IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

Congratulations to Wymsey! Wymsey made it into the NY Times today, via a cooking article which I’ll publish in full here as it will one day become subscription content.

Wymsey is the wonderful absurdist creation of Charles Ivermee, and to find out more about why I’m posting this here, skip to below the article.

Take Egg Off Speed Dial
By PAUL ADAMS
Published: March 8, 2006

FOLLOWING a detailed recipe forwarded to me by a friend, I waited until 7 p.m., when my free minutes begin. I stood an egg in an egg cup between two short stacks of books. With my new Treo 650 I called my old Samsung cellphone, answering it when it rang. I laid the two phones on the books so their antennas pointed at the egg. Supposedly, this would give me a cooked egg.

But after 90 minutes, with the Treo’s fresh battery running low, the egg was still cold. Maybe, I thought, this method uses some sort of telephonic radiation to coagulate protein without heat? I whacked it on the table and watched raw egg ooze out. I poached it later by conventional means.

The recipe I used had been making the rounds on the Internet for the last month. It originally appeared in 2000, in the Wymsey Chronicle: wymsey.co.uk/wymchron/cooking.htm.

The Chronicle, a single-handed creation of a 60-year-old English legal archivist named Charles Ivermee, documents life in the fictional village of Wymsey. The original egg-cooking article, a step-by-step how-to ostensibly written by one Suzzanna Decantworthy, appears in a droll weekend supplement that also features a woodland hunt for wild tofu. Stripped from its whimsical context, though, the recipe, just offbeat enough to be credible, has been widely forwarded by e-mail.

The caprice of the Web snapped up the article only recently, with mentions last month on slashdot.org, boingboing.net and other sites. “Last year the page could expect around 100 visits per week,” Mr. Ivermee said. In the week of Feb. 6, when the Slashdot community noticed the recipe and extensively debated its veracity, that number increased to about 132,000 would-be cooks.

Clearly, people are eager to have their technophobias confirmed, but a cellphone’s power output is half a watt at most, less than a thousandth of what a typical microwave oven emits.

But those of us who are inclined to cook without a stove are not without recourse. I have independently confirmed the deliciousness of eggs poached in a dishwasher, fried under a hot iron, shirred on a radiator and coddled in a drip coffee maker.

Back in the dinosaur days of the internet, 7 years ago, I came across the Parish Board of the Micro-state of Wymsey which had its own Chronicle. A humorous chronicle with a very silly absurd forum. I’ve no memory of how in the world I got there but it was by accident. The place was composed of characters and it’s not very well known that I’m a triplet, but I am, and I told the second of those third’s, Irene de Mandible about the forum and she leaped right in. And if you think I go about informing and directing Irene toward things in a regular way, no, I don’t, as she is an embarrassment. This was my first and only time, a leap which meant that Irene eventually became Wymsey’s ambassador to “the area from the Mexican border with the USA to Cape Horn in Chile and all off-earth territories.” Which was right up Irene’s alley, the off-earth territories part. She was only confused by the other parts.

The website in which, at the time, I was investing my energy was Bigsofa, a subdivision of which was The Urlybird Times. I had intended to periodically do real interviews with people and ended up only doing a few, and among them were two interviews touching upon Wymsey. The first was with expert, Irene de Mandible because she is after all one of my three/thirds and was thus easy.

URLYBIRD: What inspired your interest in Wymsey?

IRENE: Hmmm. I honestly don’t recollect. I’m not sure I was interested in Wymsey. It just happened to be there.

URLYBIRD: Many things just happen to be there.

IRENE: Yes, but not where my ancestor, Adam de Mandible, happened to be as well. I understood he might have come to America from Wymsey in the 17th century. Wymsey appeared to me to have its share of knowledgable historians, and as I was at that time researching my family history I thought I would post to the parish notice board and see if anyone knew anything.

URLYBIRD: This was in September of 1999.

IRENE: You HAVE done your research, haven’t you? At first the Wymsical-powers-that-be insisted Adam de Mandible had no association with Wymsey. They insisted so strongly, despite the fact there was no evidence Adam de Mandible didn’t have anything to do with Wymsey, that I began to wonder why this was, why they would be so adamant about it. I mean, they were so adamant. Then it was later discovered that my Mandible ancestors did, in fact, attain Wymsey during the time of William the Conqueror. A family of cartographers. John Applegate was ever so helpful. I’m forever in his debt for this bit of illuminating information on my ancestors. Well, not forever.

URLYBIRD: They attained Wymsey…

IRENE: Went to Wymsey. Reached Wymsey. Achieved Wymsey. Yes, they attained Wymsey. I meant what I said. I don’t know if they were charmed by Wymsey and decided to make it their home, or if there simply wasn’t anyone left to dispossess, but, however they might have come by Wymsey…

Somehow Irene managed to wind up that interview referencing Naom Chomsky.

Another interview was with Pookah, twin sister of “expert Irene de Mandible”, which means she is the third of the thirds after Irene was reported as missing after Urlybird’s interview with her (being a big time webmaster of Bigsofa I didn’t want to let on that I was related to these people I was interviewing, which would have destroyed my credibility as a web journalist, though I did manage to drum up several very real people to interview). And Jeff, Irene’s husband, was interviewed as well.

POOKAH: Irene and I, we’re not much alike. At least I don’t think we are. But we’ve always had this psychic bond. This metaphysical sympathy, a link connecting us.

JEFF: IF THEYRE NOT TRAINED WELL SHE HAS TO KEEP THE DOGS ON A CHAIN WHEN SHES PAINTING THEM SHES A GREAT CANINE PORTRAIT ARTIST ONE OF THE BEST THERE IS SHES TRIED PAINTING CANINE PORTRAITS USING PHOTOS BUT ITS NOT THE SAME I PAINT TOO SO I UNDERSTAND BUT MY SPECIALTY IS PAINTING GUITARS HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE GIBSON #$% SERIES AQUA AUTOBODY PAINT #@$% WITH THE SUNBURST FINISH AND ALLIGATOR CRAWLING UP BESIDE THE BETTY PAGE TYPE BEACH BEAUTY SAYING WISH YOU WERE HERE HAVING A GREAT TIME I DID THAT THEY ARE NOW ALL SNAPPED UP ON THE JAPANESE COLLECTORS MARKET

NYTimes, Slashdot, Boingboing, etc! Talk about Wymsey suddenly getting its extended fifteen minutes!

But we, in the know, were there first, way back when, in 1999 and 2000. Never mind that Wymsonians occasionally intimated that I was stomping around where I’d no business being. That business about the sunstone or whatever it was.

But I loved Wymsey so damn much…well, Irene did, that she couldn’t help herself, once y’know I’d put her in contact with them.

I got up from the keypad to get H.o.p. something to eat and was thinking how I might write in a humorous way of Irene’s ultimate disappearance from the internet, considered what the story might be and how I might write of how Irene was “in love” with Wymsey and how she was lost, totally lost, when Charles Ivermee turned out to have a personal life and got hitched and how she hasn’t appeared once on the internet since then. And up leaps son H.o.p. and follows me and smiles at me and says, “I’m in love with you, mommy” not one second later. Which is the kind of thing an 8 year old will say to his mom, though he’s never used the words “in love” before. For which reason I asked him what he’d said and he repeated. We hadn’t spoken in fifteen minutes as I’d been writing and he was drawing and as soon as I stood and turned to the kitchen and thought the words “in love” blam up leaps H.o.p. from his seat and out of the blue announces, “I’m in love with you, mommy”. Which means wow what about love even humorous absurdist spin-story fabrications, that any thought of love enters the universal unconscious and blam up hops H.o.p. to announce, beaming, yes, the great highway upon which we communal travel does exist, or may simply mean yes that the way to a boy’s heart is through his stomach, considering I had walked into the kitchen.

Anyway, please, take some time from your day and read the latest in Wymsey droll at the Wymsey Chronicle and dip into the archives. You can’t imagine how pleased I am at the numbers of others who have been recently acquainted with the Wymsey wit, even though it slammed the servers in a harsh way.

