Seven More Days!!!!

Just in case any of you are lagging....

Only Twelve More Days....

Until this ridiculous election is over! The Republicans are pulling out all the stops, creating a cast of inane characters like something you might find in a particularly banal (and somewhat racist) childrens book (Joe The Plumber, Rose The Teacher, Eddy the Dairyman).

While GOP Hypocrisy should never surprise, this revelation, caused my eyebrows to raise even further than they have previously (I think I might need surgery to fix them): It seems that the RNC has spent $150,000 at places like Saks and Neiman-Marcus to dress up the Palins and their various hanger-ons.

Now, while I am no fashion maven, I come from a long line of clothes horses, and I can tell you this - you can take trash to Bergdorf-Goodman and dress them up like class, but you still got trash. And that's what the Palins are: A-1, purebred country trash. Prior to this little adventure, I'm sure their idea of fashion was the ladies department at Wal-Mart. For "fancy dress", maybe a trip to Macy's. (Which reminds me: Wherever will they get a maternity formal for the Christmas Dance at Wasilla high? Or perhaps that's a hot item in Wasilla))

I suspect the GOP know this, otherwise, why would they have selected Saks and Neiman-Marcus? If they really believe in the Palins, they would have sprung for couture.

Back in the Game!

The girls in the typing pool will no doubt remember that I spent a large amount of work time looking at a website devoted to abandoned buildings in Detroit. One of those buildings was the lovely, but derelict, Book-Cadillac Hotel. At the time, it seemed to be destined to meet the same fate at the JL Hudson Department Store or the Detroit Statler Hotel.

But guess what? After years of being closed, and more years of renovation, it is now reopened as a Westin!!!

To give you an idea of the scope of work that was involved, check out these before and after pictures of the Ballroom.






Welcome back, Book-Cadillac! I may just have to take a trip to Detroit.

A beautiful day to talk about Hi-Fi !

It's an absolutely gorgeous day here in Seattle: Crisp and cool, with a lazy sun rising up from over the mountains, flooding the Sala Grande with light. So I decided to put on some Samba music, have a cup of coffee, and forget about those people (the horrid racist republicans) for a while and talk about console stereos.

My love affair with consoles began at a tender age, when my dad purchased one second-hand from his receptionist. As befitted my parent's somewhat Ethany Alleny taste, it was sort of a modified colonial. But it was a stereo, intended for use by the children, and I spent many happy hours in the basement, playing records and listening to radio. In those days, AM radio was yet to be taken over by those people (see above definition) and in the evening you could get radio stations from exotic places like Chicago and Texas. They had real local disc jockeys, who actually jockeyed discs, and played things that people in Chicago and Texas wanted to hear. Those were the days, radio-wise.

As I grew up, I forgot my first love for a few years, dabbling in component systems with things like 8-tracks and direct drive turntables. But as my design aesthetic took root, I began to regard that equipment as just clutter that took away from a tasteful sala grande. Although there is a case to be made for the 50's era audiophile, who had early component pieces, you really needed a crew cut, and black horned-rim glasses for that look (as well as a closet full of white dress shirts) and I wanted nothing to do with it. Also, those pieces are tube driven, ugly as hell, and ridiculously expensive for some reason.

One day, while wandering aimlessly around a thrift store (I've spent a lot of time wandering aimlessly around thrift stores, if you haven't noticed) I spotted a big, gorgeous brute of a stereo: Long and low, and with louvered speakers. Not to mention solid state. (Solid state is important to me, having had my heart broken by too many flakey tube numbers over the years, as you will read further down) so I snatched it up, and hauled it to my tasteful apartment.

Unfortunately, I was going through an impressionable time in my life, and a neighbor (who shall remain nameless, but there are some who might know him as the chandelier guy) ridiculed my poor stereo, and ruined my relationship with it. (Yes, I was an impressionable sap, but in my defense, I had aspirations to minimalism, and this individual certainly knows from minimalism. His is a different type of tasteful from mine, and one I just can't do. I have since learned that if there is one thing I'm not, it's a minimalist.)

Years passed, I moved into my first house, and hooked up with a really quite dandy little consolette by Airline (the Montgomery Wards brand. For those of you not old enough to remember Montgomery Wards, it was like Sears. So much like Sears, that people got confused and usually just went to Sears because it was closer, and their feet hurt. This caused all sorts of financial problems for both Montgomery AND Wards, so they went out of business.) The trouble with the Airline Consolette was that while it called itself "Hi-Fi", it was only mono, and it wasn't even interested in stereo. I was, so we parted ways.

