An Odd Way to Make a Charitable Contribution

As previously posted, last Saturday Dulcinea and I thought we would take in a film at the Tivoli Theater in Westport. We had a late lunch/early supper at La Fonda El Taquito on Southwest Blvd. One of my favorite Westside eateries. You can’t fail with the fresh tamale or the chorizo and potato enchilada.

When we arrived at Westport in the early evening, we spotted groups of people in various colored t-shirts. Every person in the group had the same color and each group had a different color. We couldn’t read what the shirts said from our car because the script used was very flowery (they should have used Helvetica).

The street in front of the Tivoli was closed off so we had to park a few blocks away. As we walked through the crowd we discovered the t-shirts said “Crawl for Cancer”. 20 Pitchers, 10 People, 5 Bars, 1 Perfect Day. It seems we were in the middle of a charitable event.

Most of the donors looked very young and many were very drunk. It is sometimes difficult to appreciate the humor of drunks when you yourself are not inebriated. Such as the two women behind us who were pissed-off and yelling about the shabby treatment they received on the plaza when they were not allowed to come in off the street to use the restaurant restroom. Actually, pissing in the street seemed to be a popular past time. Some couples seemed about to fornicate, while others were very angry and bitching at each other. There were several crying drunks, and a few humorous characters. Emotions were running high.

All in all, getting drunk out of your mind seems to be a strange way to make a charitable contribution to curing cancer. However, Fidel’s, the cigar store in Westport seemed to take it all in stride. This is the sign they had out in front of their store.

On The Way Back

On the way back from the Ozarks last weekend I decided to take an indirect route back to Kansas City through Columbia and visit a few old friends still at Mizzou. I also stopped off in Jefferson City at the Capitol Building to get a good view of the Muddy Missouri in flood stage.When I arrived in Columbia at mid-afternoon I had forgotten it was graduation weekend and the campus was packed with new graduates, spouses and parents. I made my way over to the MU Bookstore at Brady Commons because I knew they would be having some end-of-the-year discounts. I can’t walk into a bookstore without buying an armful of books, and when there is a sale on I have to lock my credit card in the car. I was so proud of myself, I only bought three books. One on German settlements in Missouri and two travel books.

While I was in the travel section a student walked in and was looking for the Lonely Planet travel guide that covers Mexico and Central America. The clerk said they did not have it but could order it for him. However, he was leaving the country the next day.

As I have traveled in Central America, I struck up a conversation. He and a friend were planning to tour for the three month summer hiatus. They were flying to Mexico and after exploring some of the Yucatan they were going on to Cuba for a month. After that they had no definite plans except visiting friends in Guatemala. He wanted to go on to Belize and was thinking about Ambergris Caye. Was I ever envious; I wish I had the time, the money and the chutzpah to do that.

It was a hot, sunny afternoon and I had not eaten all day. I met my friends at Booches bar/pool hall for a cheeseburger and ice cold Michelob Light draught beer. When in Columbia make it a goal to have a cheeseburger from Booches, considered by many to be on the world’s best. A perfect ending to a perfect lazy day, only the two hour drive back to Kansas City remained.

A Short Visit

Last week was the break between the end of spring semester clinic and the beginning of summer clinic. Saturday May 5th was graduation and the faculty and students all got to put on their caps and gowns and act like we actually know something about life.

Afterwards I took a few days to visit my father in southern Missouri. I’ve written about him before. He is very old and still lives by himself on twenty acres just outside of a small town in the Ozarks. I hesitate finding the time to go visit, I don’t know why because I always come away invigorated and feeling much better about life in general.

We get up early and drink coffee while watching the menagerie of song birds, retiles and small animals that keep him entertained out his backdoor. I also find myself catching up on world happenings. He takes the daily paper and reads it front to back. He catches the early local news, the national news and then “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer”.

Mid-afternoon we waited out a sudden spring thunderstorm at the local VFW drinking a couple of cold draft beers. That evening for supper we cooked up a few fish that I had caught that morning in the pond, along with grilled pork chops and baked potatoes. After listening to the St. Louis Cardinals game on the radio (he NEVER misses a game) we called it a night.

The next morning I had to return to Kansas City.

Two Recommendations

I have been thinking philosophically about my life of late and have been enjoying it more. It started when I read the novel Water for Elephants written by Sara Gruen. If it is not already a bestseller it soon will be.

If you are a mystery lover that needs high-caliber excitement with surprise endings, you won’t care for this book. If you need deep intellectual obtuse writing, you won’t like this book. If you like books that are extremely well written, have an entertaining story that is hard to put down, and the author uses wonderful technique, then this may be the book for you. Without ruining anything about the story I can tell you it is about an old man in a nursing home that keeps remembering back to his youth, during the depression, when he ran away with the circus. That may sound boring, but I promise you there is more life in this book than anything I have read in a long time.