And again congrats from me, Marty and H.o.p.

The world is a funny place. A few days ago, for the first time in two decades, it occurred to me to try to recollect what my kindergarten teacher’s name was. I hadn’t thought about it in nearly twenty years and at first I thought oh I’ll never remember, then after a few minutes it finally came back that her name was Koenig.

This evening I get an email from a woman who was expressing appreciation for a website of mine. Her name? Koenig. Not since my kindergarten teacher have I had any dealings with a person named Koenig.

So this evening I for some reason thought about how it had been a while since I’d had one of those coincidental moments with H.o.p. where something I’m thinking will pop out of his mouth.

Earlier today I wrote on the blog how I was feeling “zombified”. It’s not a normal part of my vocabulary. I just happened to use it.

Several hours later H.o.p. is sitting there playing on the computer and he says, “What does zombified mean?” He doesn’t read the blog so I asked him why. He said he’d seen it on a game and was wondering, then showed me the end game screen of the Power Puff girls game he’d just been playing, which read, “You’ve been zombified!”

Not much of a coincidence but it’s still funny that “zombified” is the world he elected to ask me about.

I guess zombified is the word of the day.

A little earlier I was reading Touching the River which is all about electrified art. H.o.p. was drawing elsewhere. Then I was done and reading something else and H.o.p. gets up from the table and starts dancing around telling me about a new character he’s just come up with.

THE ELECTRIC KNIGHT!

He’s all electric. Even his sword is electric.

His opponent?

THE DARK SIDE OF ELECTRICITY.

Yes, that’s the opponent’s name. It’s a bit of a mouthful, but there you go.

* * * * * * *

Have been having hours long conversations with my brother on what to do about my piecemeal computer, which needs more memory and has one of its fans going. I’m hoping to make this one last a little longer. Trying to figure out how we can upgrade it just enough to do its job without getting too pricey, and then if it is still not up to speed I’ll have to bite the bullet and get a new one but I can pass this one along to H.o.p. in decent working order.

My brother referred to my computer as “a special case”.

I said I knew what that meant.

He said he was trying to be polite.

Earlier in the day Marty had come in with the ZBS (Zero Bull Shit) catalogue and plopped it down in front of me and said, “The Fourth Tower of Inverness!”

We’ve been planning a car trip, to be taken fairly soon, and the Fourth Tower of Inverness (we had some cassettes of it back in the 80s which wore out in the 80s) was a wonderful Jack Flanders radio series done in 1972 that is punch drunk with things like Ram Dass playing the Wurlitzer of Wisdoms…perfect material for a long drive through Texas.

So, I look it up and see they have the original series in mp3 download plus, it seems, a newer version (?) on CD. Must be a newer version because the original radio series is given as such whereas this other isn’t. I called Marty at the studio and said, “The radio version, right?” though I already knew what the answer would be, which is what I’d choose. “But they have it on CD,” he said. “Apparently not the same thing,” said I. “Original,” he said.

And then in walks H.o.p. who interrupts and says:

H.o.p.: Mom, what’s alchemy?

Mom: Where’d you hear about alchemy?

H.o.p.: I don’t know. What is it.

Mom: I’ll tell you as soon as I get off the phone.

So I got off the phone and downloaded The Fourth Tower of Inverness (took a little while) and tried to explain a little bit about alchemy to H.o.p.

H.o.p. has some radar.

I fired up the Fourth Tower of Inverness and we began to listen to the first episode, which begins thusly:

And now, kiddies, just like back in those days of yore, the whole family can once again huddle around that beautiful mahogany cabinet, slowly turn that great heavy dial, and stare blankly at the speaker as in your mind vague forms begin to shape themselves. Can you see the mad alchemist with the bent frame, Dr. Missoula…?

H.o.p. was hooked. We are now on episode 3.

Highly recommended!

The other day this came to my mind, something which I thought could be an interesting project to pursue on a long term basis, something which would be perfect for blogging, which could be possibly entertaining while offering a tiny, unassuming window on a narrow spectrum of experience that is infrequently talked about and often mocked.

Daily, I would take a different person’s photo, an off-hand portrait or a picture that would allow the person to remain anonymous (such as their hand, their shoes or midriff), and I would ask them three questions.

Have you ever seen a UFO?

What is the most peculiar or profound coincidence you’ve ever experienced?

And I’ve been searching my mind for the third question. But I keep thinking it should be what is the person’s earliest memory. I could also ask the person if they have any religious affiliation, are agnostic or atheist or…whatever.

I’m not looking for anything in particular, this wouldn’t be like a poll.

On Sunday night I was thinking this was a great idea and I would start it on Monday. But on Monday I was then a week deep into trying to get my new computer (I’m now in Vista world) somewhat in order, was occupied with that, and then decided my project would be lame anyway. Then I thought about it again a little on Tuesday, this time thinking of maybe different things I should ask and deciding no, no, I won’t do it after all.

I hadn’t talked about this with Marty or H.o.p.

Today, sorting out the computer continued. I was on the phone to India for three hours and the technician was great. Afterward, I did some website updates for someone. I started a new painting. I realized I needed to reload in my Wacom brushes and some other brushes. I remembered some programs I still needed to install but have to locate them first (I still need to purchase a scanner as mine won’t work with Vista). I began gathering together some of H.o.p.’s newest sculptures to photograph since I can now manage them again on the computer. We had pizza for the second time this week, as a special treat for H.o.p. Marty was in late from the studio and we were all kind of drained so there wasn’t much talk about anything and what talk there was was about the studio. We watched some jazz history on television. I did my yoga. H.o.p. went to bed. Marty went to bed. Then after a couple more hours of painting I went to bed. Then after a little while longer H.o.p. came stumbling in from his room, crawled into our bed and was fast asleep again immediately.

As I lay there, unable to sleep, I thought again about the project that I’d on Tuesday decided to abandon. And I thought maybe it would be a good idea to do it after all. Still though, as on Tuesday, I had gotten away from the initial purpose. I thought of a hundred other practical subjects to ask about but the list of questions grew too long, so I narrowed it down to one question, thinking maybe I should ask if the person had one bit of history they wanted to relate.

Then I remembered my original idea. The UFO question and the question about a peculiar or profound coincidence. Maybe, I thought, I should ask if they had ever dreamed something which came true? Or maybe that was getting to be too much.

Wondering if this was really a possibility considering that I’m rather shy and not good at approaching people (but certainly I could approach one person a day on this?), thinking that I would need to invest in a cheap digital recorder too, I lay there, waiting for sleep, reciting in my head over and over the two resolved upon questions I would ask. “Have you ever seen a UFO? What is the most peculiar or profound coincidence you’ve ever experienced? Have you ever seen a UFO? What is the most peculiar or profound coincidence you’ve ever experienced? Have you ever seen a UFO…?”

And this voice suddenly announced beside me, “They have found the aliens.”

I looked over and it was H.o.p., eyes shut fast, talking in his sleep. I can’t recollect the last time I heard him talk in his sleep.

That was the only thing he said.

George has the honor of being my very first interviewee. I saw him outside the window and decided I might as well start now and we could use H.o.p.’s little digital camera to record a movie from which I could make a transcription. Knowing the battery in H.o.p.’s camera was running low but hoping it would last long enough, we ran out and caught George. We talked in the shade of the trees on this humid, sunny day, the mosquitoes snacking on us.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And I’m going to take a photo…

GEORGE (laughing, expecting me to take a photo right then): Wait, wait…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: But, but, no, no, but you can be, I’m going to get my camera, you can be anonymous if you want to or…

H.O.P.: Look, I’m filming.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Have you ever seen a UFO?

GEORGE: No, no.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Ok. What’s the most interesting coincidence you’ve ever had?

H.O.P.: About alien sightings.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, not about alien sightings. About anything. An interesting coincidence, synchronicity.

