It came from the shower drain…

Warning: this is a disgusting — albeit environmentally friendly — tip.

As time goes by, the water in our shower tends to drain more slowly as hair begins to accumulate in the pipe below. I sheathe our drain plate with the webbed netting that garlic or onions sometimes come in, and while that catches the majority of offending hairs, it certainly does not get everything.

Now, I really don’t like the idea of relying on chemical gels to deal with clogs because 1) they’re more of a band-aid than a true fix, and 2) I only turn to chemicals as a last resort when it comes to most anything, really.

So, the other day as I was scrubbing myself in an inch of standing water, I got the idea to employ our toilet plunger since we’re basically dealing with the same kind of problem, if you think about it. However, rather than push the clog down through the plumbing, my enthusiastic “suction” stroke forced the pipe to cough up a fist-sized hairball just oozing with the most revolting, black, foul-smelling sludge. It scared the hell out of me at first and a second later caused me to gag. Still, it was mentally satisfying to see that mass come up. Really satisfying.

My suggestion: the next time you find yourself dealing with a clogged drain, go for your handy dandy plunger first — though if you want to avoid being traumatized, try plunging away for a few seconds rather than giving a single “up, up, and away” stroke as I did. You’ll sleep better for it.

Ray Rayner: that’s all folks!

This week I’ve turned my attention back to First Forty, a project that’s been on ice since last September. I picked up right where I’d left off, with my short encapsulation on the day’s events from February 22, 1978: namely, that Ray Rayner had revealed the winner of the jelly belly count and… well, that’s about it.

Now, I haven’t thought about Ray in years, but he was an important figure in my life during the 5th and 6th (and possibly 7th) grades, more than I knew at the time. I’d like to take a minute here to remember him.

Seeing Ray’s name again prompted me to do a little sleuthing around the Web, and it wasn’t long before I turned up all sorts of good stuff.

After we moved back to Chicago (Warrenville) in the fall of 1977, I spent most weekday mornings from 7 – 8 in front of the tube with Ray Rayner and Friends on WGN. (I imagine this went on for about two years — at which time I entered junior high and had to leave the house earlier to catch the bus.) Come to think of it now, I was usually up before 7 because I remember watching Orion Samuelson (The Big “O”!) deliver the daily farm report: a mix of agricultural news, weather, the price of pork belly futures and all that jazz. This is what Midwestern kids (used to) grow up with.

For me, Ray was the undisputed king of morning television. (I know now that he’d done a lot of television work in Chicago prior to my time, but Ray Rayner and Friends is how I first came to know him.) Donning a funky jumpsuit — the orange one with the tree-branch appliqués being my favorite — covered in “to do” notes in the pre-Post It era, Ray would wing his way through an hour of classic cartoons; news, weather, traffic, and sports; visits with Dr. Lester Fisher from the Lincoln Park Zoo; disastrous attempts to reproduce the featured arts-and-crafts project; friendly chat sessions with Cuddly Duddley (an over-sized spaniel puppet); and tense “guest appearances” by Chelveston the duck (“Chelvy”), whom would often terrorize Ray, snapping at and chasing him around the studio. Good stuff.

The (aforementioned) jelly-bean count was a contest Ray held annually. He’d fill a jar with jelly beans and have viewers try to guess the amount, all entries to be sent to the station by post-card. One year I brought a scientific approach to the task: I found a jar of approximate size and counted the number of jelly beans required to make a single “layer”; then, multiplying the number of layers I estimated it would take to reach the top of the jar, I arrived at my answer. I don’t think I was even close. So much for science.

(One interesting association I have with Ray is watching his show with nobody else around. Surely this could not have been the case, as other people in the house would have been up and moving about between the hours of 7 and 8. It may be that Dad was already out the door by 7 while Mom tended to sleep in. [I don't recall seeing her most mornings — which was fine, since I loved getting up early and taking care of my own breakfast and lunch, and having the house to myself.] Todd, I think, usually stayed upstairs after he’d got up. I don’t remember him being there with me in front of the television with a bowl of cereal, and I don’t recall ever talking to Todd about Ray. In fact, I don’t think I spoke to anybody about him. It may be that I didn’t want to share Ray. He was like a favorite uncle who never talked down to you, and you got the feeling that there wasn’t anything he’d rather do than slowly welcome in the day together.)

