Let's make Polaroid art while we can, being that the last of the peel-off film left the factory -- any factory -- more than a year ago. There ain't gonna be any more for the foreseeable future.
And if there ain't gonna be any more for the foreseeable future, there won't be any wet emulsions on the peeled-off part of the film to plaster onto copy paper to make a second, much funkier print. And if you can't make any second, much funkier prints. . . .
I get that time marches on. I get that progress must progress. But I don't like it.
I DON'T LIKE losing more and more of the tactile in technology and in life. I don't like that there won't be that feel -- and that satisfaction -- of pulling film out of an old Polaroid camera . . . and waiting.
I don't like having one less way to be creative that doesn't involve a computer -- not unless you want it to. I don't like having one less opportunity to figure something out myself in a very analog fashion.
I don't like a world where creativity is becoming, where everything is becoming, a Walter Mitty exercise -- the technological version of living in your head instead of in the world.
And I want people to still make effing Polaroid pack film (the peel-off kind) and reel-to-reel audio tape and flash bulbs that scare the s*** out of people when they go off and drip coffee pots . . . and typewriters.
Fat chance, that. This is a world where the under-30 set no longer knows how to write in (or read) cursive, and most of the world's typing gets done with one's thumbs.
WHAT IS IT with that?
Let me ask my friend Harvey.
You have your fake social circle on your smartphone. You have your fake news. I get to have a fake 6-foot bunny rabbit.
And the last of the peel-off instant film.
Yeah, I know. Mighty big talk for someone who's ranting about all this stuff on his blog.
Fortunately, hypocrisy never goes out of style.
Remember when "instant" photography meant pulling the picture out of the camera, waiting a minute or two, peeling off the print, then trying to find a garbage can for the gooey negative?
Polaroids. Your Polaroid camera produced what we simply called "Polaroids."
We went to a lot of trouble to produce what, truth be told, were really crappy pictures. Exposure was a crapshoot, and even the most exactingly focused shots came out fuzzy.
Young folks with no memory of Polaroids and Instamatics (the take-the film-to-the-drug-store version of fuzzy photography) have no idea how spoiled they have been by their smartphone cameras.
The Polaroid Colorpack II of my childhood is long lost. But the Colorpack II and the fancy-schmancy Polaroid 320 Land camera of someone else's long-ago now are part of my present, thanks to estate sales.
And the pictures still are "Meh." Fun as hell, but decidedly "Meh."
THERE'S JUST something satisfying about snapping a picture, then physically pulling the undeveloped picture out of the camera. The photos on your phone can seem like an abstraction. Your Polaroid shots are anything but.
They're real. They're physical. The experience is tactile. And what you're gonna come out with is a mystery -- at least for 90 seconds or a couple minutes, depending on the temperature.
What I came out with is a little dark. That's what happens when the bloody flash doesn't work. And by "flash," I mean a flash attachment that takes a flash bulb, which you must replace after every flash picture.
Kids cannot fathom this. But I am here to tell them this, to us old people, was the stuff of science fiction at the time. Before Polaroid and flash bulbs, we had to illuminate our subject with a torch to do our cave paintings.
You try it sometime.
But one fun, artsy thing you can do with your wet, gooey Polaroid negative after you've pulled off the print is to carefully place it on a sheet of copy paper -- wet side down -- and roll the hell out of it with a hard rubber roller. What you get is an instant print -- a funky bonus artwork from the throwaway part of your Polaroid snapshot.
Scan it, then enlarge and enhance it on your computer, and you just might have created something artistic. Like this.
It's digital magic. But first, you have to go old school.
Is what grandpa is sayin'.
Fire up the flux capacitor, and call me Marty McFly.
We're blowin' this pop stand.
To paraphrase a great legal mind who's married to a world-class White House bullshitter, 2018 is a shitshow inside a dumpster fire . . . and I can't see how 2019 is gonna be any better. So here's what we're going to do.
We've put in a call to Doc Brown, we're gonna get in this here DeLorean . . . and we're gonna put the pedal to the metal.
The Big Show is gonna go back in time.
IT'S WHAT one might call a no-brainer. Even if one has to wear a crew cut (with Butch wax, of course) and Ernie Douglas eyeglasses. If you're under 45, you may have to Google "Ernie Douglas."
Do it now. Where 3 Chords & the Truth is going, Google hasn't been invented yet. Neither has the Internet.
Hop in. The motor's running, the road is straight, and I'm about to stomp the accelerator.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
This week is all about the "& the Truth" part of 3 Chords & the Truth.
As in, truth exists.
As in, we know certain basic things and, truth be told, we always have. Unless you were raised by wolves -- and, sadly, "wolves" is a distinct possibility for some -- your mama taught you what's what by the time you were 5 years old. Maybe 8 if you were a slow learner.
So, amid the fine music this week, the Big Show also is all about getting back in touch with what your conscience could have told you -- us -- if you -- we -- hadn't been telling it to shut the f*** up all these years. Getting back in touch with what you knew all along.
Getting back in touch with what you already know . . . and then acting on it.
Holding your ground.
Fighting the good fight.
For as long as necessary.
Until truth one day comes back in fashion.
THAT'S AN important thing to reacquaint oneself with especially if you reside, as about half of us do, somewhere behind enemy lines.
Oh . . . did I mention that this week's show is, as usual, filled with great music, expertly arranged?
If I didn't, it is. Naturally.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Adolf Hitler, 1940.
Adolf Trump, 2018.
WHAT IS IT with that?
