Philly Fanatic

You know, it’d probably be easier and a whole lot cheaper at this point if we just moved Typecast Press to Philadelphia.

I mean, what in the name of Benjamin Franklin (yes, that’s him as a young printer) were we doing bouncing down Broad Street toward Philadelphia’s University of the Arts yesterday?

Of course I know that we were there to pick up a Vandercook SP-15 we had purchased. What I mean is:

What in the name of the Liberty Bell were we doing buying another Vandercook from Philadelphia?

Baltimore was for years a hotbed of letterpress printing. Mary can’t find any printing presses here? (Oh, yeah … that’s right, five and counting.) But this one, she insisted, was so sweet and well maintained, it could be brought online immediately … assuming, naturally, that we could rent a 16-foot truck, drive the two hours to Philly, load the press aboard, drive it back home to Baltimore and somehow boost the 700-pound press onto a loading dock too high for standard delivery trucks to reach. Then, we’d need to get the Vandercook No. 4 (bought and transported from Virginia … geez … up on dollies and wheeled very carefully through the studio and across the hall to a storage space. Once that was settled into position, the SP-15 could take its rightful spot.

Wait … did she just say it could be brought online immediately? Only 700 pounds? Heck, most of our presses, the No. 4 included, are twice that.

Sold!

A great addition to Typecast Press. Or so I kept telling myself as we sat and steamed, quite literally, at the weigh station. Not even out of Maryland yet, and Shop Boy was doubling up on the expletives.

Now, Shop Boy’s fear of scales is well documented, but this was a topper. Two long lanes of 18-wheelers, and us, crawling toward the main inspection building. Neither of us had ever been through a weigh station before — have you ever even seen one open? What did this mean? Did they think we were drug smugglers, or hauling human cargo? Hazmats?!?! We’re going to jail!

Mary, not wanting her parents subjected to the dulcet tones of my ranting, told them she’d call them back and got to the job of calming me down by questioning why in the world I had pulled off in the first place.

Shop Boy: “Because when the state cop tells you to get over there in line, and when you motion ‘Me? What for?’ and he points at your grill and exaggeratedly waves you — yes, you! — into the weigh station lane, you do it.”

Mary: “Oh, god. You’re so law-abiding. If you hadn’t been so worried about being in the right lane for the toll, he wouldn’t have even seen us. Besides, he couldn’t have meant you. He didn’t wave any other small trucks … oh wait, there’s a van. Whatever. I told you to stop worrying about special lanes at the toll booth. See? They charged us the car rate there, Mr. Big Rig.”

She was right. And wrong. The next bridge toll was triple for us, as a truck. And I made a huge point of smugly making Mary take more money out of my wallet for the lady. That’ll show her to be all smartypants.

Back at the weigh station, it was finally our turn. Our weight was fine. (We’d skipped breakfast.) And soon we were free, bouncing back down I-95.

Literally bouncing. This truck was a menace. It was hopping so much atop the span across the Susquehanna River that  Shop Boy thought we were going into the drink. Forget texting while driving. I was ready to distract myself from all that troublesome staying-in-your-lane  and maintaining-your-speed business by praying with the rosary beads … a text message to god, as it were.

Mary got word by this point from Perry Tymeson that he’d fulfilled his end of the bargain in Philly. The press was on the sidewalk waiting. And so it still was an hour later as we blew past Perry and Laurel Schwass-Drew, the printer/instructor in charge of getting the university’s press placed in a good home. The school has its eye on a more expensive machine, and Typecast Press was providing the down payment.

It turns out Laurel is, ahem, a fairly regular reader of this blog, which Mary found out to her dismay when they met on Mary and Perry’s advance scouting trip to check out the press. Dismay is too strong a word, but Mary can get a littled bugged when she does all the work and Shop Boy gets the glory. I just blush — then in a fake deep voice announce: “Yes, I’m worldwide … heh-heh.”

Anyhow, Laurel, Perry and Shop Boy boosted the press onto the lift gate and Mary carefully guided us aloft and into the truck the Vandercook rolled. That was a snap. Perry strapped the press to the side rails, we ran to grab a quick bite, got a promise from Laurel that she’d stop in for a visit if she’s ever in Baltimore, and soon we were bouncing back toward the freeway. (It didn’t help that Shop Boy cheated on a couple — or three — turns on the way out of the city and hopped the curb.)

Long story short: We made it back to Baltimore at 4:05 p.m. Fox Industries, which owns our building, locks up the forklift at 4.

Well, poo!

There were now two possible outcomes: We could rig up a ramp and somehow shove the press up about a two-foot incline onto the loading dock. Or, we could wait until the forklift was available the next morning, paying a second full day’s rental for a truck that had nearly shaken loose all our teeth.

No …

Stinking …

Way.

So with Option 2 off the table, Shop Boy decided to simply play the two aces in his hand in Perry and Kyle Van Horn of the Maryland Institute College of Art, who’d arrived just in time. (We’re sheltering his dream Vandercook as it awaits a ton or two of TLC.)

Shop Boy might not have put money on us either, but quicker than Mary could say “I can’t watch,” Perry had turned a pallet, a couple of two-by-fours and a few thin metal plates into a ramp. (Guy’s good.) And with Perry steering and tugging from the loading dock while Kyle and Shop Boy shoved from below … bingo. Two seconds flat. Where do you want it, lady?

It was almost a letdown. I mean, after all that? What could Shop Boy whine about now?

How about Perry going on about the new press the University of the Arts was purchasing? Seems there was a guy near Philly who had a jones for printing and the wherewithal to assemble a printshop from nothing but the best. Now his stuff, in pristine condition, had begun to come onto the market.

Shop Boy could hear the gears turning in Mary’s head.

Now what in the name of cheesesteaks did he have to tell her that for?

Embarrassaurus rex

Used to be that the family trees of any number of animals were on the tip of my tongue. You know, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, species. In the Latin, the last category is lower case.

We, for instance, are Animalia Chordata Mammalia Primates Homonidae Homo sapiens. Then there’s my personal favorite in college, the chimpanzee: Ditto Ditto Ditto Ditto Ditto Pan troglodytes. Not that we’re related to or descended from monkeys or anything. And not that we’d call them troglodytes to their faces.

Little boogers can be a tad, um, violent in their natural habitat. OK, really violent. Another Family resemblance.

Anyhow, Shop Boy’s been thinking a lot about science like this since a very significant discovery was made about me. See, Mary works in a crazy old turn-of-the-last-century printshop. Still, as it turns out …

Shop Boy is the dinosaur.

My professional industry, journalism, is just waiting for the final meteor to hit. And I worry, a lot, about what’s next for a democracy whose subjects seek out only news sources — and, ahem, blogs — that exclusively feed their preconceived notions about politics, religion, etc.

See, there’s where I’m standing and there’s where your standing. The truth is somewhere in the middle. But when someone plops down the truth, to me it looks like they’re putting it too close to you. Your vision is just the opposite. The truth doesn’t change, but soon we’re so busy calling “no fair!” that the truth becomes immaterial. And this great, dirty, difficult, complicated, ugly and — yes — beautiful experiment in freedom stalls. It’s troubling no matter what your political stripe. And we should all worry about that.

More importantly, though, we should worry about what happens to Shop Boy.

Um, right?

No matter. I worry enough for myself and several other people. Just ask Mary. Or, better yet, ask to borrow one of her enneagram books. You know, The Enneagram, The Enneagram in Love and Work, The Enneagram in the Printshop. (OK, I just made that last one up.)

Basically, the enneagram is this system that assesses your defining characteristics, assigns you a number (1 to 9) and places you on a satanic-looking chart. From there, your compatibility with others and future prospects at just about anything can be assessed.

Mary has informed Shop Boy that he is a Six: The Loyalist.

Which is sort of cool because I grew up a loyal Boston Red Sox fan and Rico Petrocelli, No. 6, was my favorite player on that team.

Not so cool: A Six is apparently, uh, kind of nuts. Passive-aggressive, embarrassed-arrogant, manic-depressive, bipolar kind of deal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

And not that Shop Boy believes Word One of this tea leave-reading, crystal-gazing mumbo-jumbo.

I mean, check this out from the Enneagram Institute (where you can seek your own number if you dare).

Sixes are reliable, hard-working, responsible, and trustworthy. Excellent “troubleshooters,” they foresee problems and foster cooperation, but can also become defensive, evasive, and anxious—running on stress while complaining about it. They can be cautious and indecisive, but also reactive, defiant and rebellious. They typically have problems with self-doubt and suspicion.

That’s just silly. I mean, you do like and believe in Shop Boy, don’t you? Really. I’m sure you do, right? Please tell me you do. Will it really kill you to say so? We had a deal! I don’t care anyway. You’re not the boss of me. In fact, you’re an idiot! Sorry, I didn’t mean that. Still friends? Thanks.

Key Motivations: Want to have security, to feel supported by others, to have certitude and reassurance, to test the attitudes of others toward them, to fight against anxiety and insecurity.

Like I said, that ain’t Shop Boy.

Of all the personality types, Sixes are the most loyal to their friends and to their beliefs. They will “go down with the ship” and hang on to relationships of all kinds far longer than most other types.

The perfect guy to be left holding the bag. Great.

Sixes are also loyal to ideas, systems, and beliefs—even to the belief that all ideas or authorities should be questioned or defied. Indeed, not all Sixes go along with the “status quo”: their beliefs may be rebellious and anti-authoritarian, even revolutionary.

You mean, like the idea that we can leave the printshop before 1 a.m. sometimes? Anarchy! Call the authorities!

In any case, they will typically fight for their beliefs more fiercely than they will fight for themselves, and they will defend their community or family more tenaciously than they will defend themselves.

If anybody is going to say anything negative about Mary’s lack of respect for sleep, it’s going to be Shop Boy. Don’t even dare. I’m tired and dangerously cranky.

The reason Sixes are so loyal to others is that they do not want to be abandoned and left without support—their Basic Fear. Sixes come to believe that they do not possess the internal resources to handle life’s challenges and vagaries alone, and so increasingly rely on structures, allies, beliefs, and supports outside themselves for guidance to survive. If suitable structures do not exist, they will help create and maintain them.

Which explains Shop Boy’s imaginary friends.

They say hello, by the way. Hey, which one of you forgot to clean the ink plate again?

Sixes fear success almost as much as they fear failure. … The old Japanese adage that says, “The blade of grass that grows too high gets chopped off” relates to this idea.

True story: Shop Boy returned home from D.C., late one recent night to find Mary glumly slicing corners off this fancy blue paper with an X-acto and a pica pole. “Whatcha doing?” Shop Boy asked innocently.

Mary: “I didn’t want to tell you. We need to line some envelopes.”

Shop Boy: “Um, OK, how many?”

Mary: “Uh, 125 … but then we need some samples.”

Shop Boy: “Um, OK, how many have we done so far?”

Mary: “Uh, like, zero. But you’re so good at this type of thing, I know it won’t take you long.”

Shop Boy: “Um, OK, how long do we have?”

Mary: “Uh, I told the guy you’d drop them off on K Street in Washington at 9 a.m. But we only need the first 75 by then.”

Shop Boy: “Um, OK, what does it entail?”

Three different, yet-to-be-cut lengths of double-stick tape, one placed inside the envelope just beneath the fold and the other two on the inside of the flap. Pull the non-adhesive strip off the lower sticky part, shimmy the blue paper past the glue into the envelope, check the straightness of the piece against the flap and, with the thumbs, press the blue paper onto the sticky tape. Now, without bending or otherwise shifting the flimsy blue paper, remove the non-sticky strip from the other two lengths of tape, check the straightness one last time, smooth out paper first with thumbs, then with a full hand. Set aside a moment. Then, fold the envelope flap and press the hand solidly across the back of the envelope, creating the clean fold of the blue paper. Bingo. Shop Boy, the ultimate conveyor belt guy, had a system mastered within, oh, an hour or two. Then, it was an envelope per minute or so.

Mary: “I knew Shop Boy would do this better than I ever could. Remember that last project? You were awesome. Do you mind finishing?”

Sixes are like a ping-pong ball that is constantly shuttling back and forth between whatever influence is hitting the hardest in any given moment. Because of this reactivity, no matter what we say about Sixes, the opposite is often also as true. They are both strong and weak, fearful and courageous, trusting and distrusting, defenders and provokers, sweet and sour, aggressive and passive, bullies and weaklings, on the defensive and on the offensive, thinkers and doers, group people and soloists, believers and doubters, cooperative and obstructionistic, tender and mean, generous and petty—and on and on. It is the contradictory picture that is the characteristic “fingerprint” of Sixes, the fact that they are a bundle of opposites.

Sort of explains the love/hate relationship with those beautiful envelopes. (Yes, they did turn out great — cooked my own goose once again.)

Psst! Did Shop Boy mention that the bride is in the Obama administration? Which just means I’ve got at least three and a half years to forgive and forget. I will.

And, as usual. I’ll give Mary a pass.

Loyal? Sure.

Somebody’s got to be, I guess.

Besides, it apparently runs in the Family. The enneagram family, anyway.

What Happens in Rhodamine Red, Stays …

There’s this giant Korean grocery store a few miles down the road that offers a shopping experience that’s truly from another world.

Between ordering your whole fish (seemingly every species, normal and freaky, is staring back at you) and shouting a number that corresponds to which filleting process you’d like followed to vast displays of frozen stuff you’d never imagined putting in your freezer — never mind your mouth — to a football field-sized table of fresh string beans to fruits grown to  the size of your head, the place is just a maze of enchantment and wonder. And then you get to the appliances and knickknacks.

You know, mostly, oh, Hello Kitty toasters, Hello Kitty alarm clocks, Hello Kitty salt and pepper shakers, Hello Kitty TV sets, Hello Kitty phones, Hello Kitty flashlights, Hello Kitty lamps, Hello Kitty mirrors, Hello Kitty lip gloss, Hello Kitty water bottles …

Mary’s eyes get huge at the explosion of pink. She loves Hello Kitty as much as she used to love Paul Frank’s stuff … before Frank’s business partners forced him out of his own business and tried to take his name away from him. Now, in his honor, she wears only monkey face T-shirts made while he owned the company. Hey, what’s right is right.

Last night, then, Mary was right in her element.

With her very own walking, talking Hello Kitty Shop Boy.

Then there were the Hello Kitty Heidelberg rollers, the Hello Kitty ink plate, the Hello Kitty rubber gloves, the Hello Kitty ink knives, the Hello Kitty apron … I mean, wow.

That Rhodamine Red ink sure does leave its mark.

Forget the name … the stuff is ppppiiiiiiiiinnnnnkkkkkkk! And it’s a bear — OK, a large pink bear — to get off a printing press. Believe me, Shop Boy tried everything short of plastic explosives. Still, the ink stained the pristine blue rubber rollers. And it got on absolutely everything.

You know how when you maybe miss a spot, like a mini dab of ink is left in the smallest crevice? A “holiday,” some room painters like to call it. No problem. You’ll get it next time.

Well, neon holidays are the order of the day until Mary’s done with this Rhodamine Red craze. And if Hello Picky can see it, you might, um, want to go over that spot just once more.