GEORGE (reflects long): If you could see my brain now you’d probably bust out, go to laughing. Hmmm.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You can’t think of one or there are too many.

GEORGE: I can’t think of one, y’know. I draw a blank on that one.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: A total blank? OK. Well, what if you had a story you wanted to tell. One of your more interesting stories.

GEORGE (laughing, smacks mosquito): That I would want to tell?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS (laughing): That you would want to tell. A little piece of history.

GEORGE: You asked the wrong person.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I’ve asked the wrong person? You? I know you’ve got tons of stories. You’ve probably got, you’ve got…

GEORGE: I know…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You’ve got a country of stories.

H.O.P.: Yup, mom, a country of them.

GEORGE: Just any type of story?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yes.

GEORGE: Unusual?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: It could be an unusual story. You’ve been a lot of places. You’ve done a lot of things. You’ve met a lot of people.

GEORGE: But I don’t know any stuff that’s unusual. The way I look at it it’s not unusual.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Well, you know what I mean….a little bit of history.

GEORGE: I remember I was in uhm Vietnam and, uh, being that far away from home, young, y’know, and I never thought that I would meet somebody in Vietnam that was from my hometown that I knew, y’know, because I grew up in a small place, y’know, in Georgia. But, I was off that night and I went to the rec center. And I went in there to shoot some pool. So I said, “Who’s up next?” and they said, “You’ve got to put your name on the list.” So I put my name on the list. And the guy said, “George Gamble!” And I said, “Ol’ Johnny Bussey!” Y’know we were like two kids inside of this with all these guys standing there. And they said, “You all know each other?” And we said, “Yeah, man! We grew up together in Manchester, Georgia!” They said, “Where is that?”

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I don’t even know where Manchester is.

GEORGE: It’s southwest of here about seventy miles. You got a Georgia map? Find Meriwether County. It’s spelled M-e-r-i-w-e-t-h-e-r. Find Meriwether County and look down in the right hand corner. It’s right at Meriwether County, Harris County and Talbot County, right where those three come together you’ll see the little town of Manchester. It’s about 4000 people, maybe 5000 now. But when I left home it was about 3000 people down there, y’know. And uhm, this guy, as a matter of fact we used to go to his house on Sundays….

H.O.P.: Uh, oh, the battery is dying.

GEORGE: And, uh, he was living with his grandfather. His mother lived in New Jersey. And the two boys went to school down here. And when he graduated from high school, he moved to New Jersey where his mother lived. And next time I saw him was Vietnam.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Now, that’s a coincidence.

GEORGE: It’s a good feeling to see somebody that you know, that you grew up with, that far away from home. It’s amazing.

H.o.p.’s camera then shut down, the battery going dead. A couple came up from the next apartment building who were out walking their three dogs. I went inside for my camera and took several photos of George.

I knew an arrangement where I’d be using H.o.p.’s digital camera to capture interviews for transcription wasn’t going to work out as he is using his camera all the time and I never know when it’s going to be charging or when he’s going to be in middle of filming something and won’t want me borrowing the camera. So, as Marty was also thinking it might be useful for him, I ordered a little digital recorder.

The recorder came in today. (So soon!) For a small package, it is stuffed with all kinds of controls and I hadn’t yet tried to figure it all out when Marty got home and said he had an interviewee outside waiting for me.

“Maybe tomorrow is better,” I said. “I’ve not figured out the recorder yet and H.o.p.’s camera isn’t charged.”

“Oh, I can figure it out, no problem,” the musician, studio engineer, producer said.

“Great,” I said.

I grabbed my boots and my camera and tossed him the recorder and we headed outside. We did the interview, which turned out to be a nice long one with some wildly interesting stories. I couldn’t have been more pleased.

I took photos.

“Uh, let me go see if this came out all right,” Marty said looking worried.

Well, turns out he hadn’t completely figured out the recorder when he thought he had and the interview was lost. So, I’ve got a photo but no interview.

We’ve arranged, hopefully, to do it again Thursday evening.

“You sure I won’t be damaged goods now, since it won’t be as spontaneous?” the woman asked.

No, no, it’s all right, I assured.

“Maybe you could ask some other questions,” she said.

The first two questions need to always be the same for this project, I told her, but I can change the third question.

Hopefully, hopefully, we will get that second interview done. I worked on the photo tonight and it’s a nice fuzzy twilight shot.

Marty figured out the recorder and showed it to H.o.p. as it’s going to be H.o.p.’s job to do the recording himself. Getting used to the recorder H.o.p. interviewed me…and, boy, he was good. I wasn’t taking it all very seriously, was being pretty brief with my answers and he put on this persona of like this pro interviewer politely reminding me that the people couldn’t see my gestures so could I be a little more descriptive, and asked all kinds of questions seeking exacting details in a conversational way. What was interesting too is they weren’t leading questions, he never sought to put words in my mouth, instead they were questions that would have helped any interviewee verbally paint an involving picture. I was seriously surprised.

“Damn!” I thought. “I’m not even needed! H.o.p. could more than capably do this all by himself!”

I would offer a transcription of that recording but it ended up getting lost too as H.o.p. didn’t quite have the recording part down yet.

Ben was loading a dresser into his truck. I asked him if he’d like to do an interview. He asked what it would be about. This was only my third interview and no one had asked me what it would be about before and I wondered how best to answer that question without ruining the surprise of the first question and considered I really ought to think this through later. He asked me if it was anything that would have the government showing up at his door. I told him no. I told him I’d also want a photo, though it could be simply of his foot if he wanted to remain anonymous. He had no problem with me taking his photo but he promptly plopped a big white hat on his head that sucked the sun into it and the pictures came out rather inadequate so I thought I’d just use this one of a book he was giving to H.o.p., “Explore a Spooky Swamp”, as counterpoint to the interview. Ben takes in thousands of books and has regular sales to raise money for the library and has won a number of prestigious awards for his volunteerism.

H.O.P.: This is H.o.p. and Mom and their questions and we’re going to do it right now. Go ahead mom.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: My first question is always, “Have you ever seen a UFO”?

BEN: No.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I knew that because we’ve talked about that before. The second question is always, what is the most interesting coincidence you’ve ever had happen to you, the most memorable.

BEN: Coincidence. Things that you’ve thought of that happen later…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: All kinds of coincidences…

H.O.P.: Like my alien balloon popping.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yes, that was a coincidence.

BEN: This is tough.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yeah.

BEN: This is a tough thing. I’m having trouble thinking, my memory slipping I guess.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: It is a tough question.

BEN: I have a latest thing that happened.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: A coincidence?

BEN: Explain what you mean by coincidence.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Say you’re thinking of something and something that has to do with what you’re thinking about happens. For instance, you’re thinking about somebody and they call. It can be mundane and every day or exceptional. Some people have exceptional coincidences. Or if you can’t think of a coincidence perhaps something…eerie. (Ben had, after all, just given H.o.p. the book, “Exploring a Spooky Swamp!”)

BEN: I’m not sure I can even think of a coincidence, where something happened that I had a premonition…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Not even a premonition. It can be like, “Oh, I was just thinking about such and such…”

BEN: Oh, yeah. Wow. This is hard for me. I can’t think of anything, right now. This now.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Can’t think of anything? OK.

H.O.P.: Move on to the THIIIIIRRRRD question.

BEN: This is bad. I’ll think of something as I ride home.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You probably will and it will be too late for me. If you want we can come back to this.

H.O.P.: The third question!

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: What is a story you’d most like to tell, which is going to be tough as you always have so many stories.

BEN: Yeah, what is a story?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: A history.

BEN: Yeah, well I just recently spent a few minutes telling a lady the history about why I’m banking with Sun Trust bank.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: That would be just fine.

BEN: It’s amazing because for years, I started off, I banked with C&S bank from 1950 to 1963, and every Monday I would go into the bank on Pharr Road and Peachtree and cash a check for $10.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Why $10?

BEN: Because that’s what I needed for lunch money that week.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: All right.

