New Year's Evolutions

The masters of science who think about these kinds of things have oft stated that one of the biggest differences between humans and animals - besides the fact that animals don't use credit cards - is that humans have this bothersome trait of "caring what other members of the community think about them." I like to say and think and act as if I am apart from this, as I think each and every one of us does. But the truth is that in some measurable way there's always somebody's opinion we do, indeed, care about. Even if we say we don't. Like for example a cherished older relative, or a spouse, or someone we knew from high school we re-meet somewhere down the road. The plain fact is that, despite all our ubercool protestations to the contrary yes, Virginia, we actually do give a shit what other people think. It's what differentiates us from the baser, natural animals in the chain. Anyway so far as we can tell.

The advanced view of this, however, is that we like to think that the people whose opinions we value are somehow hand-picked through our personal and therefore rarefied filters. As in; yes I do care what some people think, but I decide who those people are so it's alright because I only pick cool people whose opinions I care about. The problem is that deep down inside we all know this is also bullshit. Total self-justifying and complete bovine scatology. We don't want the guy in the next car to think we're odd so we stop singing when he pulls up to the light beside us. Or we cut the grass because we don't want the neighbors to think we're a bunch of slobs living here. Or we hide the liquor bottles in a hole in the wall because... oh wait, nevermind about that one. Oh hahahahaha. Nothing.

What?

I guess it all depends on what constitutes "other people" when we say we don't care what they think. That has a terrific potential to be a comfortable justification a little bit don't you agree? OK we're actually on kind of questionable ground and it isn't exactly how we'd like it all to go down or something but - know what? - I don't care what people think.

Yeah right. Sure you don't.

So this is a round about way of saying my New Year's resolution is going to be "Try to be less full of shit." I think that has a lot of potential. Don't you agree?

Haha. I'm asking but I actually don't care what you think. Well maybe a little. Of course if I didn't care what you think I wouldn't edit the misspellings from this post. So there I am being full of shit again.

Man I really gotta work on this.

Happy Birthday

Born in Chicago 63 years ago today. I've forgiven her for backing Ralph Nader - yeah like that was going to work - as she's forgiven me for thinking Alan Greenspan was some kind of a genius. Christ, is it everything I know is wrong er what?

Sing on Patti.

The Quest For Cool

I sense more and more a general slowing down and oncoming carefulness as the days go on. The rush of action and unmindful speed that took me through the days of car trips, cocaine, big arguments, and a random carousel of mindless obsessions has calmed itself like a recidivist sea under the hand of some wild eyed Nazarene. And it was good. It's not a cane-wielding slowness or a creeping along on shuffling feet, twenty-year-old suit stale breath and point me to my easy chair you asshole slowness. It's more like a not interested in your bullshit, calm down, people under 30 are so fucking boring kind of slowness. A reaching back to retain what is universally cool in a larger sense rather than embracing what is momentarily cool in a transient sense that - if you miss the moment - makes you look like you're trying too hard to be cool and are therefore the most uncool thing to come along and therefore just another out of touch bad joke trying too hard.

It isn't a giddy retro or some oldster chauvinism based on the fact that it's all slipping away and therefore it must be re-embraced before I die because it helps justify all the shit I'd done. It's a recognition that there are eternal verities and they are not now, and never were through history, the flash and sparkle of what is catching the masses just this second; but the things that were made once upon a time added to the things being made right now that will still touch and reach and grab and be something twenty years from now if we can only get the wide-eyed robots to let loose the plastic and break away from the crowd.

When you were a kid there was this dichotomy. You didn't want to be like your parents. You didn't want to be like that kind of "everybody else", which was exactly why you tried so hard to look like the other kind of "everybody else". Dig - the conformity of non-conformity is the essence of a teenager. You can't escape it. If you don't see it please stop reading this and go the fuck away forever.

Six or seven of us were so cool we smoked cigarettes and listened to Motown while the rest of our friends were happily white as drifting snow listening to whatever rock and top 40 roll they were selling on the radio. But we were still conforming to each other. Trying to be different by being the same as one another. See? We were just as full of shit as everybody else.

