Random Notes... Again

I’m a fairly conservative kinda guy in my habits (OK… my politics, too) in that once I make a choice I tend to stay with it.  That’s true where cars are concerned (The Green Hornet and I celebrate our eighth year together next month), soft drinks (Dr. Pepper.  And ONLY Dr. Pepper.), jeans (Levi 501s)… the list goes on and on.  The same thing is more or less true about ‘pooters, too.  I’ve been a PC-guy since Day One and a Gateway customer for the last 15 years or so.  I’ve been pretty loyal to Firefox for the last four years (beginning with v. 1.0), as well.  But Firefox has been acting a bit…ummm… willful of late, if not downright petulant.  She refuses to run videos, and a re-start may or may not rectify the problem.  But the final foot-stomping, tizzy-throwing, rage-against-MY-machine episode came yesterday when she locked up on me not once but four times.  Enough, already.  I threw the bitch out.

Buh-bye, Firefox.  Hello Chrome.  And so far… so good.  “Developing,” as it’s said. 

(Oh… in case you’re wondering… Chrome has a real-time spell-check function, too.  Important, that.)

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I’ve been meaning to mention this for quite some time now, but the subject never seems to make the cut.  Have you noticed our industrial chemists are doing wonderful things with scents, of late?  The product that immediately comes to mind is liquid soap.  I have a bottle of Softsoap “Elements” in Pink Grapefruit on my kitchen counter and I swear to The Deity At Hand that the soap smells exactly like cutting into a Texas Ruby Red.  Washing my hands with this soap almost always makes me hungry.  In the kitchen. It’s quite a different story in the bathroom… where I have a bottle of Dial’s “Yogurt” Vanilla and Honey mixture on the sink.   That blend smells for all the world like a piña colada.  Seriously.  It never fails… I wash my hands and I see myself back in The Caymans, on the beach, drink in hand, soaking up sun…  Amazing stuff, this scented soap.  Cheap Thrills ‘R’ Us, I suppose.

And please… no wise-ass metrosexual remarks (I'm kidding!).  Guys like pleasant aromas, too.  But what I really want is a soap that smells like Shell Super-M or Castrol R-30*.  That would be really cool… as in “race day!”

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Today’s Random Bit On Aging, or… “The mirror is not your friend.”  I dunno how it happens for everyone else in this boat, but the physical fact of aging, as manifested by my visage, kinda snuck up on me and smacked me right in the face… literally, suddenly, and without warning.  It happened one morning a few years back (let’s say six, for argument’s sake) as I was shaving.  Growing old is a subtle thing where one’s appearance is concerned.  Change takes place oh-so-slowly and your face might possibly be the thing that is most familiar to you, as you see yourself every day.  But we either don’t notice subtle change, or we’re in denial… one or the other.  In my case it was a failure to notice.  I didn’t really notice my hair line was receding, nor did I notice those “character lines” as they developed.  Until that morning.  At which time it dawned on me:  “Damn, Bud… you’re frickin’ OLD!”  There was a jangling disconnect between my mental self-image and the reality staring back at me from inside the mirror.  Some way, somehow, the human brain gets an image imprinted on it and that image stays in place, regardless of the reality of the situation.  I was apparently stuck somewhere around age 40 and never moved forward. 

And that’s how it was with me.  I was well and truly shocked.  But I got over it.

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Fascinating historical trivia... in today's Guardian (UK).  An interview with the guy who designed the “set” where the famous “Kitchen Debate” took place, in Moscow, in 1959.  Excerpt:

In 1959, Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev made a rare public appearance together at Moscow's newest landmark: the American National Exhibition. A few days before the opening, the two men strolled through the pavilions, bickering flirtatiously for the press, and pretending to admire US handiwork. When they entered the re-creation of a Long Island kitchen, however, the tone changed. Khrushchev averred that Russian kitchens were longer-lasting than American ones and that, in any case, he doubted the average US worker could afford what was on display. Nixon said they certainly could, and what became known as the Kitchen Debate gathered steam until the US vice-president thundered: "You must not be afraid of ideas!" Infuriatingly, the Russian president smiled and said: "That's what we're telling you - don't be afraid of ideas."

The man responsible for the kitchen and everything else on show that day was Jack Masey, now 84 and sitting in the office of his design firm in Manhattan. On the table in front of him are papers relating to what he calls "the whole shebang" - the two decades he spent working for the US Information Agency, which sounds like a branch of the CIA but, Masey assures me, is not. At the height of the cold war, it was Masey's job to attend world fairs and deliver an idea of America that outshone the idea of the Soviet Union - not through missiles, but through hairstyles, kitchen units, car designs and, at one point, a mechanical talking chicken.

The concept of the world fair, the expo, seems quaint today. But in the 1950s, it was a chance to show people things they hadn't already seen, things that were exciting and new, even if it was at heart a big, colourful piece of propaganda. Russia's reciprocal exhibition in New York focused on Sputnik, heavy farming equipment and a big statue of Lenin; some of what Masey and his team came up with for the Russians - Pepsi, Ford cars, Levi jeans, Disney films - are still basic units of Americanism today.

You may think it strange, Gentle Reader, but I remember the Kitchen Debate.  I was 14 at the time and believe me, the event was news.  Big news.  Why, you ask?  Because of this, in part… from the linked article, again:

Nearly 3 million Russians saw the show. They mobbed the guides for details about their lives, their incomes, their marriages. They tested the United States' idyllic view of itself. "Provocateurs in the audience would shout out, 'What about the negro problem? We understand that in the US there's no medical care? When you retire, there's no social security?' The guides would say, 'That's an interesting question, we can't pretend that we've solved it all, but we're trying.'" Likewise, when the Soviets came to America, Walter Winchell wrote a stinging piece in the New York Times along the lines of "wonderful fashions, what about the labour camps?"

The Cold War, and all that.  We Americans saw “cultural exchange” as a way of thawing out the Cold War, of humanizing each camp to the other.  Too bad that didn’t really work… the Cold War lasted another 20+ years.  And it looks like it might be re-igniting as we speak.  If a Cold War can “re-ignite”… contradiction in terms that it is.  I digress, as usual.  The article is a fascinating peek into the mind of the guy who led the cultural-exchange charge, and it’s pretty cool that Mr. Masey is able to tell his tale.  Talking chickens and all.

Related:  American Art in the Cold War.  

* Shell Super-M is a castor-based (bean) oil used in racing motorcycles... specifically two-stroke race bikes.  It smells wonderful!