H.O.P.: Umm hum.

BEN: So, I would go in and I would walk up to the teller with my $10 check and she would look at me very suspiciously because every week it would be a new person.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Were they dressed in yellow or other colors?

BEN: That’s a good question.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I used to know a person who worked at C&S and she said they preferred that they dress in yellow because it was nice and sunny.

BEN: That’s a good…that’s interesting. Well, C&S I think liked blue suits for men and gray suits, kind of like IBM, gray suits, and for women white blouses and you couldn’t see below the blouse so whatever. So, anyway, up to the lady I would go with my $10 check and she would ask me if I had an account there and I would say yes I have this check and I have an account here and I would like to cash it and she would hum, well, you have to get it approved by that person over there and I’d say ok and I would go over there and they would say have a seat and sign in this little book and I think the vice president would come out and he would ask me for my driver’s license and they he’d look very carefully at it and sometimes he would go back over to the teller and check and uhm my signature card, so, it was an arduous, what would you call it?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yes, a difficult process…

BEN: Yes, a difficult process and they’d look at me and then look at my signature and look back and I always had a suit and a tie on and my hair wasn’t combed just right probably. I tried to shave and do the rest of that stuff properly. So, anyway, I decided I would go into this little bank there on Peachtree Road called the People’s Bank, and there was a nice lady, an older teller there, looked like somebody’s grandmother, named Mrs. Mason. And, with glasses and reddish brown hair and a white blouse with a ruffled collar, and always looked the same. There was nobody else in that bank except for Mrs. Mason and over sitting in another room a nice old feller named Mr. Clodfelter. And Mr. Clodfelter was the president of the bank and she was the teller, and I’d go in to cash my $10 check, she would look at me and say, “Good to see you,” and she would cash my check so I was a customer of People’s Bank. But Mr. Clodfelter got old and he decided and he decided (laughs) this is a long story…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS (laughing): I’m waiting for the punch line.

BEN (laughing): You may never get there. So, anyway, Mr. Clodfelter’s getting old so he decides to sell the bank to Georgia Railroad Savings Bank of Augusta, so…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

BEN: So they become First Georgia Bank.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: When was this?

BEN: Oh, this has got to be sixties, seventies.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Right, years ago.

BEN: So, first Georgia Railroad and Savings Bank and I go in there and they have four or five people, but generally they have the same people in there and I don’t have a lot of trouble cashing my check. But, and it goes along pretty well for twenty years. Well, for fifteen years.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: We started out with them in Augusta and I didn’t like them.

BEN: The sixteenth year they become First Union Bank, they sell out to First Union, and my daughter goes to work there during the summer. I mean we were pals, you know? So she works there, they train her to be a teller, they train her to do something, they give her an award for selling more savings bonds than anybody else and this goes on for four years off and on. So my daughter decides to get married, this is my daughter, Anna, and I need money, right? Because this wedding’s, Linda’s planned this incredible wedding. And it’s going to cost lots and lots of money. So I go back into First Union Bank and there’s this nice little lady I’m friendly with named Mrs. Something-I-Can’t-Remember-Right-Now and I say I want to borrow $20,000 because my daughter’s getting married.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Uh-hum.

BEN: She’s finished college and she’s marrying this guy she met in college and they wanted, oh, they were so thrilled, and what I wanted was a Home Equity Loan and I want to pay monthly payments on it until I pay it off. And the lady says, “That sounds OK, now where do you live?” So I gave her the address and everything and we got to talking and she said, “Who built your house?” And I said, “I built my house.” And she said, “What kind of house is it?” And I said, “It’s a log house.” And she said, “Log house?! Wait just a minute.” She went back into a room and out comes the vice president and the vice president comes up and says, “We don’t loan money on log houses.” And I said, “Well, wait a minute, I don’t owe any money on my log house.” No, no money on log houses. It would be a first mortgage. So I said it’s not that much money, I can pay it. Anyway, to make a long story out of it I was very discouraged and I got home and we got to talking and I remembered Susan Houston, a long time contemporary, was working for Trust Company of Georgia in the Home Equity Department. Became Sun Trust Company. So I called her up and she said, “We’ll send the appraiser out there.” The appraiser went out and looks at the house and he says, “Well, uh, I don’t see anything wrong with this.” He calls back to Susan. By that time, I didn’t need the whole $20,000, I only needed fifteen. So they said they would loan me a lot more than that, the appraisal was a mammoth amount of money. Not a million dollars but to me, it seemed like to me.

So Susan Houston loaned me the money. I paid it back. And I was relieved, a lot of the strain was gone from worrying if poor Anna was going to be able to have the lavish wedding she needed, and that wedding turned out to be kind of a copy of… now, this is a coincidence…!

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK! A coincidence!

BEN: The wedding turned out to be almost exactly like “Father of the Bride”, the movie. Hmmm…have you ever?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: H.o.p. has never seen…

BEN: Oh, there are two of them! The first one’s the best one, with Spencer Tracy, and the other…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You know, I have’t seen that one, I’ve only seen…

BEN: Well, it’s the same story, but it’s much better with Spencer Tracy.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK, we’ll have to get it.

BEN: Anyway, I can’t watch it because it sets me into a dither because I was so stressed out anyway. So there is the Father of the Bride at the wedding and he’s supposed to dance with the bride, you know, where the orchestra is playing, OK, so where is the father but out in the parking lot helping to get the cars parked around the building. I was that same guy. That’s a coincidence.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: A similarity.

BEN: So I can’t watch “Father of the Bride”, I’d rather watch something else. Even with Steve Martin, I’d rather…so that could be a coincidence. They used to laugh about the movie and they’d, the kids, they wanted to show it and wanted to watch me react (laughs). I’d go into tears. Oh, my goodness. So, happily ever after, the bill got paid and Sun Trust lent the money and I feel a great loyalty to them and I do not feel a lot of loyalty to First Union who has become now Wachovia or whatever that weird name is. They’re nice people, they were always nice people, they were always nice to me, they took my money and they put it in their bank and did with it what they did and I checked it all back out at one time. So there you are H.o.p., we may have come up with a coincidence.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Or similarity.

H.O.P.: Is it over?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: The story is over, thank you very much!

H.O.P.: OK, everybody, clap. One, two, three and now! (H.o.p. and Idyllopus clap.)

The interview done, we then talked about a lot of other stuff.

I’d done Interview 2 with Niki but it hadn’t made it into the recorder, so we had planned to do the interview again the next evening. Niki showed up with her roommate, Gretchen, who was just as game, and in order to keep an element of surprise I spoke first with Gretchen then Niki.

Another thing, as is becoming obvious in these interviews thus far, I should probably reconsider the order of the questions as well, though I’d like to keep “Have you ever seen a UFO” as the opening inquiry.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Recording? OK. Have you ever seen a UFO?

GRETCHEN: Ooooh. Not personally. But I believe that they’re there. I think that it’s not something outside my imagination. I don’t think it’s hard to believe.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK. Do you know anyone who’s seen one?

GRETCHEN: I don’t….my sister says that she did. When we were very young and living in Lebanon, Ohio, that’s where I’m from, originally, in the Cincinnati area, she says she has. And I believe her. I never thought she was weird.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: When she was a child?

GRETCHEN: Yeah. We were very young. I remember that. But it’s like, we had hot air balloon races there all the time, so I kind of just passed it off as like…we’d go out in the field, there was a huge field behind where we lived, so we’d go out there and see tons of hot air balloons lifting off at the same time. People would go out there and practice, practice the courses, so…sometimes at night you would see them too. So I kind of passed it off as that.

NIKI: You think a UFO moves that slowly?

GRETCHEN: I don’t…

NIKI: That she would mistake a hot air balloon for a UFO?

GRETCHEN: I don’t know. I was probably five. I was young. I mean I was young enough that I really don’t remember it real well. I just remember…it was kind of like more a country area not even like suburbs we were outside the suburbs almost.