Although there aren’t many video clips of Ray on the Net (copyright being the main obstacle — which has also prevented any DVDs of Ray from being released) I hit the jackpot when I came across FuzzyMemories.tv, a site dedicated to “Classic Chicago Television”. Their “Screening Room” section holds a number of clips from Ray Rayner and Friends, including the last episode that ever aired. I never saw that one — don’t even remember when I stopped watching Ray or hearing that his show was going off the air. So, finding these clips was a real treat. When Yumi went out to dinner with her girlfriends the other night I cozied up to the computer with a glass of wine and teleported back to 1981 (sans the wine), and found myself plunked down on the floor in front of our living room TV.

It’s amazing how the slightest trigger can tap into memories and sensations the brain has long-since filed away and forgotten. I mean, it’s all there. I’m really starting to believe that with the right prompt it should be possible to call-up nearly anything you’ve experienced and registered. I’m finding this especially true with my journals. Stuff I’ve had no need to recall comes back with amazing clarity after reading a few sentences which, in turn, lay a path to where those memories have been stored. But I digress. What I want to say is that hearing Ray’s voice again brings me right back to that place and time, and the warm tingles work their way up my spine to the base of my skull, caressing the back of my head. Watching Ray takes me to my safe place, my bubble.

Even so, it was a little uncomfortable watching some of the clips from Ray’s last show. It’s obvious that he’s not entirely comfortable himself — trying to keep it together but at times letting the heightened emotional impact of the event bleed through. It always irks me that the shows which often get released or otherwise memorialized are the “final” or “20th-anniversary” specials etc., when nothing is as it should be. Most of the time all you really want to see is a run-0f-the-mill, everyday episode. Those are the ones you remember. Thank god there are a few other clips of Ray Rayner and Friends on Fuzzy Memories from the late 70s, when nothing momentous was coming down the pike (and from the time when I would have been watching).

Observations from the here-and-now (and a few other things I’d forgot):

Pacing. Talk about s-l-o-w! Wow. How quickly we forget how our viewing sensibilities have been drastically reconfigured in only a few decades. These days I often find myself watching Turner Classics when I want to relax if only because of the pacing. Remember when cuts between scenes lasted longer than a few seconds? Watching these old clips now of Ray’s show, with it’s lack of background music and gratuitous graphic overlays, is a breath of fresh air.

Budget. Holy cow, Ray Rayner and Friends looks like many public access shows did on cable in the late 80s. And this was WGN — the country’s first “super station”. But you know what? We never cared.

Intelligence. I’d forgot how Ray never “dumbed down” his show, much in the same way that Rocky & Bullwinkle never shied away from biting wit and cutting sarcasm. Ray talked to you like one of his buddies or members the studio crew (whom he collectively referred to as “Chauncey”). The man was funny. Plus, he’d do things like pull gems from the songbook of pop and jazz standards and proceed to murder them on-air, accompanied off-camera by Don Orlando on the Wurlitzer. I love it.

Ray Rayner and Friends also included news, traffic, weather, and sports. In hindsight, I suppose the producers threw these in to add a little “parent appeal”, but why shouldn’t kids like to be clued in as to what was going on, as well? Mom and Dad watched the evening news; I got mine in the morning. (Ray’s traffic updates were always read over the same stock footage of cars stuck in traffic. Classic.) I’d also forgot how Ray’s chalkboard had all the latest college and professional sports scores off to one side. As Merri Dee would read the news and weather I’d try and figure out what teams all the different abbreviations stood for.

And Ray also delighted in trivia, asking questions (primarily to his crew, pulled from a book he kept on hand entitled Super Trivia) that no kid would rightly know the answers to, but you always learned something new and never felt belittled in the process. Take Ray’s last show, for instance. Here are a few of the questions he threw out as part of his “quiz” (c’mon Dad, I know you can do this):

1. What was the real name of The Saint?

Which band or band leader is each of the following singers associated with?

