Kyrie

The Electric Prunes released Mass in F Minor in 1968. It didn't attract a lot of attention. It got a little bump when the film Easy Rider used the Kyrie for the acid-dropping scene, then it sank into relative obscurity. I liked it then, and still do. I'm a sucker for the West Coast Psychedelic sound.

I like that they decided to do it straight, take it seriously, without irony; to just compose a mass for their time and place. Old wine in new bottles, to twist the parable.

Doing this post, it occurred to me to wonder how that one little snippet of Greek, the Kyrie, wound up in the Latin Mass. I did some research . . . and I'm still wondering. The answer seems to be, "Well, that's just the way it happened."

Deja Vu: Joan's Apartment

I was re-watching Mad Men recently, when I saw something that made me sit up and hit Pause: a piece of kitsch art on the wall of Joan Holloway's apartment. It was a fake Chinese scroll painting of a red bridge over a deep gorge, and I had grown up, during the Mad Men era, with its identical twin.

It's from a paint-by-number kit. My father had painted it, with his usual care and patience -- if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right -- and it hung on the wall of our kitchen for a number of years. I dredged the Internet for a picture of that scene, so I could email it to my siblings; the best I could find was the one you see above.

I liked Mad Men when it first aired, and still do. When I found out that Matthew Weiner, the show's honcho, had been a writer/producer for The Sopranos, I figured: well, OK, it'll have one or two good seasons, then it'll get all Hollywoodish and up its own butt. But, no. It was very good from start to finish.

And, as a bonus for us Boomers, it did a very nice job picturing the world of the 60s. Some of the cultural stuff was contorted by modern wokeness (no, the average American didn't smoke three packs a day, and no, women's lives were not a relentless hell of misery and oppression), but the details were right on the money.

Kudos to the anonymous set-dresser or prop-buyer who found that paint-by-number scroll and put it on the apartment wall.

A River of Money

Some years ago, I attended an informal reunion of high-school friends and acquaintances. (Baby Boom era, upper-middle-class suburb of Washington, DC.) Almost everyone there had wound up working in the Government/Nonprofit/Academia world. And almost without exception, when they told war stories about their challenges and achievements, the stories had to do with obtaining government grants.

These people live on the banks of a great, roiling river of money. They are aware intellectually, I'm sure, that there's a lot of productive work being done upstream. But they mostly don't see it being done, and they mostly don't know the people doing it. For them, the river is just part of the landscape, fixed and eternal.

They're sure it won't affect the river if they dip their little bucket down to fund this bike path, or that conference, or some "initiative." It will surely do some good. And anyway, look at all the people who are scooping it out by the barrelful and spending it on things we don't like.

These are not bad people, and though they live comfortably, they are not getting rich. But my Lord, there sure are a lot of them.

Boston Globe Mag: "The complicated sex life of baby boomers"

"MADELEINE AND HER TWO FRIENDS had barely pulled up to the bar when one of them began chatting with a cute guy — “in his 30s,” Madeleine remembers. They were on a girls’ weekend at the beach and looking forward to some sun and fun. A few hours and some drinks later, the girls piled into the guy’s car and headed back to their condo. “We are going skinny-dipping!” one of them yelled."

The next morning, there were no regrets. “We had a blast,” Madeleine says. Sure, maybe it wasn’t the smartest move to get into a stranger’s car, “but there were three of us, and, I mean, we had our cellphones.”

Madeleine and her friends may sound like teenagers on spring break, and indeed that’s what they often feel like. But they met decades ago — they were “ice-skating moms” to daughters on the competitive circuit — and are now in their late 50s, divorced mothers of grown children and having, in many ways, the time of their lives. “You’ll be out at a bar and see some guys you think are cute,” says Madeleine. “Until you realize they’re in their 20s. But you forget! You forget how old you are!” (Madeleine, like other singles in this story, didn’t want to include her full name when talking about her sex life.) (read more)