Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Machines of Youth

“It’s a hard trip to the kitchen sink
’Cause I can’t wash this one clean.”
   “Stick,” Snail Mail (Lindsey Jordan)
Along with CDs by The Beths, Weezer, Lumineers, and Goo Goo Dolls, I’ve been listening to “Lush” by Snail Nail featuring teenager Lindsey Jordan that Alissa’s husband Jeff Leffingwell gave me at Christmas (it’s a favorite at his office).  The lush arrangements and lyrics of unrequited queer love are delivered with no trace of self-pity,  In fact, if I hadn’t read the liner notes, I wouldn’t have guessed how confessional the songs were.  Despite the plaintive plea to “Stick Around,” the lyrics of “Stick” also imply the termination of a sticky situation, one that can’t emotionally be washed clean. The album’s opening lyrics set the mood perfectly:
Go. Get it all.
Let them watch. Let them fall.
Nameless. Sweat it out.
They don’t love you.  Do they?
Grace. Born and raised.
Cut you down. Still bleeds the same.
As it is. For you anytime.
Still, for you. Anytime. 
Those responding to the above post included Alissa (“Glad you’re liking the CD, J-Bo”) and Cindy B. Bean, whose photos of Gary ruins have appeared in several of my publications.
 above, Larry and Cindy Bean; below, Gary girls at drive-in, 1957 by John Vachon

Ron Cohen loaned me “Machines of Youth: America’s Car Obsession” (2018) by Gary S. Cross.  It contains several references to my Fifties Steel Shavings (volume 23, 1994) on teen culture in the Calumet Region and a great John Vachon photo from Look magazine of Gary girls at a drive-in. “Machines of Youth” begins: “In modern America, growing up has meant getting a driver’s license, buying, driving, and maybe crashing the first car; the ritual of being picked up for the date and ‘making out’ in the front or back seat; even the pleasures of repairing, customizing or racing that car.”  I am cited mostly in the chapter “Cruising and Parking: The Peer Culture of Teen Automobility, 1950-1970.”  One reference mentions both sexes skinning dipping at night on beaches along Lake Michigan.
“Juliet Naked” (2018) features Ethan Hawke, one of my favorite actors, as Tucker Crowe, a Nineties indie rocker who dropped out of sight 25 years before but is still venerated by a few hundred fanatical fans, including Duncan, played by the endearing Chris O’Dowd, whom I found so amusing in a similar role in Judd Apatow’s comedy “This Is 40” (2012).   As much as I enjoyed those characters, the women were even more compelling, including Tucker’s pregnant teenage daughter, who comes back into his life after ten years.  Unbeknownst to Duncan, his long-suffering mate Annie (Rose Byrne) develops an online relationship with Tucker that blossoms into a romantic friendship after Duncan takes up with a younger woman.  Annie, manager of a museum in an English seacoast town, curates an exhibit highlighting the summer of 1964.  One old photo shows two young couples by the beach.  At the opening 84-year-old Edna, one of the four, identifies herself and her date:  It was George, mmm, he was a fast worker. He wanted a bit of fun. I wish I did too, but I fought him off. I thought, ‘Edna, you can never go wrong not doing something. It's the things that you do that get you into trouble. Here I am 84 years old and I've never been in trouble in my whole bloody life. Goddammit!’   
Annie takes Edna’s lament to heart.  Up to this time, her chief sexual pleasure came from a dildo-shaped vibrator, in contrast to her lesbian younger sister Ros, who is with a new lover each time they meet. When Ros brags that her latest is a gold star, meaning never had sex with a man, Annie doesn’t know what that means.  Annie decides to move to London, reconnect with Tucker, and be open to new experiences. My favorite scene: coerced to perform at Annie’s museum, Tucker sings the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset.” 
                      Alissa Yoshitake and Dean Bottorff with Angie
Several Holiday cards came with newsletters describing 2019 family highlights.  Good liberal Lois Hart’s came redacted, emulating the Mueller Report that documented Trump’s obstructions of justice.  Many mentioned beloved pets; in fact, the Yoshitakes, California relatives whose daughter Alyssa recently graduated from the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (where Becca had a try-out), was composed as if written by new cat Emmy:
  They told me that my predecessor, 17-year-old Ariel, who went to the “rainbow bridge,” didn’t do her job last year.  They say that’s the way cats are.  I didn’t know any better because I am only 6 months old and I act more like a greyhound than a kitten sometimes.  The place I came from (the Humane Society) was really scary busy.
Dean and Joanell Bottorff’s began:
  Where to start.  Maybe order of importance.  Angie got fed this morning and every morning throughout the year.  Not once did she forget to remind us to put food in her bowl.  Best of all, for several months, she got extra scraps of beef trims, left over from the Wykoff (SD) Volunteer Fire Department Picnic and daughter Ann’s birthday celebration.  You may not think that having your bowl filled every morning is the most important event of the year, but then you are probably not a dog.
Gayle and Ed Escobar’s included photos of their China trip, a new grandchild, and, most prominently, their cat.

In a PBS interview with David M. Rubenstein published in a new book (“The American Story”), Chief Justice John Roberts spoke briefly of growing up in Northwest Indiana but left out that his father was plant manager at the Bethlehem Steel plant in Burns Harbor, and the family resided in the affluent beachfront community of Long Beach.  Roberts attended Notre Dame Elementary School and the exclusive La Lumiere private school in La Porte (I passed the grounds en route to Halberstadt Game Weekend), where he was an honor student, student council officer, a Regional champion wrestler, and captain of the football team.  While at Harvard Roberts majored in history and  anticipated a future in academia until a taxi cab driver told him he’d also been a history major at Harvard. Realizing that job prospects for historians were grim (just as they had been 50 years ago and remain today), the practical Hoosier decided to set his sights on law school.

Reviewing Richard A. Hall’s “Pop Goes the Decade: The Seventies” for Choice magazine and being limited to 190 words, I couldn’t fit in the comic genius of filmmaker Mel Brooks, that “High Fives” originated in the 1970s, or that future tech behemoths Apple and Microsoft started then.  In many ways the Seventies was my favorite decade. On the cover: John Travolta, Richard Nixon and “Wonder Woman” actress Lynda Carter.  My choice would have been the original Saturday Night Live cast.

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