2. Mildred Bailey

3. Rosemary Clooney

4. Dorothy Collins

5. Bing Crosby

6. Doris Day

7. Mike Douglas

8. Bob Eberly

9. Art Carney (yes, he was a vocalist at one time)

10. Fred Astaire

(I didn’t get any of the answers, even now. Wrong generation. But you really need to watch the video clip to see how Ray’s enthusiasm for the material sucks you right in, no matter how obscure. It’s also interesting to note how Ray seems the most relaxed during that final show while reading his trivia questions — it provides a distraction even as the set is being struck around him.)

One last note: when I see and hear Frazier Thomas again I immediately think of my Aunt Jean. There’s just something so “Chicago” about them both

It’s obvious to me now that so much of what Ray did on his show was for himself: all the inside jokes, cultural references, and skylarking with the crew. But you could tell that he was really enjoying himself, and that enthusiasm came right across the airwaves to us, the audience. And rather than feel like an outsider because you didn’t “get” everything Ray said or talked about, his friendly demeanor and easy manner had the opposite effect: because he could just be himself, you felt respected. He wasn’t putting on an act just because there was a kid in the room. And I appreciated that. True, I didn’t get a lot of Ray’s humor, but I knew I would, eventually. I was just happy to be treated as an equal — even if Ray did advise me to take extra precaution on cold days and bundle up before heading off to school

From the Web I learned that Ray left Chicago and did some work in Albuquerque for a while before retiring from television. He passed away on January 21, 2004 in Fort Myers, Florida.

Thanks for everything, Ray. There’ll never be another quite like you.

(link: Fuzzy Memories “Classic Chicago Television)
(link: Ray Rayner on Wikipedia)
(link: Ray Rayner obit)
(link: Ray Rayner on tvparty.com)

(answers to quiz: 1. Simon Templar 2. Mildred Bailey – Paul Whiteman & Red Norvo 3. Rosemary Clooney – Tony Pastor 4. Dorothy Collins – Raymond Scott 5. Bing Crosby – Paul Whiteman 6. Doris Day – Les Brown & Bob Crosby 7. Mike Douglas – Kay Kyser 8. Bob Eberly – Jimmy Dorsey 9. Art Carney – Horace Heidt 10. Fred Astaire – Leo Reisman)

Dabbling in tabs

I’ve really been enjoying having my guitar back (the Tokai that Todd mailed me recently). It’s also been fun looking up guitar tabs on the Web — mainly for intro licks that get me to sit down and practice for a few minutes. Man, gone are the days (for the most part) of plunking down big bucks for pricey sheet music. I still have a whole boxful at Dad’s house — but only those titles that made it past the culling: the others I flogged years ago at Logo’s Books in Santa Cruz to scrounge up some cash.

(Trivia: first sheet music I ever purchased was U2’s Joshua Tree; bought at Crow’s Nest music in Naperville, July 1989. I remember coming home and trying to work out a D chord on the back porch of our house. It seemed unlikely I’d ever train my fingers to automatically configure themselves in that position and I wondered how in the hell anyone could simultaneously sing and concentrate on finger placement. It was one of the more deflating moments in my life with music.)

Anyway, some of the easy licks I’ve “de-coded” are the opening chords/intros to the Doobie Bros’ “Long Train Runnin’” and “Rockin’ Down the Highway”, INXS’ “New Sensation”, “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath, and, the crown jewel so far, Matt “Guitar” Murphy’s intro to “Sweet Home Chicago” from The Blues Brothers. (I have to say, though, that when I try to replicate what Matt’s doing in the film it doesn’t sound right at all, but I like the fact that I’ll have to work at it a bit more.) Just having fun, that’s all.

What’s surprising is that most of these riffs are fairly straightforward, which is a bit anticlimactic. I mean, it still takes a lot of practice to get them down well, but the notation is not rocket science by any means. I guess it’s just weird in some way to be able to “get inside” or crack musical referents that have a strong personal association. Don’t get wrong: it’s great — and way cool — but also a touch disillusioning.

