Jim Nolan's Blog

The 1970s Just Ended

As long as there was Tab Cola, the decade wasn’t over.

You were beautiful to me.

 

I can still hear the jingle in my head.

“Tab, Tab Cola, what a beautiful drink. Tab, Tab Cola, for beautiful people. Tab, you’re beautiful to me. Real cola taste, just one calorie.”

In the commercial, a beautiful bikini-clad woman walks towards camera from the water, wet from the sea but somehow holding a can of… Tab. Apparently, if you drink Tab, one calorie Tab, you will look like her or I suppose the male equivalent. “Promise, large promise,” said Samuel Johnson, “is the soul of an advertisement.” Becoming beautiful because of a soda pop is a large promise.

In my house growing up, we loved Tab. Dad especially. It was the one soda we were allowed to have, maybe because it didn’t have sugar and tasted bitter. No Coke or Pepsi for us. We were beautiful people, becoming more beautiful with each lousy-tasting can.

Occasionally we might drink a Fresca, which was, like Tab, a Cola-Cola Company product. It was another one-calorie drink, and also tasted terrible, which made it acceptable in our house. The cyclamates gave both sodas a weird aftertaste and probably grew polyps as they traveled down into our sugar-free gullets.

“Fresca” means “fresh” in Italian and Spanish. I bet the naming experts had a good chuckle over that one. If you opened a can of Fresca today that had been sitting in the sun on an AMC Gremlin dashboard since 1971, the potassium benzoate, Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid and glycerol ester of wood rosin would have aged it like a fine wine, if they didn’t dissolve the can and the car first.

Both Tab and Fresca were truly representative of the times. The Me Decade, Tom Wolfe famously called it, but it was also a decade when Americans decided that they had missed out on all the fun hippies had in the 1960s, and decided to create their own unique and insane version of it. Even Lawrence Welk decorated his TV set like Timothy Leary had slipped the entire staff peyote. Wunnerful, wunnerful. And if you look at it now, psychedelic. They probably had a lot of Tab backstage in the fridge.

As of December, Tab is as kaput as Shake-A-Puddin’, having outlasted it by decades. Of course, Tab had the advantage of being physically addictive, having caffeine, the only reason anyone would drink it more than once. To me its demise somehow marked the true end of the 70s. As long as Tab was out there, the decade was hanging on, like Marimekko and weed still give life to the 1960s.

But the 70s will never die, even if Tab does. As long as there’s bad taste, the decade will be with us, like the smell of English Leather lingering in your dad’s closet. As long as a double knit suit hangs in a vintage clothing store, the spirit of the 70s is still strong. Until the last orange shag carpeting is ripped out, revealing a wood floor. The last Ford Pinto gets crushed. The last time “Disco Duck!” gets played on Spotify. When the last beaded macrame planter is taken off its ceiling hook.

We won’t have Tab, but we will always have the jingle. Which raises the question, what are the beautiful people supposed to drink now? I can’t imagine anybody emerging from the ocean with a can of Mello Yello. No, our country’s signature Tab beauty will now begin to fade away, like Dorian Gray once his portrait is destroyed. It was a good run.

Let “The Repair Shop” Mend Our World

A British TV show has a fix for everything.

Steve Fletcher (clocks), Will Kirk (cabinets), Kirsten Ramsay (ceramics), Jay Blades (host, furniture), Lucia Scalisi (paintings). Photo credit: Weald & Downland Living Museum

It’s the office we’d all like to go to. In an historic, thatched-roof barn in bucolic West Sussex, England, a team of expert restorers fixes beloved family heirlooms. Is their work appreciated? Typically, the customers burst into tears when they see the restorations.

The sounds of a music box, unheard for decades, recalls time spent with a grandmother as a child.

A precious antique vase, passed through five generations, accidentally smashed into a dozen pieces, is fitted together as good — or better — than before.

A teddy bear, a comforting companion through a difficult childhood, is given back its button eyes and missing ears, shampooed and re-stuffed, reborn and ready to be passed on to a grandchild, complete with new red bow.

Furniture restorer Jay Blades greets the customers when they come in, and matches them up with the craftspeople who are going to do the work. They are all wickedly competent, and the program shows how they approach each project and overcome the unexpected challenges it brings with it.

Often, they have to figure out something new, even with their years of experience. And if they want to run something by another master restorer, they simply ask one of the team to come over to their desk to have a look. They collaborate. They joke. They praise one another. And we look on and marvel at their good humor and abilities honed from years of practice.