NIKI: I mean I just don’t think about it floating like that. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t, I mean, it’s unidentified…

GRETCHEN: Yeah.

NIKI: I just don’t think about it like…I think more about it like…Sound of hand smacking as she gestures a speedy take off.

GRETCHEN: There’s no real perimeters…it’s not like, it could be like, could just be what someone else, what someone else has created…(unintelligible) something means that it has to go light speed, like…? I don’t think…

NIKI: What is it that she saw? What is it…she came to you like, “Gretchen! Gretchen!”

GRETCHEN: Like, she didn’t tell my parents. Like, “Mom and dad are going to think that I’m crazy.”

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Oh, she didn’t tell them?

GRETCHEN: Yeah, she was nervous.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: How old was she?

GRETCHEN: She’s two and a half years older than me. So, she was probably seven and a half. Eight, maybe. I was five, six? So, it was around that age, I guess…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK.

GRETCHEN: But I just kind of, you know…

NIKI: What did she say…what did she say that it was…

GRETCHEN: She just said it was big. Like, “I could see the moon and something passed over the moon.” And she was like, “I don’t know what it was, it was like very close.” It just seemed…it wasn’t a plane. She was like, “I know it wasn’t a plane, but I don’t know what it was.” She really was very nondescript and from what I can remember, like, it’s not like…this big, round object that was flying. It wasn’t, it wasn’t like that. It was a quiet thing.

NIKI: This is exactly what Juli said last night–can I?–”Anticlimactic.”

(Portion of conversation clipped.)

GRETCHEN: We hold all these expectations, for those of you, for those of all of us, I guess, who believe in other life forms and…and just the whole thing, it’s like…you expect a certain thing because the media showed you it, this little green man who’s flying a saucer, and it’s like no, well, one person knew off the bat knew at one point and from there everyone just took off with it and the Twilight Zone got a hold of it and, you know what I mean, it’s like you have like this expectation and it could just as well have been a hot air balloon.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: There’s a long history of UFO sightings. There were some freaky UFO sightings back in the 1400s. Illustrations done of them. Many of them occurring in Germany? (I was off by some a century. And by many I meant two I’d seen from Nuremberg.)

NIKI: You see these stories where people say that they saw it in the woods, next to them on the road. Really, what do you do if that happens? Do you suppose you get out of your car and go check it out? If it was landed, like “Close Encounters” style…

GRETCHEN: Yeah!

NIKI: You would park your car by yourself. You think you’d…

GRETCHEN: I’d probably sneak around it. I wouldn’t sprint up to it, but I. I think I’d…if you were in the woods…I don’t think I’d have a choice…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I think I’d be a coward and leave.

GRETCHEN: Oh, no. You would have to. At that point I’d be like I don’t care if I’m abducted, I have to know. Your curiosity isn’t that strong? It has to be! If a UFO landed right there?

NIKI: I’d feel more comfortable if it was in town, like, if there were buildings around and…

GRETCHEN (laughing): And people?

NIKI: I don’t know why I think it’s on some back country road in the middle of nowhere. I mean, why would I be there anyway?! (Laughs.) But I think I might too, I might freak out about it at the last minute.

GRETCHEN: You don’t think you’d just park your car and get out and just kind of like duck down and watch? Just look for movement or something?

NIKI: I would have to.

GRETCHEN: You would! You wouldn’t be just, “Oh! Gotta go! Gotta call the cops!” Yeah, right. You wouldn’t do that.

NIKI: I think it’s funny when people act like they’re so freaked out when these extraterrestrial beings poke and prod them because if we got ahold of something like we didn’t know? What are we going to do with them? We’re going to suck them dry and completely keep them forever. That’s exactly what we would do is take samples.

GRETCHEN: Yeah.

NIKI: So I don’t see why that wouldn’t be reciprocated and why that’s so far out of the realm.

GRETCHEN: That’s true.

NIKI: OK, this is your story now. Go. There’s more to the game.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I have three questions. The second question is, what is the most interesting coincidence you’ve ever experienced?

GRETCHEN: That’s a tough one. That’s vague. Interesting coincidence…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Oh, the third one’s even vaguer.

GRETCHEN: This is one I feel like I need to be a little prepared for. If I was able to think about it then…

NIKI: It was a hard one for me to answer as well.

GRETCHEN: Can I hear the third question first or…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Sure.

GRETCHEN: As far as coincidences go, I…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, sure. That’s fine. We can do the third question.

GRETCHEN: I’m not necessarily sure I believe that coincidences are coincidences. I guess my view of the coincidences is…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: All right.

GRETCHEN: I feel like things…I’m not one of these people, like, “all things happen for a reason”. I don’t necessarily think that. I don’t like. Humm. That’s a tough question. I really don’t know how to answer. I can’t really think of a specific…

NIKI: I was asking the curator from the gallery today, I was telling her about your project? And I asked her hers. And she grew up in Guyana. And she was in New York City and was shopping in a store and saw somebody that she was in elementary school with, that she was friends with in elementary school, and they hadn’t spoke since they were seven or eight years old.

GRETCHEN: You think that’s a coincidence? I just don’t think…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: George’s story was that he was in Vietnam and went to play pool and there was someone that he had grown up with, used to go to school with, would go over to his place on Sunday. George didn’t relate this as a coincidence. It was instead what came to his mind to relate when I asked him if he’d a story he would like to tell.

GRETCHEN: If that counts as a coincidence then I…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: There are different levels of coincidence. You’ve got some freaky and more mundane and every day.

GRETCHEN: There was a boy who I was…I was just talking about this today, actually…there’s a boy who I went to a Christian, like, pre K until about third grade, I went to a Christian school? And from pre K until about third grade there was a boy named Allen ______. And we talk now all the time, like we’re really good friends? We talk on the phone like two or three days a week and I don’t talk to that many people on the phone like that often. So, anyway, he and I, we grew up together, and then we ran into Panama City, or rather we ran into each other in Panama City, we were staying like four doors down from each other our senior year of high school. We hadn’t seen each other since third grade. But we knew…like in Springborough…I was seeing a girl in a Springborough t-shirt and I said do you know Allen _______? And she said, “This is him.” And he was like, “Who are you?” And I was like…I didn’t expect it to be him. I said I was Gretchen and he was like, “Oh my god! Where have you been?” So I guess that, that’s a big deal, and we still talk and we’ve been friends since.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK.

GRETCHEN: So I guess that’s a big one.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And the third one question is…

H.O.P.: Oh, the third question? Da-da-da-dah!!!! H.o.p. sings the opening notes to Beethoven’s 5th.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: We’re on to the third question. What is a story you’d like to tell? A little piece of history?

GRETCHEN: I think my favorite childhood story is…I feel like I’m an entrepreneur, I have an entrepreneurial spirit, but everyone in my family seems to be as well. When I was, again, like five, six? Very young. This is one of my like first memories? I actually remember like doing something? Where I don’t remember the memory I actually remember doing it? My best friend and I, Eric __________. He lived like diagonal from me? We had a little cul de sac where the hot air balloons take off from? But we would always go around our neighborhood trying to make money any way we could and I don’t know what for, I mean, like, thinking back, what ever were we trying to make money for? We didn’t ever do anything that required money, we were just always trying to make it.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: When I was a kid we tried to make money for candy.

GRETCHEN: But you had like probably a corner store to go to buy that candy, like I didn’t. Like, “Hey, mom! (unintelligible) for some gas money!” I’m not a saver either…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yes, we were a few blocks from a store.