From there, I started on a string of tube amplifier consoles, one more needy and confusing than the last. It was a messy, confusing, expensive phase in my life, and the less said about it the better.

Then one morning, I found myself alone in a cheap motel room (I'd gone to Yakima or someplace to look at some overpriced tube model that turned out to be nothing like its advertisement) and I vowed that from now on, I would be strictly solid state, and would stop trolling the internet for love. I'd find it the old-fashioned way: Thrift shops.

And I've been very lucky: The Sala Grande now has a wonderfully long and low GE - Sexy as all get out. If Mrs. Robinson was a console stereo, it would be that GE.

And The Lodge? Well, that's a story in and of itself. While it still has a West German tube number that is hanging out down there (I promised it that I wouldn't kick it out until it found a place to crash. Anybody interested in a bitchy little Grundig should contact me) the real story is the new Magnavox.

(let me warn you, that the styling on this stereo is decidedly not tasteful. It comes from a very dark period in Our Nation's History - the Nixon administration - when people, including industrial designers, were having a crisis of confidence, or indigestion, or something. I wouldn't dream of having it in the Sala Grande, but since The Lodge is pretty much all about camp, it works down there.)

Brace yourselves, Ladies and Gentlemen, for the Faux Mediterranean splendor that IS the Lodge Magnavox!




Yes, I know it's dreadful. And it's mostly not even wood. It's truly the ugly duckling of Chez Vel-DuRay. But sometimes things that look like god-awful ugly 70's end tables actually contain wonderful surprises. Take a look inside!



YES! YES! It's an actual pull-out stereo!!!! I'm a sucker for concealed anything (except for concealed weapons, unless they are handled by people with military or police training) so you can see why I HAD to have this. Not only does it have an eight-track, it also has a converter thingy you can put in your eight-track to play cassettes!!! How obsolete is that???

Anyway, I'm content with my hi-fi situation - for this week at least - and feel like I have really reached a place of centering and warmth, stereo-wise.

Although I did see this absolutely fierce Packard-Bell the other day.....

Anyway, I knew I owed you - my gracious, world-wide audience - something other than a post bitching about those racist McCain supporters, and that creepily religious, and totally unqualified (especially when paired with a man who has a history of medical and emotional problems) Sarah Palin. There will be more of that to come, rest assured, but sometimes a day is just too nice to spend it on contemplating just how stupid, greedy, or racist one must be to be a Republican, or to believe GOP talking points about associations with domestic terrorists. After all, Ayers was never convicted. Unlike Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy. But they're white and conservative, so that must be different somehow....

And at least while Obama "sat in the pews" of Reverend Wright's church for twenty years (which seems like an awful long time to sit in a pew. I hope they had padding) at least the Good Reverend (and he is a good man, for those who have the intellect to actually research him know) isn't a witch doctor, like one of the pastors that "blessed" la Palin. And at least Obama and Wright aren't anti-Semites, like apparently all the members of that dear little church in Wasila - but I digress...

Ta-Ta for now. Remember, Keep it tasteful!

Fat Racists for McCain

Oh, I know - I need to talk about other things than this stupid election. And I promise you that, right after the Obama victory, we'll get back to Mid-Century Modern furniture, setting a gracious table, and housekeeping hints. But right now, I just have to vent.

Look at the fat slob in the picture below: It makes me ashamed to be a portly, middle-aged white guy. And it's an insult to sock monkeys everywhere. Nothing like a desparate candidate and his half-wit racist, hateful followers to really bring a nation down.

God, I hope Obama wins. The only reason he will lose - apart from GOP election tampering, of course - will because we still have a lot of dipsticks like this around.

Sarah Palin is a crass, manipulative bitch.

The woman is without a shred of class: A trashy, skanky, pseudo-folksy, schmaltzy, mess of a woman. Watching that debate was like swimming in a pool of congealed yuck. Strictly lowest common denominator goo.

If we are dumb enough - as a nation, that is - to buy into that load of crap that is collectively known as McCain/Palin, then we certainly deserve a depression. Those two are like a plate of yesterday's mashed potatoes, with a layer of shredded velvetta and High Fructose Corn Syrup on top, microwaved for thirty seconds, and then left under a heat lamp for four hours.

Actually, they're worse. That would probably just make you sick. McCain/Palin might actually kill you. I know that they're done nothing good for my blood pressure.

But enough of that. Let's enjoy this little tribute to a much better - and eons more tasteful - mother. A mother who wouldn't even pretend to enjoy hockey. One of my more ill-chosen role models, Lucille Bluth...