ARCHIVED POSTS
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April 25, 2017
WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS …
PAPER, GLUE, AND INK FOREVER — Photo by Carmela Cunningham
I try not to dwell in the past – even though I sometimes find it very tempting to do so. One of the hardest things about life, especially in the 21st Century, is to accept change and to accept that the world in which I grew up is forever gone and has morphed into something quite different and often more hostile. I try to adjust, to keep up with the times, to stay true to what is important to me, to let go of the old and accept the world as it is today.
But there is one change with which I have a big problem. Books. More specifically – giving up books. Books written on paper with words printed in ink. Books that smell of the library, books with my fingerprints on the pages, books with corners turned down to mark my place. Stand-alone books that I can hold in my hand and carry around. Books, each dedicated to one subject, whether it’s a crime novel, a history, a political treatise, or a collection of chili recipes.
They clutter my book shelves, and when the shelves are full, they lay atop other books, spilling onto the floor and crowd together stacked on desks and file cabinets. They surround me like old friends – many with completely different views of the world – but each making its contribution to who I am and who I will become.
My wife has taken the easier way out. She has a Kindle, an electronic reading machine, she can carry with her. It has almost 150 books on it, most of them read, some standing by to be read. When she wants a new book, she goes to Kindle’s electronic store, orders it, and within a few seconds it is downloaded to her device and her credit card is billed. She can be stranded in Hicksville, West Virginia, and with a few strokes of the keys have the literature of the world at her fingertips.
But Carmela’s Kindle doesn’t smell like a book. It doesn’t feel like a book. It’s just an electronic anthology of all books. It’s an impersonal, almost hostile device composed of plastic and silicon and absolutely devoid of any personality.
I tried the electronic books when they first came out and I was tempted. You could look up definitions of words that you were not sure about, and if you came across a character from earlier in the book that you no longer remembered, you could search his name and find the first reference to him. And most of all, it was cheap.
But now e-books are almost as expensive as regular books, and given the choice, I choose traditional paper, ink, and glue. A book is real. It has weight to it. If you drop it on your toe, it hurts. When you first get it, it’s new and fresh and crisp. After a while, it becomes softer, friendlier and faded. Each one is unique. The typeface is as different as the subject matter.
I’m keeping my books. I know that when they pry them from my cold dead hands, they will simply throw them in the trash, to be carted away and buried in some landfill. That’s OK with me.
I won’t need them anymore.
– George Lee Cunningham
Do you have a dissenting opinion or any opinion at all on the subject? Contact me at george@georgeleecunningham.com and let me know. Meanwhile, you can always subscribe and get an email reminder of blog postings. Your name will not be shared and you may cancel at any time.
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April 19, 2017
COMMERCIAL CRITIQUE – THE BEST AND THE WORST
DISEMBODIED CHILDREN”S CHORUS IN PRAISE OF HONDA
I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I watch enough of it to make some critical judgements about what the masters of the medium are trying to sell me. When it comes to the commercials, we’re all seeing the same things, and you may have your own ideas.
Here’s a small sample of some of commercials I like and some that I hate.
Untuckit.com, Grade: F
Here we have a manly character walking down the street, playing it straight, talking about why you should buy his shirts.
“My problem, like a lot of other men, I couldn’t find a shirt that looked good untucked. So this became my passion. To design a shirt that captures the perfect balance between light and fit…”
I’m glad he is doing well in the untucked shirt business, but his passion is to design a shirt that looks good when you don’t tuck it in. Really? He gets the award for aiming low. And his shirt? It looks like a shirt. I don’t know how long it took him to design a shirt that looks like a shirt, but I think his pitch falls short.
Untuck it.com gets an F.
Mybetriq, Grade: A-
On the other hand, I find myself charmed by the little blue-eyed pink bladder that goes around with his mom, holding her hand, and giving her a tug whenever it’s time to go to the bathroom. If some genetic genius could clone little bladders like that to sell as household pets, I would buy one.
The point of the ad is to sell Mybetriq, a prescription medicine to treat overactive bladder. The symptoms of OAB are urgency, frequency, and leakage. Side effects are increased blood pressure, urinary tract infection, common cold symptoms, and headaches.
What I like best about the commercial is that after the woman goes to the doctor and starts using Mybetriq, she still hangs out with her cute little bladder. The bladder is a winner. I give it an A-minus – a minus only because of the nasty possible side effects.
Virbezi, Grade: F
Speaking of characters who represent bathroom diseases, one of my least favorites is Ilana Becker – a talented actress, who unfortunately plays an irritable bowel. She is very good at being an irritating bowel, which is what she was hired to do. But by the second time you see the commercial, you want to go the bathroom yourself, at least until it is over.
Fortunately, the poor Irritable Bowel Syndrome victim learns about Viberzi, a prescription medicine that will cure her problem.