On TV this week they're going to give Robert Di Nero this big award for being a great actor even though he has been playing one version or another of Robert Di Nero for the past 25 years now and hasn't really acted at all. Here's another New York guy with a mole and a cutting Italian-American hybrid accent. Now he opens the car door. Now he's mad. Now he's sentimental. Now he's the same guy he's been in each of his last sixteen movies. He used to be young and cool and was all kind of nuances from a taxi driver to a turn of the century immigrant but he was hungry then.Now he's fat and sloppy and just plays himself every time just with a different expression. Di Nero phones it in anymore. Like Nicholson. Same shit, different day.

There are lasting things, things being done now - in the new - that will stay cool through the ages to come. Cool isn't just a province of the past. But it's intangible so it's hard to describe. If there's any problem with the now it's that one nutbag on the internet can meme something great into a pile of shit by plugging into the robotic mindset of his peers and, like a pair of shoes nobody buys anymore simply because they are seen as yesterday's thing, the target gets a dull sheen of shit smeared all over it that takes years to rehabilitate.

Timelessness is under assault because any dickbrain with a computer who wouldn't have been paid attention to before mass media changed forever starts a ball rolling and the conformity of non-conformity still rules and kicks in like a motherfucker. Like it always did since forever.

If you need the pyrotechnics, a two-day stubble sporting an unconventional weapon in the face of constantly morphing bad guys, value effects over talent, and can't recognize when icons give up and just peddle the usual shit because they happily dismiss your standards after having forgotten their own, this blog is not for you anymore.

Just sayin.

More Pix, and a Glimpse At My Home

More scenes from Reunion...

One of my prouder accomplishments... obtaining a pre-1920 gas pump in N scale.
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The Catholic graveyard.
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Passengers. Yes I popped the top of the cars and painted the floor... which absolutely NO ONE will see... the color of the CGW maroon carpets, and cut the bodies of N scale figures to fit in the windows. Why?

Um... why yes. Yes. The color of the CGW carpets were maroon. Um... why are you looking at me like I need to get a life?
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I thank Mrs RW a lot for giving up our Arts & Crafts dining room.

It helped a lot, I think, that she started traveling in her work so much this past year. That way she didn't get to hang around long enough for this stuff in her beautiful dining room to get on her nerves. It's been up since late summer while I worked on the debut. From here on out it'll just be from Thanksgiving to New Year's.

Isn't there ANYBODY in town to check this out??

Evocations

Sometimes peope tell me the pictures of the Christmas Train are better than seeing it in person and I have to agree. But it's because I can put the camera inside the town, right down on a street, and take a photo of an angle we can't accomplish even by sticking our head into the middle of the display.

Here are 3 pictures that came out specifically well in that way. I used to travel a lot around the country, driving a lot around the greater Midwest from Ohio to Kansas and going through small towns just like Reunion. And every once in a while a view of the Train evokes a memory of something I'd seen. I wish I could say it was intentional.

BTW, anyone in the general area who wants to arrange a time to come see it in person just let me know!

Railroad shed by the station.


Chestnut stand near the park.


I swear I've seen this street before.


And a bonus - Earl the Watchdog in the junkyard. Yeah kind of blurry. I'll get another one up - better - before too long. But Earl IS on the job!

The 740 Makes It's Debut

Of course all my friends on Facebook have seen the whole album by now, but here's the kind of thing that makes model train people act up like the geeks we truly are.

There actually was an engine 740 in the rolling stock of the Chicago Great Western (the line that serves Reunion) and it was the same kind of design "Mikado" that I've obtained for the set. So the 740 rolls again!

I'll have more pictures more often now that the set-up is finished and running for the Christmas season. So keep coming back.


A sample of the actual logo of the CGW line.


A photo of a CGW engine (notice the font style of the picture and compare it to the models below).


The 740, with coal car.


These decals were made to order by a guy who does this sort of thing for model train people. What else would you expect?

I'll be posting more every day or so. Please come back to see.