Geez. Did I mention that Mary borrowed her portion of Rhodamine Red ink — after trying in vain to reproduce the color normally — from one of our favorite local printers, Vince Pullara III? Shop Boy used to like that guy.

And did I call this a craze?

Mary just e-mailed to say excitedly that she’d purchased more gloves, more environmentally sensitive press wash, a die for cutting business cards … and her own tub of Rhodamine Red.

Sigh.

Looks like the Kitty’s out of the bag.

The pink horse has left the barn …

More Words to Letterpress By

As the school semester was about to end, Mary thought it might be kind of fun to give her Maryland Institute College of Art letterpress class a quiz. You know, just to see if they’d been listening, or if they were simply suffering Mary’s chatter until it was their turn on the press.

To her surprise, they’d absorbed a lot. Shop Boy wasn’t all that shocked — Mary always gets her message across loud and clear.

But they didn’t get everything.

True story: I’ve mentioned in the past that Shop Boy was a science major for two years in college. Well, one of the requirements was a class in botany. And the only professor teaching botany back then was a bored-rotten blowhard of a dude famous for failing, like, three quarters of his students. You know, the whole “I’m doing this for your own good — if you’re not smart enough for my botany class, you’re not smart enough for a career in science. Might as well learn that right now.”

You should have seen the final exam. Botany? Please. It was astrophysics. Appropriately, Shop Boy was “in the weeds,” as they say of lost souls, and this professor was driving the lawnmower.

Scored 27 out of 100, and the only reason I got past zero was the essay section. I had no idea what the enzymes of the carrot broke down into — must have been a paragraph I skipped in the 13th required book for the class. But I did know my Bugs Bunny. And in that 25-minute, frenzied term paper of an answer, Shop Boy somehow blathered, bleated, bloviated, blustered and bluffed his way to a passing grade. (Yes, graded on the curve, 27 was a D-plus. Looney Tunes, for sure.)

As he handed me back the exam, hand shaking and still about to wet his pants by the looks of things, a friend whispered to me: “He’s laughing at you. That’s BS!”

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” Shop Boy responded.

So there was the stack of Mary’s completed quizzes. Pretty good stuff. No botany majors, mind you, but well done.

And then I saw it. Next to a section on letterpress terms was an adorable little drawing, really a masterpiece of simplicity (hey — it’s a college of art), of a fox-like animal with a caption that read: “The Common Reglet.”

“Kid gets an A,” I said.

After all, what does the word “reglet” mean to anyone who’s never assembled type in a chase for printing? Not a whole bunch. These kids were all about polymer. And that, my friends, is what we call a “teachable moment.”

And so is this. For those who might have stumbled upon this blog while looking for something, um, very different — I can see the keywords that got you here, you bad boys and girls, but I won’t tell Mom — a reglet is a strip of wood used as spacing material between lines of type or to help lock your form in the chase, or metal frame, for moving to the printing press.

Now, Shop Boy’s not as cantankerous a cuss as that old botany dude, but while I’ve got you here, what do you say we make sure we’re all a little more up-to-date on our letterpress words? Then next time somebody asks you, the answers will be on the tip of your tongue. Oh, don’t thank Shop Boy. Consider it a public service. Let’s begin …

Common printshop expressions and their meanings:

Taping the rails: Amtrak’s track-maintenance program. (Sorry, a little commuter humor there. )

Leveling compound: generally, gin, tonic and a wedge of lime. But there are many brand names and variations.

Used to loosen Shop Boy up before delivering the news about the latest press purchase. Also useful outside the shop. For instance, when Mary needed to persuade Shop Boy that a three-story Baltimore rowhouse wasn’t too much space for two people, that Shop Boy wouldn’t be a slave to the dust bunnies, that the fact it smelled like her Grandmama’s house was a good thing … she really poured on the leveling compound. Suddenly it was very clear: I had no vote.

By the way, Grandmama’s house in Raleigh, N.C., was a donut’s throw from an original Krispy Kreme stand. Oh, my. The stampede down the front steps when the neon “Hot Now” sign lit up. Back then, you could buy two dozen and get one dozen free. I mean, what would you do?

Dust bunnies: After a certain point, Shop Boy just likes to think of them as thick, gray, shag carpeting.

Pulling a negative: This is when, usually late, late at night after a long, frustrating day (or a whole weekend) — when your feet hurt, your head pounds and you realize that bedtime’s just a dream — you become something like the opposite of your true nature. Some, including Mary, have labeled this phenomenon “being a jerk.” While this seems a bit simplistic to Shop Boy, she’s got raised pica pole and a whole bunch of “uh-uh, not tonight, pal” on her side.

Depression: This is when, usually late, late at night after a long, frustrating day (or a whole weekend) — when your feet hurt, your head pounds and you realize that bedtime’s just a dream — the impression you have is still something like the opposite of the one you are seeking.

Bible bump: This is praying for that little extra push to get you through the night — without pulling a negative — and mercy and deliverance from this deadline.

Actually, this is a fun expression, taught to Mary and Shop Boy by a compositor at the newspaper where we met. The woman was clearly having tremendous pain in her hand at the spot of this big lump. We asked if she was OK. “Oh, that’s just a little Bible bump,” she said, explaining the cure she’d undergone for previous bouts: You put your hand on the counter, somebody grabs the Bible, raises it above their head … and smashes it down on your hand to break the cyst. Relief is yours. Um, after a while.

Gulp.

Talk about putting the fear of God into someone. Which brings us to …

Digitalis: From the Greek for “injury to fingers or toes, which turn red, swollen and angry after being smashed between two heavy objects.” Mary about gave Shop Boy a heart attack the other day when she forgot to let go of the tail end of a card and slammed her fingers in the Vandercook.

A for effort. D for dumb … we’ve all been there before, haven’t we?

An Insider’s Look

Hey, for those of you who haven’t seen this item at Design*Sponge, have a look. (Our friends have been very nice about sharing it around. And it’s fun to get the attention.)

If you haven’t seen the Typecast Press studio, the pictures will give you a little taste of what the place is like. Oh, and you get to see the flat files/work table you read about a while back — the one Shop Boy built with his own unsteady hands.

Hope you’ll take a peek and read Mary’s descriptions of why we do what we do.

And do drop in sometime.

Now where was I? Oh, writing the next blog entry.

More soon …

Letterpress List No. 78: Bucket Brigade

It all comes down to a difference in plumbing.

Which is how Shop Boy once again found himself in the ladies’ room with a 10-gallon bucket.

Oh, it’s not what you think … whatever it is you might be thinking. Mary had recently gotten a hands-on tutorial in the use of our Jet platemaker from her partner in crime at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Kyle Van Horn. And suddenly we were ready to burn our own polymer plates. Our roommate’s departure had left a perfect little office of its own for the Jet. Whew. Polymer plates can be kinda stinky to create. And with Mary’s super-sensitive nose, it just wasn’t working out to make plates in the main space. Now, if the plates stink, just close the door and turn on the exhaust fan.

Anyway, bringing this machine online is something that’s been way overdue, so that’s exciting. A visit from the plumber to our studio is way overdue as well, however.

So Shop Boy frequents the ladies’ room. Oh, it’s not a bad place to hang out.

Most ladies’ rooms tend to be better equipped than the guys’. And for a factory restroom, this one’s pretty fancy-schmancy. Flowery couches, cool old free-standing pink sinks, curtains, clean stalls …

And the utility sink?

Yep. Guess they figured if they put it in the men’s room, guys would just pee in it or something. The sad part is they’re probably right. Geez. The men’s room across the hall has a couple of urinals, two truly scary stalls and a cheap-o formica countertop with two little sinks protected by — oh, let’s just say that most guys couldn’t reach to pee in them. And they’re tough to get water out of, too. That’s why Shop Boy needs the utility sink. Did I mention the men’s room trash can with the sign over it that reads: “No Trash: For Recyclables Only”?

Excuse me? Recycling in the restroom? Takes all kinds, I guess.

The ladies’ room utility sink has hot and cold water, meaning you can blend them to create the right temperature, like high 70s F or something. Then, off you go down the hall to where the Jet awaits, dump in the first gallons, then back to the ladies’ room. It takes about 15 gallons between the Jet and the rinse basin, by Shop Boy’s estimate.

But Shop Boy won’t complain much more than I already have, for even I can see how lucky we are.

Mary, Shop Boy and Typecast Press inhabit the space where Noxema was invented. For real. In fact, many of the locals still refer to Fox Industries as “the Noxema Building.” Cool by us, since our main suite consists of the Noxema president’s office and that of his executive secretary. Honest, we’ve got pictures. Not sure they’d have liked how we’ve painted the place. White to lime green can be an adjustment. They’d have liked the cocktail lounge, though.

There’s an old poster above a door that says helpfully: “Your whiskers are “dead.” It’s your skin that hurts.” In that spirit, the company would give tons of the goop to workers with their paychecks. Judging by the looks of some of the older folks in our Hampden neighborhood, most of the boys sold the Noxema for smokes. OK, that’s mean. But there’s a local watering hole called Zissimo’s in which the real, vanishing, um, characters of Hampden pass the time. So, the city passes a no-smoking-in-restaurants law. Yay! So now all the folks from Zissimo’s begin venturing out to the sidewalk — and into the sunlight — for a puff … and immediately there’s talk of granting the bar a waiver from the law.

Swear to god.

But back to Noxema headquarters. Because he was the big boss, the president’s office — and now our printshop — includes a personal restroom with its own presidential “throne.” As for the secretary, she had her own washroom too, less exalted but pretty handy. And this is the space that our photographer roommate had long used as his darkroom. It wasn’t until he moved out that we could really see that the toilet and sink were still there.

For better and worse.

The worse is that it’s kind of gross right now.

The better is what the plumber’s going to deliver: a hose for filling the Jet, and a drain for emptying it afterward. Yes, those buckets of wastewater have to be lugged back to the utility sink. (Basically, it works like this: Lay the negative against the orange piece of plastic, turn on some high-test, ultraviolet lights to expose it — avert your eyes, kids, or you’ll go blind — and then what’s exposed hardens. The scrubbers remove the rest, which becomes part of the wastewater. And off Shop Boy goes.)

Oh, yes, and there are a number of ladies working in the building. So Shop Boy knocks. Even if it’s 2 in the morning. And sometimes I make Mary go in first.

I mean … they might be recycling in there or something.

***

Letterpress List No. 78

Hey, any day now, the letterpress family will be welcoming a new little printer into the world. The other side of the world. Lou at Poppy Letterpress is about to, well, pop. Check out her blog entry announcing she’s shutting down operations in Canberra, Australia, until the baby’s born. Now, I only know Lou and her hubby in a virtual sense. But please send wishes for an easy delivery her way if you get a chance. As a longtime reader of this blog, she’s suffered enough.

(Of course, Shop Boy can say that about all of my regular readers, but we won’t go there, will we? Thank you.)

So, for Lou, how about an hour’s worth of music to chase away the labor pains? Video links are courtesy of YouTube.

Tom Traubert’s Blues – Tom Waits (With a Waltzing Matilda chaser. Oddly lovely.)
Just a Girl — No Doubt (For the most beautiful parents on the planet. Sorry, Lou … I mean Gwen and Gavin. But it was close.)
Adrenaline – Gavin Rossdale (Here’s to exciting times for us all.)
Ladies Room — Kiss (Knock, knock. Who’s there? SB. SB who? SB a pain in the butt, yo. When’s the plumber coming?)
Baby — Stephen Lynch (He’s such a bad little boy.)
Stay Up Late – Talking Heads (Good luck with that.)
New Sensation — INXS (Indeed.)
Detroit Lullaby — Hamill on Trial (Enjoy your crib time, kid. It’s a tough world out there.)
Wild World — Cat Stevens (You betcha. It could make you a little crazy, even.)
London Still – the Waifs (Saw the Aussie band at Baltimore’s Artscape. Fell hard for the voices.)
Lightning Crashes — Live (OK, I’m a sap.)
I’m My Own Grandpaw — Willie Nelson (He was smoking something when he wrote this, god bless the old doper.)
Sweet Child O’ Mine – Guns N’ Roses (Not a very good boy, either. Probably pees in the utility sink.)
52 Girls — the B-52s (For the ladies of Fox Industries. OK, there are more like nine. Whatever.)
Gone Like the Water — Freedy Johnston (7.5 gallons at a time.)
Girls – Beastie Boys (Who could ask for more?)
Business Time — Flight of the Conchords (Recycling is not part of the foreplay, but it’s very important.)

Connecting the Dots

There are many things that Shop Boy did as a junior high school student.

He drank way too much beer for the first time and got early lessons in how to drive — not simultaneously. You think I’m crazy?

A buddy usually handled that part.

Annoyed by the repeated nuisance of standardized tests, Shop Boy would skip the questions and instead think of a visual pattern and carefully, with a perfectly sharpened No. 2 pencil, fill in the circles that would create it. Or, he’d think of a song and try to complete one line of the test per drum beat.

What? Tell me you never did that …

Shop Boy often turned a small pimple on the chin into a gaping wound visible for miles through an, um, overreaction to its presence. (”No, it isn’t a zit. I simply got grazed by a bullet last night in a very heroic situation.”)

Then there were the clumsy first steps toward what would become a post-college love affair that ended so clumsily … ugh. Let’s just say that Shop Boy can count on one or two fingers the women who truly dislike him — if they think of him at all. Shop Boy earned the hatred of both in the span of a week and has been trying to make it up to women, and himself, ever since.

Shop Boy also set lead type, carved linoleum blocks and ran a treadle-powered old C&P in printshop class.

Most of the silly things you do in junior high you outgrow.

Ahem.

“I’ve got a present for you,” Mary said. “Close your eyes and hold out your hands.”

Now, Shop Boy once plopped a live rabbit into Mary’s hands after saying the same thing, so …

I looked the box over and suddenly remembered a discussion we’d had a week or two before. Being reminded of Shop Boy’s junior high industrial arts days, Mary had wondered aloud whether he should try his hand once again at the linoleum block thing. “I guess so … I guess.”

Now, Shop Boy isn’t usually superstitious or worried about “signs” from the gods or whatever, but:

Inside the box of five Flexcut linoleum carving tools of varying blade shapes and sizes was another smaller, brightly colored container.

For Band-Aids.

Did I mention that my “experience” with linoleum blocks was carving out a little, happy sun with bright, sharp sunbeams spreading out all around the sphere. Except for that one spot where the tool had slipped and created a flattop haircut.

Regular Picasso of the linoleum block, little Shop Boy was. Hey, wait a minute. Maybe I’d been channeling him all along.

Either way, this should be interesting. We bought a couple of cheapo blocks so that Shop Boy can work on reawakening any latent artistic spirit that might be lurking back there somewhere.

But what should be my first amazing bit of linoleum block art?

I did see this really neat pattern one time on this standardized test.

Rube … Goldberg, That Is

If John Ottina, the late, truly great husband of Mary’s Cousin Mollie, is peering down on us today, he’s got to be looking like he swallowed some bad pasta as he says to the angel next to him:

“Mollie gave all my favorite power tools to that guy?”

