Darrin Stephens, Michael Stedman, Brian Kinney and Mike Baxter.  What do these four fictional TV characters have in common? Bonus points if you can name the shows they were a part of.

I have always been enamored with advertising, especially print. And mostly lifestyle and fashion.  It is one of my dirty little secrets. For me it is the visual storytelling; not so much the emotional manipulation and gross augmentation of consumerism. 

The common theme is advertising. The shows: Bewitched, Thirty Something, Queer As Folk, and Last Man Standing.

This is Criminal

 I listen to a wide array of podcasts, and a few are about spies and espionage. On a recent episode the story was about the terrorist threat that launched the liquids rule for air travel.  The narrator was sharing a situation where a suspected terrorist was being watched as he would go into a wooded area of a public park in the wee hours of the morning. Eventually, it was discovered that he was burying supplies to make bombs.  Seems on brand, right. Not as much was the struggle the guy seemed to have in figuring out the digging of the hole: after he and his cronies were busted the investigators, discovered he had gone into the forest and poured water on the ground believing that would magically make the dirt disappear and they uncovered on his computer searches for how to dig a hole.

Imagine...the actions of this mastermind have dictated how much shampoo, toothpaste, sunscreen, etc. you can carry with you on vacation.  If only the nefarious would use their powers for good instead of evil.

Shaken and Stirred

 Admittedly, I am coming late to the table of the last installment of 007 and Daniel Craig as James Bond. Somehow, I had avoided any spoilers of a two-year-old movie. However, I watched it today.  And I was gob smacked.  I watch Bond movies regularly as I find them aspirational and a heck of a lot of fun. Somehow, I had never seen No Time to Die. I watched it today because it was free on Prime.  I was blissfully unaware this was the last in the Craig tenure. He has been my favorite and it is always bittersweet when a new actor takes on the role. Suffice it to say (and not give it away entirely if someone hasn't seen or heard about it) I was a few degrees beyond verklempt at the ending. 

In thinking about the franchise moving forward I can think of a few storylines: the female 007 takes over; the agent that assisted him in Cuba moves into the spot; Madeleine or Mathilde (with some creative time jumping) fill the void or Madeleine is pregnant with James' son-James and James Bond returns.

Damn you, James.

Anthropocene* Totem Pole

 Historically totem poles have been created by several indigenous cultures as an expression of honoring their leaders and to convey the experiences of the people who erect them. 

What story are we telling?

*The Anthropocene is defined as the era of human influence and impacts on the earths systems and biodiversity.

Quantum Entanglement with Karen Carpenter

 

It was 1971. Most likely a Saturday afternoon when I walked into my grandmother's living room.  The TV was on and Karen Carpenter was singing Superstar.  I was transfixed. A truly pivotal moment in my 8 years of living. Fittingly, it was also my grandmother who called twelve years later to tell me Karen Carpenter had died. 

I was a groupie before I even knew what a groupie was. I was a member of the fan club, saw them perform multiple times at SPAC and listened to their albums an unfathomable number of hours. Luckily, my best friend was also a mega- fan.  We even lip-synced to Jambalaya at an elementary school talent show.

Maisie, my 15-year-old, has an incredible ear and wildly eclectic musical tastes.  So, when a group discourse began about what we should listen to at "game night, someone asked Maisie what she listened to, and the Carpenters were part of the itinerary.   Everybody, ages mid-sixties to teen, in unison, chimed in about their appreciation for the Carpenters and the tragedy of Karen's death. While the Carpenters were streaming, I experienced a surreal moment. I looked at the people assembled and thought "50 years ago would you have ever predicted you would be here now, with this assortment of people listening to the Carpenters"?!

Cockroach Poker snapped me from my space/time warp, and I was pressed to ascertain whether my colleague was lying or telling the truth, as is the crux of the game. Unsure, I recruited the aid of Karen Carpenter from the beyond. And smooth as ever she was right.

