Author: Mark Alexander

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A Followup on the Last Post

Thanks to my Arizona cyber buddy Homer, I was able to acquire all the advertising goodness which follows. (The photos are mine.) Click on any image to embiggen…

First up, an article about and an ad for the photographically-reclusive Showcase of Homes:

This ad dates from the late 60s, about the same time that the Showcase of Homes opened:

The next four ads are all from the early 1960s. The first Hallcraft home we lived in was The Pinafore:

I always thought this was a cool plan, probably because it was a full two story house (rare for Phoenix in those days):

I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to find this next one today. At one time I had a notebook that had nearly all of the single sheet floor plan and exterior rendering sheets for each model that the builder gave out (sadly, lost in a move in the late 80s along with several binders full of audio equipment brochures), but this was one floor plan that I never had in the collection and I’d always wondered how it was laid out:

This was probably my favorite plan of all time:

The Villas started out as a good idea, but now, thirty years later, without exception they’re all ghetto and look like armed camps:

This was my family’s second Hallcraft home, the one I lived in during my high school and college years:

Don’cha love the blatantly misogynistic advertising? (It was the 60s after all…) I also think it’s funny how Hallcraft regurgitated this particular plan through several different incarnations over the years, finally abandoning it in the early 70s:

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Meh.

I’ve been a fan of the Pet Shop Boys since Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money) and the Please album first hit the airwaves back in 1986. In fact, that CD provided the soundtrack of my life when I first moved to San Francisco and will always hold a special place in my heart because of it. (Two Divided by Zero will forever be tied to a memory of driving over the Bay Bridge on a foggy August morning for a job interview in Oakland.) Over the years, I’ve always eagerly looked forward to each new release, and when Yes popped on the scene a few years ago I was ecstatic. I thought it was one of their best albums ever.

So you can imagine the anticipation I had for Elysium. Could they top—or at least equal—the genius of Yes?

Sadly, no. Not even close.

I believe “underwhelming” is a good description of how I feel about Elysium, their latest release. The tempo and lyrics seem to reflect a pair of artists who are realizing that not only are they not 25 and the life of the party any more, but also that they’ve passed through middle age and now find themselves wondering what they’ve actually accomplished. I’ve listened to the album several times, and—with the exception of Memory of the Future, which sort of reminds me of Ben and I—I just can’t get into it. It’s all downtempo, agonizingly navel-contemplating, and ultimately (which is a horrible thing to tell an artist) forgettable.

WHERE are the upbeat dance tunes laced with biting social commentary? Where is this album’s Sodom and Gomorrah Show or even I’m With Stupid?

But after a string of incredible hits that span the last twenty six years, I’ll grant that even the Pet Shop Boys are allowed a stinker now and then…

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A Little Trip Down Memory Lane

…for my Dad, because he does pop in here from time to time.

During the 60s and 70s, Hallcraft Homes was one of the biggest homebuilders in the Phoenix metro area. For many of those years, my dad worked as their chief designer. You can’t spit in Phoenix without hitting his work, and he’s perhaps the most recognized but unknown designer in the city’s residential history. Years ago he was questioning what he’d done in his life and I pointed this out to him. “But no one knows they’re my designs!”

I responded, “Not now,” but who knows what will happen in the future?

Years ago I visited the old neighborhood and happened to strike up a conversation with the then-owner of the house we lived in—a Hallcraft, naturally—when I was in high school and college. He was thrilled to meet the son of the designer and pointed out there was a quite a growing fan-base for that particular model, the “Horizon.” (The model was even seen in Raising Arizona.)

I made the mistake of accepting his invitation to come in and take a look at the old homestead. I was surprised that with twenty plus years having passed, much of what I remembered about it was still intact, but the beautiful deck my dad had built out back was gone, as was the swimming pool my parents had installed about a year before I moved out. When people say you can never go home, they mean it.