Philosophically, they all promote the idea of reusing objects, rather than throwing them away. And surely these restored treasures will be passed down through many more generations.

One expert in particular amazes me, the clock restorer, Steve Fletcher. How anyone can take apart a contraption with hundreds of small parts, clean and repair them, and put it all back together is astounding. And if Steve finds himself missing a gear or spring or some other part, he just makes one. He’s been practicing his craft for over 45 years.

The narrator has a thick Scots accent (later, a different narrator is Welsh), and each line is written cleverly enough to bring a smile.

Of course, one wonders what object you yourself would want to bring in to be repaired. A painting with an unfortunate tear? A beat-up old violin? A steam-driven toy boat? They’ve all been featured on the show.

How about the world? I’m pretty sure this talented group of individuals could fix it, too. Set them to work on healthcare for all. Racial equality. Peace and harmony between nations.

It might take them a whole season, but I’m pretty sure they’d get the job done with the same professionalism, camaraderie, and good humor they exhibit fixing everything else.

The first two seasons of The Repair Shop are available for streaming on Netflix.

New Robe, New Man

There's nothing like a new robe.

Mom, circa 1973, Buffalo, NY.

Some things are sacred to a man.

His brand of potato chips. His James Brown Live at the Apollo LP. The inviolability of his shaving razor. And, to be protected at any cost, his robe.

My flannel robe had been under attack by my wife for over a decade, possibly two. I could never really understand why. It was a “black watch” tartan pattern, soft as a misty day in the Scottish highlands, and I laundered it frequently, at least twice a year.

Actually, my wife had one main issue with it. The sleeves tended to droop down into my breakfast. They seem to be especially attracted to eggs.

I don’t see a big problem with this, gravity is gravity. If the sleeves got jam on them, it would serve as a pleasant reminder of a happy meal. And the longest it was going to stay on there was, as I indicated earlier, six months.

I loved that robe with a love that surpasseth spousal understanding. I swore I would never give it up.

Then, one morning, out of the blue, I ordered a new terry cloth robe. Maybe being home for months during the virus quarantine had something to do with it—I’ve been wearing a robe a lot. It seemed like an easy way to surprise and delight my wife.

But the real surprise was on me. I loved it. There was something about its plush look that made me feel royal, like the Cowardly Lion singing “If I Were King of the Forest.” I couldn’t have felt more kingly if the robe came with an ermine collar.

Now I understand why New York crime boss Vincent “the Chin” Gigante wandered Greenwich Village in his bathrobe and slippers. Maybe it wasn’t to bolster future insanity pleas. Maybe he was just proud of his robe. He wanted it to be admired, not only by his wife, but the whole neighborhood.

My mother had a quilted robe in the 1970s. A Christmas present from my father, it was orange and yellow, and had what appears to be a lace collar. Mom liked her robe, and what Buffalonian wouldn’t? It was warm. And that is ultimately what a robe is all about. Something to keep your fingers from freezing before you can wrap them around a mug of coffee.

I should have listened to my wife years ago. She’s right about these things 99% of the time.

So, thank you, old robe. I’ll always remember you with fondness.

That said, I’m going to enjoy my cushy new robe.

Best of all, at least for my wife?

The sleeves cling tightly to my wrists.

Getting Ghosted

In my family, the paranormal is normal.

My grandfather, Bengt Paul, was a graphologist, read the future in cards, and practiced automatic handwriting. He also liked an expensive cigar.

Do you believe in ghosts? I don’t. But I admire the people who make a living in paranormal professions. My grandfather dabbled in them.

This might explain my love for any show about ghosts or aliens, or alien ghosts. I will also watch any program about Alaska or ancient Egypt. Recently there was documentary series called “Alaska Haunting” about ghostly visitations. Had they discovered a pharaoh’s tomb on the Chilkoot Trail it would have hit the trifecta for me.

And when I say documentary series, that’s how the show is listed. But Ken Burns isn’t shooting it. It’s a documentary in the sense that ET was a documentary.

Many of these shows punctuate their stories with interviews of “experts” in their chosen field, be it alien abduction, alien communication through the pyramids, alien fast food preferences, or alien podiatry. When you call yourself a “paranormal investigator,” there isn’t a big vetting process that goes along with it. It’s kinda like being nominated to a position in the current administration. You’re not being chosen for your command of actual facts.

