Lance's blog

We went to a They Might Be Giants show today, and you loved it. It was pretty much the same as a grown-up TMBG show, right down to the puppet-to-human ratio on stage.

This evening, in the car:

You: If you see a blue light, say “aaaahhh! there’s a blue light!”

Me: [Seeing some blue in a nearby neon sign] Aaaahhh! there’s a blue light!

You: No, a round blue light.

Me: Oh, I don’t see one of those.

You: They’re on the red light and the green light. [Probably-accurate translation: there are traffic signals with blue lights about somewhere.]

Me: Ok, wait. If a red light means ‘stop’, and a yellow light means ‘the light is about to turn red’, and a green light means ‘go’, what does a blue light mean?

You: It means “look out! there’s a blue light!”

Is there any doubt that, had just a few things in history played out differently, this would be available for your mobile phone today? I wonder whether there is an equivalent for the GLBT crowd or fat people. (I’m thinking of more-or-less accepted forms of outright bigotry, not suggesting that blackness is like fatness.) This ad ran in the June, 1961 issue of Ebony. Here’s the text:

TRAVEL WITHOUT EMBARRASSMENT
No More Embarrassment • No More Discrimination
KNOW BEFOREHAND:

• Where You Will Eat
• Where You Will Relax & Play
• Where You Will Sleep
• Where You Will Be Welcomed

TMC GUIDE’S 87 pages of cheerful and helpful information will give you TRAVEL PIECE OF MIND. Your trip will be a happy one. TMC GUIDE covers U.S.A., CANADA and CARIBBEAN ISLANDS. Lists over 4000 Hotels, Motels, Resorts and places of interest. You will be delighted with this wonderful GUIDE. Complete list of States which have Civil Rights Laws.

Send $2.00 postpaid (Sorry, no C.O.D.) to:

WALTER L. LOWE, PRESIDENT,
TOURIST MOTOR CLUB INC., 6 E. GARFIELD BLVD.,
DEPT. E-6, CHICAGO 15, ILLINOIS

ATTENTION AGENTS—1 doz. travel Guides cost you $12.00. Can sell quickly for $24.00—100% profit—Order Now! We pay postage.

The fact that this existed within my parents’ lifetime is kind of amazing. I went looking for more on the Tourist Motor Club, and found this from the September 25, 1958 issue of Jet:

Chicagoan Publishes Book He Hopes Will Die
A Chicago businessman, who publishes a new travel guide to help Negro tourists avoid Jim Crow restaurants, hotels and public travel accommodations, said he hopes for the day that no one will buy the book. Walter L. Lowe, prominent South Side insurance broker and president of the Tourist Motor Club, said the TMC Travel Guide, 1958-1959 lists establishments in the U.S. and abroad where Negroes can be served with dignity, courtesy and warmth. Mr. Lowe said he hopes a need for the book will soon disappear.

There is also this, from page 143 of The lost city: the forgotten virtues of community in America by Alan Ehrenhalt:

For $20 a year in 1957, a black family could join an organization called the Tourist Motor Club. What they received in return was a list of hotels and restaurants where blacks would be allowed inside the door, and a guarantee of $500 in bond money in case they found themselves being arrested for making the wrong choice. “Are you ready for any traveling emergency—even in a hostile town?” the Tourist Motor Club asked in its ads, and not unreasonably. “What would you do if you were involved in a highway accident in a hostile town—far away from home. You could lose your life savings—you could be kept in jail without adequate reason. You could lose your entire vacation fighting unjust prejudice.”

We have been reading the Jungle Book for the past few nights. Despite coming to the book after repeated viewings of the Disney movie, you insist that Shere Khan is female, and you correct me every time I say “he”.

We’re only reading a few pages per night, because you have lots of questions and there are no pictures to distract you from asking them. So we’ve only just reached the hunting-song of the Seeonee pack. It comes only a couple of pages after the pack’s tiger-corrupted youth rise up and drive Mowgli out, and when the song is read in the kind of voice you use when reading to someone who is 18 inches away, it sounds lean, angular and dangerous.

