Blogging Note

We're off to Spain, Portugal and Morocco tomorrow and return the 29th of this month.

But posting at Art Contrarian will not cease -- provided that the blogging software by those kind geniuses at Google does what it's expected to do.

I've written 11 articles and stuffed them into a publish-date queue. A new post should appear every Monday, Wednesday and Friday (West Coast USA reference) while I'm away.

While on the road, I'll check the blog and my email as best I can. But be advised that it might be days or weeks before a comment gets vetted by me and published.

Happy reading!

Spotted: A Hyper-Fan

I don't know about the rest of you, but the older I get, the less passion I feel about sports and hobbies. I recall pacing back and forth in front of a television set at age 30, agonizing over every play of a playoff or championship football game where one of the teams was a favorite of mine.

As a teenager I went through similar agonies during Gold Cup hydroplane races held in Seattle. The deal at the time was that the winner of the race could choose the site for the following year's race. I and many other locals desperately wanted a "home" boat to win so that Seattle would continue to host the event. It boiled down to a matter of local good-guys versus evil boat owners from Detroit, the other main hub of the sport.

Life went on. I eventually spent about ten years away from the Seattle area, losing touch with hydro racing in the process. Nowadays we sometimes wander down to Lake Washington to catch a few race heats, but I have no special favored boat and don't get cranked up over who wins or loses.

The world is big and not everyone is like me, it seems. From time to time at a place where I occasionally breakfast, I spy this:

It's an old Lincoln sedan with boat wakes painted all over it. On the top is a model hydro complete with simulated "rooster tail" spray. The hood holds models of three hydros -- the pink one is of Edgar Kaiser's "Hawaii Kai" which raced in the late 1950s. Flanking models sport faux-rooster-tails, but have no livery paint-jobs.

The owner of the car is a gent of about my vintage who clearly never let go the passions of his early youth. And he has a truly understanding and supportive wife who's sometimes willing to ride with him in that car on a breakfast jaunt.

Parting thought: I wonder if this is his only car.

Rustic Without the Mildew

I snapped the above photo at a garden shop in an nearby upscale shopping area. Outside the shop's main building was the wooden garden shed whose interior is pictured.

The intention is that this is all so rustic and charming -- a lovely touch for that half-acre back yard of yours.

As sheds go, it's nice. But it reminds me of the real sheds of my childhood it was patterned after. Those sheds were old, unheated and might have had smaller windows. Here in the soggy northwest the interiors would often develop mildew. As for those "distressed" pieces of furniture in the photo -- the real shed furniture I remember was old and genuinely beat-up.

In a nutshell, as a child I hated old, mildewed garden sheds and all that they contained. So the upscale, sanitized version at that garden shop charms me not at all.

Baseball Cap Etiquette and Fashion Notes

I wore baseball caps when I was a kid. In those days, all you could buy were sized -- none of this Velcro strap at the back business. By the time I became a teenager, I stopped wearing hats of any kind except when it got really cold outside. In the Army, we had to wear hats or helmets when outdoors, the hat style depending on the uniform of the day and perhaps the wishes of the post or unit commander. On returning to civilian life, I again stopped wearing hats until around six years ago when I finally bought another baseball cap. With a Velcro strap.

(Actually, that's not quite true. After moving to Albany, New York I did buy a Navy watch cap for cold weather use. And once when I had a consulting project that involved a trip to Death Valley, California I bought a brimmed hat for sun protection.)

Back to baseball caps. After a while, the things became somewhat addictive. I'd buy them as souveniers or sometimes as personal statements. But for some reason I don't like to wear a cap that I don't relate to in any meaningful way. For example, I never attended Yale University, though I've visited Yale several times over the years. But to me, visiting is not sufficient association for buying a Yale cap. On the other hand, I bought a cap commemorating the Royal 22ieme Régiment Canadien Français because I witnessed their flag-changing ceremony at Québec's Citadel (a ceremony performed once every few years). Clearly, I'm not rock-solidly consistent with respect to degree of association and caps.

Once nice thing about baseball caps is that they are pretty inexpensive souvenirs (current prices range around $10-$30, though couturier caps can set you back more than $200). Moreover they are useful, unlike other souvenirs that collect in corners of dresser drawers. My problem is that I now have lots and lots of caps, even after having weeded some out from time to time; how do I select a cap from my over-sized collection when I'm on my way out the door?

One selection criterion is the weather. I recently bought an Eddie Bauer cap that's been wax-treated, making it somewhat waterproof. So I'll probably be wearing it when it's raining. Another factor is what I'm wearing. I usually select a cap whose main color suits -- or at least doesn't clash with -- the rest of my wardrobe. That's one reason for having so many caps: I wanted a decent color selection to choose from.

Finally, there's the matter of the symbol on the cap; most baseball caps nowadays symbolize something or other. I do have a couple of caps bearing no logotype or slogan, so I can always wear one of these if I want to be truly neutral. Otherwise, it depends on my mood.

Since I live in Seattle, I occasionally feel like grossing out the locals by wearing a camo-pattern cap with the word ARMY on it. And if I'm near the University of Washington I sometimes get all snooty and wear one of my Penn caps. Other times I show solidarity: In Dukes's restaurant in Honolulu I might wear my yellow Duke's cap. Sometimes there are instances where I don't want to be misidentified. For example, I have a couple of caps with symbols relating to British Colombia and they also spot tiny Canadian flags on one side. Since I don't feel a need to apologize for being an American, I don't wear the Canadian caps overseas and run the risk of having people thinking I'm ashamed of my heritage and resorting to camouflage.

Clearly baseball cap wearing is a complicated subject. I'm interested to find out how cap-wearing readers cope.