Unfortunately, even after she has been treated and cured, she still has to hang out with the Irritable Bowel Syndrome character. Other side effects include new or worsening abominable pain with or without nausea and vomiting.
The Virbezi commercial also gets an F.
Mucinex, Grade: C-
An even more disgusting character is the short, fat, and annoying green glob of mucus that hangs around whenever somebody has sinus congestion. He’s a friendly enough little guy, but obviously not attractive. No matter how well he dresses or how friendly he tries to be, it’s hard for a ball of mucus to have friends. Nobody wants to be around him.
What happens in the commercial is that his sinus-suffering friend takes some Mucinex, and her symptoms are relieved and he is cast aside once again. Honestly, I feel for the little guy. All he wants to do is hang around and be friends.
He may be a disgusting little creature, but unlike the irritating bowel lady I do feel some empathy for him. Poor little booger. The Mucinex commercial gets a C-minus. He may not deserve a passing grade, but I would hate to hold him back for another year.
2017 Honda Hydrogen Fuel Cell, Grade F-
The creepiest ad of the year has to be the decapitated heads of children singing “Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow,” while a narrator touts the glories of the new Honda hydrogen-powered automobile. The children’s heads are supposed to symbolize hydrogen molecules, but every time I see it, it reminds me of an old movie – the 1962 black-and-white horror film, “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.”
In this movie, a mad scientist and his beautiful fiancé are in a car crash in which her head is severed from her body. The grief-stricken scientist rushes her to his lab, where he keeps her head alive in a jar while he stalks strip clubs looking for a new sexy body to attach to her head. Yuck!
The Honda ad is even worse, because the severed heads belong to innocent little children. And nobody seems to be particularly troubled by it. All they want to do is sell their stupid car.
I give this ad an F-minus, if there is such a grade. Each time I see it, it just gets creepier and creepier.
Of course, there are many more commercials on TV. I’ve barely scratched the surface.
But it’s getting late and I’m tired. And frankly, it’s time to turn on the tube.
— George Lee Cunningham
Do you have a dissenting opinion or any opinion at all on the subject? Contact me at george@georgeleecunningham.com and let me know. Meanwhile, you can always subscribe and get an email reminder of blog postings. Your name will not be shared and you may cancel at any time.
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April 10, 2017
Hello Darkness My Old Friend…
IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHT
I grew up in a low-light community. It wasn’t designed to be a low-light community and it wasn’t called a low-light community – it just was one. There was one street light on one corner of each block in my neighborhood of dirt roads and run-down houses. It was unfortunately, the longest block in the world.
I knew this because I would come home on the streetcar when I was 7- or 8-years-old after going to the movies downtown and have to walk that one dark block to get home. It was a long time ago, when nobody was undone by a boy that age being out after dark by himself. I was basically a free-range kid, back before “free-range” became a term or a controversy.
It wasn’t as though I was coming home late in the night, but in the winter, it got dark early. My problem was that I loved the horror shows – Frankenstein, Dracula, the Invisible Man, and the ever-popular Werewolf franchise. I couldn’t get my fill.
But of all the scary movie characters, the scariest of all for me was the Mummy. The Mummy was not fast, in fact he was really slow. You could easily outrun the Mummy. But he never stopped. You could run like Hell, but you couldn’t slow down. You take a nap, you wake up, and here comes the Mummy. You run into the store for a Moon Pie and a Nehi grape soda, you barely take a bite and here comes the damn Mummy. The Mummy wasn’t fast, but he was relentless.
My mom knew how the horror movies scared me, but she also knew how much I loved them, and she gave me the standard mom advice. “Remember, it’s just a movie.”
I tried to remember that. I would get off the streetcar, look down that long, dark unpaved street, take a deep breath and tell myself: “It’s just a movie.” There are no such things as vampires or werewolves or mummies.
Then I would start walking, over the creek where the alligator lived and into the darkness. At the beginning, I would be OK, but as I neared the middle point between lights, and the night got darker and more foreboding, my imagination would suddenly kick in, slap the bejesus out of my courage, and I would start running for home.
I would always arrive flush and out-of-breath. My mom would pretend she didn’t notice, and she’d ask how was the movie, and I would tell her it was good, Mom, really good.
That was obviously a long time ago. Now I live once again in a low-light community, and I like it. You tend to forget after years in the city what the stars look like on a clear night. Country folks take the darkness for granted. If you have lived for years in the city, you rediscover it, and there is a comfort in dark streets and the feel of the night.
It’s not just the darkness. There is the twilight that precedes it and the dawn that ends it. I love the neon and glitter of the city. But the nightly shift from sunshine to twilight to darkness is a joy to rediscover. And this time around, I’m not even afraid.
Mom was right. Who’s surprised?
— George Lee Cunningham
Do you have a dissenting opinion or any opinion at all on the subject? Contact me at george@georgeleecunningham.com and let me know. Meanwhile, you can always subscribe and get an email reminder of blog postings. Your name will not be shared and you may cancel at any time.