“Not to worry,” his fellow angel will reassure John. “It simply means he’ll be joining us shortly, and then the tools will pass into more deserving hands.”

Gulp.

Yes, Shop Boy is about to attempt a rare solo building project at the studio. And Satan’s probably licking his chops, too. See, there is this 10-foot stack of flat files in one of the rooms we occupy, six five-drawer cabinets altogether, and it’s long been Shop Boy’s dream to take four cabinets, place them side by side, and build a top and a base so that the whole unit would become not only a place to store paper but a clean workbench for packaging deliveries and trimming out the fancier papers for envelope linings or whatever.

I’m also a bit tired of the high-wire act it takes to fetch stuff from drawers at the top of the current stack.

Anyway, my usual ringers — Mary’s dad Wayne and brother-in-law Tom — are inconveniently, ahem, unavailable this weekend, when the deed needs to be done. So, here I go.

By any measure, the assignment should be a snap. Build a base with two-by-fours to raise the cabinets to a comfortable working height, then cut the top from thick plywood and add quarter-round as a finishing border and an edge to keep it from sliding off the top of the cabinets. Piece of cake.

For somebody else.

Heck, Shop Boy is not completely un-handy. And I’m quite clever in spots.

True story: About Mary and Shop Boy’s third week in Baltimore, we had just settled down to a nice dinner when a racket arose in the breezeway.  We pulled back the curtain of the large dining room window to be greeted by a large, squealing mama rat on its hind legs, its front paws stretched out across the glass before us as if to say, “Help me!”

Did I mention it was Shop Boy’s idea to move to Baltimore?

As we clearly were not about to gather it up in our arms, the rat at last turned and ran beneath an old rain guard that the previous owner had placed against the base of the house to ward off basement leakage. Obviously her babies were in there.

Hmm.

Mary: “Oh, my god … you’ve got to get that thing out of there.”

Shop Boy: “But it’s full of rats! I ain’t going near that thing.”

I convinced her that it was foolhardy to go confront the rodents at night and promised I’d clear the furry family the next morning. Shop Boy was pretty bummed when the next morning actually arrived — oh, just for a minute or two. But by then I’d thought about a way I could  lift the rain guard without being physically present when the rats bolted.

Do it from the air.

As Shop Boy cannot yet fly (I’m working on it … sheesh), I would need to rig something that could reach down into the breezeway from a second-story window and hold the rain guard aloft to send the message that perhaps the rats weren’t welcome.

Broom handle (check), bungee cord (check), screw-in ceiling hook (check), one-by-two edging board (check), chain (check), rope (check), duct tape (natch). So here I am, hanging out a second-story window, dangling this fishing pole contraption, Mary’s laughter echoing from the first floor.

Now we were making so much noise that Katharine, our beloved former neighbor, came to the breezeway to find out what these two nutburgers were up to now. From about a foot away from the rats’ hideout, she leaned in to witness the action. Heck, she’d once had a rat run up her bare arm from inside a trash can. This was nothing.

Soon, she was laughing at the sight of the Shop Boy Airborne Ultrasonic Load Lifter (Patent Pending) as loud as Mary was.

Well.

I’d show them. On the first try, Shop Boy hooked the rain guard and, yanking on this whatchamacallit thingy in my hands, gradually lifted the whole thing off the ground. Katharine didn’t even flinch. Man, she was ice.

No matter. The rats were long gone. Must have slipped away in the night. It was almost disappointing.

Still, victory was in the air. Mary laughed, but my trick worked. And now, whenever Shop Boy looks over a complex problem and says he has an idea for hooking up … something … to get the job done, Mary has to at least listen.

Which is why all of John Ottina’s fancy tools scare me a bit. As long as Shop Boy’s employing some crazy, jury-rigged, Rube Goldberg contraption, you can excuse the occasional crooked corner. Now, no more excuses.

Dang. How do I fake this?

Letterpress List No. 77: Short-Sheeted

Hey, write this down …

Huh?

Oh, that’s right. You’re at Typecast Press. Nothing to write on.

Hmm. Uh, Shop Boy will find you a sheet of paper. There’s one here … someplace.

There was some over there just the other day — nope. That’s for gift tags, etc. That stuff? Are you kidding? Do you know how much your little deckle-edge scribble would cost? And that other pile is packing for the platen. Leave that where it is. Wait! Don’t touch that. It fell under the press and got oil on the corner. You’ll spread it everywhere.

OK. Here you go.

Yes, Shop Boy knows it’s a paper towel. It’s that or the back of your hand, pal.

Now, take this down …

A pen? What does this look like … a stationery store?

***

Letterpress List No. 77

Yes, Shop Boy gets a bit frustrated at the lack of note paper within easy reach at the printshop. Mary’s got a system that works for her. Darned if I know what it is. Shop Boy’s nearly messed up a job or two as, being given information over the phone, I grabbed for the top sheet on a pile only to realize just in time that, yes, it was a wedding invitation-to-be. So, while we’re casting about for an unclaimed sheet of paper, how about a little music to search — or wash ink off the back of your hand — by?

Little Red Book — Ted Nugent (Stationery? Burt Bacharach? This is not the Nuge that Shop Boy knows and loves — even had him write an essay for me in my real job a couple of weeks ago. It was like Beatlemania in my office when he agreed.

True story: I dragged Mary to Ted Nugent’s concert here in Baltimore. We walk in, and the stage is filled with machine guns. And here comes old Ted waving them around. The crowd is rough and ready. And he’s egging them on. The whole concert, Mary insisted we stand by the back door, just in case. We ended up leaving early to go get Mary a soothing cocktail. That man likes his guns. Shop Boy? More a First Amendment guy than a Second Amendment dude. In other words, if you can say it like Ted does, Shop Boy might not agree, but he’ll listen.
Words – Missing Persons (I used to think as a very young man that this singer, a Playboy bunny, was quite hot. Now, under Mary’s tutelage, I recognize her as fake, airbrushed and shallow. I feel dirty. Thanks a lot.)
Paper Roses – Marie Osmond (Ditto. )
You’re Speaking My Language — Juliette and the Licks (Rules. Her and the Nuge … great double bill that would be. Maybe she could borrow his raccoon tail. Ooh.)
Paper Planes — M.I.A. (The Nuge will like this one.)
The Letter – the Box Tops (She wrote me a letter … on a paper towel.)
Take a Letter Maria – R.B. Greaves (Don’t use the Crane’s!)
Girl Don’t Tell Me (You’ll Write) — Beach Boys (Don’t wait by the mailbox, bub.)
Hot for Teacher – Van Halen (”I got my pencil… gimme something to write on, man.”)
Original Prankster — the Offspring (The joke’s on you.)
Feelgood Inc. — Gorillaz (Awesome. Can’t write that enough.)
Paper Bag — Fiona Apple (She looks oddly … merry here. Not like her at all.)
Every Day I Write the Book — Elvis Costello (That’s a lot of sheets, fella. Where’d you find them?)
Kiss My Glock – Ted Nugent (And order is restored.)

Helping Hands

This teaching gig of Mary’s is going to pay off handsomely.

For Typecast Press interns from here on out, I mean.

Oh, not that it’s been pure hell up until now to serve as an intern for Typecast Press. But you know how it is. You agree to feed and shelter college kids — or keep them off the streets, anyway — in return for their unquestioning servitude. It’s a great chance for them to learn by doing, to watch a master of the craft doing things the right way, to soak up knowledge not available anywhere else at any price. And you get free labor. Awesome deal, right?

Then they show up, all eager and stuff, on the worst possible day of the worst possible week and …

“Oh, um, well, you can, uh, maybe make those thingies over there into a neat pile. Then you can, um … yeah, clean that stuff. It’s sorta dusty. I’ll be done in just an hour … or two, tops.”

You feel lousy about it, and you look a bit incompetent to be honest. But a deadline’s a deadline.

Soon the intern’s antsy for some real work and getting in the way of yours with curiosity, questions and … needs. You could throw up your hands, give in and offer the kid your full attention (deciding you’ll make up for the lost productivity by staying late into the evening).

You could send the intern away with apologies and a promise of a much better work session next time … or the time after that, tops.

Or, you could call the “Intern Whisperer.”

You might know him as Shop Boy.

Ahem.

Shop Boy has had great luck solving the intern dilemmas that arise by the very nature of the arrangement (not unique to the printshop). You’ve got work to do, fast, and boy would it be great to have an extra pair of hands around. Of course, it takes time to train that pair of hands to be helpful, which can be slow and frustrating. You could have done whatever it is that you’re doing in half the time if you hadn’t had to teach somebody else to do it. And you would have gotten it right the first time. Soon, you’re thinking of interns not as a big help but rather as a big pain in the rear end!

It’s OK … it’s OK. I’m here.

Honestly, Shop Boy seems to have a way with interns, hence Mary’s sarcastic new nickname for me. Intimidated, disappointed or perhaps a bit at a loss over the clear impression that you sometimes wish they’d get lost, interns can become oddly timid. Unsure of themselves. Quiet. They’re not like this  among their too cool for art school peers, you can bet.

I don’t know what it is.

Actually, I do know what it is: Mary scares the bejeepers out of them. Scares the heck out of me too sometimes.

Oh, she can be a bit direct, sure. But mostly, it’s just hugely intimidating to try to keep up with Mary, so demanding of herself that you can’t help making yourself nuts, and mess up, trying to live up to her standards.

I stumbled upon one intern (no names) as she stood, hands trembling, and haltingly fed cards into the little C&P. You could cry … really.

So, Shop Boy pats the interns, encourages them, praises them, calms them. As well as the Intern Whisperer, I have been called the Softball Coach, also in a snarky tone.

All right, and before Mary says HEY! — she considers this the most powerful word in our language — Shop Boy will admit that I probably have a little more time to pat, to kid, to cajole, to encourage and to praise.

She’s the brains of the operation, after all.

Me? I’m Shop Boy.

Have I mentioned that all of our interns have been female? Mary will, sharply, as if she’s doing me a favor or something by selecting them. Fine, fine. Shop Boy likes girls. Always has. Sue me. Most of my (sadly, platonic) friends in school were girls. I didn’t trust guys. Still don’t, to tell you the truth. Shop Boy has five sisters — four of them older — who beat plenty of manners into me and taught me, gently (at least at first), that I should put the toilet lid down before leaving the bathroom. And I mostly liked them anyway. So, sure, technically, it has not been an unpleasant development having young women hang around the shop.

It’s funny: Mary always had more guy friends. And so she’s sort of eager to test the dynamic of the male intern. I mean, working with Shop Boy is a dream come true, after all.

But back to the Maryland Institute College of Art class. Hey, once you’ve herded cats — I mean, corralled a bunch of college kids, male and female, for six hours at a time — you learn what makes them tick. And how to keep them (hopefully) engaged and entertained.

And that’s what I mean about this benefiting future interns, including Aron, who starts in May. See, now the interns who show up all eager will find Mary well-prepared and eager as well, ready with all of these interesting projects: lining envelopes with cool papers, designing and printing coasters, doing origami, creating posters from wood type and old copper cuts, you name it.

Which leaves stacking stuff into neat piles and cleaning rusty trays to Shop Boy …

With some guy hanging around having all the fun with Mary.

It won’t be pretty.

Not that I’m bitter … yet.

The Next Chapter

There’s a sign outside Typecast Press, a plate actually — copper on wood. We needed something to let folks know we were there, and Shop Boy figured this might be cool. It’s “right reading,” meaning the type would print backwards if pressed into paper. But of course this way you can read it from the hallway, generally a good attribute in a sign. Brayered-on black ink helps the legibility, too.

The Old Printers’ Home …

And Museum of Mostly Useless Antiquities

Well, it’s officially a lot more antique with the now mostly digital camera guy moving out.

Chris Hartlove has a great office at home and wants to save a few bucks. So, he’s begun to pack up his gear. Makes sense. And you know what space hogs Mary and Shop Boy are, even facing a bump in rent. Chris was lucky to last this long. The body wasn’t even cold before we had plans to turn the former darkroom into the platemaking room. And it’ll be awesome having the extra square footage.

But it’s still sad, of course. Chris gave us our start when we were desperate for a place to store our first thousand-plus-pound press, and basically sealed his fate. Shop Boy will long remember those first crazy days in Chris’ space — now all ours. You know, those days in which we bought the cabinets and machinery and lead and ink and paper that slowly began to crowd Chris out.

That’s life, right? The Fox Building will very likely outlive Mary and me. Typecast Press will one day be torn asunder.

I say this as, in the third room of our studio, Kyle Van Horn of the Maryland Institute College of Art has dumped about a 1,500-pound Vandercook needing some serious TLC on us. Hey, he’s hoping to get his own space, but he needed a place to store it in the meantime. How could we say no, having been there?

Kyle, if you’re reading this, don’t get any smart ideas.

***

By the way, this is Shop Boy’s 152nd post. Haven’t read them all? Please do so now. We’ll wait.

…

OK, now that we’re all up to speed …

Priceless prose, huh? (And, yes, by that I do mean FREE.)

Why does 152 matter? Only because I figured my last post would be, well, my last one. Real life has been a bit, um, needy these past few months, hasn’t it? I’m not going to whine. That’s not my style. (Yes it is, Shop Boy.) But I’ve had to slow the pace of posting just a bit. And this week, I really wondered if that was that.

If readership stats are any indication, though, you”re OK with a little less of me.

Then, every time I think this fun exercise is over, something else strikes me as interesting, odd or, ahem, funny. And I’m right back at it again. With no end in sight.

Sorry about that.

Oh, and thanks.

Patron Saints of Letterpress

As a huge supporter of anything that helps bring more beer into the world, Shop Boy was torn.

See, a brewery had been planning a relocation to a new municipality, which was thrilled — until the townfolk got a load of what the beermeisters would be contributing to the local sewage stream.

And nearly soiled themselves.

Enter Tom Beal, engineer, inventor, brother-in-law of Mary and, to Tom’s apparent dismay, previously described by Shop Boy as “a lumberjack of a man.” I meant it as a compliment, of course, seeing as how he could crush me like a bug.

Tom will one day help save the world from cholera if people will just listen to him. Of course, that means another earful of effluent about Bob Dylan’s brilliance — um, OK. But when Tom’s the guy you’re counting on to build the waste receptical where new types of bacteria will eat beer-making wastes and save the local ecosystem, chill. Have a brew. He’ll get it done.

He’s also very responsible for the smooth operation of several of Typecast Press’ machines and was a large part of the reason Perry Tymeson, one of Mary’s favorite letterpress dudes, agreed to give up most of a weekend in Jersey City (Shhhhh! Don’t be rude–it’s got some killer kielbasi) to guide the refurbishing of a Vandercook No. 4, idle for nearly 30 dark, moist years, to proper operating condition.

Perry, a master printer, press fixer and a super nice guy, it turns out (where does Mary find these dudes — should Shop Boy worry about a pink slip?), had stopped by the shop during a previous visit to Baltimore and spotted Tom’s handiwork.

The term “friction drive” mean anything to you? (Oh, behave!)

It will. Perry Tymeson will soon see to that.

