21st century | reverse threading

March 21, 2022
by kerrisherwood11 Leave a comment

fallen and passé. [merely-a-thought monday]

so a few years back – for a little bit of time – we would get our netflix fix by signing into the mom-we-never-met-in-los-angeles-account-whose-son-was-the-ex-boyfriend-of-the-ex-boyfriend-of-our-son. it feels like we should send her a thank-you note for those times watching “parenthood”. i’m sure she is lovely; her son is delightful. we were grateful for the path in during a time in a place we had no cable and were mostly watching dvd movies we brought home from the tiny library. we didn’t miss tv. and, though we are back to having cable for years, we don’t really miss it now. it’s about time to shut it down.

i sent the picture of the fallen antenna and its hulking thirty-foot-plus tower to our children, and my son, incredulously (or was that with a hand smacking his forehead over our caveman existence), asked, “was that even something in use anymore?” to which i reassured him that we were certainly not in the darkest of ages and that it was purely decorative. i do, however, know that there are people still using some kind of antenna in some capacity. it’s just not us.

netflix recently announced that they are reconsidering the way they are selling their service. they are trying on a new program where you can’t glom onto someone else’s netflix to watch – across the street, across town, across the country. it would seem that they are changing the rules midstream, but i guess ya gotta make money. because i am idealistic, i’m certain that spotify will follow and so will rhapsody and dish and apple music – a sudden conscience burst of everyone-has-to-pay-appropriately-for-what-they-stream….eh, it’s doubtful.

everyone is on someone’s netflix. everyone is using someone else’s cable sign-in. everyone is on someone else’s amazon and someone else’s cellphone bill. it’s a thing called survival.

i was on the phone with the car insurance company. i had gotten the new premium billing for the next six months and it had gone up 20%. twenty percent. now, that’s a lot considering the age of our vehicles, the amount of driving we don’t do, the fact that (knock wood) we have not had any incidents, our clean driving records (knock wood again). i asked what the justification was for the abrupt rise in cost, particularly after years of decreasing premium costs for good behavior et al.

the woman on the other end of the phone was lovely and explained “inflation” to me. i calmly retorted back, “so, the insurance company is responding to inflation by increasing premiums 20% while recognizing income is not growing in any manner near that.” she paused and drawled, “you know, i couldn’t agree more.” it was not without glee i got the increase down to 10%. but even then, i was still a bit disgruntled. when was your last 10% raise?

the time-before-the-last-time i called spectrum (our cable company) and asked for a review of our service and billing, i made it abundantly clear that i was looking to lower our cost. after a long period of time on hold – during which i listened to some beauteous piano-cello music – the rep came back on the phone and excitedly (this was contrived, i’m sure) told me that she had a great new deal for me. with unmatched enthusiasm she described the new deal…all the channels and services and blah-dee-blah…ending with “shall i sign you up?” naturally, this did not include the price. and for good reason. when i inquired about the pricing, she told me the cost of the package. it was $35 MORE than our current package. more. to clarify: more.is.not.less. i was speechless for a moment, trying to think of anything positive to say. i uttered “nothankyou” (twice to make sure the recording got it) and hung up.

soon it will be time to cut the cable. we watch very little tv. and that which we want to watch we can likely purchase in an app or something. i’ll have to ask my son.

because the days of being gathered in the living room around the tv watching “mary tyler moore” or “gidget” or “hogan’s heroes” or “petticoat junction” or “growing pains” or “three’s company” or “golden girls” or “cheers” or “friends” or “home improvement” or “everybody loves raymond” are kind of passé.

master marsh was right. the photo of our tv antenna demise should be labeled “the death of broadcast television”.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

July 31, 2018
by kerrisherwood11 Leave a comment

the 21st century. [two artists tuesday]

side B of the canvas

along with the portable record player we take out on the deck, we have the you-remember-the-case-with-the-handle box of 45’s. with titles like sugar sugar and IOU and julie do you love me and….the side A of these records are the likely hits. but if you turn it over and play side B you can often be surprised by a song you like even more than the touted “side A” song.