GRETCHEN: We lived in Turtle Creek Township which is like right outside of Lebanon. There’s nothing like…Highway 48 is what connected us to the city and it wasn’t close, we weren’t allowed to go there. So anyway we would go down and like try to shovel snow, mow grass, rake leaves, do whatever we could, like that kind of work. Finally, my mom was like we need this garden, we had this garden like the width of this rug in our back yard and she always wanted a tomato garden. She was like, “I love tomatoes. I want to grow tomatoes and peppers.” But there was like all these like thorny like teeny tiny bushes like teeny, well, just horrible weeds that require gloves. And so Eric and I were like, “No, no, we don’t need gloves.” And so we’d go out there and are like trying to pick them up and we’ve got thorns all through our hands like, OK, we’ll have to go about this a different way. So, I’m like, well, what if..and we used to ride our bikes everywhere at the time, so we both had just gotten bigger bikes like we’d had our training wheels taking off our first bikes and then we finally upgraded and we thought we were like so cool because we were above the rest of the neighborhood kids, we had these bigger bikes. So, I’m like, what if we took off the front wheels of the bikes and peddle through the ground? Stick them into the ground and peddle as hard as we can and it would be like tilling up the ground.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: That’s interesting.

GRETCHEN: He was like, “I could do that”, so he takes off the front wheels like here’s our money maker, we’re gonna do it, and we get out there and we put our bikes in the ground and we’re like, “OK, you’re ready?” And we start peddling and we’re going nowhere. We’re stuck in the ground. It didn’t work out and my mom ended up giving us money. She was like, it was a good effort and a creative one, so…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Very creative!

GRETCHEN: She was like I’ll give that to you but don’t mind the garden. So my dad rented a tiller and dug it up. But it was the beginning of my entrepreneurial spirit.

NIKI: And hence the 4th of July water stand…

GRETCHEN: It’s not my first and last lemonade stand either. People go like, “Oh, that’s cute,” and I’m like, “No, it’s cute when I was like five. Now, I’m trying to make money. That’ll be three bucks.” “But I’m a runner!” “But I’m a sales person.”

NIKI: You weaved a good tale, right there.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Thank you.

Part 1 of 2. Read the interview with Niki here.

Niki was my second interviewee. But that interview was lost. We arranged to speak the next day and she brought along Gretchen, her roommate. To keep an element of surprise for Gretchen, I interviewed her first, making her my fourth interviewee, then interviewed Niki again next. Because this became a serial/group interview, I’ve elected to place Niki’s as my fifth interview, since it naturally follows Gretchen’s. You can read Gretchen’s interview here.

Niki works in an art gallery and is an entrepreneur.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Now, back to…OK. H.o.p., sit up, let’s get a little closer here. And…have you ever seen a UFO?

NIKI: I have NOT seen a UFO.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: But, you said…we talked about this yesterday…and we ended up with it not being recorded…but you said that you didn’t think they were UFOs? What do you believe they are?

NIKI: What did I say?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You said something to the effect–no, you said that you didn’t think that they were flying saucers. That’s what you said.

NIKI: Oh, yes, that I didn’t think that our predisposition is necessarily accurate towards it. But, just as I was saying that I expect it to be something that just shoots off? I mean, that’s fabricated from some place. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t be like a hot air balloon. The same reason I was saying with…in the woods. But I don’t discredit anyone who says that they have seen one. I’m sure that there are plenty of people who are, for whatever reason, kind of, um, I don’t know, switching the tru…maybe, a little bit on the edge, but I have no reason not to believe them. So…I’d like to see one. I’d like to think…why not me? Why not?

GRETCHEN: Yeah, yeah.

NIKI: I would love to and I’m sure maybe at some point…but not as of yet.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And what is your most interesting coincidence? You’ve already told…

NIKI: Now, should I tell that one again? Because, actually, yesterday, after I went home I looked up coincidence in the dictionary because I was interested to see really what it meant, because it took me a second with it. And it’s more mundane than what I thought. It’s pretty much just an occurrence, is how it’s defined. But it doesn’t have to be…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: It doesn’t have to be. But you have an interesting story…

NIKI: OK, I’ll tell this one. (To Gretchen.) Have I told you about the goat man situation?

GRETCHEN: No.

NIKI: OK.

GRETCHEN: Sounds interesting.

NIKI: I was living in the second floor of a building, and it was at night and I was sleeping, and I was woke up to the sound of this like tormented, goat-like, half goat scream type of noise, like sounding like half goat half scream. I’m not gonna try to like..not gonna try to like recreate the sound that I heard. And it really frightened me. And it was right outside of my window. And I was on the second…and it was like it was in the tree. And my blinds were down and I was very scared. I was too scared to look to see what it was. And I was living with my sister and I tried to wake her up but I couldn’t wake her up. In the morning, I said, “I can’t believe you didn’t hear this miserable sound. I mean, it scared the crap out of me.” And she said, “I don’t remember any of this.” So, the next day I’m over at a friend’s house and we’re talking about it. And I say, “This is what I heard last night…” Oh, and this is connected as well, I find this out after I started talking to my friend, my friend says, “Was there music involved? Was there any piano playing?” And I said, “Actually, yeah, my sister plays piano and she’d been playing that night.” And she says, “You’re not going to believe this…” And she has a friend who lived I think in Russia, and she was playing the piano, and she looked over, I think she was in an apartment, and she looked over, and she saw in the building across the street a half man, half goat type of creature looking at her and making this sound type of thing. I mean the same kind of…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: The same kind of sound?

NIKI: The same kind of thing. Well, at least this was my assumption. And she told it to go away, and it did go away. But she said…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: How did it go away?

GRETCHEN: How did she tell it to go away?

NIKI: Well, she, that’s the thing, and I don’t think I said this part last night, but I remember Julieanna saying this to me, that she told the thing to go away. I think she actually said, “Go away, in the name of god, go away.” That type of thing. The thing had chains on it? Which I didn’t say last night?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, you didn’t.

NIKI: But I…but that’s not something I ever thought of with this goat man type of thing. But she said that and I picture Jacob Marley style, I’m not sure exactly. But it did. And it turned around and left. But if it does have that kind of religious spin on it?–I thought maybe my sister was pure and holy and that’s why she didn’t wake up to be disturbed by this thing?

GRETCHEN: That’s reasonable.

NIKI: But, with the piano playing and with this thing Juli had said there was a connection with the…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: What I’d said was the only archetype I could think of that fit was the god Pan, that has to do with music, pipes, which became demonized with the advent of Christianity.

H.O.P.: He stole the sheep.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: He stole the sheep? I didn’t remember that story. (I think H.o.p. was referring instead to a story concerning Hermes.) That’s the only archetype that I could think of.

I was also thinking of how Pan is sometimes in the company of Dionysus and a part of the myth concerning Dionysus is that he was a god who releases from prison, from chains.

NIKI: Like before Christianity where all those things were considered demonic because after…

GRETCHEN: Well…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Well, after Christianity they were considered demonic.

GRETCHEN: Well, I guess I’m trying to picture the goat man in chains…and in a tree…

NIKI: But I was like…

GRETCHEN: Playing the piano…

NIKI: But I do have, I’m curious, and especially you’re hearing a sound like that, it surprises me, it was right there, I mean my bed was right up against the window…

GRETCHEN: And you didn’t open the window? You didn’t?

NIKI: No. I could have very easily just moved my hand up and moved the blinds and I was petrified. So…

GRETCHEN: That’s crazy.

NIKI: That’s goat man, right there.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: That is weird.

GRETCHEN: When you say goat man, you imagine a goat man with say knickers on, dancing around a fire. Is that some type of painting? Is that…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I’ve seen wood cuttings with that kind of imagery, because with Christianity that’s what has been fostered…

GRETCHEN: Yeah, because I don’t know why I have that picture. That’s all I can think of. I can’t believe you never told me that. You were living with who? Julie?

NIKI: No, I was living with my sister. I was probably just turned 21 type of thing. 20 or 21.

GRETCHEN: And this is for a documentary?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, no, this is for entertainment. It’s a fun project. I’ve got several projects that I’ve done associated with my website, and I thought this would be a long term, fun project.

GRETCHEN: You should write a book. You should chronicle this stuff.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: So, the last question. Do you want to go with the third question I asked…

H.O.P.: Oh! The third question? Da-da-da-da! (Sings the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth.)