Still, they pontificate with great authority, as if they’re chaired MIT professors, or have anything approaching believable evidence to support their claims. Even their speculation is speculative. But it’s highly enjoyable. These people are on TV talking nonsense—they know it, we know it—and we’re eating it up. There’s nothing more American.

Or European. My Swedish grandfather Bengt was born too soon, and could have been on one of these programs. He practiced automatic writing. That’s when you hold the pen, and the pen writes by itself, as if it’s controlled by an unseen hand. Once the pen wrote, “Do not speak to those without names.” Even as a skeptic, I would have had a hard time sleeping that night.

Grandfather was also known for reading the future in cards. He was like Solitaire in “Live and Let Die,” only not as attractive. He sometimes read cards for his good friends Sofie and Hans Gabler, who believed he received intuitions. In March, 1946 he “saw” Hans in a strange house with Hans’ mother and sister. Six weeks later Hans unexpectedly had to go to Hamburg to live with them for three years.

Once Sofie and Hans asked Bengt about their son’s upcoming marriage. “He will marry a blond woman,” my grandfather read in the cards. “No, no,” the Gablers said, “he is engaged to a brunette.” A week before the scheduled wedding, his fiancée cancelled. When the son came with his new bride-to-be, she was indeed blond.

Given my grandfather’s astounding psychic abilities, I know what you’re thinking.

“Jim, you may have paranormal powers yourself.”

Look, it’s possible. Perhaps my talents lie buried deep within me, waiting to erupt, Carrie-like, if someone dumps pig’s blood on me. That would be cool. It’s almost worth doing the experiment. Maybe on TikTok.

Until that happens, if there are any paranormal show producers out there who need a host or an expert, I’m genetically qualified. I can read cards on CNBC and intuit which way certain stocks are headed. It could be a segment on Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money.” I’m certain my predictions would be no less accurate than any other stock pickers’. In many ways, that profession shares a certain strain of bloviation in common with ghost hunters, with even less accountability.

Like ghostly apparitions, there is much that is unexplainable about the stock market. For example, current market evaluations in the face of 16% unemployment. One in six people can’t find work.

Now that’s scary. Ghosts in Alaska? Not so much.

With Apologies to James Lord

 

Some Even More Remarkable Men

Someone once said—was it Gide?—that authentic fame is being known by fifty people so long as they are the fifty whose opinions make all the difference.

                           ­—James Lord, Some Remarkable Men: Further Memoirs

Frederick P. Odell

A swimming champion from Princeton, Freddy was extraordinarily attractive to men and women alike. He himself was attracted to anything that smelled of chlorine, and thus passed much of his time with swimmers and later in life, laundresses.

Once on a lark Freddy dog-paddled around the Ile de la Cité, scandalizing not only his wealthy Philadelphia family, but the Philadelphia ornithological community as well, of which he was a prominent member. Roger Tory Peterson tried to intervene and bring Odell back into the Pennsylvania birding fold, but apparently the wound was too great. 

It was to be the defining tragedy of Frederick’s life, one from which even his buoyant nature could not recover. One wonders how anyone deals with such loss.

With his great wealth, Freddy was able to affect some good on behalf of our feathered friends—a campaign to teach them the importance of regular bathing was perhaps his most ambitious and controversial project—but he never swam again. He once told me recently that even sprinklers made him melancholy.

Francis Willow

Francis was one of those rare tree surgeons with the ability to transform a yard with a few deft snips of his pruning shears. Yards in the Ohio town in which I was raised became more artful and less prone to Dutch Elm disease because of his wizardry.

If Francis had a weakness it was for wisteria, which he refused to cut back. It eventually cost him his livelihood, and soon after, his sanity.

He now works as a Roto-Rooter man in the Greater Cleveland area.

Randolph Little-Johns Chick

It was in Paris after the war that I first met Randolph. His discernment for art of the highest order was unerring, but he was poor and had to make do with collecting back issues of Stars & Stripes. He hoped that it would lead to something greater, perhaps even back issues of Horizon Magazine (the last issue of which published a short story of mine, a great honor but alas one that pushed the magazine’s value even farther from Randy’s grasp).

Today Randolph has assembled the definitive  collection of The Sporting News from the early 1980s. He’s put on a bit of weight over the years, forcing him to forgo his one sartorial flourish, Sansabelt trousers.

Iain Densk

Iain used to make ham and cheese sandwiches for Giacometti. Alberto wouldn’t let anyone else prepare his lunch, not even on weekends. At first this created no small amount of consternation at the Parisian restaurants Alberto frequented, but eventually they took it in stride, eager as they were for the great artist’s custom.

