Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Friends --

You imagine it can't happen to you, and then it does.

Here's why 2Blowhards disappeared: Our webhost, who'd given us impeccable service for eight years, made a wee goof. He put the backup disk on the same machine as the disk this blog (and various other websites) were on. It was only to be for a few weeks, while he prepared to move the backup to a super-secure offsite location. What were the chances of anything untoward happening during those mere few weeks?

Then the motherboard fried, and it partially overwrote all of the disks on the machine, originals and backups alike. Poof went the blog, as well as its backup.

The damage was so severe that it looked like there'd be no recovering any of our work whatsoever. We had a few anxious days, believe me about that. A lot of heroic work from specialists, though, finally turned up most of our content, enabling us to put 2Blowhards back online, even if minus several months' worth of recent postings. Our webhost swears on a stack of O'Reilly computer books that he'll never do anything so foolish as to put a backup disk on the same machine as the original, ever again.

But our unexpected hiatus gave Donald, Friedrich and me a chance to evaluate where we stand vis a vis blogging. For a few weeks we wanted nothing more than for everything to return to normal. Then, as more time passed, our feelings started to change. We compared notes. We've been running 2Blowhards for a long time. How much did we really want to continue?

What we finally decided is that 2Blowhards has reached the end of its natural lifetime -- and that, because of this, we're retiring the blog. We'll be keeping 2Blowhards online for a while (maybe even several years) as an archive of our work, but we won't be putting up any more new postings. I'll leave comments open for a few weeks, but I'll be closing them down soon after to keep the blog from turning into a spam-magnet.

Friedrich and I first started posting here back in 2002; 2Blowhards was one of the very first of the cultureblogs. (Donald has been blogging with us since 2005; several other writers have contributed as well.) Our shared conviction was that the public conversation about culture was 'way too restricted, and was in dire need of being bashed around. The choke-hold that the official class -- the pros, the profs, the critics, the editors, the journalists, often the artists themselves -- had on how the arts were talked about and thought about drove us crazy.

The opinion-making class would have you believe that there's only one -- or at most only a few -- ways to be a respectable, informed, and legit culturefan. Baloney to that, we felt. As we knew from experience, there are innumerable ways to enjoy an interest in the arts, as well as uncountable worthwhile ways to take part in the general culture-conversation. As bloggers, we wanted to emphasize that point -- and we also wanted to give examples of what a more open and freewheeling approach to thinking and yakking about the arts might be like.

Urge-wise, those are the two impulses that that have driven this blog.

Point #1, it seems to us, has been sufficiently made. If in 2001 the official culture-class still had a choke-hold on how the arts were discussed and thought about, in 2010 many of the old purveyors of respectable opinion are on the defensive, if not actually crumbling. The freewheeling new era that we looked forward to, and that we did our modest best to champion and herald, is here.

As for point #2, well, in my more grandiose moments I like to think that we Blowhards did a bit of pioneering work so far as developing an amusing, helpful and web-appropriate way of discussing the arts goes. The trad approach to artsyak is to (metaphorically speaking) stand on a stage, face an audience, wag a finger, argue, debate, and rail. We set out to do something very different -- to create postings that wouldn't be traditional essays but that would be open-ended conversation-starters instead. We wanted to offer an alternative to the prof-lectures-his-students model of artsyak; we wanted to throw a party instead. (So far as the minor art of criticism goes, that's a pretty radical program, by the way.) It took us a year or so to find our footing, but once we did we were off and running -- and, to be honest, we were often having to work pretty damned hard to keep up with our brainy, informed, and enthusiastic visitors.

So that's our announcement: 2Blowhards is now officially frozen in amber.

Donald will continue doing his most-excellent posting at Art Contrarian, his own blog. Bookmark it please, and visit regularly and often. Friedrich is treating himself to a vacation from writing. As for me, I'm in a self-indulgent, whimsical and scattered mood. Check out my lazily-updated personal website; Friend me on Facebook, where I share scads of links; or ask me a question (and read my maunderings) at Formspring. Formspring's great, btw! Or at least it's what all the cool seventh-graders are doing.

Heartfelt thanks from all of us to everyone who has dropped by this blog, and especially to regular visitors and commenters. Many of you have come to feel like good friends. You've given us far more in the way of pleasure, instruction, and fun than you'll ever know.