Heck, we knew it was cool, but little did Shop Boy know how potentially revolutionary Tom’s system was for the letterpress world. But if Perry hadn’t seen it before, that’s good enough for me. I did know that Typecast Press would’ve been sunk without it.

Anyway, Tom was sacrificing a weekend of brewery bilge blasting to once again enter the letterpress vortex. He and Perry would help Shop Boy — OK, mostly Shop Boy would help them — restore the No. 4 so long abandoned to cold, a leaky roof and mouse poop in an Arlington, Va., backyard printshop. Look, for every Vandercook expert and every brilliant machinist, you need the one guy on his hands and knees who reaches his arm into — oh, geez, eww, what is that? — and cleans the non-business end of the press.

Well, it took hours and hours of hard labor. But when Mary walked in and described the No. 4 as “bling,” we knew we were close to done. Oh, the chassis is a sight, despite Shop Boy’s best efforts at clearing the peeled paint and rust. But the press bed and the brass parts? Gleaming.

As for the friction drive? Shop Boy ain’t giving up the goods on this one. We’ll let Perry do the evangelizing on Tom’s system once he’s ready to help save his world from unnecessarily idle presses.

And Tom? As he headed back to wife Melissa and the beer gig — he’s basically designing the holding tank where the bacteria will do their thing — Shop Boy told him once again what an amazing guy he is and how miraculous the eventual yeast-away machine would be.

Tom modestly demurred, commenting: “If I were a brewer I wouldn’t want yeast-eating bacteria anywhere near my beer.”

And he laughed an odd laugh.

Not to worry. Tom’s on it. Which can only mean one thing:

That’s more beer for us.

Letterpress List No. 76: Peeks and Valleys

Kids are so sweet.

I mean, why was Shop Boy even worried about having 16 Maryland Institute College of Art students over to Typecast Press for a class on clamshell presses? Sixteen attentive, excited minds eager for a change from the usual printing experience on the Vandercook presses that are MICA’s strong suit. And Shop Boy had drawn responsibility for the big C&P, the 12×18, my main squeeze.

The color? Intense black.

Sweet. No mixing. Let’s roll!

So, anyway, you know how with these polymer plates you really can’t tell what the finished product will look like until you ink it up? Here’s what the very first impression from the very first student in my group looked like:

Pornography.

Naked woman trussed up like a turkey. Another in a  chef’s hat holding a ladle.

Shop Boy (in his most professorial tone): “Ahem, well. That, um, what do you think of the impression? Shall we, uh, hit it twice … er, I mean, shall we allow the press to complete two full rotations before we pull, uh, remove the coaster?”

Young woman: “Yeah, twice. That’ll look even better!”

The others nodded in agreement. It was going to be a long night.

Mary had invited the 16 students and Georgia Deal — the chair of the printmaking department at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington  (no pressure, Shop Boy) — to get a feel for how letterpress printing works on machines built for mass production. Rather than pull one or several perfect proofs, this was about creating a stack of 60 great coasters, square or round.

Kyle Van Horn of MICA, Mary and Shop Boy would split the group by chosen ink color: red, black  and yellow/brown.  Mixing colors isn’t my strength. Basic black? Even Shop Boy can handle that.

So we got through the rest of the night fairly uneventfully. Shop Boy guided six students (plus Georgia) through the process. They are a creative bunch, and they waited more patiently than you’d expect of college students. (One exception: Mary about had a riot on her hands when she merely suggested we wait a bit before ordering pizza.)

And the porno?

Fine, fine. Artists like to push the envelope … or the coaster. So, whatever. We’re all adults here. And it was her coaster … like to see her serve Mom a cup of tea on that baby, though.

We got out of there very late, yes.

But to Shop Boy’s relief, not in Vice Squad handcuffs.

***

Letterpress List No. 76

How about an hour’s worth of music to create — or simply appreciate the human form — by? Most of these tunes should be available in the usual places. Goofy or great videos are from YouTube.

Pornograffitti – Extreme (That image will stay with me a while.)
Pour Some Sugar on Me – Def Leppard (And turn me after 30 minutes at 350 degrees.)
Rebel Girl — Bikini Kill (OK, I get it. Gender statement … right?)
Back to Black — Amy Winehouse (Intense. Like the singer’s poor soul.)
Suddenly I See — KT Tunstall (As for the seven coasters Shop Boy helped them print, there was the aforementioned, um, dinner scene …)
Without Me — Eminem (A bit of self-promotion …)
Season of the Witch — Donovan (A reflection on the Salem Witch Trials — the coaster features the image of the doomed fellow who, when being crushed to death with heavy stones, uttered the immortal phrase “More weight” …)
Running on Empty – Jackson Browne (A play on the glass-half-full or empty idea …)
Mexican Wrestler – Jill Sobule (A sumo! OK, that’s a reach …)
Nike a Go Go — the Misfits (And a little manipulation of an iconic image — the skull — from punk rock.)
Air Force Ones – Nelly (Sounds nice. Make it twice.)
Shock Me — Kiss (Pushing the envelope of good taste.)
Kiss Off – Violent Femmes (Did I happen to mention I was impressed?)
Monkey Wrench — Foo Fighters (OK, so the impression on the smaller C&P was too strong for the final coaster of the night. The image looked great, but the coasters were full of cracks. You know what that means: a midnight platen adjustment. Somebody go get Shop Boy!)
Naked Pictures (of Your Mother) – Electric Six (Says it all.)

Letterpress List No. 75: Jenny Appleseed

And we thought Baltimore was a small world.

While in Tucson, Mary and Shop Boy had stopped in at the University of Arizona to check out the school’s letterpress shop. Mary found the name of the young woman running the program earlier and, while we were in town, decided to give it a shot. Margaret Kimball — or Margi — said she’d be happy to meet us.

So, once more we packed Mary’s mom and dad into the car — actually, Wayne Mashburn served as our tireless chauffeur all week, with Mary riding shotgun and Shop Boy and Mary’s mom, also Mary, making wisecracks, pointing out odd landmarks, complaining about the heat and providing lousy directional advice from the back seat. We’d lured them with the promise of an art exhibit at U of A’s modern art museum and lunch at El Charro, the Mexican place everybody quite rightly raves about. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

We were to meet Margi in the courtyard. How would we find her in the crowd?

Mary (to Shop Boy): “I think that must be her.”

Margi (eyes wide in recognition): “I knew that had to be you.”

What’s up with that? Letterpress pheromones or something? These printing people are so weird that way. Oh, wait …

And so there was Margi, who Shop Boy must report looks an awful lot like a young Teri Hatcher from Desperate Housewives. Sorry, guys. She’s got a boyfriend. But maybe he’ll get kidnapped and locked in the basement by the jealous guy next door, whose wife will get revenge by sleeping with the mailman, whose ex will set him up by adding poison dust to the letters he drops in the mailbox of …

Or you could just join the University of Arizona Letterpress Club.

Seriously.

Margi, a grad student from Connecticut, is trying to build that part of the Arizona graphic arts program. Equipment-wise, she’s off to a great start. The evolving U of A shop is long and fairly narrow. There’s a  Vandercook SP15, a beauty, at its center. Then there’s a sweet Old Style C&P, one of those with the swirly, “decorative” wheel spokes that, Margi explained, are as strong as the cheaper-to-make, thicker, straight spokes of the New Style machines. Hmm.

There’s also a Baltimore No. 10, of all things. What’s that press doing in the desert? Not rusting, that’s for sure.

Mostly useless travel tip: Cars do not rust out in Arizona. We saw more classic muscle cars — in all states of customization — in Tucson than Shop Boy has ever seen in his life.

More useful tip: The Boneyard, where the Air Force mothballs its planes, and the Pima Air and Space Museum are farther beyond cool than you can possibly imagine. As a bonus, the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base had invited all sorts of military fliers down for a little air show training. Meaning — and Shop Boy nearly fell over when Mary’s dad, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Mashburn, pointed to the sky — a C-130 cargo plane, a modern fighter jet, a P-52 Mustang and some WWI bucket of bolts were flying in formation. It was like that all week: A-10 “Warthogs” doing tricks above the baseball stadium, attack helicopters maneuvering to refuel in midair as a C-130 uncoiled its hoses.

Even Mary was whooping over all of the impromptu shows. Dang, that was neat.

But where was I? Classic cars in the desert … poison in the mail … oh, of course, letterpress.

Margi showed us around, pulling the dust covers off everything — no wonder they’re so clean — we chatted a good while and then we left her with well wishes for the club and an invitation to come visit next time she’s on the East Coast. And one more thing: It turns out that a printer by the name of  Heather Green will be teaching a letterpress course at U of A this summer. She owns the Vandercook that Jim Irwin — on the other side of the city — had only the day before told Mary and Shop Boy about once owning but selling to someone named Heather Green. What are the odds?

Then off we went to meet the Mashburns in the art museum. Mary’s mom, I should tell you, is the Fairy Godmother of the Arts in Colorado Springs, Colo. It was she who helped lead the charge, when schools began cutting art education, to put it back. She’s no artist, as she’ll tell you herself. But she’s the one who instilled in Mary a passion for and an understanding of the arts and their importance to the human soul.

And I love her dearly, but …

Shop Boy partially blames Mary’s mom for this letterpress voodoo her daughter has me mixed up in. There, I said it.

Anyway, we found the Mashburns wandering through a gallery of restored works from a Spanish church — by Fernando Gallego — the creepiest progression ever on the life and death of Christ. Oh, the scholarship was fascinating: Restorers had discovered lines and doodles beneath the outer surface to suggest the artist’s thought progression.

Shop Boy’s thought?

Run!

Downstairs to the main gallery, that is, where a retrospective of modern expressionist works by Nancy Tokar Miller included, you guessed it, a book of poetry illustrated by Miller and created by a local letterpress outfit called … Chax Press.

Well, there you go. Quicker than you can say Google, Mary had the printer/owner’s vitals down his HDL levels. Really, folks. She’s always said she’d make a great spy. And Charles Alexander, This Is Your Life.

Wayne and Shop Boy had one more baseball game/air show to attend. So Mary and Mama dumped us off, went to visit Chax and, by all accounts, “Jenny Appleseed” here has officially let a loose group of Tucson letterpress types know a whole bunch more about each other and the potential for forming a tighter circle and saving the world through wood type and polymer than they’d ever imagined wanting to know.

Welcome to the club.

***

Letterpress List No. 75

A friend, Gail Gibson, has a great expression for the act of swinging your head side to side and scanning the room before dishing the real dirt on someone: The Baltimore Swivel. Swear to god … around here, if you can’t say anything nice about someone, don’t spread the nastiness without first checking the tables and barstools around you. They don’t call it “Smalltimore” for nothing. Shop Boy will tell you the horrifying true story of how he got burned another day.

Meantime, how about an hour’s worth of music to bond, watch a P-52 flyover or recondition a ‘68 Mustang — by?

In Da Club — 50 Cent (Margi’s asking much more nicely.)
Johnny Appleseed — Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros (A little snippet of the lyrics to this tune are featured on the menus we print for Woodberry Kitchen.)
Craig – Stephen Lynch (Shop Boy’s going to hell for loving this so … it’s about sibling rivalry and, um, the brother of Jesus.)
Pictures of You — the Cure (Craig would love these Gallego images.)
Heard It Through the Grapevine — Marvin Gaye (Or from the next table over.)
Pretend to Be Nice — Josie and the Pussycats (And don’t forget the swivel in your small town. Hey … isn’t that Rosario Dawson?)
Mexican Radio — Wall of Voodoo (Mary had wanted to make a side trip to the Mexican border. Sadly, not a very wise thing to do these days.)
Designated Drinker — Alan Jackson/George Strait (With Wayne driving, all bets were off for the, um, Typecast Press crew members aboard.)
Wild Wild West — Escape Club (Can’t hear this one anywhere else but the ballpark anymore. What does that say about baseball fasn?)
Your Love — the Outfield (Ditto.)
Wild Wild West — Will Smith (Much cooler: “You don’t want nada … none of this.”)
Dreams – Van Halen (And saw a lot of this above the field.)
Centerfield — John Fogarty (True story: Wayne catches the first foul ball of his life at the beginning of the week and gets his photo taken with the guy who hit it, Rockies centerfielder Ryan Spillborghs, at the end of the week. He and, ahem, Shop Boy’s hands make the nightly news in Denver … about the 1:35 mark of the video. We were totally geeked. It truly was a cool moment, folks.)
Shock the Monkey — Peter Gabriel (In honor of the “Monkey on a Stick” at the Kon Tiki Lounge, a Tucson legend.)
Poison — Alice Cooper (And the drinks ain’t bad there either.)

Doing Things by Feel

Essentially, my buddy Dave Schmickel was telling me somewhere between Baltimore and D.C., “That train long ago left the station.”

We were just sort of chatting on the commute, Shop Boy remarking on the exacting nature of yet another particular project testing the soul of Typecast Press when Dave wondered aloud — you know, for the sake of argument — whether we’d ever thought of acquiring a more modern printing press so we could turn around such jobs faster, more easily and, ahem, more cheaply.

Where, Shop Boy asked him, is the romance in that?

Point taken, though. I bet we all wonder from time to time what we’re killing ourselves for. Shop Boy talks to a lot of people about this letterpress stuff and how cool the process is and how amazing the old machinery is and how awesome it is to touch the items we print and …

“Oh, umm. Ah. Uh-huh. And how much does it cost? Really. But I can get it at Kinko’s a lot cheaper. I’d never hire you.”

And that’s my DAD!

Been there, am I right?

Don’t get Shop Boy wrong. Some of my best friends are modern offset printers … or people who frequent them, anyway. They don’t get it, they won’t get it, they don’t want to get it. As for us, while reserving the right to sometimes whine about same, we like doing really cool projects and we love really old things.

The crazy, bent thingy that somebody somewhere repurposed for prying up the tympan bales on the C&P. Still works! The pile of rusted, bent metal trays stacked so precariously as they await rehab that they occasionally crash onto the floor in a wonderful cacophony. That pokey little number that you use to shift the cylinder on the Miehle vertical. Oh, and that nutty Corner Making Contraption.

One particular exception to Shop Boy’s love of the tired and arcane: the ice pencil.

This is a rudimentary tool — just frozen water, really — my dentist uses to isolate the individual tooth from which the pain is emanating. He touches each one in the row until he’s certain he’s got the right chopper.

You know how it is. Your tongue can sort of “point” to the spot that is sore. Dentists apparently prefer a more reliable signal, rather than opening a tooth, pulling the roots, slapping a new cap on the thing and then having the patient say when he’s done, “Gee, it still hurts in that general area.”

So he goes for a subtle but more precise sign. Like Shop Boy about jumping out of the chair when this icicle finds the sweet spot.

Owwwwwwweeee!

Now, I’m not a violent man, but if he ever approaches my mouth with that Neanderthal tool again, Shop Boy’s liable to bop old Dr. Freeze with the nearest rock.

Yes, Shop By has another root canal brewing. Believe me, you know when it’s time. And I’m dreading having to tell my dentist tomorrow. (Have one or two and they don’t need to tell YOU.) I mean, they’re falling like dominoes, the teeth are. The roots, anyway.

