Flatleavers and Flakes in their Forties

And three artists I just learned about

The more adults I meet, the more I become a grumpy old man. I used to roll my eyes at the eternal adolescence in American culture, especially at how my generation and those after us play video games and never stop obsessing over pop culture long enough for it to be considered nostalgia. But I’ve found that the people who let’s say, never stopped watching Star Wars and still go to fan conventions are often better at adulting than the people who swapped hoodies for Polo branded garments and 2.3 children.

As a verb, adulting means behaving like a responsible adult. When we complain about having to adult, it means the mundane and tedious tasks like keeping house, and not spending money on toys and games like a kid would. But that’s just Puritanism making us feel guilty for enjoying ourselves. You’re not hurting anyone by buying that giant three-hundred-dollar Halloween skeleton for your lawn, or having a bedroom that’s three feet deep in unwashed laundry.

When I think about a responsible adult, it means someone who is reliable and dependable. Maybe it’s because part of me is still very much a child, and the lesson of Horton the Elephant is still in my ear: I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.

More and more, that’s become as much of a fairy tale as the microscopic inhabitants of Hooville. There’s a whole online dependency group for people who like flaking out and don’t want to feel bad about it. Now, sometimes it can’t be helped. You need to break plans. But on the other hand, showing up for people involves actually showing up. You can only do this so many times before the affected party realizes that they aren’t high on your priority list, and it’s not their problem that you feel bad when called out for it.

Parents tend to be the worst offenders, because they’ve been given the wildcard of excuses. Disclaimer: I am not a parent, and never will be. But also, I know quite a few parents who managed to raise children without ditching plans at the last minute every time they felt like it. Because they showed up, with their kid or not, when they said they would. In some ways parenting is tougher than it was when I was a kid, because both parents have to work to pay the bills. My single mom luckily had our grandmother to watch us, but she also couldn’t take us anywhere, because we were kids! When we went out to eat, it was McDonald’s or Arthur Treacher’s, which was a fish ‘n chips joint named after the actor who played Constable Jones in Mary Poppins. Now, you can’t even escape kids in bars or breweries. A Philly brewery had to ban strollers because they were blocking the exits.

They recently set noon to 2pm as kids’ time, and they apologized about it. It’s a friggin’ brewery! The only places you can escape kids are strip clubs and the gaming floor at casinos. New Jersey is starting down the path to allowing recreational cannabis cafes, and I imagine those will be kid-free.

This wasn’t meant to be a rant against children. It’s meant to be a rant about adults who act like children. But even children have a name for people who flake and leave you for something else.

Flat-leavers.

Apparently this is regional, but it means somebody who leaves you when something better comes along. People who double-book with a lot of plans and then cancel on you, are flat-leavers. The origin may be from when a car gets a flat. A friend stays and helps change the tire, even though the fun ride has become a chore. A fair-weather friend hops a ride and leaves you flat.

People who keep making plans with you and then decide that sitting at home with a drink to relax is better are flat-leavers, too. And hey, we all need self-care and whatnot. But try caring for others once in a while, too.

And I get it. Sometimes it feels great to cancel plans and just stay home and do nothing. But at some point, that habit becomes who you are. A flat-leaver.

I end up making friends with the people I

Now that my rant’s over, here’s a video of me having fun on the Hudson River Walkway Bridge in Poughkeepsie:

I am a big fan of animated films, and I miss the traditionally drawn ones now that computer-generated rule the roost. One animator who I didn’t know about was Bessie Mae Kelly, the first woman animator. She inspired Walt Disney with her work on Aesop’s Fables, and also… ahem… created a mouse couple called Milton & Mary. You can read all about her here, and see some of her work.

Another artist I learned about recently is Jonah Kinigstein, who rebuked non-representational art when it became popular, and despite winning a Fullbright scholarship and a profile in Life magazine, fell into obscurity due to changing tastes in the art world. He got Pollocked! But he never quit painting, and now at age 99 he’s been rediscovered again.

And finally, another artist who I don’t know who I love or hate is Michael Heizer. He’s known for enormous and enigmatic installations, and City is a Nazca Line Ziggurat Zen Garden in the desert that he’s been working on since the ‘70s. You can’t photograph it, and he won’t tell you what it means—that’s for you to decide. It’s a three-hour drive from Las Vegas and 90 minutes to the nearest tiny desert town. If you forget to bring water, or your car breaks down on the way, you might literally die to immerse yourself in this multiple square mile artwork that evokes earth mounds like Cahokia and brutalist architecture, and also the geometric designs from Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.

Last but not least, the world’s greatest collector of postcards, Donald Brown, reflects on his life’s work as he donates much of it to a museum. Brown was a librarian, and collected postcards since his teens, amassing over a million different postcards. The first commercial postcard was issued in 1861 in Philadelphia; a “craze” swept the world from the late 1800s to 1915, before they were relegated to vacation mementos and keepsakes. You know how I feel about postcards, and I think he’s a wackadoo. Most collectors are. I believe things should be used; I used to collect knives, and I have several rare blades prized by collectors, including a Burt Foster Bowie and a Mad Dog hunter; they’ve all been used.

That being said, I have a few cards that I can’t bear to mail people. One is a metallic birthday card of Bugs Bunny in drag as Carmen Miranda, from the ‘90s. I adore it, and Bugs winks at me as I work at my desk. Another is this postcard:

I can’t remember where I bought it, but I wish I’d bought a dozen of them. I love everything about it, from its sentiment to its men’s pulp magazine sensibility. Speaking of postcards, I sent out the blimp postcards to my Founding Members yesterday! If you want to join them:

I went on an offroad adventure with a bunch of Subaru drivers, and finally made it to Funtown, the fabled dirt bike sanctuary hidden deep in the Pine Barrens! That will be coming later this month.