                                                                                                     

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJmmaIGiGBg

Old Fat Lady Seeks Sponsors

 

I was thinking about how I wanted a Half-Dome The North Face tee-shirt like Jimmy Chin's.  This led to fanning my desire for new trail running shoes (looking at you Altra), some climbing shoes (Evolve, La Sportiva?) for me and Maisie and our developing love of bouldering for which we could use a rock gym membership (Salt Pump, Evo). Of course, I could use a new bike (Norco Bigfoot, Cannondale, Mongoose) to get to the gym. These thoughts gravitate to camping and more and more gear and culminate in capital T trips-Alaska, Africa, Scandinavia, Everglades, The Keys (which leads to fishing and boats), the desert southwest, the PNW, the Rockies, polar bears in Canada- you get the drift. That's when it dawned on me, I need a sponsor! As I am currently unemployed, I would have the time to employ the merch and travel to the locales to use it. All the career gurus encourage aiming for the job you want!

Ostensibly I would slim down and metamorphose into Mature Athletic Woman Seeks to Keep Sponsors.

 

 More Badass Than I Look

     My hero Yvon Chouinard has written and talked about intentionally using one fly with Tenkara exclusively for over a year.  He would change size and pattern, but always a pheasant tail and partridge. 

     Unintendedly, I have fished most of my life exclusively with Rapala floating gold or silver lures-also in various sizes. The one deviation from this color pattern is a mackerel one for stripper fishing in the Atlantic.

     My memories of fishing really have no beginning...they just are.  We fished ALOT and OFTEN when I was growing up. We went as an extended family every Saturday night. We would pack up sandwiches and assorted snacks or cook hot dogs over a beach fire. I started out using a cane or bamboo pole and a nightcrawler. One of my earliest memories is of going with my father to his boss's farm and fishing from a rowboat on the farm pond.  I caught a bull head/hornpout and as it was swinging on the line in the boat waiting for my father to take it off the hook one of the barbs stuck me in the knee. I fondly remember fishing at Lake Algonquin also for bull head with my grandmother, parents, uncle and cousin. I graduated to an open face spinning reel- one of which took a swim in the Sacandaga after a humongous carp tore it from the shore, my fully clothed and shod father, madly running in after it until the water got too deep.  We regularly fished Abenaki, Lewey, Northville Lake, Nancy Pond and the Mohawk River.  We spent time on the lake in our boat drift fishing with crawlers and red and white spinners for walleyes. In those halcyon days things were cheap, you could buy cans of soda for ten cents apiece or twelve for a dollar. When the can was empty you simply sank it to the bottom of the lake-we weren't yet woke to what we were doing to ourselves and the environment. Eventually the old and temperamental Johnson Sea Horse had more bad days than good and was retired. 

 It was around this time that my father and I started fishing by the bridge that separates the little lake from the big lake in Mayfield (NY). The genesis of my decades long dance with the Rap. We would go after supper, him on one side of the causeway and me on the other (usually the left). We caught small mouth, largemouth bass, pumpkinseed, chub, pickerel and crappie; all catch and release. It was so gratifying to start with a fresh out of the box lure.  By the end of the evening that lure would have teeth marks and scrapes all over it. This is where I bested my phobia of bats.  At sundown was the best fishing.  It is also when the dinner bell rings for bats to start their nightly mosquito banquet. They cruised with mercurial precision around my ankles, so close and so fast I could feel their wing beats.

I would steel myself and coach myself through with the age-old angler affirmation "Just one more cast".  Eventually, darkness would require us to relent. Depending on the veracity of the fishing, I forgot about the leathery wings at my ankles.

Decades hence I continued to fish with Rapala. A catch and release enthusiast, I bend the barbs back and remove one of the treble hooks. I play around with the depth by cadence of retrieval and entice hits by twitches and jerks of the line. It's not often that I am skunked.  My catches are not record- setting, although I did simultaneously catch two small bass on the same lure at the same time once! I endured an ice fishing trip with a guy who stated he would rather fish all day and experience a single catch as long as it was superb versus a busy day of flags with "junk fish" on the hook.  I will attest that begets an undoubted tiresome day.

The joy is in the process not the outcome. Rapala Forever!