Planted in the past.

Last year I wrote about Glitter Plaques, a popular decorative wall hanging made of plastic that were very popular for a short time and then POOF! vanished. When you're a kid and something is everywhere it becomes as noticeable as the air; then it slowly fades away and, unlike the air, you barely miss it when it's gone. But when you see it again you're astonished at how long it's been. Whatever happened to that thing? Where did it go? Why did it go? It used to be everywhere! 

I will pay big bucks for it on eBay!

As I noted in last year's entry, you might expect bendable plastic things like the Glitter Plaques to suffer over time. But what about something like this? Surely concrete is forever! 

I used to see that exact planter everywhere. That is, not THAT planter, it hasn't been following me around like some creepy concrete stalker, but ones that looked exactly like that. Every home with the smallest, most pathetic excuse for a garden or lawn had one. 

Other things people had on their postage-stamp properties were stable grooms (white, usually; the black ones were from an older generation), little Mexican kids with or without burros and wagons, deer, and the Virgin Mary. Probably half the concrete used in Dyker Heights went for that stuff. Gnomes and St. Francis weren't popular at that time. But these particular planters, with that quasi-upside-down fleur de lis, were.

And then they all... went away. 

I've never owned a concrete planter myself; never could commit. I suppose I feared I would plop it down to find out that it was in a terrible place to grow a plant, full of darkness and herbivores, and then I'll have to move concrete. Concrete full of dirt. But all my family members when I was growing up had them, unless they lived in apartments. Maybe those folks had a few stashed away too, just in case. 

I tried to look up manufacturers of these things, and it certainly seems like people in the concrete planter business have a lot on their plate these days. National companies make everything from concrete trash receptacles and water fountains to terrorist-thwarting bollards. None of them will own up to making black grooms or Mexican boys. 

I suspect whoever was making the planters like the one seen above was a regional outfit for the greater New York area, possibly one that got taxed to death in the 70's like a lot of other local businesses. Maybe they made most of their money doing overshoes for the mob before Rudy Giuliani came along. If anyone has any information on them, or would just like to share your own heartfelt nostalgia of concrete and cement, feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line at the usual place (frederick_key at yahoo). We can bond over cement.

Thimbleweed Park: The Obsession.

When the game Myst came out in the 1990s, it was billed as "The Surrealistic Adventure That Will Become Your World." I'm not sure I'd say the same about Thimbleweed Park, but only because it is a lot more funny than it is haunting. It sure had me going to my phone at random intervals to try crazy things to advance the plot.

Obsession? Such a cruel word. 

Myst's various worlds were beautiful landscapes you wanted to explore; Thimbleweed Park is kind of a dump you would want to flee, rendered in pixely 1987 LucasArts type screens (no coincidence that the game is set in 1987). 

This is one of those classic adventure puzzlers, where you have to solve a bunch of puzzles and do a bunch of weird things to get through the story. Although the game opens with a murder, it is really the spiritual brother of LucasArts' The Secret of Monkey Island rather than a mystery like The Last Express. First, because the action menu is typical; your character can Talk To, Push, Pull, Use, etc. the things and people he or she encounters; second, because Ron Gilbert is one of the designers and he invented Monkey Island; and third, because like Monkey Island, this game is completely insane. I loved it. 

(Very mild spoilers may follow....)

Put together through Kickstarter, the game is a strange journey through a the small town of Thimbleweed Park, initially to solve a murder, later to confront a much greater evil. And you do it with the help of... an agent who may be bad, another agent who may not be an agent, a dead guy, a nerd, and a clown. So, you're screwed right off the bat.  

If you play the game through you can use an easy or a difficult setting. If you intend to use the more difficult setting, you will need a tremendous amount of patience, and maybe a tips/walkthrough page, or maybe both. I ultimately wound up using a lot of patience and a few online hints. You can make yourself absolutely crazy trying to get a dime when all you have a nickel, or trying to find a way to get information out of someone when one of your action options is not "BEAT UP".

The game is virtually made up of what would be mini-quests in other games, and they often don't make sense except in the game's own deranged logic. If you are the kind of person who gets furious because your character has to get a particular magazine from a newsstand that's only open after dawn and will only sell that if you can prove your age but you have no ID so you have to get another guy to make you a fake ID and he will only do it for a salami sandwich but the diner has no salami and you have to get them some and -- and so on, then this game may feel like a frustrating waste of time. (Example above is not real, but could have been.) If you like these kinds of challenge, it's right up your alley.