I remember a story Lyle Larson once told when I was taking his courses on Twain and Hemingway at SMC. He was relating the time someone showed him how to play the basic melody of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata on the piano. For years he’d held that piece in such high esteem that it crushed him to learn how just about anyone could pick it up in a few minutes. Ever since, he’s heard the song with somewhat jaded ears, having lost some of the reverence and awe he held before, which is sad, really. Maybe some things are better left a mystery. Either that or I’ll just go back to Steely Dan, which is always a challenge…

The Police come to Honolulu

Concert ticket (plus surcharges): $114
Concert t-shirt: $35
Beer: $7 x ?
Chance to see The Police in concert for the first (and most likely last) time in my life?: a hell of a lot!

Last Saturday Adam and I went to The Police concert here in Honolulu. I almost didn’t go because of the absurd price of tickets, but we don’t get many big name acts out here so you take what you can get; and besides, it’s The Police! I never saw them back in their heyday and I simply couldn’t justify not seeing them. Sting said the last time they played the Blaisdell was back in 1981. (They toured here in ‘84 in support of Synchronicity, but I’ll bet they played Aloha Stadium for that one.) Plus, Honolulu is the final stop for this reunion tour that’s been on the road since last May.

(On a side note: Adam and I were both trying to remember the last big-time concert we’d each been to. The nearest I can remember is perhaps the H.O.R.D.E. Festival at the Shoreline Amphitheater in ‘97 or ‘98? I remember seeing Ben Folds Five, the highlight for me.)

The boys have all grown older (which was true of the crowd, as well) and the songs were a bit mellower, but their musicianship was still tight as ever. Plus, the Blaisdell Center only seats about 10,000, so there really wasn’t a bad seat in the house. Adam and I sat through the first half but spent much of the second hour on our feet, circling around the mid-level walkway. The cool thing there is we were able to walk right behind the stage, with the band maybe 20 yards away. (Can you imagine getting to check out Stewart Copeland’s drumming from that proximity? Hello!…) The security detail wasn’t down for loitering so we had to maintain a slow, measured shuffle, making at least 4 or 5 circumnavigations in the process.

Here’s the set list:

Message in a Bottle
Synchronicity II
Walking On The Moon
Voices Inside My Head
When The World Is Running Down
Don’t Stand So Close To Me
Driven To Tears
Hole In My Life
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Wrapped Around Your Finger
De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
Invisible Sun
Can’t Stand Losing You
Roxanne
King Of Pain
So Lonely
Every Breath You Take
Next To You

Of note:

Fiction Plane (the opening act, featuring Sting’s son), were pretty good. The guy sounds just like his father, though I don’t know how much he’s trying to work that angle. Another Julian Lennon? He probably hates that criticism.

Ann, I was thinking of you often during the night. You and The Police will always go hand-in-hand in my mind (even though I developed my own relationship with their music years later).

And yes, during “Walking on the Moon” I sang as much of the lyrics to “Bussing in the Lounge” as I could remember. (John, I would have tipped a beer in your honor but I got a little ahead of myself when moving to let my neighbor pass by, accidentally knocking over the reserve I had stashed under my seat. I was thinking of you all the same.)

None of the t-shirts featured images of the band members today.

Though recording devices of any type were strictly prohibited, I’ll bet half the audience at any given time were staring at their cell phones instead of the stage. (While a good proportion of the remainder took in the jumbotron rather than squinted to see Sting…) For the time being, there are still quite a few videos posted on YouTube from the show that we saw. Just do a search for police concert honolulu.

(Honolulu Advertiser concert review)

(KameraKozo’s photos from the concert)

Please, do NOT save Ferris

(First off, if you like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or keep a special place for it in your heart, don’t take personally what I’m about to say.)

Oh my god, does this movie suck.

I don’t know what inspired me to request it from the library in the first place. (Perhaps it’s the fog of 80’s nostalgia I’ve been trying to negotiate my way out of after watching the entire run of Freaks and Geeks over Christmas vacation.)

I should have known better, too, since I remember not liking the movie back in The Day. Which is odd, too, since in 1986 Ferris had everything going for it that I should have identified with: suburban-Chicago kid in his last year of high school skirts the system to create his own adventure writ large and, in doing so, shows the adults it really is better to be 18, clever, carefree, immoderate, and iconoclastic — rather than submissively get in line to don the “square” mantle of adulthood without so much as a last stand. I mean, that was my life (only off by a year). So why didn’t I buy into it?