My childhood dentist — um, how do I put this more gently than he ever would have? — was a thorough individual who believed with all his heart that if you drilled away most of the kid’s tooth, there’d be no further possibility of decay.

You know that sound of the fine drill bit, the little one whose high pitch lets you know that the dentist is just finishing up with the kid ahead of you? Well, in Dr. Monte’s office, the tipoffs to start sweating were the yells and crying when he had drilled past the point of Novocain with the most ornery drill bit in the shop. Not sure if that fine bit was ever used.

Mary hates Novocain and the way it makes her face feel a little puffy afterward. Ever since Dr. Monte, Shop Boy has overcompensated.

“Are you comfortable? Can you feel this little instrument tapping your tooth?” the dentist will ask.

“Feel?” Shop Boy responds. “I can still SEE you. When my whole face is so numb that my eyes swell shut and I am drooling all over your arm, you may quit injecting the Novocain.”

So what did he expect with the ice pencil trick? That Shop Boy would take it like a man? Thank him for narrowing the choices down to the exact tooth? I was furious. (Turns out he was touching the wrong tooth; the one that now needs the tree stump treatment. So there you go.)

Anyway, I guess my teeth are old things now. But I’m not loving them today. Sigh.

Look, Shop Boy’s been a lucky, lucky man healthwise. (Mary will now knock on wood. OK, OK … I just did too.) Especially for someone who ran headlong into so many immovable objects as a kid and so many happy hours as an adult. But there’s something sort of eerily … final about root canals. The tooth is dead. One more tombstone along the road to your eventual demise. That it’s natural doesn’t make it any more of a pleasant drive, you know?

As Woody Allen has said, “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

I feel you, Woody.

More Novocain!

Letterpress List No. 74: Wakeup Call

It was time to read the writing on the ceiling.

Mary and Shop Boy had just returned from a sunny, warm week in Tucson, Ariz., gaining three hours on the return flight home. The great state of Arizona refuses to recognize Daylight Saving Time, and so we never had to spring forward, losing an hour of sleep, until right then. Midnight to other folks on the East Coast was suddenly 9 p.m. to us. Party time.

And 6:30 the next morning was 3:30 a.m. to Shop Boy. So, what in heaven’s name was all that racket?

“The Day I Tried to Live” by Soundgarden, as a matter of fact. Stunningly appropriate, though Shop Boy didn’t yet appreciate the humor in that as I staggered to my feet and fumbled for the alarm clock button so the sound wouldn’t wake Mary up.

No fear of that.

She’s getting used to the notion of Shop Boy sleeping through the night rather than waking with a start, sweat pouring off me and, convinced I’m late for work, hopping in the shower, dressing and kissing Mary goodbye on the forehead only to hear behind me as I head to the door: “Shop Boy! It’s 2 a.m. Are you crazy?”

As a baby, my mom once told me, an agitated little Shop Boy would rock himself to sleep by flexing and releasing his foot, creating momentum that made the crib sway back and forth. Pretty ingenious for a tot.

Not so for a full-grown man.

“Look at this …,” Mary said one night as we changed the sheets. “You’ve worn a hole with your foot.”

And that was that.

My Valentine’s Day present? An alarm clock that lets me awake to my favorite songs simply by plugging in my iPhone. Oh, and there’s a weird red window on there that beams the time of day wherever it’s pointed. Like the ceiling, where a prone Shop Boy can now see in big red numbers what time it really is.

So there Shop Boy stood unsteadily, rubbing his eyes as Mary snoozed, dreaming perhaps of teddy bear cholla, the adorable, prickly cactus that dots the Sonoran desert. Or the Mexican food of Tucson that has become, ahem, so much a part of us. Maybe the visits to three separate printshops that you’ll be hearing all about.

Or maybe just getting back to our own printing, which is what we love, after all.

See, it’s far too easy — when “rise and shine … breakfast is ready” becomes “get up … you’re late for work” — to lose the inner joyfulness a week away can bring, to forget why you do what you do every day. But this trip was too cool, too filled with memories — and devil’s food cake with white icing and coconut (thanks to Mary’s mom and dad!) — to go the usual route.

Instead of just trying to live, Shop Boy gathered himself, took a breath and one final glance at the ceiling — just to be sure — smiled as another bit of vacation goofiness crossed his mind and toddled off toward the shower.

It was already a good day.

***
Letterpress List No. 74

How about an hour’s worth of music to wake up to? Choose carefully, as any song — even “Muskrat Love,” say — can be terrifying to wake up to at the wrong volume. OK, “Muskrat Love” is terrifying at any volume, but you know what I mean. Most of these tunes should be available in the usual places. Goofy or great videos are from YouTube.

The Day I Tried to Live — Soundgarden (Seize the day. And the video’s from Arizona!)
Chop Suey! – System of a Down (Wake up! … I’ve threatened to use this as my morning reveille. But that would end badly — with the time projected on Mary’s back as she hit the ceiling.)
At Dawn — My Morning Jacket (OK, kind of a yawner.)
Enter Sandman — Metallica (Tucked in … nice and safe. No sweat.)
New Day Yesterday — Jethro Tull (Timelessly odd.)
Incense and Peppermints — Strawberry Alarm Clock (Ditto.)
One Man’s Ceiling (Is Another Man’s Floor) — Paul Simon (So true.)
Sick and Tired — Anastacia (She has been, but she’s a fighter.)
Between the Sheets — the Isley Brothers (Subtle.)
No Sleep Till Brooklyn — the Beastie Boys (Never subtle.)
Situation Under Control – the Alarm (Just breathe, Shop Boy.)
Runnin’ Down a Dream – Tom Petty (Great commuter tune.)
Sweet Dreams — Roy Orbison (Nice.)
Muskrat Love — the Captain and Tennille (Your brainworm, not mine.)

The Letterpress Mafia

You can’t hide from letterpress.

How far had we gone? So far away from everybody we know that Shop Boy could actually wear his cowboy hat without fear of having one of you see me and laugh.

Look, it’s for sun protection. Shop Boy ain’t no cowboy, as any of the folks at the Dallas airport who looked at me, as I merely carried the hat, with “oh right, you’re a cowboy” looks. Bah.

It’s sort of like the time Mary took Shop Boy to the menswear department to buy a suit for a wedding we were invited to attend. She immediately fixed upon a dark charcoal, pinstriped, double-breasted suit. Nice.

Till I put it on … and Mary started squealing. I glanced at the mirror and nearly tore a seam.

“Where’s the violin case?” Mary chortled.

The salesman was a bit put off by the two hyenas mocking his merchandise, but good heavens, there it was before our eyes. Shop Boy the mobster.

True story: Growing up in Cranston, R.I., right next to Providence, young male grandchildren of immigrants were taught to fear two things: God … and Raymond Patriarca, and not necessarily in that order.

Patriarca was the “reputed” crime boss of New England, running the mob from the cozy, Italian-American confines of Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood. Pretty neat place, actually. When you pass an archway with an inverted, gilded pineapple attached, you are there. Mary just calls the place Pineapple Hill.

But whatever we call the neighborhood, we say it with respect. Because for all we know, that pineapple is hung upside-down as a warning to other pineapples not to mess with the mafia. There’s a funny old state slogan (not endorsed by the chamber of commerce): Rhode Island — lobsters and mobsters.

OK, another funny one, from a Don Bosquet cartoon of a highway sign that reads: “Welcome to Rhode Island. Keep your smart remarks to yourself.”

With their stories of mob mayhem, our parents probably just wanted to keep what they thought were their squeaky clean kids out of some of the more, um, adult Providence neighborhoods. We weren’t squeaky clean, but we listened enough and did watch enough TV crime news and mob movies to believe that if you got crossways with the mafia, well, you could run but you couldn’t hide.

So here Mary and Shop Boy were on a nice, relaxing baseball journey to Tucson, Ariz., and we gotta go looking for trouble.

Didn’t have to look long.

Turns out there’s this guy (there always is) with a letterpress printshop in a lovely, nowhere place in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains partially ringing Tucson that’s called, appropriately enough, Catalina.

OK, so it was at Shop Boy’s urging that Mary sought out Jim Irwin of Letterpress Finesse. It is in Catalina that Jim keeps a printshop in a tiny cinderblock out-building that lost half its roof in the last windstorm. The cactus and odd desert plants are everywhere, huge, weird and blooming, the view of the mountains is breathtaking.

Jim’s got a Vandercook 4T, a beautiful old C&P and a Kluge, plus a power paper cutter and a bunch of cuts and old lead type in there. There’s a rack at the back of the shop where Jim’s rollers are protected from the rare Tucson rainstorm by an old, extra polymer sheet from Boxcar Press that forms a sort of awning — Mary’s kind of place, I figured.

Now, Mary elbows me in the ribs if Shop Boy speaks too well of our competitors in this global economy. But geez, what Jim Irwin turns out of his little shop is just astonishing. A pro, this guy. Still, Shop Boy can only imagine what the poor man was thinking as we rolled up, Mary’s mom and dad — Wayne and Mary Mashburn — in tow, for an impromptu tour.

He was a heck of a lot more charming than Shop Boy’d have been, let’s put it that way.

So we shot the breeze a bit, got a little advice on rust from a guy in the Place That Rust Forgot — Electrolysis? Oh, yeah, Shop Boy’ll be doing that — and Mary and Jim quickly started dropping names of letterpress folks they knew, knew of, or had worked with. Dang, do these people all know each other?

Made Shop Boy a little edgy, to be honest.

The Secret’s Out

The earliest sign of spring is a brand-new crush.

Oh, it’s OK.

Mary and Shop Boy joke about our “secret crushes” all the time. See, Mary has this thing for the men of letterpress. (She also likes chubby guys, apparently. Lucky for me. Sigh.) It’s always, “My new secret crush stopped by today and gave me some advice on the rollers.” Or, “My other secret crush gave me this great old book on printing.” There’s just something about dudes who share her passion for this nutty letterpress stuff.

Insert your own “large equipment” joke here. Shop Boy wouldn’t touch that with a 10-foot … oops, guess I just did.

Forgive me.

For you see, Shop Boy has his own jones working these days. I’m obsessed.

And of course you know, distractions can be a killer in the printshop.

That’s why I’m dragging poor Mary across the country — away from all these whirring, powerful and heartless presses (and her secret crushes) for a week while Shop Boy gets a big distraction out of his system.

Baseball. In Tucson, Arizona.

Hey, you can have your own dangerous obsessions. I’m sticking with a romance a lot less likely to get me swatted with a metal ruler.

Colorado Rockies baseball. Can’t help myself. Sure, Shop Boy grew up a Red Sox fan. But we lived in Denver just long enough for me to enter this dalliance. And it stuck. Besides, I’ve been sort of angry at the Sox for making the Rox look like, well, little boys in the World Series a couple of years back. Imagine, a Red Sox fan resenting a world championship. Don’t want to summon a curse or something.

But you didn’t come here to read about baseball, so let me go get some, and Shop Boy’ll be back here with more essential letterpress knowledge in a bit.

Perhaps I can fit in a remote blog post or two between forkfuls of Mexican food. But no promises.

Let me tell you, I am hopelessly in love with that stuff.

Letterpress List No. 73: Roll Models

There Shop Boy stood … stooped, actually, the carnival strongman sign taunting me. “Popeye, my left gluteus,” I was sure I heard it say. Or maybe that was Mary.

See, she was at the other end of the sign, which is 15 feet tall and deceptively heavy. And she wondered what the big deal was. Her end sat upon a dolly as she steered it much as the caboose guy steers the back end of the hook and ladder around tight corners on the way to a fire. Mary was doing a great job of steering. But it was still jammed tight where two stretches of hallway are separated by about a 4-foot turn. A real jam.

True story: Shop Boy needed a haircut. We happened to be at a Baltimore bar named for a couple of local guys’ efforts to build — in a backyard — a one-man spaceship to the stars. Seriously.

“So,” Mary asked the woman bartending at Rocket to Venus, “know anybody who cuts guys’ hair?”

We’d had a couple.

“Call this number,” the young woman said. “Ask for Bethany.”

OK.

Shop Boy made the appointment, showed up at the appointed time and then drove home.

“Your hair looks great,” Mary said, running her hands through the ‘do atop my head, gelled within an inch of its life. “How’s Bethany?”

“You mean Deathany,” Shop Boy answered.

“What?” Mary asked.

“Yeah. She’s in the roller derby. Wow! You should see the tats — and the piercings! And blond and orange hair to the ceiling. Deathany: No 666 in your program, No. 1 in your heart.”

“I don’t care if she’s Satan,” Mary said. “She’s cutting your hair from now on.”

Deathany might be reading this and might be holding a sharp pair of scissors near my throat any day now, so Shop Boy should add that she’s sweet and funny … and will put you on your keister. Her main role with the Charm City Roller Girls is as a jammer for the Speed Regime, one of four teams — strong kid. Solid skater. I’ve seen her in action. And I’ve seen her take off her helmet afterward. Boing! Hair snaps back into spiky, multicolored amazingness.

I ask Bethany once a month why she bothers to keep me as a client — dullest hairstyle to ever walk through the door. Oh, there are gray streaks, but that’s about as wild and colorful as Shop Boy gets. She just smiles. I think maybe she and Mary have a diabolical trick or two up their sleeves.

Anyway, we could have used Deathany and a few of her teammates in our corner to, um, help persuade the strongman sign to bend around this seemingly impossible turn — or to somehow embarrass Shop Boy into finding an extra Top Dog surge of strength.

Because we had only two choices: Shop Boy was going to lift this sucker into as vertical a position as he could to soften the angle — for as long as necessary — and we were going to muscle it through. Or we were going to have to put the sign back where it was, endlessly in the way in our to-be teaching studio.

Let’s see …

I grabbed the sign about two-thirds of the way to the top and slowly raised it toward the heating ducts, fully extending my arms above my head and standing on my tiptoes as the top of the sign scraped along the wall, inching toward the other hallway.

Mary: “This isn’t going to work.”

Thanks.

The sign had been outdoors a long time before it came to the Fox Industries building and became ours when the previous tenant left and had no way to store it elsewhere. Its wooden structure had rotted in spots and the orange paint was peeling. So each time it was turned ever so slightly it released a shower of debris. What a mess. But it just looked too darned groovy to give up … until now.

The sign turned. Luckily, Mary had thought to wrap a trash-bag condom over the end so we wouldn’t mess up the hallway. So Shop Boy was spared a wood shampoo. And he saw the final bit of inspiration he needed in the words now visible at the very bottom of the strongman sign: Sick Duck.

Whoosh!

The momentum nearly carried us through the door to the Ladies Room, but Shop Boy caught his balance and stopped it just short. No Girlie Man here.

One more dead lift and the sign was propped against a wall in an unused room, awaiting the once-over from local artist David Hess, who has a huge barn where he creates his sculptures. He liked it enough to take it out of our lives. Mary said it went out of the building easy as pie.

The implication being that Shop Boy’s a Cream Puff.

Hell on wheels.