You had me read it twice more after the first time through, and you would have had me read it again if I hadn’t insisted on moving on. You acted like you’d never heard anything like it. And maybe you hadn’t.

Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack

As the dawn was breaking the sambhur belled

Once, twice, and again!

And a doe leaped up, and a doe leaped up

From the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup.

This I, scouting alone, beheld

Once, twice, and again!

As the dawn was breaking the sambhur belled

Once, twice, and again!

And a wolf stole back, and a wolf stole back

To carry the word to the waiting pack,

And we sought and we found and we bayed on his track

Once, twice, and again!

As the dawn was breaking the wolf pack yelled

Once, twice, and again!

Feet in the jungle that leave no mark!

Eyes that can see in the dark—the dark!

Tongue—give tongue to it! Hark! O hark!

Once, twice, and again!

Today I discovered that you already know at least two things that I had thought you might learn from me. First, you can point out which rectangles are squares and which are not, although you have not so far articulated what the difference is. Second, you know the Peanut Butter Jelly Time song. I’ve been meaning to share that with you for like a year, and just never got around to it. But it’s like in Jurassic Park—the Peanut Butter Jelly Time song will find a way.

We’ve been meaning to try this for a while. Last night we grabbed a quick dinner out before hitting the Plaza to see The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It went well, but this morning didn’t and I think we may wait a while before trying a weeknight movie again. I enjoyed the movie more on the first viewing that I have any other Wes Anderson movie since Rushmore.

Whew. It’s been a crazy week. Your mother and I have been taking turns for a couple of weeks now, one of us picking you up and bringing you home, the other staying at work until 10, 11, 12…. On Thursday you went to spend the night at Maddie’s house so we could both work. (We ended up being at our respective offices until about 1:30am.) You’ve been a champ about it, and we appreciate it.

You’re such a big kid these days. There’s a lot I’d like to describe for the record, and I’m having a hard time knowing where to start. We’ll come back to that.

Music. We have been listening to music in the car lately. Via last.fm, here are the most-played artists in the past week:

1. David Bowie
2. The Knife
3. Iggy Pop
4. Air
5. Boards of Canada
6. Queen
7. Portishead
8. Sufjan Stevens
9. Van Halen
10. Massive Attack

News. President Obama canceled the space program. Or something. I’m sure that you’ll know all of this by the time you read it here, but I think this is a good time for a brief recap. Our nation first went to space in the 1960s. We were having some insecurity about whether we were the superest superpower, and we were worried that the U.S.S.R. would get into space first and either drop bombs on us or else just make us look like jerks. So we rounded up all of our top Nazi scientists and made the space program. And it was good.

Since the 60s, we’ve been kind of goofing around. We landed some people on the Moon (and brought them back home), made a space station in orbit with international partners, and put up some very useful satellites. The best of these satellites are part of the Global Positioning System, which lets me search for nearby Starbucks locations when I’m in a strange neighborhood.

But the central point is that space so far has been a huge disappointment. There have been no sexy aliens, no quirky parallel universes and absolutely zero pitched laser battles. And over the same time period, we have done a really good job of making these things up in the forms of TV shows and major motion pictures. Until we have reached the point where the space program is really not necessary.

Floridians and fanboys are going to be upset about the funding cut. But Floridians and fanboys are always upset about something. They’ll have to face the facts, and the facts are: (i) space is not actually cool; (ii) the space program is lousy economic stimulus; and (iii) our economy is about to do one of those numbers where the stuffy university dean climbs sputtering out of the swimming pool, sees something shocking and then loses his balance, arms pinwheeling, his mouth and eyes comically wide, as his center of gravity moves slowly back, back, back until he’s back in the pool again.

Gotta run.

However it is that your culture/religion/workplace celebrates the winter solstice, I hope it’s merry and bright. (Unless that’s a bad thing in your neighborhood/cult/whatevs, in which case I wish you luck with that.) Here’s some holiday music.