Probably because this movie sucks. (And it’s not that I just don’t get it, either, though I’m willing to reconsider. If anyone could forward me a critical review that elucidates some brilliant and subversive sub-text that I’m just not picking up on, please, by all means clue me in.)

Yumi and I suffered through the first 40 minutes before ejecting (both literally and figuratively). I can understand why Yumi didn’t connect, but I’d watched the movie in it’s entirety at one time and so had a history with it. Guess I’ve just outgrown the genre. Or, more likely, little that I identified with in 1986 has much relevance to my life these days. Duh.

While I was at it, I thought I’d also give Caddyshack a screening — seeing as how I’ve never watched it. (!) Fortunately I didn’t pay to see this movie in a theater because that would have been time and money out right out the window. That said, it was tough to watch — neigh, endure — in the background even as I busied myself with other things. At this rate I think I’ll forgo other “period” films in the same vein that somehow got by me. Porky’s, anyone? I think I’ll just stick with Turner Classics.

(By the way, this is why I don’t care to recommend films or books to other people. I know there are legions of Ferris fans out there — my cousin being one of them. For me, though, I know a film just isn’t working for me when all I can think about are the other things I could be doing instead of watching it.)

Adrian Cardoso Crain

I just found out this morning that Chad and Denise became parents on December 31st, and to prove it, here’s Adrian Cardoso Crain! I’m so happy for the two of them, but was surprised (and a little ashamed at myself) to learn that Denise had even been pregnant. (!) Guess it has been a while since we last spoke… In any case, this is great news. Here’s one little boy who has a lot to look forward to with Chad and Denise for parents, don’t you think?

Ride down memory lane

Winter break is always good for getting to those odd little projects that niggle quietly in the dark corners of your mind during busier times. One thing I’ve been wanting to do for a while now is create a photo-set showing all the bikes that I recall ever owning. Why? Aw, who knows. And who cares! But it was fun, let me tell you. I was able to dig up pictures of the majority of bikes that have come into my life over the years — though I had to make do with a few substitutes from the Web. That’s not to say I won’t unearth photographic evidence in the future, but for right now this is what I’ve got. (link)

New World “Mash”

This one’s for all the solo jammers out there.

Last summer I came across a killer vid of some guy drumming along to Rush’s “New World Man” in his garage or basement. That find led to several others, and while they’re interesting to watch on their own, ever since I’ve been wanting to make a good thing even better by mashing them together into a single video. Well, this morning I finally got around to editing it. While the result is less than perfect, I had a lot of fun making it (and fun is what I needed at the time).

I found several other clips that would have worked nicely but I had to draw the line somewhere, so I just went with the original four I’d downloaded. This could be really habit forming… (link)

Sweetie, darling…

In my continuing patronage of the Hawaii State Public Library, I finally (FINALLY!) checked out “Absolutely Fabulous”, a series I’ve known and referenced for years now — though in fact have never watched. Well, that pillar has fallen, as I spent this morning strewn out on the floor fighting off an oncoming cold and watching TV. (Come to think of it, the only time I ever really watch television exclusively is when I’m too sick to do anything else that requires concentration.)

The episodes immediately brought back memories — perhaps a little too clearly — of Claire and Danielle when they were at the height of their Ab-Fab indulgence. Even so, good times. (link to photo)

Fait accompli

More than 15 years after this book came into my life (not this particular copy, which I picked up at work) I’ve finally read Ender’s Game. Call it part distraction from end-of-the-semester worries, part new commitment to start reading again for pleasure — but no matter the reason: I read it. Funny thing is, while the book was good, Ender’s Game could never have been better than I’d built it up to be in my mind; in the days when Meggin and George were reading the Ender trilogy, this first installment seemed to drift in and out of our conversations and lives. Even so, I never read it: content to let the book serve as one of the few neutral ties that George and Meggin shared. While I’m happy to have read the book, it feels a little strange to have it checked off the list.