***

Letterpress List No. 73

Whew! Been a while without music, eh? Hope you missed it. How about an hour’s worth of music to flash around a track with the Speed Regime — or just let them do it and have a cheeseburger and a beer in the stands — by? FYI, the next bout for the Charm City Roller Girls is March 14 here in Baltimore. Doubleheader. Du Burns Arena. Check it out live. Most of these tunes should be available in the usual places. Goofy or great videos are from YouTube.

Venus – Bananarama (She’s got it. The rocket builders? Not so much.)
Helen Wheels — Wings (Goofy but fun.)
Rollin’ – Limp Bizkit (Cream puffs too, it turns out.)
She’s Lost Control– Joy Division (Go see a bout. You’ll know why this is included.)
Lace and Whiskey — Alice Cooper (And Chickens?)
Hang Fire — Rolling Stones (From Tattoo You.)
Take Your Mama Out – Scissor Sisters (If she’s in the way on the track.)
Will It Go Round in Circles — Billy Preston (The bad guys win every once in a while.)
Rebel Girl — Bikini Kill (Don’t start none …)
Fight Song — Marilyn Manson (… won’t be none.)
Kick It Out — Heart (Let’s roll.)
A World Without Tears — Lucinda Williams (Gotta be tough.)
Hit Me With Your Best Shot — Pat Benatar (OK, that was too easy. A great song that’s become a bit of a cliche.)
Making Movies — Dire Straits (The roller girl song — love it.)
A Rhapsody in Black and Blue — Louis Armstrong (Um …)

Not My Birthday

Maybe it’s just me, but it has always been disconcerting, and sometimes even creepy, to hear the voice on the other end of the phone line close with: “Have a blessed day!” The insinuation seems to be: “Remember, God’s watching, sinner.”

It’s a big Baltimore thing, and I do tend to pick up local idiosyncracies by osmosis or something. Like pronouncing Saturday like “Sayerdee.” That’s a long way from “Sataday,” the way I pronounced it back home in Rhode Island. One of these days Shop Boy will live somewhere where the locals pronounce it right, and I’ll be cured.

Meanwhile, slap me if I ever end a conversation with “Have a blessed day!”

Shop Boy tells Mary often how blessed he already is. See, not everyone in this life gets to know exactly how and where he or she will die.

Me? Heart attack, on a platform, running for a train.

Mary always gets mad when I say it, seeing this as some sort of criticism of her desire to never get to the station too soon and have to wait around. Criticism? Where’d she get that silly idea?

On February 26 a few years back, Shop Boy and Mary were running frantically for the Amtrak train when Shop Boy stopped, dropped the bags, stomped his foot and said sharply to Mary:

This is NOT my birthday!

She nearly died of laughter right there.

“Poor little bear,” she said, softly touching my enflamed cheek. “We can give you a credit. Now, come on!”

Credit means that for every hour of my birthday ruined, one hour of birthday princehood is added on.

Well, start the meter.

We’ve got Mary crazy printing for her beloved Cousin Mollie’s Greek party this weekend in Florida (we’re carrying the printed materials with us), unprinted menus due at Woodberry Kitchen and Shop Boy staring down a murderous, multiple-magazine deadline, then the rush to do laundry and pack for Florida, where we’ll land, grab a cab to Mollie’s and start prepping food for the party.

Shop Boy will take his next breath sometime shortly after that party ends.

Happy Birthday to me!

Whatever.

True story: Each year around this time, Shop Boy would make the trudge home to Cranston, R.I., to let Mom make me a birthday cake.

She wouldn’t hear of me not coming, and got quite guilt-trippy if I didn’t make arrangements.

Shop Boy was the first of her seven kids to permanently abandon the old Rhode Island home. Every time I came home, Mom would make a huge deal out of it. I don’t know if my siblings resented the attention I got for messing up their weekend or not. Wait, of course they did. Even I resented me. Who did Shop Boy think he was?

Grow up!

That’s what Mom would say — to me and to them — as she pulled my favorite cake from the oven: an apple cake with cinnamon icing.

(Shop Boy does not like apple cake with cinnamon icing, but my mom believed with all her heart that it was my favorite. She wasn’t going to hear otherwise from me. I’d eat three slices and thank her for remembering.)

Devil’s food cake, white icing with coconut: This is what Mom made me every year I lived at home. You move away, memories change.

So, yeah, it’s my birthday. February — yuck. Sneak blizzards. Ice storms. 70 one day, 15 the next.  Rats in the alley.  Early tree buds frozen. The unique male pressures of Valentine’s Day … and March is the month that Mom died.

Shop Boy has also recently had ugly, hurtful arguments over politics with Dad and my big sister Margaret. If you’ve read this far, you know that shutting up is hard for Shop Boy sometimes.

I’m going to make up with both of them today. Life’s too short.

And Shop Boy has a train to catch.

Flipping Our Lids

It’s kind of tough to play the pay-as-you-go game in letterpress printing.

Take ink, for example.

More precisely, take 2.2 pounds of ink, or a kilogram, if you prefer or have no choice but to use the metric system. (How un-American!) Now, say you’ve got a job coming in — thousand of units — that calls for a very specific, true metallic color, like copper. Nice call. You order up a tub of copper ink, about $100 on the street, then figure out that it would actually be a bit cheaper to buy a couple of tubs at the two-kilogram discount.

Then the job is canceled. Maybe the client has checked with the board of directors, which insists on a different color. Or, as has been known to happen even at Typecast Press, you did the math wrong. You actually needed only a bit but have purchased a bunch.

Shop Boy’s guessing the first scenario (a frequent occurrence in the business) or the second (ask Mary about that one, then stand back) is what left Vince Pullara III with several storage closets full of untouched tubs of ink. He’s a pretty bright guy with one heck of a printing pedigree.

But there it was, all that ink needing a new home as Vince tries to streamline his printshop a bit. By the dust on a few of the cans — and the dates (1989!) — much of the ink may very well have been ordered by Vince’s dad when he ran Baltimore’s Inter-City Press.

Wow! Stacks and stacks were already waiting for us, then Vince pointed to the supply cabinets, chatting and making suggestions on using the stuff — while never stopping a long run of envelopes he’d been in the middle of.

Shop Boy only hopes that we’re this giving of our free time and free … stuff when we decide to upgrade. Vince has been so great to Typecast Press that we were feeling a bit gluttonous packing up all that ink.

Vince’s response to our tentativeness?

He cleared a huge rolling cart and handed us more boxes. And off we went, Mary’s car sagging from the weight. Yeah, yeah, it’d have been smart to bring the truck, but we had no idea what kind of volume Vince was looking to move. You know? Don’t show up with an empty rail-freight car, a forklift and a crane when a printshop owner says he might have a little  something you can use. That’s rude.

Anyway, we hauled all the ink back to the Fox Industries building, lugged it up the stairs and piled it into the new, unfinished space. Mary, who just loves cute forms, ran to the computer to design an ink inventory list, replete with Typecast Press logo, rounded borders and, ahem, an aquamarine banner.

Then we grabbed a couple of rags, dusted the cans, separated the tubs by ink color, logged in the Pantone numbers and brand names (for quick visual ID) and finally made two large piles. One for us, one for the printshop at the Maryland Institute College of Art, including a tub of copper.

See? We can be generous.

We’re learning from a pro.

Company’s Coming

In a bunch of years in the newspaper business, Shop Boy got an awful lot of phone calls from an awful lot of drunken people at loud bars wanting me — or the sports department if I was lucky — to help settle a wager. Nowadays, a simple Google search removes the middle man.

For instance, Shop Boy was himself at a bar the other day, the Mount Royal Tavern, with Mary and friends Jen and Martin, when the bartender approached.

Another? Sure … oh, that’s not what he came for.

“You know that narrator from The Big Lebowski, what’s his name? Used to do westerns. Guys down there are having an argument.”

I’d dealt with the film critics at the Baltimore Sun for a number of years, and I loved that crazy movie, but dang it if the name wasn’t gone from my pretty little head. (OK, my head is huge, but apparently I.T. was doing a reboot up there or something.)

We looked blankly at each other … then it came to me. Not the name, but the fact that I had an iPhone in my pocket. Google! Fifteen seconds later, we had our man. Bet settled: Sam Elliott, dude, who else?

No wonder Americans’ attention spans are shot.

Shop Boy’s as much as anybody’s.

See, 16 college art students are getting a pretty big dose of Mary these days. She’s teaching a class in letterpress at MICA. Six hours a session, one day a week, for 15 weeks. Sorry, folks, it’s sold out.

And I think she and Kyle Van Horn, who’s teaching with her, have gotten the young people’s attention. (If not, that pop quiz — shhhhhh! — should do the trick.)

Now, you should know that Mary was once told by a career counselor that she should stay away from teaching — unless it was to work with enormously gifted students. She can have patience issues with folks who are stubborn learners who need to be hit over the head with a concept to get it — like, oh … Shop Boy for instance (what was Mary thinking?).

Well, she’s working the kids — gifted art students as a rule — pretty hard.

Hence there was Shop Boy, arriving in Baltimore from D.C. one cold Wednesday night and walking from the train station and past the school print building only to see the lights burning and Mary’s class still going strong … after 10 p.m.

Standing in the snow like an idiot — shhhhhh! — I sort of felt like throwing stones at the second-story window, like, “Hey, what about Shop Boy?”

Instead, I wandered home. All of about 100 yards from the MICA printshop building. Yeah, Shop Boy’s commuting two hours each way and Mary’s commuting 100 yards and I’m home first. Hmph!

You want impatient?

So the students at MICA tend to be pretty quick studies at the Vandercook deal. The school has a fleet of them, and Kyle keeps the presses shipshape. (He’s also a whiz at color registration on the stinking things — but he’s kind of our competitor, so again … shhhhhh!)

What MICA doesn’t really have is the platen presses — the Pilots, Kelseys, Heidelbergs and C&Ps — that Typecast Press has tended to accumulate.

Nyah!

It’s not that the Vandercooks can’t do all the same stuff. But to concentrate on only Vandercooks is to miss out on a huge chunk of the rich history of letterpress printing. And that is what Mary is all about.

She decided a tour — a walk through history, as it were — was in order, so Wednesday, the students, Kyle and Mary saddled up and rode over to the Typecast Press studios. Shop Boy showed up toward the end at Mary’s request, just so, you know, the students wouldn’t be frightened when a weird stranger showed up to help with … the actual class Mary will be teaching at our shop in a couple of weeks.

Excuse me? A couple of weeks?

I might have failed to mention that the depth we have in platen presses involves mostly the layers of dirt and grime. Shop Boy hasn’t stopped sweating since Mary mentioned the MICA coaster-printing session.

Yes, I know. Shop Boy should have gotten ahead of the game, cleaning and tuning up the presses as soon as they found their way to the shop. I mean, you know something’s going to come up and you’ll have to scramble to get presses and rollers prepped. Why not do it now, do it right, and then relax when your partner nonchalantly informs you that 16 people — platen rookies — will need all machines on deck for a coaster project?

A stubborn learner.

Or maybe you missed that part.

A Quick Pick-Me-Up

For a kid who was raised as a skier, Mary certainly doesn’t fall very well.

I can remember the time in Brooklyn that I sent Mary off for the subway to Manhattan only to have a weeping, bleeding mess show up at the door a moment later. In her haste, she had fallen in the street and skinned everything but her nose.

True story: The day before our wedding, Mary and Shop Boy were walking along a sidewalk in Colorado Springs, Colo., excitedly discussing our honeymoon plans.

Whoosh!

Mary was airborne, arse over elbows, as a Bostoner might say, the pavement that had tripped her just itching to tear her up once again.

Then something truly amazing happened: In a split second, Shop Boy caught her … an inch before her pretty face — and everything else — hit the concrete. To this day, I do not understand how I reacted that quickly. But I saved our wedding. Unbelievable.

“You’re OK,” I whispered in her ear. “I’ve got you.”

She went limp, I lifted her to her feet, unharmed, and we stood there hugging, both of us dumbfounded by what had just happened.

Like she’s not going to marry Shop Boy after that?

The odd thing is that Shop Boy has had a few moments like that in his lifetime. Bill Lee, a goofball pitcher for Shop Boy’s boyhood team, the Red Sox, was asked once why he had been such a great fielder of baseballs smashed back at him. He said the drugs helped him see the play before it happened, or something like that.

Shop Boy doesn’t know about drugs and seeing the future. Booze just makes me forget the future, the present and the past. I think maybe it’s just that, having made just about every dumb mistake a person could make, I tend to see bonehead moves coming.

Mary and Shop Boy were at old Candestick Park in San Francisco, watching Shop Boy’s adulthood team, the Rockies, play the Giants, when I spotted a couple of young boys running down a row of empty seats — jumping from one to the next. Keep your feet on the armrests and it’s loads of boyish fun, believe me. Slip, and one leg goes behind the seat bottom as the other lands on the seat, opening the chair and essentially putting all of your weight on that slab of wood that is about to snap your leg in two. Panic sets in, and the more you struggle, the more a fracture becomes likely. The pain is indescribable.

That was me, Fenway Park, 1968.

Shop Boy should add at this point that one of the Candlestick thrill seekers had a little brother. And he was headed down the row a little behind them. As the little boy, about 5, went past, Shop Boy pulled a Bill Lee.

“Oh, no,” I said to Mary.

Half a row later, it happened. His big brother long gone, the little boy slipped.

Shop Boy ran.

He was near shock by the time I got there, panicked, unable to make a sound but about to snap his little leg when Shop Boy, a big bear in a brown fleece pullover, grabbed him. “You’re OK,” I whispered. “Just relax and I’ll get you out.”

He went totally limp, and I reached down with my free arm, pulled the seat bottom vertical to release the pressure on his leg and lifted him out of there.

Mary swears it was one of the most funny-scary and heartwarming scenes she’s ever seen — certainly at a baseball game.

Not the boy’s dad. I carried the sobbing little fellow, who was still unable to speak, up the stadium stairs to his father, who gave me a “What are you, a pervert?” look and grabbed his son away from me.

A couple of innings later, when the tyke could finally tell his father what had happened, the guy came over, thanked me and shook my hand. Shop Boy would bet that he’d been there before, too. Either that, or it had flashed through his mind that his wife would have killed him for getting her little boy’s leg broken at a stupid baseball game.

Anyway, we’ve been without a light on the loading dock for some time. Those motion-sensing lights are apparently just like the miracle, water-saving, motion-sensing, auto-flush toilets. After a while, you’re doing jumping jacks trying to get their attention.

There’s a set of cement stairs, 18 or so, that lead down next to the steel dock and its steel beam supports to the parking lot.

Shop Boy couldn’t catch Mary’s dad at Christmas when he missed the last step in the dark and tried to rearrange his already sore knees. (For the record, I would not have whispered into his ear. But I probably should not have yelled, “Wayne, you big dummy, what are you trying to prove?”

But it seemed appropriate. Besides, he was more angry with himself than hurt. (And he’d have said the same thing to me.)

Well, my Bill Lee-dar should have told me that Mary wouldn’t be far behind, even though she’d promised not to leave work after dark. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as my mom liked to say. Good, active brains on these people … but, lord, stop thinking and watch where you’re putting your feet!

