A Guided Tour at the Museum of Human Folly (in the Year 2114)

Ladies and gentlemen, kindly come this way.  This is an adults-only institution, so no offspring under age sexteen are permitted.  Alright, we're all adults here?  Awesome.  Step carefully, folks - we haven't finished our renovations yet.  There may be a few slippery spots.  

Thank you all for visiting us here at the Museum of Human Folly.  I will serve as your guide today, my name is CharlesKultman.  Please feel free to call me Chuck!  I also happen to be the chief curator of the museum.  

We've had some staff cutbacks recently, so I'm pulling double duty.  Don't hesitate to ask any questions - I'm a font of trivia and a former professor.  You can tell by my Harris Tweed jacket that I'm a knowledge expert.  As you've undoubtedly noticed, last year's Pacific-Inland Sea tsunami did some serious damage to our hundred-year-old facility.  

You might've heard that the ultra-tech subterranean BobDylan Memorial Auditorium was ruined.  Sadly, I must confirm it for you.  So the MHF will be hosting no music-concerts, no art-performances, no pre-GoogleGoggle videoshows at the BDMA for the time being.  

We pray for your patience and understanding as we rebuild.  Berkeley as a whole will rebuild itself.  The UC alumni endowment has wisely ensured that the new Cal-Nike-Achilles Stadium will be located far from the Hayward fault.  As Saint WoodyGuthrie once sang:  "We been travelin' down a hard, dusty road / everyman is a refugee, Tom Joad."  

This odd museum of ours is too useful a treasure to waste, so we simply cannot close it down.  Fortunately, we're in the process of securing a grant from a generous benefactor - (in a stage whisper:) it's the GlobalOilFoundation.  So we'll probably be able to keep our doors open throughout the reconstruction.  

If any of you would care to make a tax-deductible gift to our non-profit organization - to remember the Museum of Human Folly in your estate plan, for example - then I urge you to talk to me after the tour.  As they say in OldMexico, pardon our dust!  

As you can tell, this ornate marble lobby has sustained some algae growth.  I try to think of it as an unplanned non-faux organic enhancement.  This, after all, is the anteroom to NorthAmerica's temple of cautionary tales.  Isn't she beautiful?  

It breaks my heart to admit it but, the fact is, this fine design-space has been sullied.  Violated by MotherNature, if you will.  And the building as a whole has incurred some minor structural damage.  But please don't fret - we're monitoring the entire building for ground-stability and air-quality.  And no localized earthquakes are expected in the next several weeks, the GeoForecasterGeneral says.  

Let's proceed to the display-galleries, shall we?  Be curious and be brave, that's my motto.  Or as it says on the 50-dross coin, "Always forward, NorthAmericans!"  

We're now entering the fragrant, subtropical Buffett Wing.  Watch out for falling coconuts - those palm trees are real!  The music audible on your AppleApps earbuds was created in the late 1970s by our multi-talented benefactor, JimmyBuffett.  Sounds pretty fresh, doesn't it?  If you're hungry later, we recommend a trip to BuffetsMargaritaville restaurant and brew-pub, just 5 miles from our door on Route 420.  

It's across the motorway from the HunterSThompson firing-range and chemical-pleasuredome, where there's never a shortage of bullets or an outage of fun.  The CarlosSantana Bay area is so blessed in the variety of its tourist attractions, isn't it?

Now, on your left, behind the bulletproof glass, you'll notice the SolarWave&WindEnergy Cabinet of Evolutionary Curiosities.  The labels explain where we obtained these odd items of genetic mutation impelled by industrial pollution.  I'm particularly proud to display our rare collection of Diablo Canyon mutant fish, bivalves and reptiles.  Getting that mothballed nuclear plant up and running didn't do the local fauna any favors!  

Scientists are still calculating the number of people who might have gotten either cancer or superpowers thanks to the explosion and radiation leak at DC in 2063.  That was a joke, folks.  Don't be afraid to laugh - it's the best medicine, and the cheapest! 

Perhaps the most intriguing exhibit - at least to me - is medical in nature.  Over here on the bottom shelf of the CanadaHealthAssurance Cabinet of Surgical Miracles you'll see an amputated, preserved soldier's leg with a bionic knee-joint.  This crude artificial device was apparently implanted after the man's natural-knee was destroyed by mine-shrapnel in the third Afghan Campaign, around the year 2037.  Looks like that poor warrior had bad luck on the battlefield twice, eh?  

Without artifacts like this long-dead hero's leg, we'd have difficulty bearing  witness to the mystifying follies of our ancestors.  It makes you wonder, for example, what other desperate things people used to do just in order to walk?  Thank the Ford for SegWayWheels!  Ambulation is so much easier nowadays.  Who needs knees?

