Hyde Park Blvd

For those who have asked for a more personal HPBlvd, here is an email drafted and sent to my gastroenterologist after last week’s visit:

Dear Dr.  ____ –

Post-colonoscopy appreciation and reflection.

Thanks for your – and the clinic staff’s –  expertise and professionalism.  You made a sphincter-tightening experience as easy and pleasant as possible.

During the car ride home, I read with some interest the paper that you handed me at the conclusion of the exam, which provided details of the procedure, including color photos from a tour that I must have slept through.  The concluding sentence reads as follows: “The quality of the bowel preparation was fair.”

I will not question why anyone would want souvenir photos of their rectum and cecum.  I could be smart and say that, if they were interested, they could have stayed awake, but I can understand how pictures of specific features (especially diagnostic-related features) might help to make real what is a terra incognita for anyone but medical professionals.

But the barely passing grade on bowel prep will not stand without comment.

Depending on one’s upbringing and personality, colonoscopy can be many things beyond a necessary screening (and, when necessary, harvesting) procedure.  It can be a challenge, a cleanse, a discipline, an enforced fast, a nuisance, a punishment, the Day of Atonement rent free of the Hebrew calendar, a rite of passage, an expression of self-denial, and many other things, including a vain attempt to know how a car radiator feels when it downs a Prestone-size bottle of polyethylene glycol.

For those of us who lean a bit toward the OCD side of the ledger, it’s one more opportunity to perform a complicated set of instructions to the letter – and to make sure we’ve held up our end of the bargain, not to mention to get the approving pat on the head that we didn’t get as children (and that made us OCD in the first place).  And in some greater cosmic court, proper behavior is rewarded, ideally in a good diagnostic outcome.

I was determined to do this colonoscopy right.  I limited my diet to yogurt the day before the day before the procedure.  For the fateful prep day, the instructions said drink a bottle of citrate of magnesia at 9am, so I did just that, and then followed up with exactly eight ounces of liquid every hour on the hour from 10am – 5pm.  And unless my friends are lying to me, I’m the only person in my circle who downed the entire gallon of goLYTELY.

I was pleased by the clinical finding of normal, and there’s nothing I can do about the ‘abnormal’ digital rectal exam (prostate having been removed and there being no one home).  But this barely passing grade on the bowel prep is unfair and I’d like to appeal to a higher court. Is there Dean or someone to whom I can bitch?

Again, many thanks.

Yours,

R

Even if it’s not a Roller, I don’t think Slowhand is feeling any pain. Courtesy of Frango.

A couple of insights into the virtues of paring down.  Food then fashion, both right for the times.

In his farewell NYT column, food critic Frank Bruni comments on how one narrows a restaurant menu:

Scratch off the appetizers and entrees that are most like dishes you’ve seen in many other restaurants, because they represent this one at its most dutiful, conservative and profit-minded. The chef’s heart isn’t in them.

Scratch off the dishes that look the most aggressively fanciful. The chef’s vanity — possibly too much of it — spawned these.

Then scratch off anything that mentions truffle oil.

Choose among the remaining dishes.

And Coco Chanel’s advice on deciding how to dress:

When accessorizing, always take off the last thing you put on.

If Geo. Barris is the hieratic version of this art form, the rat rod is the demotic.  At its best rat rods embody the conflict between aspiration and finances (or expertise), adolescence and maturity, beauty and decrepitude.  The cars are often unpainted, with rust on full display.  Bondo and other restoratives are not generally part of the program.

And like all good, demotic arts, there are no defined standards.   If it feels right, it is right.

These (and many other) photos courtesy of Streetrods-online.

Love of small cars knows no bounds, does not stop at the Carnival door.  I treat my current ride like a bumper car, so why ever not.  Thanks to Jalopnik for the education and the joy.

After Charlie Haden, it’s Avishai Cohen when it comes to bassists.

The cars I loved as a kid and the magazines that featured them.  What none of us appreciated was the quality of the photography.  Why so many of us fell in love with — and into — the Left Coast.

YouTube:  you just can’t beat it for fun at the old ball yard.

Two more of a seemingly endless number of terrific Sartorialist photos, both staged for a commercial shoot (models being blogger’s children and friends).

David Rosenberg continues to run counter to the current wisdom, reign in expectations:

Those who believe that the banking sector crunch is fully behind us should read the WSJ article today on the topic — New Phase of Crisis, Securities Sink Banks. And those who believed that the road to recovery rested with the auto sector should also have a read of Rebates for ‘Clunkers’ to End Monday on page A3 of the WSJ. The program, which was creating all sorts of distortions, including higher used car prices, is a regressive tax for the low-income consumer.

As for those who believe that the housing market is stabilizing should have a read of the article Improving Home Sales Belie Market Reality on the front page of the Money & Investing section of the WSJ. The reality is that sales and pricing are currently being distorted by the wave of all-cash deals by investors who are looking to rent out foreclosed units and this wave of competing supply for the apartment market is dragging down rents — a critical driver of the inflation rate — for the first time in 17 years.

According to a survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors, 36% of all sales now involve “non-distressed” properties. And, the article titled Souring Prime Loans Compound Mortgage Woes in today’s WSJ is also worth a read for anyone who believes we are going to see anything closely resembling a normal recovery, and assumes, of course, that the usually wrong consensus is correct that this downturn is completely over and done with. Fully 12.2% of mortgages in 2Q were either in the foreclosure process or in arrears, up from 12.1% in 1Q and 9.0% a year ago.

Enjoy the inimitable voice of James Fitzpatrick and a reminder of how one explored the world pre-internet, -television, and -jet aircraft:  via a darkened movie theater waiting for the main attraction, or between double features, or as part of an all-newsreel program a compilation of short features offered downtown at the Adams Theater, a  special favorite of Abraham Rosenberg, grandfather).

Great perspectives:  the trolley cars still run and Old Heidelberg is the queen of Randolph Street.  Trains, bridges, pre-war skyscrapers, and no sign of modern architecture.  The tour heads south to Jackson Park and even stops at Lorado Taft’s Fountain of Time, but no mention of the University next door.

Thanks to WH for the link.