Snake America Twenty Five
Snake is a bi-weekly electric magazine covering what needs not to be covered. This week: differing interpretations of manliness, authenticity and America by way of a Harley captain hat and a retro Navy blanket.
Craigslist: unquestionable hat from questionable seller: Pretty good hat, though if you click on the auction, or look at the photo above and squint--or move back if the pic is on a projector in the journalism/English/nano-economics lecture you're holding--you'll see ... a statement. You'll see something. The writer--the seller--takes liberties here in ascribing meaning to the hat and making a judgment, the gist of which won't be repeated here. He didn't type in all caps but he, bob, sounds old. What to make of this? Well, nothing. But to focus--look, these are the people you come across on the lifetime quest of the accumulation of cool shit. We see things we shouldn't and hear or read words that are plain ugly and confusing. In so doing we face questions about ourselves and our position in this world and our interests at times we don't want to. Am I turning up more things under rocks than simple joints? Do I call this guy out on his strange assumption, egg him on to let him hang himself(1) or just walk away? Do I want the item here less, or do I want it more? Do I want things so badly that I'm entering into economic and social--these are now my peers, my brothers in junk and stretching a dollar and taste...--agreements with questionable people? Who do I have more in common with? The dawn to dusk flea market, the college life? Where do I fit in? Am I being too quick to judge? Is this guy just schizophrenic? Or a Marine? Old and cannot be helped? Am I being willfully naive in holding a high civilized standard of discourse up to people I have nothing in common with except a threadbare, tenous connection of mutual interest in a for-sale item? It's a hard question. Most of the rabbis who did the arguing in the Talmud, Judaism's big legal book of discussion and debate from about 2500-ish years ago(2), generally condemned the popular barbaric sports of the time. But the Talmud nonetheless advised their readers to attend gladiator matches so they could counter the pollice verso and vote Thumbs Up and save lives. So I'm sure there's a practical solution with this hat too. Here it's his price. It's too high and no one will pay him what he's asking. Certainly no one on Baltimore Craigslist. All the things he hates he'll be reminded of when he looks at his hat, since it's not going anywhere. Ignorant twice, and failing--that's punishment enough.
Retail: redone US Navy wool blanket: This company, not sure what their name is, makes replicas of these standard-issue wool Navy blankets. The original cream colored blankets, in use since WWII-ish, maybe before itch and cover a twin cot. Every blanket. The officers in Das Boot (Germany 1981) drank and ate better than the grunts on their submarine (or, boot), but Allied officers didn't. There are no queen-sized Navy blankets. Why would there be? They're for cots. I remember in Life In Hell (LA, 1981) when Bongo showed up at Binky's apartment for the first time, with Sheba, She dropped him off and Bongo slept in the big bed. Binky slept on the couch, beneath a US Navy blanket. That's all he had. Or maybe Bongo used it. This is a historic blanket! I wanted to buy an one to be like Binky. I held off since am I going to do with a twin-bed wool blanket from an enlisted seaman? So this company above had a chance to right two wrongs with a new, big blanket. They made it even worse. The marketing copy above shouldn't be dignified with attention or insight so I won't do it. In Ghost Wars (USA 2004), the CIA gave helicopters to Ahmad Shah Massoud, fighting the Taliban, and his guys took them apart in Texas or whatever and put them back together in Afghanistan. They'd steal tanks and Migs from the Russians and would re-construct them a mile down the road after they carried the parts through the forest. This blanket is not like that. It can be improved. The worst thing--the only bad thing--about the original blankets was how small they were. It was a feature, yes, but a peripheral one. The new ones ... I saw these blankets for sale once at the pop-up flea(2) and asked one of the nine people manning he booth if they had any in queen. They said, "no, since the original ones are single size." I don't know how you can look me in the eyes and think I don't know that. What a dim series of mistakes.
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Snake
(1) with his words, like an old Observer piece
(2) Sample advice: "Eating should be done in silence, lest the windpipe open before the gullet, and life be in danger." -- words that don't kill...
(3) last year's