But I digress…

I found these photos online while searching for pictures of the “Hallcraft Showcase of Homes.” Unfortunately, it seems there are no surviving photos—or at least nothing online. I find this kind of unusual, because at the time (the late 1960s) the place was unique in that it provided a single location where buyers could tour all of Hallcraft’s current single-family homes and close a deal without having to drive around to each of the far-flung subdivisions. With my budding interest in architecture and design, I always found it to be a bit of a wonderland, especially when discontinued designs were torn down or hauled away and new ones were built in their place. It also must have been a great money-saver for the company, because they only had to decorate a single set of model homes, not dozens. (There were still models to tour in each subdivision, but they weren’t decorated.) Sadly, the place was razed in the mid 1970s and like so many other pieces of Phoenix history is now only a fading memory.

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10 Questions to Help Determine if Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened

From a great little post over at Alternet:

This simple quiz will let you know if you’re being oppressed.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing.

2. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those two guys in line down at the courthouse.

3. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am being forced to use birth control.
B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control.

4. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to pray privately.
B) I am not allowed to force others to pray the prayers of my faith publicly.

5. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) Being a member of my faith means that I can be bullied without legal recourse.
B) I am no longer allowed to use my faith to bully gay kids with impunity.

6. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to purchase, read or possess religious books or material.
B) Others are allowed to have access books, movies and websites that I do not like.

7. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) My religious group is not allowed equal protection under the establishment clause.
B) My religious group is not allowed to use public funds, buildings and resources as we would like, for whatever purposes we might like.

8. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) Another religious group has been declared the official faith of my country.
B) My own religious group is not given status as the official faith of my country.

9. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community.

10. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home.
B) Public school science classes are teaching science.

Scoring key:

If you answered “A” to any question, then perhaps your religious liberty is indeed at stake. You and your faith group have every right to now advocate for equal protection under the law. But just remember this one little, constitutional, concept: this means you can fight for your equality—not your superiority.

If you answered “B” to any question, then not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others. This is the point where I would invite you to refer back to the tenets of your faith, especially the ones about your neighbors.

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Very Good Advice from Fathers to Sons Everywhere

From Tom Matlack at The Good Men Project:

  1. It’s harder to take a punch than to throw one.
  2. Find the people who make you laugh and follow them around like a golden retriever. Laughing is like a vitamin.  You can never get enough of it.
  3. A guy who hugs a lot is comfortable in his own skin.
  4. Read poetry.
  5. There’s nothing wrong with looking at porn, but having sex with someone you care about is a thousand times more fun.
  6. When you feel like crying, for joy or out of pain, let ‘er rip. If you don’t those tears out, they will calcify in your chest and make it harder to love as fully and deeply as you would like to.
  7. Crank the tunes when you have to clean the house.
  8. Look deeply into the eyes of the one you are falling for to get a glimpse of his or her soul.
  9. Spend a chunk of time every year with people who are much less fortunate than you are. It will fill your heart with gratitude.
  10. Never lie about anything really important. The first lie will cause you to have to lie again and again to cover up the truth. And each time you’ll chip away an important piece of yourself.
  11. Find work that makes you happy. If you can change the world in the process all the better.
  12. If you get the chance to travel across the country or across the globe, take it.  You will learn way more from people who are different from you than the ones who are the same.
  13. Doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing.  But you are going to make mistakes. Tons of them. The real question is what you will learn from them.
  14. Don’t be in any rush to get married. Divorce really sucks. A good marriage can start when you’re 21 or 61.
  15. There’s nothing wrong with a Cuban cigar once in a while.
  16. Money and power look good, but they won’t fill your being with joy the way your family will.
  17. If you like guys, I will fight for your ability to have equal rights in every way.
  18. Find a way to move your body that gives you pleasure. You don’t have to be an athlete to be a man, but your body is a temple and you need to care for it, enjoy it, and use it to express yourself.
  19. Drinking can be fun in moderation. Just make sure to ask for help if you find yourself blacking out or doing things you regret.
  20. Radical honesty will get you very far in this world. Most people don’t have the guts to speak their mind, regardless of the consequences.
  21. Always give your spouse birthday presents in bed.
  22. Find a spirituality that you can wear like a loose coat that keeps you warm no matter the weather. God should provide you comfort not make you feel ashamed of yourself.
  23. Sex is great but holding your spouse in the middle of the night is one of the best feelings any guy can have.
  24. Live passionately. Dream big. Don’t back down.
  25. Always remember I love you, no matter what happens. You cannot lose me. I will always be there.

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