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Would you rather just tell me a story?

NIKI: Can I do something completely different?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You sure can.

NIKI: Not hers and not the one from last night, either. I don’t remember the one from last night. Oh, earliest childhood memory, that’s right.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Right.

NIKI: Do you have a different one or do you want me to do the childhood memory.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Do you want to do that one?

NIKI: I would prefer something different. A new question.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Oh, man, I haven’t thought of any other questions.

NIKI: Oh, Juli’s on the spot now!

GRETCHEN: Switching it off!

All laugh.

H.O.P.: Oh! The fourth question! Da-da-da-da! (Sings the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth.)

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: All that’s coming to my mind right now is “What is your favorite” and those aren’t good questions to go with.

NIKI: I would like to stick with the entrepreneurial thing right now…and…we used to entertain each other like, before we were friends, when we met, we figured out we were both interested in these kind of things. (Referring to Gretchen.)

GRETCHEN: Because I met you when I was in the entrepreneurship class and I always had these ideas and I was finally in a position where someone had me write them down and then after writing like two down I was like I’m good at this. I need to really start a book. And she’s a schemer, like, so I’m like she needs to get in on this too. Hey, Niki!

NIKI: Well, that’s just the thing. I think that it’s fun to think about this. And I wanted to tell you as well, these are the kind of questions I like to ask people, right when I meet them. Like you meet someone in a social…like at a bar, a party, I meet someone and I ask them something like this straight off, like more important than where you work, I’m starting off with, “Have you seen a UFO?” that kind of thing. So, that’s why I feel a connection with your project here. But, my most recent invention that didn’t get as much support as I thought it deserved was…I thought it would be great to do a window air conditioner cover.

GRETCHEN: You have better ones.

NIKI: What do you think is a better one?

GRETCHEN: Go with that one and I’ll tell you…

NIKI: I was thinking about vending machines on on ramps? When you’re getting on the expressway? You know that dead area?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yes, there’s nothing there except perhaps some wildflowers?

NIKI: Or some city type person mowing it.

GRETCHEN: Or the jail people.

NIKI: Or you do see wildflowers sometimes. I thought it would be nice to have like a little vending area type thing. Like a drive by vending…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: How would people stop there?

NIKI: They don’t need to. They can stay in their…please…people love to eat in their car, don’t they? So you, it’s almost like a toll booth or a drive thru and you can have yourself a frosty beverage or something or Snickers bar or whatever you prefer. Throw some apples in there. But I thought that was a good idea because it just seems like dead space. But there’s no reason for that. Why not capitalize on it? Probably not going to want to live there, not going to want to build a house, but…you think that’s a better one? Y’know, I thought the window air conditioner…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Aren’t the ramps federal or city or state land instead of privately owned?

NIKI: I think…that is how it is, isn’t it?

GRETCHEN: You know, toll roads though are privately owned. Which I think is interesting.

MARTY: Well, all through New York that’s how they have the rest stops, is in the median…the Jersey Turnpike…

GRETCHEN: As it should be.

NIKI: Oh, it’s not one on each side.

MARTY: It’s in the middle.

NIKI: Why is that? Why do other people do one on each side?

GRETCHEN: Bad planning?

NIKI: Because it does seem like a waste.

GRETCHEN: They’re always right next to each other but across the…

NIKI: It does seem like a waste.

GRETCHEN: It’s not like they’re even spread out.

NIKI: It’s strange. You don’t think about that being privately owned. Same with post offices. I didn’t realize that…we talked about that not that long ago…

GRETCHEN: Yeah. It’s a franchise almost.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And so you were thinking about air conditioning covers.

NIKI: Yes, I was, I thought…in many places I’ve lived I’ve had a window air conditioner and while, I mean, definitely necessary, it’s ugly, it’s an eye sore to me, and I think, if only, I look at my room and I love the way it looks, and I look at the window and I think, I just wish it was gone. So, I thought, what if you could put something artistic on the inside of it to make it decorative. Still functional but decorative so it felt like it was more personalized and not so much just functional.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Utilitarian.

NIKI: Exactly. What’s so funny is when I was telling people about it, people thought I meant the outside.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Listen, the first thing that popped to my mind was the outside and I was seeing you know tablecloth patterns on the outsides of air conditioners, yeah. And I was wondering how’re they going to reach to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th floors to put them on…

NIKI: It’s a mystery to me how you put your air conditioner in without both feet on the ground outside because I’d have a hard time securing it in there. But that’s what people thought and they do have covers like that.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: They do?

NIKI: But it’s like tarps type of thing from the hardware store, it’s not like…

GRETCHEN: It’s for protection, not for aesthetic appeal.

NIKI: Not at all. I didn’t see any covers that I could find. Y’know, what do you think you could sell something like that for?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I don’t have a clue.

GRETCHEN: Throw out a wild guess.

NIKI: Marty, what do you think?

MARTY: Twenty-five bucks.

NIKI: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Twenty-five, thirty, that’s what I was thinking.

GRETCHEN: Maybe if you could go on a website and throw on something that you liked, like a family photo.

NIKI: Even now, when I’m looking at your air conditioner, it’s not…inherently bad. The design, when you’re looking at it…you could paint that. You could paint it right on…the accordion part is cool…

GRETCHEN: At least yours doesn’t protrude. Ours is so…

NIKI: Yeah, I guess…

GRETCHEN: Well it’s the windowsill actually, I guess it’s your windowsill that…

MARTY: It’s so set back.

GRETCHEN: Which is nice.

NIKI: But I think that’s been my most recent thing that I’ve thought of like that. Have you thought about…you’ve thought about those kind of things?

MARTY: The most ridiculous thing that I know of, what’s their names, we went over to ____ and they were there, the blond headed girl…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: They lived around there? I vaguely remember them.

MARTY: They just moved. They came up with this thing, basically a piece of rubberized plastic with notches and a hook and it’s called the kitchen tie. And you use it instead of tying up turkey legs you put it on there and cook it and it won’t burn, won’t mar the food. But they’ve made about five million dollars in the last two years since they came up with this.

GRETCHEN: Oh my god.

NIKI: When you say “tie food”…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, it doesn’t occur to me to do stuff like this. Stuff like this has never popped to my mind.

NIKI: Really.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, never.

GRETCHEN: Don’t you think so many things could be better though? Easier, faster, better? I just think there are so many things that I go through daily and it’s like I just feel like there’s got to be an answer to it. Like when I….

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Well, I’ve always written, so when I write I think, “How can I write this?” How can I communicate something. I guess that’s where my energy…and it’s never occurred to me to look at something and go how can I work with that and make it better or how can I sell something? I mean, I’m such a bad sales person in the first place, I couldn’t sell a rubber band.

NIKI: So you wouldn’t consider yourself…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I couldn’t sell a band aid to someone who was bleeding. I’d give it away, first, but even if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to sell it.

NIKI: But that kind of means you’re improvisational type of thing. You make it work the way it is, regardless of…which I think is a great attribute to have.

GRETCHEN: Yeah.

NIKI: But it’s like…

GRETCHEN: I don’t do that.

NIKI: To a certain extent you’re saying, “I can adapt to this. Maybe it’s not ideal, but I don’t care. It’s going to work until…”

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Uh-hum.

NIKI: “…I’m fine. I’m not stressing out about how to change it.”

IDYLLOPUS PRESS (to H.o.p.): OK, you ready to shut it down?

H.O.P.: Not yet.

NIKI: Marty, how do you sit there? I can’t keep my mouth shut during these things. You’re so quiet.

MARTY: I just enjoy listening. It’s fascinating to me.

H.O.P.: It’s over?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Well, I just started doing this. You were my second.

NIKI: Oh, really?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I just started doing this. George was my first. You were my second. Ben was my third.

GRETCHEN: What were his answers?

NIKI: Do we have to go on line to get the whole shebang?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I’m still putting it up, I’ve got to get it up. And I’ve got to get your picture. I’ve got Niki’s picture. It’s a fuzzy kind of twilight thing.