Mary called me at work from the parking lot, shaken, to tell me she’d fallen, tearing up both knees — and her favorite jeans!

Jeez, this kid.

The building manager has since installed a light with a timer that goes on reliably at dusk.

Still, I guess I’m just going to have to hang around Mary every minute.

Neither of us would mind that, Shop Boy’s thinking.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Mary!

I’m glad I caught you.

Letterpress List No. 72: Clips Don’t Lie

So, you want to know about  Immortal Cupboard, the film Shop Boy was going on about last time. Now, now, of course you do.

Mary and Shop Boy went to a screening over the weekend. It’s a very arty film about a poet’s life and work. Lots of water, birds, leaves and flowers, sun, fog, snow and ice, rain and flood, the pretty pictures interspersed with the poet’s words. Lovely and well done.

And Shop Boy’s got to tell you, our presses looked like a million bucks on the big screen.

Yup, there they were, the Vandercook No. 3 and C&P 8×12, smoothly — and, OK, slowly (for effect) — producing bits of Lorine Niedecker’s poetry as it would have been done way back then.

And there were Shop Boy’s hands, making magic happen, an angry red indent on my left ring finger showing that, like any wise printer, I’d removed my wedding band while operating the presses. Hard to believe Shop Boy used to worry about the ring falling off in the shower. Now it takes a crowbar to get it off some days. Mary says she likes it that way, so …

It was just a minute or so, a montage of Shop Boy printing, tying up lead type and such. Great editing job by Cathy Cook, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County filmmaker who’d stumbled upon Typecast Press by accident while walking her dog or something and immediately recognized Shop Boy as a talent. All right, the first part’s true. Anyway, the montage was pretty exciting, and we get a big credit at the end of the film. We were totally geeked, giggling and poking each other.

As the lights came up, Mary said that Shop Boy had done great and that the presses looked awesome. Just one little criticism:

Mary: “Yikes! Could you have cut your fingernails?”

Oh, they weren’t dirty or anything. Shop Boy’s pretty good about keeping ink where it should be — in the jar, on the ink plate, on the press, on the paper, period (Mary? Not so much) — and fairly religious about hand washing. I might leave behind a sickly sweet lavender smell when I shake your hand, but chances are I’m not passing much else to you. Probably should introduce a lot of guys I know to the concept. Ahem.

But Mary was right. Shop Boy’s fingernails were absolutely chewing the scenery. I generally don’t even think about the silly things until I tear half of one off at the printshop or cut myself … flossing. But when somebody asks you to be a hand model for a movie, you might want to prep the digits, right? Not smart.

Oh, well. Next time somebody making a film about a little-known, dead Wisconsin poet whose work was printed on old letterpress machines  stumbles upon Typecast Press and decides she needs a pair of male hands to demonstrate printing techniques, I’ll be ready.

***

Letterpress List No. 72

You might have noticed that the posts here have come in fits and starts. Shop Boy’s new job requires about all the brain power I’ve got — what little is left, I give to you, dear readers. You’ll probably be able to tell when things have stabilized. Or maybe not — Shop Boy’s writing can be a bit addled normally, you say? Hmm.

Bah. How about an hour’s worth of music — OK, a half-hour at first — to appreciate birds, water, snow, ice, poetry or the first hints of spring that are popping up by? Most of the tunes should be available in the usual places. Goofy or great video links are to YouTube.

Montage — from Team America: World Police (Heartbroken I can’t find a good link yet … love this stupid song.)
The Hand That Feeds — Nine Inch Nails (Hee-hee.)
Hips Don’t Lie — Shakira (OK, it’s a reach, but anything to get a little Shakira in here.)
Lost in Hollywood — System of a Down (Ditto, anything to get a little System in here. This is a slow one — Mary would tell you that makes it even more insufferable.)
Shake Hands With Beef — Primus (And don’t even get her started on this stuff.)
It’s Raining Men – the Weather Girls (Now try to stop Mary from dancing. Sigh.)
Mr. Me Too — Clipse (Good to meet ya.)
Have You Ever Seen The Rain? — Creedence Clearwater Revival (Nice.)
Floetic — Floetry (Why not?)
She Blinded Me With Science — Thomas Dolby (Poetry in motion.)
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger — Daft Punk (Think Steve Austin, maybe.)
Riders on the Storm — the Doors (Daft poetry? Guy was nuts.)

Thrills and Chills

In other news tonight, a sit-in of sorts in Patterson Park. Rhonda Aramecious is on the scene … Rhonda?

Thanks, Jake. We’re here outside the Patterson, a famed old Baltimore moviehouse, where a couple of people have been camped out, for several days, awaiting the local premiere of Immortal Cupboard, a film about the life and work of poet Lorine Niedecker. Sounds interesting. But what has possibly drawn them out in this bitter cold so long before the movie starts?

Rhonda: Hi, folks. You mind if we ask what you’re doing here, in sleeping bags?

Sleeping Bag No. 1: Well, we don’t want to miss the movie. Cathy Cook of UMBC is the director. She’s really cool.

Sleeping Bag No. 2: Yeah, and it’s got one of our all-time favorite actors — Shop Boy. Or … his hands are in it, anyway.

Sleeping Bag No. 1: And it has a couple of flashes of letterpress printer-type stuff in there. They did the poetry book that way back then. We’re both letterpress printers.

Rhonda: But it’s not showing until Sunday at 3 p.m. It’s Wednesday evening.

Sleeping Bag No. 1: The poet was from Wisconsin. It’s cold up there, and they don’t wear shirts at football games. This is kinda toasty compared to that.

Sleeping Bag No. 2: And like we said, Rhonda, we’re printers — been exposed to a lot of lead in our time.

Rhonda: That explains it then, Jake. Fairly foggy fans figuring freezing’s fine. Back to you in the warm NewsCenter studio.

Jake: Ha-ha. Thanks, Rhonda. I guess it takes all kinds. And for you folks watching at home, here’s how you can see Cathy Cook’s film on Sunday without the frostbite. Meanwhile, this is Jake Nutella saying goodnight … and pass the popcorn.

Keep Your Shirt On

In the wrong hands, the simplest and most useful of tools can create very complex issues in the printshop.

Take the level. Fascinating bit of ingenuity. Comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. Shop Boy’s is a gift from Mary’s dad, Wayne Mashburn, who had purchased it for one of the countless work projects we drag him to Baltimore to help with. He then left it behind for Shop Boy — because what kind of idiot doesn’t have a level in his printshop?

Ahem.

Use the level (ours is red, about a foot long, with three Martian-green bubble gauges) to make certain that your printing press is perfectly square with the floor, lest unwanted wear and tear and frustrating make-ready efforts ensue.

Level your drafting table or imposing stone and compose type or place dingbats and plates with the confidence that, when locked into the printing press, they’ll stay flat and true, because that’s how you built them.

Now, put that level in the hands of Miss February of the Fantasy Builders wall calendar (Go ahead … take a peek. I’ll wait here.) and it becomes fairly obvious right quickly that … well, um … it’s not a tool best used for leveling your shirt.

You know our joke here at Typecast Press: that every letterpress printshop must have a girlie calendar for authenticity’s sake.

So, Shop Boy turned the page from January to February — and turned three shades of red. On the job site, Miss February’s work shirt had somehow both plunged at the cleavage and rolled halfway up her … oh, you get the idea. Shop Boy didn’t know quite what to say.

Mary? First, she addressed the authenticity problem by leveling with Shop Boy. (”Not real.”)

Then, she prepared to address that little make-ready problem that this young woman’s level misuse had wrought. (”You want stars or hearts?”)

We did a job a while back that included die-cutting orange stars and blue hearts from a foldover card. The little punch-outs were so neat that we gathered them up and keep them around for just such emergencies as tend to arrive with each new month of the Fantasy Builders calendar. A little glue stick and a star strategically placed here and — oh my! — there for sure.

Give it a day or two, and Miss February’s going to look like Miss Fourth of July, what with the fistful of stars at Mary’s disposal.

She’ll set the matter straight. And our little printshop joke might just be in its final months … or days.

Letterpress List No. 71: Downhill from Here

Can’t say I wasn’t warned …

About the dark side of owning a pickup truck.

And women.

I mean, it feels good to be helpful. And Shop Boy likes being nice.

True story: Shop Boy was walking across a blocked intersection in Washington, D.C., the other day. You know how it is. Drivers! Can’t stand the thought of being inconvenienced for a single minute. So they inconvenience all the rest of us for four or five minutes by “blocking the box” — driving through the yellow/red light even though there’s no room for their cars on the other side. They get stuck, blocking the traffic that now has the green light and, yes, making the crosswalk unusable. And they look at pedestrians like we’re the jerks for shimmying between the bumpers to get to the other side.

Anyway, Shop Boy began across the street, approaching a suitable gap. A woman on the other side was headed to the same bumper gap. Though Shop Boy would have reached it first, I noticed her and did the gentlemanly thing, stopping to let her pass through first. A tiny gesture, really.

That’s when I heard it:

“Well done, honey. You were raised right.”

A woman behind me had been watching and, having seen the usual rude dance once too often, I guess, was moved to speak up.

Shop Boy was moved to blush uncontrollably. And to be so courteous to everyone I crossed paths with afterward that soon I was blocking traffic.

My mom did raise me right that way. I like being gentle and polite. It’s nice. Sue me.

So who is Shop Boy to say no to a damsel in distress who needs a piece of furniture moved in a jiffy because the owner’s leaving town and the buyers (the aforementioned damsel, Edit Barry, and her spouse, John) are headed on a ski trip? Would Shop Boy and the truck be available?

I mean, when a woman asks you that nicely — OK, Mary would tell you Edit is also quite, um, attractive … Shop Boy had not noticed — of course I said yes.

I did not say this: “How heavy is it?”

Oh, my. It was an armoire. Huge, and built of oak or cherry or … whatever. Even in two large pieces, the sucker weighed a ton. And there were no good places to really grip the thing. Just hang on, brace it with your face — honest — and pray.

Another question I’ll ask next time: “Where is it?”

What’s that you say? A skinny, rickety Baltimore rowhouse with a low ceiling, narrow doorways and metal back steps made slick with rain? (Did I mention the weather?) All that was missing was a vicious dog.

It took two trips. Shop Boy and Edit — she’s an editor … isn’t that cool? — rode up front; John — a writer — sat in the bed of the truck. (Every time I started feeling bad for myself, I shot a look in the rearview mirror. Poor guy.)

At one point, as I counted the steps out loud — couldn’t see them with my face pressed against the wood — to keep track of my footing as we went up Edit and John’s porch, I lost my grip a little bit, the armoire section tilted and I panicked, throwing my bare arm between the furniture and the door frame. It did the trick … the armoire was unscratched.

Shop Boy’s arm? Oh, it’ll grow back. The most important thing is I did not drop it.

Another true story: Our friends Tim Smith and Robert Leininger are huge, huge, huge film fans. Well, the mammoth TV in their home theater was on the fritz. They’d decided to haul this old one to the repair shop, get it fixed, maybe sell it or give it to someone needing, like, a 68-inch screen or something. Meanwhile, they’d buy a bigger one.

Shop Boy did not hesitate to say yes when the idea of hauling the TV out of their house and onto my truck came up. But I nearly had a heart attack when the entertainment system was pulled away to expose the TV’s full size. You know: If it’s 68 inches across, it’s at least that deep as well. And so heavy that the parts of the plastic base that you could grab became like razor blades in your hands.

It was quickly clear: Robert and Shop Boy could not carry this bad boy. So I started thinking … the room had rugs. The hallway and stairs were carpeted. Maybe we could turn the TV on its head and simply slide it down the stairs to the foyer. Shop Boy even volunteered to stand beneath this monster and, um, break its fall.

Look, Shop Boy once moved an ancient refrigerator down four flights of stairs — solo — using this method. If it’ll slide, why lift it.

So, in two seconds flat, the TV was in the foyer. Now all we had to do was, gulp, somehow lug it out the door, down the path and then a long set of cement stairs, across the sidewalk and to my truck.

No way.

Ah, but Shop Boy, flush with the success of the slide method, had a brainstorm. If the TV slid down the carpet, surely it would slide down the lush green hillside beside the steps.

Brilliant!

Except that I lost my footing or something and the load got loose, tearing a toupee out of Robert’s beautiful lawn and, before we could corral it — crack — brushing the cement stairs, destroying the TV screen. No good … to nobody … no more.

Suddenly Shop Boy felt as though he’d swallowed a thousand sharp objects. Which is why, ever since, I say a silent prayer and then lift, don’t think. And I knock on wood, in the case of the armoire with my facial features.

And, as we hefted the top half one more time onto the base and slid the armoire into position in Edit and John’s home, all the grunting, sweat, fustration, fear, exhaustion and pain just … disappeared.

Almost.

About two weeks later, Shop Boy was crossing Union Station on the way home from work when I saw a woman wave. It was Edit. She and John were back from vacation and doing … something in D.C. I really didn’t ask what, because John spoke first:

“We’re not sure we like the armoire where it is. Will you be around …?”

“Nice to see you. Keep in touch,” Shop Boy said, walking quickly past Edit and John.

I’m polite, not crazy.

***

Letterpress List No. 71

For the record, Edit and John were incredibly appreciative. And it is an amazing piece of furniture … that is lovely right where it is. On that note, how about an hour’s worth of music to sit idly, drink a beer, or just be nice by. Most of these tunes should be available in the usual places. Weird or wacky videos are from YouTube.

Stop! — Jane’s Addiction (No … Go!)
Nice Guys Finish Last – Green Day (We’ll see about that.)
Goody Two Shoes — Adam Ant (Nyah.)
Across the Avenue – Freedy Johnston (Pedestrian on the wrong end of a bumper.)
I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman — White Stripes (But I’m trying …)
Block Rockin’ Beats — Chemical Brothers (Dancing across the intersection.)
Roll Away the Stone – Mott the Hoople (Two-ton TVs: a Sisyphean task.)
City Women –the Grass Roots (The lawn grew back. My self-confidence will never be the same.)
On the Dark Side — John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band (Springsteen ripoffs who weren’t half bad.)
The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) — Missy Elliott (Why today?)
Fall on Me – R.E.M. (Timber!)
Slip Slidin’ Away – Paul Simon (So near, so far.)
Long Line of Cars – Cake (All because of you.)
Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks — Panic! At the Disco (Oh, please … after you.)
Landslide – Smashing Pumpkins (Anybody need a massive, slightly used TV … as is?)
Drive Away — Halfcocked (Great even while going nowhere.)
Crosstown Traffic — Jimi Hendrix (Inconvenient.)
My Name is Mud — Primus (”6-foot-2 and rude as hell” — stepping on the wrong guy’s shiny shoes.)

Letterpress List No. 70: A New Day

So you didn’t really expect Shop Boy to file a blog yesterday, what with all that other speechifying going on, did you?

I mean, even Shop Boy knows when to sit there and shut up. (Here’s where we pause to let everyone get the Dick Cheney jokes out of our system. Better? Good. Let’s proceed.)

