Here’s another great quote from James Lileks, who frequently annoys me with his politics but is mucho sympatico when it comes to his sense of nostalgia, respect and curiosity about the past. He’s talking about a screen-capture from an old movie he viewed recently (the image helpfully appears in the body of the relevant Bleat, if you’re curious):

There’s the bygone world: the obligatory suit, the man sitting in a chair on the sidewalk selling the papers, the trolley in the background, the policebox from the 20s that’s been painted sixteen times. Instantly recognizable; you could fit in quickly. But utterly gone in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.

 

What did all the coins in their pockets look like? The trolley tokens, the brand of gum (okay, we can probably guess that), the feel of the pink and slightly furry paper receipt from the cleaners, the perfume of the woman who just passed, the odor of hair cream, and so forth. No one knew those things were important, and I suppose they weren’t – until they were gone and forgotten.

As he so often does, James has perfectly captured a notion I’ve often pondered but never gotten around to articulating: that history isn’t composed entirely of dates or headlines or politicians or battles. It’s isn’t even made up mostly of those things. The way I see it, history is made of details, thousands if not millions of tiny little experiential details just like the ones that surround us daily. We pay only passing attention to things like smells or environmental noise or even the materials that our clothes and various accessaries are made of, but if you think about it — really concentrate and think about it — you’ll realize that we are constantly losing little bits of the Way Things Used to Be, and most people probably aren’t even aware of it.

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Hey, kids — sorry about the relative paucity of activity around here lately. Real Life gave me the old one-two punch a couple weeks ago, which means I got too busy to blog as much as I wanted to. That wouldn’t be a big deal, except that I’ve continued to run across interesting topics that I’ve wanted to blog about. The end result is a very frustrated blogger, who is currently feeling very behind and more than a little overwhelmed. I hope to churn out quite a bit of content in the next week or two, but chances are I’ll have to abandon some of the ideas I’ve been wanting to play with in the interest of staying current. C’est la vie, I guess. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime here’s a little something for you to chew over: it seems that a 19-year-old Australian moviegoer lost the tip of his nose this past weekend in a brawl outside a movie theater. The fight escalated from a disagreement over whether the film Sin City was any good.

Now, I’ve gotten into some pretty heated discussions about the relative merits of particular movies before, but hot enough to resort to mutilation? That’s just… well, I’m really not sure what it is, but it’s a whole lot of something. I can’t begin to imagine being so worked up about a piece of entertainment. If your opponent’s facial features are starting to look tasty because he didn’t like a movie you thought was great, I really think it’s time to seek counseling. Or at the very least you need to learn the phrase “agree to disagree.” After all, it’s only a movie…

I’ve always had a thing for a car without a roof. There’s nothing I like better than driving through a balmy summer’s twilight with the top down and the wind fluttering through what’s left of my hair.

I come by it naturally enough, I suppose. My dad is an Old-Tyme Car Guy who still gets a kick out of souping up engines and burning rubber. He’s owned motorcycles, hot-rods, antiques, classics, and clunkers over the years; I grew up surrounded by his collection and not realizing that it was unusual for one family to own a dozen or more cars. I never did acquire Dad’s passion for tinkering — I’m sorry to say I’m the sort who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty — but I love driving a stylish car and, thanks to my dad’s collection, I’ve been fortunate enough to have access to some very stylish cars indeed.

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Just thought my three loyal readers would like to know that Anne dropped into the offices of her apartment complex this afternoon and got the skinny on that accident I described earlier.

It seems the woman who piled her Grand Cherokee into the canal was taking a newly prescribed medication, which either put her to sleep or otherwise affected her mental functions. (She has no memory of what actually happened.) A resident of the complex who witnessed the crash said it was much as I speculated: the Jeep drifted into the driveway, rolled up onto the sidewalk and hammered through the fence without any sign that the driver tried to brake or steer away. The vehicle went airborne across the canal, flipped over, and slid down the bank into the water. I’m not sure if it was this witness or someone else, but someone from the complex earned their good-deed merit badge by plunging into the canal and holding the driver’s head above water until help arrived. The woman’s legs were pinned in the Jeep and she had to be cut out of the wreck, but her injuries were relatively minor, considering: a few broken bones and a lot of bruises.

She got lucky, and I’m glad for her. This story easily could’ve had a much worse ending…

So, to set the scene for today’s Tale of Action and Intrigue, let me explain that my Significant Other lives in a large suburban apartment complex that’s fronted by an irrigation canal. This canal is enclosed on both sides by a six-foot-tall wrought-iron fence, which is presumably intended to keep the neighborhood children out, since it doesn’t do much good at keeping the neighborhood ducks in. Because this canal is so thoroughly segregated by the fence from normal day-to-day activity, I tend to forget it’s even there, or at least I forget that it’s a genuine hazard, and not just some kind of decorative flourish. I drive over it a dozen times a week on my way into or out of the complex, and I pay it no more mind than I do a fire hydrant or a telephone pole. Neither do the hundreds of other drivers who enter and leave through the complex’s driveway every day.

But I can think of at least one person who will be painfully aware of that canal the next time she passes by. That would be the woman whose Jeep Grand Cherokee punched through the fence on Friday and tumbled end-over-end into the water.

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It never fails to amaze me how people can be absolute shits to each other during normal, non-apocalyptic circumstances, but they become so heartwarmingly, heartbreakingly human when something bad happens.

I was planning to write a brief, light-hearted entry today to explain why I haven’t been posting much this week, but that doesn’t seem terribly important after seeing the headlines about the London terror attacks. This kind of madness makes me sad no matter where it occurs, but seeing it blacken the heart of one of my favorite places in all the world really hurts.

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