when david brought up this canvas to photograph the painting on the front side, i was reminded of what we had seen when 20 so generously gave d a slew of his dad’s canvases. on the side B, his artist dad (richard “duke” kruse) had written, “welcome to the 21st century” on the back of the canvas he had so meticulously stretched. we laughed when we first saw it, but it remains a mystery as to why he wrote it; we can only guess…maybe he was bemoaning the loss of something of the 20th century; maybe he was truly welcoming the next. either way, we get it. we are both 20th century artists.

as a painter, david uses actual brushes to apply actual paint to actual canvas, a process that doesn’t necessarily need explanation, but, in the 21st century art world, isn’t necessarily always the trend. with computer design and sketchpads -aka graphics tablets- the feel of bristles can become foreign to a contemporary artist. what about the smell of the paint? the light from the window on the canvas? the spatter of acrylic matte medium on your clothes? the wooden brush handle in your hand?

as a composer, i use paper and pencils and erasers and a piano. i have a couple of keyboards that have traveled all over with me, but the piano that takes up an entire room in our house is my tool of choice. it is stunning how much time it took me to write a full score way back in college compared to the ease of scoring on the computer. if i made a mistake on the score, i had to -with my pencil and then calligraphy pen- redo the whole page. then i had to write out all the parts individually. the 21st century has advanced the ability to have a computer generate all the individual parts off one score that is online. pretty amazing and time-saving stuff. not to mention the “playing” factor. the computer program will “play” the part you write; you don’t have to. but what about all the pencil eraser dust that falls on the keys of the piano? what about the scraps of paper spread out all over the top? what about the feel of the action below your hands, the response, the whooshing sound of the pedal?

acoustic vs plugged-in, analog vs digital. kind of old-fashioned. that’s probably why i like to sit in one of the rocking chairs in david’s studio and just watch. and why he will come into my studio and just listen. we don’t need a lot of fancy stuff. he just wants to hang his paintings and i just want to sit at a piano on a stage with a single mic. pretty 20th century.

read DAVID’S thoughts on this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

the new side A: earth interrupted VII (36″x48″)

TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY – ON OUR SITE

March 7, 2018
by kerrisherwood11 Leave a comment

flawed cartoon wednesday

my name is kerri and i was a razor-flip-phone-holdout. it’s occurred to me that i might have been the last person who ever had one; i went from having my own brand-new-razor to The Girl’s hand-me-down-razor to my friend’s hand-me-down-razor to my friend’s daughter’s hand-me-down-razor….you get the picture. i would hold tightly the little screws keeping both halves of the flip together as they loosened and fought to cease and desist – just to not have to move on and decide on (read: learn) a new phone.

The Girl and The Boy generously gave me my first iphone for christmas a few years ago. it was an iphone 4 and it was groundbreaking. all my fears of smart-phoning disappeared and i became a part of the 21st century.

if it weren’t for texting, there are few conversations i would have with my children-who-live-far-away-and-are-too-busy-to-be-on-the-phone-with-mom (i knowww you can relate.) it was always remarkable to me how fast The Girl could text; i teased her with thoughts of entering her in national contests. she rolled her eyes. apparently, this is not an uncommon skill. i have to say, i flipped out the day, some time ago, that my iphone deleted my string of texts from The Boy. these text-strings are pieces of life.

i have graduated one iphone beyond the 4. skipping the 5 i now have a 6. well, technically, a 6s (there are varying opinions as to what the ‘s’ means.) it still amazes me the kind of connectivity with the world i can have with this little device, how truly smart it really is.

text me when you land makes me laugh. an absurdly funny cartoon, you have to admit, texting is alive and well in all places.

TEXT ME WHEN YOU LAND MERCHANDISE