All the best,

Ray Sawhill, aka "Michael Blowhard"

at July 26, 2010 | perma-link | (26) comments

Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Guests are coming and my wife decided that today is the day to change vacuum cleaner bags. I had to deal with three different machines. And in the process got reacquainted with the art and craft of the machine-human interface.

All the detachable bags had the same annoying attachment feature -- a piece of cardboard stiffening on the bag along with a hole lined with rubber where the duct of the machine inserts. These are hard to deal with when it comes to actually making the insertion; a certain amount of aligning, pushing, fiddling with the alignment, pushing again -- with success usually coming after two or three tries. Since I'm asked to do this chore only a few times a year, I have no real learning curve to rely on.

I'm sure better bag attachments are possible, but the arrangement I found on three different brands of cleaners suggests that price of replacement bags was the most important consideration, so the arrangement was the cheapest one that would function passably well.

The little Hoover shown above had the best bag-changing design features. Even though the bag itself had the now-classical cardboard stiffener plus rubber-surrounded hole arrangement, the change operation worked smoothly -- almost.

It has a plastic connector piece where the cardboard could be slid on. Then all one needs to do is set the connector-plus-attached bag into a recess of the machine and close a hatch that has the waste hose attached -- it's aligned so that the hose connector inserts into the bag with no fuss.

But fuss there was. Not having the manual handy, I tried inserting the hose connection into the bag before shutting the hatch. The hatch refused to close. Repeatedly. Until I finally realized that the insertion was related to the closing of the hatch.

Ideally, a piece of equipment should be designed so that no manual should be needed, where everything should fit together only one possible way. That little Hoover comes very close to that ideal and is very nifty once one understands that final step. What's probably needed is a short message molded on the attachment plate stating that it and the bag should be placed in the bag compartment before closing the hatch. Perhaps newer versions than our three-year-old model fixed this detail.

Later,

Donald

[Cross-posted at Art Contrarian.]

at July 24, 2010 | perma-link | (3) comments

Donald PIttenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

I'm not into coins and therefore was surprised when I glanced at the reverse side of a penny I received in change a few days ago. It seems that after nearly 50 years of having the Lincoln Memorial, the Treasury decided it was time for a redesign. (In 2009 a set of reverses were minted to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, but I somehow never noticed any of those coins.)

Here are the reverses of the main penny designs of the past century:

The U.S. Mint's statement is here, and the Wikipedia entry here.

I don't know about you, but I think the new design is about as insipid and ugly as any experienced committee of camel designers could ever have come up with. It's probably the worst coin design I've ever seen (and as reference, I've got baggies full of old European coins eagerly awaiting to be used again should the Euro meet its demise).

Bring back "wheat" -- at least its design is honest and fills the space nicely.

Later,

Donald

[Cross-posted at Art Contrarian.]

at July 20, 2010 | perma-link | (9) comments

Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Maybe it's happening in Palm Beach or the Upper East Side. Or perhaps in Beverly Hills, Malibu or Rancho Mirage -- though I was in the latter three within the last six months and didn't notice it.

That "it" is cars with matte -- rather than shiny -- paint jobs.

I noticed this in London's tony Mayfair district a couple of weeks ago, spotting at least three cars with matte finishes. And each of those cars was an expensive one -- the cheapest of the lot being a Porsche.

Here are some photos I snapped:

Of course one wonders Why?

I have no answer at this point, though my first reaction was that it must be some trendy thing for a small subset of those who buy cars costing more than $100,000.

Later,

Donald

[Cross-posted at Art Contrarian.]

at July 19, 2010 | perma-link | (5) comments

Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Paris' Musée d'Orsay, with its magnificent collection of (mostly French) art for the period 1850 to 1900 or a little later, is undergoing some renovation. The top floor or two are closed while work proceeds.

So what about the visitor spending mega-shekels to get to Paris to view all those goodies in person? Will he be disappointed? Feel cheated?

Probably not.

I entered the d'Orsay last Tuesday wondering about those matters, but a quick walk-around revealed that most of the important works were still on display even though a subset had been sent off to San Francisco for the duration.

Here's how they pulled it off. Galleries on the level above the main floor that usually are devoted to special exhibits were used to display paintings formerly found in the galleries on the highest floors. And it's possible that some paintings were re-hung closer together than previously in some other galleries (though a number of galleries seemed the same as they were last May when I paid my previous visit).

So, if you have tickets to Paris this summer or fall and want a good d'Orsay experience, you will find one.

Later,

Donald

[Cross-posted at Art Contrarian]

at July 18, 2010 | perma-link | (2) comments