That said, you'll probably waste time anyway, because the game is packed with things to look at. Including at least one alley. There is an entire giant library full of books with short excerpts; there are phone books with everyone who made a Kickstarter contribution; there are even video games within the game, if you can find tokens. (Note: You probably will not be able to find the tokens.)

Since you have to work several different characters, you may find that you need to coordinate their actions in a way that will not make internal sense. For example, for a character to solve a puzzle in one part of town, you may have to switch to another character in another area who can do a required action to enable the resolution but would have no reason at all to do so. Go ahead and do it, and hang the motivation.

If that advice doesn't make sense, don't worry, it will.

As you proceed the air of menace grows, only exacerbated by the background humor. It's darkly funny, but you do come to care about the characters, at least most of them. Yes, even the clown. Maybe even especially the clown. And even if, as in Monkey Island, your characters' safety is seldom a concern, there's no guarantee you'll get a happy ending.

Ultimately it's an extremely meta game, and I did find it engrossing and enjoyable and often hilarious. So I'm happy to help out, as the creators request during the closing credits:

We wouldn't want them to have to get real jobs. We want them to make Thimbleweed Park 2. Hey, if Monkey Island could run five games, they can squeeze out another Thimbleweed Park, I'm sure.

Holey doughnuts!

Christmastime is here again! How do I know, you ask? Because it's rainin' themed doughnuts!

As often -- way too often -- in the past I have undertaken to review Dunkin' Donuts seasonal offerings, a job that was complicated by the fact that the usual two seasonal choices were upped to three this year. But on advice of my doctor, I kept it to two, with snide remarks about the third. (Actually my doctor's advice would probably be "Eat kale," so we didn't discuss it.)

The three seasonal doughnuts for Christmas 2017 are: 

1) Gingerbread Cookie Donut

2) Snowflake Sprinkle Donut

3) Frosted Sugar Cookie Donut, or Donut Not Appearing in This Blog Post. 

So here's doughnuts 1 and 2:

Let's look at them in reverse order.

The Frosted Sugar Cookie was described in the literature as "a frosted donut with cookie dough flavored filling and topped with crumbled frosted sugar cookies"; this made me think of the pumpkin-shaped doughnut from 2014 that was actually too sweet for me. Considering that there are very few things in this world that are too sweet for me, this scared me off it.

But the Snowflake Sprinkle also disappointed in its way, because it was really just a frosted sprinkle doughnut. Sure, the sprinkles are shaped like snowflakes, but is it worth going out of your way for that? And while I hate to rat on my local Dunkin' Donuts shoppe, the press release describes this item as a "frosted donut with red icing and special snowflake sprinkles" -- you'll notice my doughnut had white icing. Problem in the back office? Hmm.

The most interesting one was the Gingerbread Cookie, which was okay but completely bizarre. Here's the thing: It looks like a doughnut with gingerbread cookie bits stuck in the icing, but that's not really what's going on. The cookie bits are all for texture; they have virtually no flavor. There's a good deal of gingerbread flavor, but it's all in the doughnut icing. That's not really a bad thing, but a weird thing, as you can imagine. It's like a ventriloquist act where the dummy is the straight man -- nothing's where you expect it. It took me the whole doughnut to figure out what was so odd.

So there's my take on the three Dunkin' Donuts seasonal doughnuts; you may have a different experience. Or you may wish to report on what your local store or chain is up to. I may have more to add if I break down and go back for that Sugar Cookie monstrosity. I hate to be so rough on a chain store I enjoy, especially at this season of love and brotherhood. I'll say this: even if they had utterly dismal doughnuts at Dunkin', it'd still be worth going there for the coffee, and that's a plain fact, Rudolph. Go get ho ho hopped up on caffeine at Dunkin' this year.

John, Hurt.

One less thing to file.

"Forget the manual; no one reads them. Corporate says from now on we're
just releasing all the information on YouTube as 'Appliance Hacks.'"

Sing!

Advent begins tonight with the vigil Mass, and you know what that means:

Twenty-three shopping days until Christmas!

Moreover, it means that a lot of our friends who haven't been to church since Easter will start trickling back, and God bless them for it. When I was a young chap about town I would go to church once a week -- on Wednesdays, at lunch. I was trying to become a Christian, but I wasn't going to let that dictate my weekend plans. So honestly, not throwing stones here.

Catholics are pretty tough on these things; if you don't make the days of obligation, which include every single Sunday (or the Saturday vigil), that's a serious sin that requires Confession. In my pre-Catholic days I didn't know that, or much else, really. It's been a long journey.

But I didn't mean to write about that. What I meant to write about is SINGING!