I'll say farewell to you here, my dear patrons.  But I'm leaving you in the capable hands - well, virtual hands, anyway - of my trusty cyber-doppelgänger, BotChuck2.  Thank you again for coming, ladies, gentlemen and nongenders!  And try to behave, BC2 - no more "Danger, Will Robinson" pranks, okay?  (stage whisper:) Please don't be put off by BC2's dark-lensed spectacles.

The future's looking so bright that BC2 has to wear RayBanShades.  We certainly don't want his EpicMicroCircuits to melt.  Have a good day, everyone - and better tomorrows!

Square Music Hurts the Hip

We’re Square, We’re There - Get Used to It!

by Joseph Crawford Mrazek

While observing a dozen people, from teenaged to oldaged, stiffly going through the motions of square dancing at the Sister Bay Village Hall barn dance on Saturday (July 31st), I had an epiphany: the music that moves most listeners is so hopelessly unhip. Why do audiences prefer square sentimental tunes to more interesting original songs? Is it simply a matter of bad taste being commonplace? Or is there something more elusive and complex behind this troubling phenomenon?

Although the Door County Folk Alliance musicians onstage at the quaint stone bayside venue nearly outnumbered the square dancers that evening, folk and country music used to move millions of Americans. Among the first popular radio programs heard nationwide were the WLS Barn Dance from Chicago and the Grand Ol’ Opry, broadcast by Nashville’s WSM. Both of those popular-music shows started in the 1920s; the Opry can still be heard, now worldwide via the Internet and satellite radio. The nuns at St. Edward’s Grade School in Racine even bothered to initiate us aspiring rock-n-rollers into the mysteries of allemand-left and doe-see-doe in the early 1970s.

I gained some insight into the general preference for square music at a Fish Creek restaurant on that same Saturday night. On an outdoor stage beside the firepit at Gibraltar Grill, a tall grayhaired acoustic guitarist and mediocre singer with the odd stage name “Cookee” captivated a gathering of diners and drinkers. His repertoire, comprised entirely of Top 40 hits from the 1960s and the John Denver songbook, was pretty dull stuff. Moreover, this weirdly compelling entertainer (real name: Gary Coquoz) was a visual parody of middle-class, middle-aged summer tourist - i.e. Jimmy Buffett fan - style: Hawaiian print shirt, white cargo shorts, sneakers and a yellow headband. Yet, despite his cheesy baritone and corny stage patter, Cookee charmed even a jaded amateur critic like me. How’d he pull that off?

Well, I suppose he understands intuitively how music creates a temporary community out of an assembly of distracted strangers. Cookee made the audience part of his act with teasing asides and singalong choruses. He embodied the essence of effective communication: good storytelling. He fed our craving for humor, emotion and wisdom like Jesus Christ dispensing loaves, fishes and beatitudes to the multitudes. But the grizzled mustachioed troubadour Cookee, who hails from the mountain town of Leadville, Colorado, accomplished his minor miracle without invoking an original lyric or even a single note of his own invention. Nevertheless, his tip jar attracted dollars like an evangelist’s collection basket.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love a good cover song as much as the next guy. I was thrilled, for example, when Adam Mackintosh perfomed John Lennon’s “I’m Only Sleeping” last week at Harborside Park in Ephraim. Then again, that semi-psychedelic ode to indolence remains a hip song, despite the passage of 44 years since Lennon recorded it on The Beatle’s Revolver album. Even so, I reserve my greatest respect for musicians who write their own excellent material. Unfortunately, few songwriters approach what Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and Joni Mitchell managed to accomplish in their heyday.

Retro-chic combos playing jazz and jump-blues from the Truman era - including Shout Sister Shout, a fine Michigan-based ensemble that performed at the Peg Egan PAC in Egg Harbor on Sunday (August 1st) - have their place. But rock ‘n’ roll gradually made such sounds obsolete to most contemporary ears. The resurgence of interest among young music fans in bluegrass and other old-timey sounds is more a faux-nostalgia driven fad than a trend with commercial or artistic staying power. Hip hop can also be politically and aesthetically challenging, but it has mostly degenerated into stale ghetto cliches and empty dance beats.

Sadly, nowadays the masses go for lamer stuff than the rock and soul music that I grew up with in the ‘60s. Music buyers and concertgoers flock to such vacuous pop stars as the earnestly square Taylor Swift and the artificially hip Lady Gaga, neglecting brilliant accessible artists such as Wilco and Neko Case. If the marketplace of culture reflects the times, then we seem stuck in a sterile (albeit sometimes lyrically dirty) era. It’s true that the musical analog of comfort food can be nourishing. Among my own guilty pleasures I count Abba and The Bee Gees. And I certainly would not impose fine sonic cuisine on ears unable to appreciate it.

In the USA we can all enjoy the smorgasbord of musical choices. It’s just too bad that most of us choose junk food. It makes pop-music radio so unpalatable for listeners with above-average taste. Maybe that’s why the Sony Walkman and the Apple iPod succeeded immediately: they made it possible for every person to be his or her own private DJ, hip or square.