Nice day. Great speech by President Barack Obama. Would have been cool if he’d included a bit about letterpress printers as the future of our nation, but that’s OK. Not everyone was disappointed. Mary? Had to pry her off the ceiling afterward. Really. And why not? It was her day.

Shop Boy should mention here that Mary always worries about me getting too loose with the lips. We could maybe turn off a less liberal client. To which Shop Boy says: Look, if you don’t see Mary as one of the smartest, most open-minded, funny, silly, talented socialists in the Western Hemisphere, or can’t tell that this is so simply by talking to her, so be it. Actually, Mary’s just a military brat who’s seen a bit too much of what the world can do to the voiceless. Still, she believes in and — mostly — loves this nation as too few do.

Shop Boy? I’d vote for her. What can I say?

Wait a minute … wasn’t this all about me? Yes, thank you very much, fellow Americans. For you see, Shop Boy has discovered that his words do not merely befuddle the average brain. Nope. They move people.

Check it out. So the Mobtown Shank — a blog/website that IS Baltimore, by our own Benn Ray — recognized Shop Boy’s singular genius, letting me make the call on the top 10 blogs of 2008. (So then I got paved over and pushed to the bottom about four hours later for top movies or fashion or books or some culturally significant thing or another. Whatever.)

Top that, Mr. President.

Oh, OK. Well done.

Still … it’s pretty cool. Have a look. And God Bless America:

Shop Boy’s Top 10 Blogs of 2008

1. NEATORAMA — http://www.neatorama.com — A non-walking compendium of the crazy news and images of the day from “out there.”

2. CUBEECRAFT — http://www.cubeecraft.com — Offers free, funny, fold-it-yourself paper figurines. Pick one, print one, own one. Hellboy! Stay Puft marshmallow man! Michael Myers! Resistance is futile.

3. MODERN DRUNKARD — http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com — A boozy assortment of tips for the tipsy, frothy frivolity and warped features like a fictional drink-off of history’s greatest boozers. Oooh. Smell the gutter!

4. LASERPANTS — http://laserpantsftw.blogspot.com/laserpants -- Profane commentary on the news of the day (some days, anyway), with photo flotsam and even a little shopping advice. By our very own Geoff Brown.

5. BLOG OF HILARITY — http://blogofhilarity.com – Bitter commentary on wacky news, a staggeringly negative take on celebrities and even the occasional ogling of underage actresses. To paraphrase Ms. Bankhead, blogging’s only dirty if you’re doing it right.

6. MIXWIT — http://www.mixwit.com – Make your own online mix tapes by browsing an assortment of music sites, decorate the cassette covers and post them on a blog or share them with friends. Oh, and it’s free. EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s also now defunct.

7. MR. PEACOCK — http://mrpeacockstyle.blogspot.com — An apparently tireless dandy’s daily blend of fashion, home decor, food and stories of his beloved mom. It’s a site even a supporter of Proposition 8 could love.

8. OH, IT’S THOSE GIRLS – http://thosetwinsgirls.blogspot.com – Who knew Minnesota Twins fans could be so funny? Apparently, what doesn’t kill you makes you funnier. Orioles fans should take a lesson from these two sarcastic, besmitten baseball nuts.

9. BUGS & CRANKS – http://www.bugsandcranks.com — News, notes, witticism and whining about the twists and turns of the baseball season, now 12 months long. Includes Orioles coverage by local wiseacre Patrick Smith (that’s Smitty to you, pal).

10. IMPRESSIONS OF A SHOP BOY – http://gwbgt.wordpress.com — A storytelling blog (ahem, mine) that’s a little bit about letterpress printing and a lot about laughing at the world … and yourself.
***

Letterpress List No. 70

When it comes to music knowledge — especially local — Shop Boy ain’t no Benn Ray (who I’ve met but do not know, by the way). Still, we shall try to find an hour or so of non-local listening worth your time. Shop Boy considers it his duty to America. Most of these tunes should be available in the usual places. Goofy or great video links are to YouTube.

My President – Young Jeezy featuring Nas (Shop Boy wasn’t sure whether to scream or salute when I saw this — it’s something else.)
A Change Would Do You Good – Sheryl Crow (Funny how Miss Crow was once stuck as a backup singer to Michael Jackson when she has so much stinking talent of her own. Maybe somebody found out she voted Democrat.)
If I Ruled the World — Nas featuring Lauryn Hill (A Mary favorite. It really does rule.)
The House That Jack Built — Metallica (Camelot II? Oh why not? Let’s dream a little. Besides, Mary says Mrs. Obama’s the new Jackie O.)
Dream a Little Dream of Me –Louis Armstrong (Had to slip Mary a sedative, of course.)
Come Together — the Beatles (Let’s, shall we?)
Elected — Alice Cooper (From a dude who, in the interest of bipartisanship, long ago traded in his cynicism and makeup for custom-designed pitching wedge.)
Eat the Rich — Aerosmith (Shop Boy, as a representative of Typecast Press, feels perfectly safe in listing this song.)
America the Beautiful — Ray Charles (Hold back the tears today. I dare you.)
Ah Mary — Grace Potter and the Nocturnals (Shhh. Listen closely.)
Pride in the Name of Love – U2 (Funny, but Shop Boy’s never been a big fan of Bono and Co. Jingly, jangly guitars, song after song, just get a bit tired after a while, you know? But the boys’ hearts are in the right place, I guess.)
Sweet Home Chicago – Big Time Sarah and the BTS Express (2:30 a.m. on a Wednesday. She killed. Shop Boy’s first after-hours blues club. Afterward, felt sort of like this video looks and have not been the same since.)
Accentuate the Positive — Willie Nelson (Go for it.)
People Get Ready – the Blind Boys of Alabama (Yeah, there are many versions. But this one will get you.)
Today – Smashing Pumpkins (A bit cold for ice cream, but cool.)
Walking in Memphis – Marc Cohn (Nice …)

Letterpress List No. 69: Sensory Overload

Besides humor, Shop Boy pondered one day (because that’s what he does), which is the most important sense to a printer?

Sight, hearing, taste, touch or smell?

What kicked off this navel-gazing was Mary suggesting that the ink on the big C&P was getting a bit thin. She was across the room, with her back turned to the press, busy with another project.

But she was absolutely right. Shop Boy took another look through the stack and the five menus on top were a lighter shade than the rest.  I stopped and added ink.

Shop Boy: “How did you know that?”

Mary: “The sound.”

Shop Boy: “Huh?”

Mary: “Listen. Hear that particular ’squish-squish?’ If you don’t, add ink.”

Well, I’ll be … and with the radio on, no less.

So OK, even those of us who, ahem, don’t listen very well can probably get by. And Mary and Shop Boy have known some very gifted deaf printers. We’ll cross that sense off first.

Taste?

I am happy to report that Mary has yet to dip her finger into the ink, touch it to her tongue and pronounce it a bit shy of cyan or magenta. That would just max out the weird meter. (We’ve been in the red zone a few times, believe me.)

Of course, as even old Charlie the Tuna might one day admit, good taste is a very helpful attribute. But rely too much on taste? Not so great an idea.

True story: Shop Boy was a skinny, skinny little boy. The size of boy that bullies just love. Well, after one particularly bruising run-in, I decided that Billy Smith would never pick on me again. Little Shop Boy would bulk up.

The training regimen was awesome: Twinkies, Yodels, Suzie Q’s, Devil Dogs, Ding Dongs and all the pasta my mom could cook up.

But it worked a little too well.

One day, Shop Boy was walking, alone, across the local athletic fields when the sound of running feet came from behind me. I turned to see a half-dozen guys, a little older, fury in their eyes, storming toward me. With nowhere to go, I froze. This was going to hurt.

And just that quickly, they stopped running, looked at each other and then started walking away.

“You’re lucky you turned around, kid,” one of them shouted to me. “From behind, you look just like Billy Smith.”

Suddenly, I didn’t want to be him-size anymore.

Nowadays, I keep a picture around of little Shop Boy taken at the Galilee, R.I., tuna tournament. Behind me is a several-hundred-pound fish hanging by its tail. In the photo, and in my mind still today, I’m much wider than that fish ever got to be.

Call it a fat dose of karmic revenge.

In a previous copy editing job, Shop Boy once made light of Elizabeth Taylor’s weight problems. The actress said she felt bad for herself, so she binged until she was huge … and nearly dead. My headline:

“Consumed By Self-Pity,
Taylor Ate Herself Thick.”

Uh-oh.

What would Old Purple Eyes have to say about me?

Now, lord knows Shop Boy’s not the first printer ever to have a little extra, um, lead in his bottom. But what better time than the new year to say, “Yikes. Dust off the running shoes.”

In a filing cabinet, Shop Boy keeps a clipping of an ad from a defunct all-sports newspaper called The National. It’s defunct, I believe, because management threw a ton of money at the “talent” — meaning big-name writers — and apparently precious little at, oh, copy editors. (Typical.) It made for ragged reading. And the scores were wrong as often as right. What a mess. Anyway, the old sneaker ad features a guy jogging along a bridge. The copy reads something like: “There’s a guy just a few steps behind me. He’s wearing the same clothes. He looks just like me, but he’s a lot heavier. And if I slow down, I’m afraid he’ll catch me.”

Nasty, right? But it always hits me where I live. As the old sitcom line goes: “My body is a temple …”

“Yeah, the Temple of Doom!”

Mary: “God, Shop Boy, you’re such an anorexic.”

Shop Boy: “Yeah, but don’t worry. I’m apparently a pretty lousy one.”

What?

Too much information? Too bad. My blog.

But all right. We’ll cross off taste and move on.

Smell is both a blessing and a curse. I mean, Mary smells nice and all that. But the main job of smell in our printshop is to remind Mary to remind Shop Boy that it’s time once again to take out the trash. Or to “Turn on That Exhaust Fan Before You Kill Us Both!”

I could live without that one, then.

Sight’s pretty key, even though we’d been able to struggle through with crummy lighting in our big space. During the daytime, at least, we could walk out onto the sunlit loading dock for a color and straightness check. Today, with three brand-new banks of energy-efficient fluorescent lights, it’s like the sun’s moved indoors.

Gonna have to get me one of those green plastic visors. And warn the roommate.

But maybe touch is THE sense. Heck, we’re letterpress printers. We want the plates to touch the paper. Often hard.

And when things go very wrong, as they have and will on occasion, there’s the reassuring touch, like a long hug from Mary after Shop Boy has had his bell rung and his psyche dented — again — by getting my big, fat head stuck behind a set of shelves that we’re moving, and releasing a stream of negativity often referencing my size and intellect.

Mary: “Oh, Shop Boy, you’re not fat and stupid … just a little slow sometimes.”

Nice touch.

***

Letterpress List No. 68

Sorry to get heavy on you, folks. Believe me. How about an hour’s worth of music to lighten up by or just pass the time on the treadmill? Most of these tunes should be available in the usual places. Goofy and great video links are to YouTube.

Eat to the Beat — Blondie (A sweet tooth.)
Touch Too Much — AC/DC (The scale don’t lie.)
Party Out of Bounds – B-52’s (Time to pump the brakes.)
What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me) — Jerry Lee Lewis (My, oh my.)
Take It Off – the Donnas (I’ll do my best, then mess up again.)
Worrisome Heart — Melody Gardot (The doctor’s going to insist on a few, um, lifestyle changes.)
Too Little Too Late — Barenaked Ladies (”One day, this embarrassment will fade behind me. And that day, I can think of things that won’t remind me.”)
Somebody’s Gotta Feel This — Kid Rock (Eww. Take Shop Boy’s word for it.)
Look Sharp — Joe Jackson (Got a date with my tailor … who’s going to be hauling extra cloth.)
Lithium — Nirvana (Breaking the mirror.)
Running Up That Hill — Kate Bush (With a chubby doppleganger in hot pursuit.)
Tough Enough — the Fabulous T-Birds (Yoo can doo eet, Shop Boy.)
Baby Got Back — Sir Mix-a-Lot (We’re not judging others … just Shop Boy.)
My Humps — Black Eyed Peas (And Alanis, too!)
Back That Thang Up — Juvenile (What’s your plan?)
My Love Don’t Cost a Thing — J.Lo featuring Fat Joe (There’s some back for you. Spent a little too much cheddar together.)
Tush — ZZ Top (Ain’t asking for much.)
Symphony of Destruction — Megadeth (For whom the dinner bell tolls.)
Hunger Strike — Temple of the Dog (Or not.)
We’re All Gonna Die Someday – Kasey Chambers (”It hurts down here cuz we’re runnin’ out of beer.” No gut, no glory.)
Get Right With God — Lucinda Williams (Amen.)

Quiet on the Set

It’s a Hallmark Card of a movie … that’s what “Seven Pounds” is.

All the mush with none of the crush.

Did it push Shop Boy’s tear-duct button? Sure. But what’s the challenge there, eh? Manipulative? You bet. Great film? No. But it was better than a sharp poke in the ribs.

Mary and Shop Boy saw the film Friday night at a theater near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Very cool, modern moviehouse, with faux leather bucket seats and arm rests that fold up for easy, um, dating or whatever. The theater is steeply banked, so nobody’s big hair can block your view of the screen. This is a big deal in Baltimore.

OK, quickie “Seven Pounds” synopsis: An IRS agent with a secret and a briefcase full of guilt (Will Smith) uses inside knowledge to find seven individuals most worthy of his help. It becomes his life mission to save them. So, there’s this one lovely young woman (Rosario Dawson) who needs a heart transplant but can’t find a match or the money to pay for it, seeing that she’s already tens of thousands in debt to the IRS. Turns out her heart makes her too weak to run a manual printing press — a C&P, looking radiant as well — and the Heidelberg Windmill’s heart’s given out as well.

Oh, our gaunt (at least until he takes his shirt off) hero also hopes to help a battered mom, a kid with cancer, a coach who needs a kidney and a blind guy, among others. Good for him.

But mostly it’s about the hot girl with the heart of gold that’s about to stop beating. Can’t blame the dude — or the filmmakers — for keying on that bit.

All right, most important, did “Seven Pounds” get letterpress right?

Mary and Shop Boy didn’t let our expectations get too high, but … Hollywood, we gotta talk.

At one point, Rosario shows Will her printshop, demonstrating the ancient C&P by pumping the foot treadle a few times and exhaustedly handing old Will the finished product of one pass of the rollers.

A four-color, airy fairy greeting card.

And Mary whacked Shop Boy in the ribs. (Dang. Should have lowered that arm rest.)

A four-color job in one pass on a press that’s clearly been idle for months? Hey, it’s Hollywood, so whatever. But it seems the director took all of the grand advice of a highly regarded letterpress consultant on dialogue and printing history, mashed it between the platen and bed of the press and said, “Here, this fits better.”

When did Hollywood get the idea that all talk is bad?

I mean, who better than Ms. Dawson’s lovely lips to give a succinct tutorial on modern letterpress printers’ reasons for turning away from the traditional “kiss” impression? Perfect. But how much time would it have taken from the story for her to simply add something like, “This is what I was working on when my ticker went bad. I don’t want to ink the press and then have to clean it. But I’ll give this card a little punch so you can feel what I’m talking about.”

Would have saved Shop Boy a few bruised ribs.