Little did I suspect when I first met Iain that he would play such a vital role in the preparation of not only my lunches but my biography of Alberto. It was Iain who informed my entire chapter on the 1952 rift between Alberto and his brother Diego, a rift that was formed over Alberto’s inexplicable fondness for pre-packaged Muenster cheese.

After that Diego would say to me (always in private) that in order to understand Alberto’s work, one first had to understand what he valued in a baguette.

Arnold Voisinet

A taxi driver by trade, Arnold once drove me from the Excelsior in Nice where I was staying while visiting Dora Marr, to a restaurant somewhere on the outskirts of the city. I remember that Arnold wore a hat unlike any I had seen, with a large feather extending rakishly from the hatband. I asked him what kind of feather it was, and he replied to me that he did not really know.

I never saw him again.

Wilhelm Scream in Funny Times

Excited to have a piece in the May issue. Click to enlarge.

Don’t Use My Last Name As Your First Name

It’s all Nolan Ryan’s fault

My name is trending on the baby name lists. James, a perfectly good name, is #4. I’ve got no beef with that. It was good enough for James Brown, it’s good enough for anybody.

But the name that’s trending is Nolan, #64 and rising.

The final straw? An article on the front page of the New York Times today, with a photo of a Brooklyn couple and their baby boy, Nolan. If it’s becoming popular in Brooklyn, in a few years’ time it’ll be in the top five.  

This is just wrong, and I say this on behalf of all Nolans. Real Nolans.

Nolan comes from the Irish surname Nuallán. It has been variously described as meaning chariot-fighter, champion, famous, or noble. This, however, is probably an Irish marketing gimmick to sell knickknacks to American tourists named Nolan.

Every Irish surname, at least according to the souvenirs you can buy, descends from similar highfalutin ancestry. Nobody wants to bring back a keepsake informing the world that in the original Gaelic, your name means “horse thief.”

That said, I like the chariot fighter angle. In this one, single case, it’s probably true.

So I think I’ve established that Nolan is an ancient surname, descended from a noble race of famous warrior charioteers, pulled by steeds we purchased fairly or captured in the wild and tamed.

I can understand, then, why non-Nolans are so desperate to get it in their names somehow, even if it goes in the wrong place.

Nolan Ryan, who is named after his father, started the trend, or rather, his grandparents did. Maybe they had been on a trip to Ireland and got bamboozled at a tourist trap. Or they had seen some of my people going by in the family chariot. Naturally it was appealing to them.

Unfortunately, Nolan Ryan lived up the Nolan name in every way: Baseball Hall of Fame, most no-hitters of any pitcher, most career strikeouts.

How does a last-name Nolan compete with that?

The example we find is not encouraging.

There is a ballplayer listed in Wikipedia as “The Only Nolan.” How Edward Sylvester Nolan got his nickname is unclear. According to Wikipedia, it may be because no other Nolan had ever played in the major leagues. A pitcher, he had a lifetime record of 274 strikeouts, compared to Ryan’s 5,714.

The Only Nolan was blacklisted in 1881 for “confirmed dissipation and general insubordination.” So perhaps fans and teammates thought, “thank God he’s the only Nolan playing for us.”

At least there is no mention of stealing horses.

Given his example, we Nolans might as well change our last names to Ryan. Or simply flip the order of our names. Nolan James doesn’t sound half bad. Better yet I’ll change my name to Nolan Nolan, it’s distinctive and uses the name to its fullest potential.

Look, if you want to give your son the name Nolan, it’s fine by me. He’ll probably grow up to be a great ballplayer.

As for us last-name Nolans, we’ll be watching Ben Hur.

Squirrel King: Birdseed, Mayhem and Madness

Lions and tigers and squirrels, oh my. 

Cartoon by Isabella Bannerman

While watching an episode of Netflix’s popular “Tiger King,” my wife casually mentioned that I am the Squirrel King. It’s an identity I embrace, but unlike Joe Exotic, I do not intend to become polygamous, at least not right away. Also, I’m guessing the neighbors might disapprove if I start blowing up gas cannisters, even with advance warning. 

There is this similarity: many furry mammals depend on me for their happiness. There is a family history to this. My father also used to provide for the squirrels, in his case unwillingly, because until recently, homo sapiens were incapable of outsmarting squirrels. “Squirrel-proof” feeders were joked about at squirrel gatherings, as hilarious, ineffective attempts by humans to favor avian species over them. The feeders not only sustained them with food, but with a sense of superiority to us.