I'm sure I've noted this before in this blog, but even in Advent when the hymns are often familiar Christmas tunes, northeastern Catholics hate to sing in church. That's mainly the case everywhere, though, not just in church. Not like church is different because we're belting out the Latin. For the most part, if you expect us northeast Catholics to do any public singing, we have to get our drink on and be dragged to karaoke, and even then there's a good chance we'll sneak out the door before our turn comes up at the mike. We look at Baptist services with a mixture of awe and horror. Look how faithful they are! Look how happy it makes them! Why aren't they dying of embarrassment? 

I guess we know that most of us don't sing particularly well, but really, it's no excuse. As one of our musical directors says, the Good Lord gave her that voice and she's gonna give it right back to Him. Of course, she sings like an angel, so it's not the best advice coming from her.

I've had compliments on my singing, which is really gratifying, but I'm still shy about the church singing. When no one else in your pew is warbling, you get self-conscious. Worse, I've been known (by me) to screw up the words even on things I know quite well, because of under- or overfocus. It's sad when my mouth trips right out of the gate, and I wind up spewing

O come all ye faceful
Troyful and trumpumpant
O come ye all come ye
To Bebblehem

And then I think of the poor late Linda McCartney, wife of Beatle Paul, who got caught out in 1990 on concert audio released by some sound guy connected with a Wings show. For you kiddies who don't remember Linda, or Wings, or the Beatles, let's just say that a lot of people used to accuse her of being a no-talent who would have been a nobody if she hadn't married Paul, and this audio track seemed to confirm it. Had the Internet been around then it would have been everywhere in a day. As it was, a lot of radio stations played it. I heard it because I listened to the Imus in the Morning show in those days, and they made a lot of hay out of it. (Remember their slogan: "We're not happy until you're not happy.") Here it is:

Paul McCartney's defense of Linda's substandard background vocals is that she was dancing, and he released video to show she was busy and not focused on vocals. No one's singing is great while they're running around.

But I think of that sometimes when I'm screwing up words to the Gloria or a standard hymn, or just singing like crap. Maybe my voice is blending with the other singers, but God sure hears me. I'd like to do a good job, but my mind wanders like a toddler in a toy store. Some days my voice sounds like I swallowed a frog and his croak got stuck on the way down. But I generally try to do my best, and I hope everyone else will too this year.

We used to have an old-timer in our church who could not sing a note, but it wasn't for lack of trying. He was awful, and he was loud. I thought he was fantastic. I still do.

Ranking friends.

Acquaintance

Too dull; just "some guy,"  really

Adjunct
Professional connection, so you're stuck together

Clubber
Okay if you're in the Drones with Bertie Wooster; otherwise barely above Adjunct

Well-wisher
Friendly person who doesn't really do anything for you

Connection
Does something for you but is not friendly

Abettor
Does something with you that is not friendly

Associate
Does something with you, but there's no warmth

Colleague
An Associate with warmth

Peer
Someone you're really eye-to-eye with, except maybe in England

Fellow
A guy you know and like who is on your level; now we're getting somewhere

Ally
A Fellow that you can count on

Compatriot
A closer Ally; less likely to stab you in the back

Collaborator
Even less likely to stab you in the back, lest you both go to the big house

Confederate
Unity of vision leads to greater loyalty

Companion
Someone you can endure traveling with

Crony
Someone you can endure swiping money with

Accomplice
Someone you could endure going to jail with

Teammate
Pulling the oars for the same boat, but he could suck at it

Partner
Pulling oars in the same two-man boat, so he'd better not suck at it (TV cops would rank this higher)

Cohort
People see you together, they know you're up to something

Comrade
People see you together, they think "Molatov cocktails"

Pal
Someone you actually like

Mate
Someone you like even more, at least in Australia

Homeboy
Guy from the 'hood upon whom your favor rests

Crew
Guy from the 'hood whom you trust

Pard
Guy from the ranch whom you trust

Confidante
Guy you really trust but may not like so much

Brother from another mother
A good guy, but one who seems a little phony

Wingman
Guy you can't do with out, until a girl comes between you; think the "Road to" movies

Chum
A good guy, period

Amigo
A good, fun guy

Stalwart
Someone who would go to jail for you

Buddy
Someone you would go to jail for

Blood brother
Someone you have bled for

Friend
Top of the heap; someone you would bleed out for

Not on list:

Supporter (too subservient); Disciple (too subservient; too biblical); Helper (too subservient; too blah), Entourage (too subservient; too showbiz---and there's no actual friends in showbiz).