Just after finishing the book Water for Elephants Dulcinea and I went to the Tivoli Theater Saturday night to watch the film, The Namesake. We almost went down to the plaza to see one of the “blockbusters” playing at the local theater chain. But as I couldn’t remember much about the first Spiderman and never saw the second Spiderman I didn’t feel like doing Spidy III. And I’m so glad we went back to Westport.

The Namesake is a simple, beautifully told story about a family. A love story if you will, between husband and wife, parents and children. A love story between cultures and between countries. I recommend this film.

I think perhaps I was a little too busy last semester and became a little lost. I lost sight of what I wanted out of life, misplaced some of my priorities and made myself a bit too alone. After a few weeks off, relaxing, being around friends and family, reading the book and seeing the film I recommend above I now feel better balanced.

I find it strange and wonderful that just when I needed balance it came to me. I don’t know why it happened, perhaps because I was seeking without acknowledging that I had a need. But it did come, in the least expected forms, and I won’t complain about that.

Helvetica (the film): A Review

Do you know what font you are using right now? If you are on a Mac the default is Helvetica. Microsoft uses a clone called Arial. (Isn’t that typical of MS to take a classic and fuck it up just enough to call it their own?)

I went to a documentary film several weeks ago about a famous typeface (a font to computer users) called Helvetica. I promised several friends that I would tell them about the film, being the procrastinator that I am I way ahead of schedule.

The typeface Helvetica was created in Switzerland fifty years ago as the ultimate modern type and survives today on many corporate logos, street signs, and most any where that needs easy to read, clean instructions. And now, in the hands of several young avant-garde graphic designers it is being reborn all over again.

How boring can an hour and a half film be about something we see everyday and to which we never pay attention? (Or so we think.) Damn interesting, thanks to the skills of the veteran documentary producer and director Gary Hustwit. And where else, except the Tivoli would you expect to see a lot of techno-nerds buying popcorn and coke to see a documentary film?

Who comes to see a movie about a typeface? There were old people, one had silver-blue hair, and another even had an oxygen bottle. The majority were late twenty, early thirty somethings. A lot of the guys had the spiked Ty Bennington look alike hair.
Women were more business like. Lots of horn-rimmed glasses. Many of the crowd came as groups of employees of graphic design firms. The pre-reality art crowd (aka KCAI) that you see on First Fridays was mercifully missing.

It was a tech savvy crowd. Before the film began the dim light of the theater was aglow with the light of cell phone screens. Almost like a den of fireflies. Of course everyone was multi-tasking on their phone while talking to the person next to them.

As to the film? It was a documentary. So please don’t look for a climatic ending. It had an “in your face cinematography” (overheard on the way out; “I can’t believe how yellow their teeth were.”). Seriously, the film allowed the top graphic designers of the last fifty years to tell us how they have used, abandoned and re-used the type Helvetica. For many there is a love/hate relationship with this typeface.

That is what makes Helvetica a good film. In unscripted interviews we get to see the raw personalities of people that have, unknown to many of us (at least to me), dominated our visual culture for years. Some of the graphic artist are hilarious, some primadonas, most egotists, and once in a while a nice person. Meet the people that have been influencing (and will continue to) our lives with a tool called print. And for the last 50 years many times that print has been Helvetica.

Post Script.
How do you pronounce Helvetica? I was totally surprised to find that Americans use a soft a, as Hell vat a ca. The Europeans use hard vowels, Hell ve te ca.

Post Post Script.
Did you know that the American Airlines logo, still in use today was one of the first corporate logos to be designed using Helvetica? And it was the first to merge words…. AmericanAirlines.

An especial thank you to: memyi

Hallelujah!!

Finals are over!
And you that have to take them think you have it tough? Just try to give one. Do you know how difficult it is to write a good test question? A question that doesn’t have half the class down of you after the exam whining, “You didn’t talk about that in lecture.” and then crying, “That wasn’t fair. Kill the bastard!” I wish I had an unlisted email.

I would like to say:
No, I didn’t lecture on it, but yeah, it was in the readings. So read the fucking reading assignments next time! I can’t believe your audacity. You are in professional school you little spoiled shit. What do you want? A pud exam that all of you can make an A on? And then bitch because you are so much better than him but you still got the same grade. Grow up, take the fucking iPod out of your ears and listen to the world.

Thank you for listening. I just had to blow off a bit of steam. The students of today are the best I have ever taught. They are brilliant, diverse, and have wonderful personalities. But they are so fucking demanding.

And they say the new “millennials “are even worse.

Oh well, thank you for letting me vent. Bring them on!

(Sorry about all the explanation points!)