This is the day of rejoicing | The Bleat. 12/2/13, 8:49 AM ABOUT Search The Art of June Weekend! New Diner! RECENT COMMENTS polymathamy on 06.14.12 Bleat THIS IS THE DAY OF Amanda from Michigan on Boo. Hiss Julie on Testing the new RSS feed idea REJOICING shesnailie on Autobots and Bruckner on JULY 1, 2010 · 59 COMMENTS · in POP CULTURE, RETRO DELIGHTS, THE EIGHTIES Wagner von Drupen- Sachs on Autobots and Bruckner I don’t feel old when I think of the 80s, but maybe I should. 140 OR SO Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page. CLICK – AND SAVE! First and foremost: today is the day I finally put up the Big Thing I’ve been talking about. Bad news: it’s pretty much the same old thing. Good news: not entirely, and certainly not for long. I am at a coffee shop, because I had to get out of the house and be around other human beings. Not talk to them, mind you, but be around them. If I wanted to talk I’d go to the office and get nothing done. Here I can work and A BOOK I RECOMMEND be reminded I am not living on an island at the top of a hill with a dog. http://lileks.com/bleat/?p=7458 Page 1 of 8 This is the day of rejoicing | The Bleat. 12/2/13, 8:49 AM Did some column research at a fireworks stand, where they had the usual ugly packaging. It’s all ugly. Every year I lament the end of the cheap Chinese fireworks graphics, and every year criticize the work of three guys who have a pirated copy of Illustrator, and so this year will be no different. The proof, tomorrow. Child 44 Went to the grocery store for lemons, because I like to put some fresh- Tom Rob Smith Best Price $0.01 squeezed lemon in vodka now and then. I chose Lunds, because they had a or Buy New post-office box outside. (It’s things like that must make grocery-store managers crazy. Ads? No. Prices? No. Selection? No. Atmosphere? No. Availability of pre-made food? No. Mailbox out front I use because my usual Privacy Information box has been rendered inaccessible by road construction? Yes.) There was a nice Minnesota lady making sandwiches for all to try: Thai-peanut ground THE PAST AT YOUR FINGERTIPS turkey sloppy joes. There was nothing sloppy about them. Little in the way of DECEMBER 2013 traditional Joe, either. But it was good. I got my lemons and wandered S M T W T F S around the empty store, feeling hideously bereft. Used to come to this store 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 all the time in the mid Oughts, when I took daughter shopping; this one was nice and comfy, a big cocoon of reassurance: you’re the sort of person who 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 may not buy this exotic cooking sauce today, but likes to think he’d buy it some 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 other day. It’s here! It’s all here. Also organic artisanal ketchup! 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Then my industry started to crater, and I felt the cold, Scottish hands of thrift 29 30 31 clasp my wallet, and it’s been that way ever since. I probably save five bucks « Jul a week not shopping there, and have traded the money for the efficiency of Target (“Surprise-free grocery shopping!”) or the other Soviet-flavored THE DISTANT PAST bargain places. To hell with it. I’m going back to Lunds, I decided. July 2013 But then I realized that I stopped going to Lund’s when my daughter stopped June 2013 going to the grocery store with me – when she had a choice, that is, and May 2013 preferred to stay home doing stuff she liked, even though we still have fun at April 2013 the store. That was why I stopped going. Pushing the cart with no one looking March 2013 back. February 2013 Sigh. January 2013 Well, she comes back Thursday, and I can’t wait. This has been a preview of December 2012 stuff I prefer not to think a great deal about. November 2012 Speaking of previews, here you go: October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 http://lileks.com/bleat/?p=7458 Page 2 of 8 This is the day of rejoicing | The Bleat. 12/2/13, 8:49 AM August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 It’s the New Institute. Careful observers will note that it resembles the main June 2010 index page, and also has echoes of the Bleat; this is intentional, since those May 2010 are the three main “brands,” if you will. But it’s not just a new front page: I’ve been rehabbing all the sites, and I’m about 70% done. This means consistent April 2010 fonts, navigation, image sizes, quality control for links, and so on. It means March 2010 rescanning ten tons of material and adding new pages to existing sites, and February 2010 oh, it means a completely new Gallery of Regrettable Food, more or less. I’ll January 2010 be rolling out additions to that one through the end of the year. And then I am DONE. December 2009 November 2009 So. Enjoy! October 2009 I’m sitting outside. The speaker is playing “Blinding Me With Science,” very September 2009 quietly. I’ve heard this song three times in the last three days. This song was August 2009 released 28 years ago. This is like being in 1982 and hearing 1954’s #5 song, “Make Love To Me” by Jo Stafford, over and over. Didn’t happen. On the other July 2009 hand: the #4 song was “Sh-boom,” which you could hear from time to time. June 2009 (The other songs are forgotten.) But “Sh-boom” owed its persistence to the May 2009 trailing edge of 50s nostalgia, which was a product of the mid-70s. (The early April 2009 70s Depression nostalgia did not last, perhaps because the musical vernacular seemed too foreign.) “Sh-boom” made people think of the happy March 2009 50s when everyone had tailfins and went to sock-hops and everything was February 2009 peachy except for the whole atom bomb thing, but since it didn’t happen then January 2009 we can retroactively remove the anxiety from the retelling. It was all “Sh- boom” stuff and innocent and carefree! HOST WITH THE MOST Well, no. Apparently the store’s music is set on 80s synthpop today, because it’s been Dolby, Real Life (Send me an Angel, of course) and now OMD, one of the smarter and more interesting bands of the era. Really: they get slagged for having A) a few hits, and B) angular hair, but they had an experimental side, http://lileks.com/bleat/?p=7458 Page 3 of 8 This is the day of rejoicing | The Bleat. 12/2/13, 8:49 AM knew the virtues of a groove, and did a nice job riding the wave from tinkly dinky synth sounds in ’81 to cool well-constructed stuff like this: Safari Power Saver Click to Start Flash Plug-in UNTOLD RICHES AWAIT YOU This is just a fragment of the site, you know. Head HERE for the full menu. Enjoy! BLEAT PREMIUM Go HERE to join - for as little as you like. You'll get an email with your passwords. The page for your bonus-secret ulta links is HERE! This is the time of rejoicing. Always liked that. “Sugar Tax,” was the album; listened to it sitting in my cubicle by the window in Washington DC. A million years ago. Some day soon there will be more time between today and the song than there was between the song and the event it described. That seems impossible, but I know better. Now it’s Annie Lennox wailing over “Sweet Dreams,” which was mysterious and haunting and angsty-modern when it came out, but I am mightily tired of it. I remember there were cover stories about the New Androgyny when that song came out, mostly because she had very short hair and wore a tie. This was not a trend that swept the nation. As opposed to the Pat Benatar look, which had not-so-short-hair and angry eye makeup and legwarmers; high school girls adopted that en masse and went around looking for ballet barres to stand next to, on tip-toe. After Howard Johnson – cheerful forgettable guy who looked like every other scrawny English synth-pop guy with a head full of exploded hay – came Joe Jackson, with “Is She Really Going Out With Him.” Turns out now we know he was mad at him. After this, it’s Herbie Hancock’s last big hit, “Rockit,” which I remember hearing and disliking on the spot. (Never liked scratching.) What set it apart was the video, which was unnerving, and came from the difficult team of Godley and Creme. Yes, the guys who did “Cry,” and were the creative force behind 10cc. http://lileks.com/bleat/?p=7458 Page 4 of 8 This is the day of rejoicing | The Bleat.