To give the chickadees and cardinals any chance at all, Dad would trap the squirrels and release them at a driving range several miles away. Some of the larger squirrels may have hit a few buckets of balls before beating a well-worn path back to our yard.

Unlike Dad, I have discovered a truly squirrel-proof feeder, no doubt the result of some NASA-developed technology repurposed for sunflower-seed and cracked-corn protection. It’s an invention on par with man’s greatest achievements, breakthroughs like spray cheese or dry shampoo. Squirrels give it the old forest try, and soon give up, discovering that it’s easier for them to eat the seed on the ground that’s been spilled by the birds. I spread a little more of it beneath the feeder, too, resulting in the healthiest, plumpest population of squirrels in the tri-state area.

I imagine that to the birds and squirrels and chipmunks, I am like the horned god Pan in The Wind in the Willows, the beloved Friend and Helper of the woodland creatures. But it’s more likely I am considered the unreliable moron who hasn’t refilled the feeder yet.

To do that, I keep a plastic container holding 40 pounds of seed out on the deck. One day I forgot to put the lid back on, and when I returned 15 minutes later, a squirrel was sitting inside it with a dazed expression. It may have been the most amazing moment of its life, like you or me falling in a vat of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. Its grandchildren have heard the story a million times:

Grandpa: “Why, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Quantities of sunflower seed beyond the dreams of avarice.”  

Grandchild: “Did you go and get Grandma?”

Grandpa: “I wanted to.”

My dad’s own squirrel-proofing activities came to an end when his trap captured not another squirrel, but a skunk. As long as the skunk could not lift its tail, Dad was assured, it could not spray him. The skunk had not heard this, however, and Dad got hit. You can just imagine the delight of the squirrels watching from the trees, some of them who no doubt had done time in the trap themselves. Their little paws must have been slapping their knees, if they have knees.

My rapprochement with the greater squirrel community has helped heal this rift between the Nolan family and the family Sciuridae. I may be their King, but I rule with a sense of noblesse oblige, extending these lovely creatures a helping hand in an uncertain world. There’s nothing exotic about it, but I hope my reign will be remembered fondly among my subjects.

The Real Scoop on Raisin Bran

Two scoops of raisins in every box? Really?

It was Ronald Reagan who said, “Trust, but verify.” He meant Soviet arms control treaties, but he might as well have been talking about raisin bran. For years, one brand has claimed they put “two scoops” of raisins in every package. There’s even an illustration of smiling mascot “Sunny” holding two raisin-packed scoops on the box. We all just accepted this as truth, like fiber-needing sheep. Until today, when I opened a box, spilled out the contents on the breakfast table, and counted every last raisin.

Without these plump beauties, we’d simply be eating 100% bran flakes, without that chewy kick to mark us as more adventurous than the poor souls who take their cardboard-tasting flakes straight, or worse, forgo flakes altogether and consume all-bran, tiny little tubes of bran that advertise their purpose all too well. 

So raisins are important. We know it. They know it. My wife knows it, too, which made it surprising when she objected to my dumping the box on the table, as if it were not some legitimate scientific inquiry. Sir Isaac Newton probably faced similar criticism when he himself experimented with fruit—apples, in his case—to prove once and for all that they fall down, not up. This, by the way, is considered one of science’s great achievements.

One raisin. Two raisins. Three raisins. I was very careful adding them up, after first separating the cereal into its raisin and bran components. A few may have been subtracted into my mouth. The grand total? Two-hundred and four juicy raisins. And here’s where things get sticky, because as far as I can ascertain, there is no established volume for a transfer scoop.

I did, however, discover that the raisins added up to approximately one cup. Thus, the two scoops in question would have to hold a half-cup of raisins each.

I will leave it for the reader to decide whether this is an acceptable scoop size or not. But let me say, I have never been disappointed with the number of raisins in any bowl of raisin bran I have eaten. I am satisfied that the “two scoops” claim, while it may or may not be meaningful, lives up to its promise on the spoon.

Thank goodness. In these troubled times, we can continue to trust the voices we have always relied on for the truth, like Sunny, Tony the Tiger, Count Chocula, and Cap’n Crunch. Fortunately, the truth is sugarcoated.

New Piece in Funny Times

Excited to have a piece in the October issue of Funny Times. Click on image to enlarge, it should make it easier to read. 

"Stretching Myself" in May Issue of Funny Times

Click to enlarge, and note the great Isabella Bannerman cartoon. Thanks, Funny Times!