that up so we could do laundry. Power stayed on as the ice storms slid farther south than Kansas, and east. No glaciers melting around here, though.

Just checked the weather and it’s going to be below zero tonight. Then it ramps up from there into daylight 30s and 40s. Dang near tropical. BTW, here’s a link to the best advice I’ve seen and it comes from Louisiana. (Link)

 Never open with the weather. Sorry, Elmore.* Sorry faithful readers.

• 10 Rules of Writing. Elmore Leonard

No blog in January?

 But, not to ignore it altogether, here’s a token look back at its first day from Ted Kooser’s The Wheeling Year, A Poet’s Field book (Link)

“It’s New Year’s Day and the future backs up, beeping with cheer, and closes its iron maw on the past. And then, with its massive hydraulics, it crushes the last year, mushing all the days together.Then it lumbers away, groaning and leaking, the scraps of the good times flapping farewell from the edges.”

The epigraph to this book is both biblical and poetic:  “One day tells its tale to another.”  Psalm 19

The slim book has about 20 short poetic entries for each month and each one is a wonder. I return to it time and again, whatever the month or the season. It gets five round bales from the Wise Acres Reading Forum for its wisdom, beauty and daily breath-take-awayness.

 

The case for no term limits

For the series West Wing, anyway. It ran from 1999 to 2006, and now Netflix has the whole massively award-winning episodic filibuster. I watch an episode or two a night, and am floored by the acting, the one and two and three-liners, the heart and soul, pathos, outright laughs, life lessons, kindness, cruelty, deep human-ness, on and on.

Donation receipt from the Washington National Monument Society. Tall orders get done when the West Wing is involved…

I’d forgotten how much I liked this series a few years ago, but I recall that I’d wished our then present white house housed people like the series. The thing is, it probably did. The creep level in any given admin is probably high, as is the cool level.  It’s a microcosm of our country.

Good minds, not-so-hot minds, mix it up until they figure it all out. The government is run sloppily, or better than that. Surprising presidents like Jimmy Carter, who seem ideal in some ways, will probably pop up, historically, as a lukewarm leader. Same as Obama and Bush. Clinton? Nixon? LBJ? No, Carter had standards.

If anyone had suggested a West Wing Two, say in 2007, somehow hinting at the actual events of the last few Trump-Biden-Trump years, it would be tossed as unbelievable. “Come back with a script that’s not so sci-fi or Kafkaesque and has real people, and we’ll look at it.”

 Meanwhile, I’ll watch West Wing nightly and to heck with term limits on that series. I missed a lot of the original episodes. Thanks, Netflix and Aaron Sorkin and Martin Sheen and all the rest of you guys; truly a job well done.

 

 

February Blues

And other music. This time of year I find that a helping of Rhapsody In Blue (Link) and some French Market Coffee with chicory does wonders for my outlook on a cold gray morning. Links to R.J.Ronqillo (Link) and Trouble In Mind with some slide/resonator magic; TajMo: Keb Mo and Tajmahal and Room on the Porch, (Link) at the Grand Old Opry, and a short slice of Jesse Davis guitar solo (Link) (he played with Tajmahal a lot during his all too short stay on earth—I include him in case you’ve not heard him, and once you have, you’ll look him up. Indigenous genius, So, links provided above in bold near the artists’ names. Enjoy. I’ll be rhapsodizing right along with you.

$16,764,500 for your thoughts

And you thought we were all done with pennies. So did I. I did wonder if any, maybe 5 or 6, were going to be earmarked as the actual last ones, therefore making them rare coins. But this latest deal from the mint surpasses that.

Art news tells us (Link) that “Stack’s Bowers Galleries, the nation’s premier auction house for rare coins, set a record that is unlikely to ever be broken, selling 696 2025-dated cents or “pennies” for more than $16 million.”

Gallery President Brian Kendrella said, “They captured the public imagination like few rare coins we’ve ever handled.” In fact the numismatists so crowded the website that the servers got fried and the auction was postponed until it was back online. For less than seven bucks’ worth of pennies. 696 of them.

Another car dealer heard from

In days of automobile yore, you bucked the big three at great peril—now, everyone does it. And they all seem to have pretty good reasons and products. If only everything out there could be bought for under 100k, the maker might have a shot at selling them.

Good movie. I think I’ll get the DVD, watch it again…

I was in high school when the Tucker tried to become a garage-hold word in the fifties. I saw one in KC’s Brookside; it had a neon sign in the back window: “You have just been passed by a Tucker.” I loved the derring-do, the audacity. I didn’t see another one for thirty some years; I was working at Saatchi & Saatchi in Los Angeles and I used to come in early, about 5am. That morning, in the lobby, a pale metallic blue Tucker sat under the lobby lights like a shimmering dream. They had brought it there in the night as a prop for the Jeff Bridges movie, Tucker, The Man and His Dream, (Link) a 1980’s movie that Saatchi was advertising through its many Hollywood contacts. The Coppola-directed movie dramatized just why you didn’t take on Detroit and the Big Three automakers. At that time.

Note: I was working on Toyota, anathema to the three afore-mentioned car manufacturers. We did good.

Anyway, the way was paved for any Tom, Dick or Elon with a few hundred million burning in their pockets to jump into the ring. Hence Rivian, Tesla, and a host of others. The car shown above in the main pic is an Olympian, the newest of the bunch. Here’s their website (Link). See what you think.

And that, dear G-Blog readers is that

The exhaust pipe end of the Jan-Feb edition. Stay warm and safe. Remember those who depend on the shelters to get inside to warmth and safety. The people who watch out for others are overextended in this kind of weather. Humans and animals need their help, and ours. Thanks.