NIKI: Okay.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: So, are we done? Do you think we’re done?

H.O.P.: Well, I, I don’t know.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I think we’re done.

H.O.P.: What about the second question?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: We’ve done the second question.

H.O.P.: Ok. Now time for the ending…

NIKI: I think that you should…I think somebody could write a book about that. Have you ever thought about that?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, I don’t do that kind of writing. But I like this because it gives people an opportunity…I like to communicate in stories but it’s not something…I’m not telling the stories here. I give people a lead-in question and they tell the stories. And plus I’m interested in who has seen a UFO and how many people do think about coincidences.

NIKI: Do you consider this art?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Do I consider this art? I will…as I get more done. You can turn this off now.

H.O.P.: And now for the big finish.

H.o.p. plays a short musical selection.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK, the first question is always “Have you ever seen a UFO?”

DAMIEN: Yes, definitely.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You have! OK! Tell me about it.

Look! Look! I’ve got a UFO sighting!

DAMIEN: I was probably about 12, 13, 14, somewhere in there, and I literally saw a flying saucer.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: It was a saucer.

H.O.P.: Ooooo!

DAMIEN: It was very low and it had lights that were spinning around the perimeter of it. And it sat above a house across the street and I got a good five second glimpse at it before it just disappeared.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: It just disappeared or it took off?

DAMIEN: It took off. It was a flash of light and it was gone.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: A flash of light and it was gone. In the flash of light did it disappear or did it go in any particular direction?

DAMIEN: It went in a direction. It went up and away and then it was gone.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: In just that fast? (Snaps fingers.)

DAMIEN: And I was terrified after I saw it because it was so vivid. And I was also pretty young and I really didn’t know what to make of it. And I knew about UFO’s and this really just confirmed…what I’d seen.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: How large would you say it was?

DAMIEN: It was big. It was bigger than a house. But it was far up in the sky.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: How far up in the sky was it?

DAMIEN: Hundreds of feet. But it was above the house down the block and across the street from me.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: What color was it? Was it at night time?

DAMIEN: Yeah, but it had white lights around the outside, almost head light size, probably…every five feet apart, around the perimeter of it. And it was real narrow. Almost a saucer.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You’re the first person I’ve interviewed who’s seen a UFO.

DAMIEN: I’ve another one, too, but I’m not so sure about this one, but…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: What attracted you to look outside?

DAMIEN: You know, I have no idea, that’s probably what was so strange about it.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: So you just went to the window and…

DAMIEN: Yeah.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And what time was it?

DAMIEN: It was night time. Maybe nine o’clock.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Had you been asleep?

DAMIEN: No. It was just a regular day. I’d probably been out playing with some friends, or something, and, yeah, I just happened to look out the window and it was right there.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: So it was early enough that there was other activity going on around…

DAMIEN: Maybe so. I wasn’t in bed yet and I was still pretty young so it was definitely before midnight, so I’d say nine or ten o’clock.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: That is interesting.

H.O.P.: Oooo, oooo, oooo! First guy with a cool UFO sighting!

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Do you have a question you’d like to ask, H.O.P.?

H.O.P.: Okay, first, what color were the lights?

DAMIEN: They were white. The second one I saw was really strange and, I mean, it could have been some sort of air craft but it was such a strange shape. It was six red lights that were in a straight line. They were linear. It wasn’t like any type of airplane. It was like a definitive six dots and it was moving across the sky, and it was flying real low. It wasn’t making noise like a helicopter or an airplane. It was silent. But it was really strange.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: So you just saw it passing…

DAMIEN: Yeah, this row of six lights and I’ve never seen a configuration like that in an air craft.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Did you observe any kind of outline shape?

DAMIEN: No.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Where was the first sighting?

DAMIEN: They were both in the same place, it was just outside of Detroit, Michigan, and there was a construction site across the street where they were building new condos at the time and we used to go over there…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: The first or the second…

DAMIEN: Yeah, this is the second and we used to go over there and play in the dirt.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And how old were you at the time of the second sighting.

DAMIEN: It was like in a couple of days of each other.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Oh, okay, so a paired sighting.

DAMIEN: It was.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Interesting.

DAMIEN: Wild.

(After we’d turned off the recorder, Damien noted that about six weeks later a UFO of the same description was reported on the news, it having been seen in Ontario, perhaps around the London area. I asked what year and it was perhaps 1986. Somewhere around 1993-1996.)

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Did it make you a sky watcher?

DAMIEN: Oh, definitely.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Do you go down to Fernbank to look at the sky, or do you have a telescope…?

DAMIEN: Well, I really like hiking and camping and some of my best experiences have been out west because you actually seem like you’re closer to the sky, the stars seem closer, all the constellations, plus you’re away from the city and you can see more without ambient lighting.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I’ve heard that out at the Grand Canyon is the best place.

DAMIEN: Yeah, Grand Canyon’s beautiful, I’ve been there at night. Yeah, anywhere out west is very cool and I’ve been to like the planetarium in Chicago to see their humongous telescope.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK, the second question is always “What is your most interesting coincidence”?

DAMIEN: Oh. That’s a tough question.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: That’s what everybody says. If you want you can have a chance to think about it a bit…

DAMIEN: I know I can think of something more interesting but one that just happened recently to me that was pretty strange. I was fishing in Lake Allatoona and using what they call Silver Shad.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: What is a Silver Shad?

DAMIEN: It looks like a small minnow with two hooks on the bottom. Made of plastic, and it rattles. And I’d been fishing all day and was with Bill Sheffield, didn’t catch anything, and I broke my line off on the way back in. So, I tied off another lure, we finished our little loop around, totally other side of the lake, I snag something, I reel it in, it’s a rod and a pole with the exact same lure that I’d just lost on it.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: That’s funny.

DAMIEN: Isn’t that interesting? But it’s a funny coincidence.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: That’s a good story. And the third question…

H.O.P. sings the first few notes of Beethoven’s Fifth.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And the third question is just what is a story you’d perhaps like to tell. Just a little piece of history that comes to mind.

DAMIEN: A little piece of history. Man, this is hard. That’s a good question. Pertaining to anything?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Pertaining to anything. Just what comes to mind.

DAMIEN: I’m brainwashed with music.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Oh, yeah. Of course. Well, I get all kinds of stories. I have gotten stories of entrepreneurship and banking practices.

DAMIEN: I don’t know. I just got back from vacation, actually. I should have some kind of history about something.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK, let’s skip that and do another one. What is your earliest childhood memory?

H.O.P.: Ooooo! The fourth question?!

DAMIEN: My earliest childhood memory. One that I always seem to remember, and I was real young, just like that set of eyes that looks out, not realizing much else, I was obviously an infant, but we had this gigantic Alaskan Malamute, looked like a Husky, it was an 80 to 95 pound dog named Valentine…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: She would have been like a monster to you.

DAMIEN: Oh, yeah, just humongous, covered in fur, and I remember just laying on my back and this dog would come over and roll me over with its nose, just push me over, and I couldn’t do anything at the time, I was just a baby, I’d flop over. It’d come over and look at me and nose me back over. I was too small to speak or to even get up on my own, I just remember this huge dog looking at me and I was just a set of eyes looking at him wondering, “What’s he going to do?”

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Did you have any feelings about it? Were you scared or did you trust the animal?

DAMIEN: Yeah, I trusted him. And I remember mom saying that they didn’t trust him. It ended up being OK but they were real nervous at first, this gigantic dog sizing me up. I had him for years. He was a sweet dog.

H.O.P.: Was it a he or a she?

DAMIEN: She. Valentine. My dad gave him to my mom on Valentine’s Day.

(Not a typo. I had to check that again. Valentine was identified as a she.)

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Well, great. Thank you. You’re the first person I’ve talked to who’s seen a UFO.

H.O.P.: Great! Now, time for the ending theme.

H.o.p. sings a closing theme and gives a round of applause.