Well, Cathy and I got back from Orlando on Thursday, and this is the first chance I’ve had to write a post about it. All in all, it was a fine trip! My book talk at Barnes and Noble went well, mostly due to Danni and Michelle, the hosts of the excellent podcast Book Club After Dark, who were nice enough to interview me. They asked great, insightful questions, and I had a lot of fun. The turn-out was modest, but the people who did show up seemed really interested. They asked some great questions, too. It was especially nice to see my old friend Norm, who came to the event to cheer me on. He also snapped the picture above.
Afterward, Cathy and I had a great dinner and some fine beers at the Harp and Celt Pub downtown. The next day, we did a driving tour of Orlando, Noland Twice’s home turf, refamiliarizing ourselves with our old stomping grounds. As one might expect, parts of the city seem completely different from when we lived there, while other parts seemed exactly the same. Overall, O-Town still feels like two cities. There’s the lovely, old, Southern city, with its tree-shaded streets and gorgeous houses from the 1930s and ‘40s. Then, there’s the litter-on-a-stick, urban sprawl of Generica, with its strip-malls and fast-food shacks and liquor stores. And traffic. Lots of traffic. The really sad part about Orlando is that you have to drive through the nasty bits to get to the nice, old, quaint bits. But oh well. I still love the city.
When we were done exploring, Cathy and I drove down Mills Avenue and visited the Mennello Museum of American Art, which is perhaps the best small museum I’ve ever visited. I was especially taken with their current exhibit, entitled Pool Party, which had lots of amazing photos and paintings of American pool culture from all over the country. I was especially taken with this 1970 photo, above, by former combat photographer Slim Aarons. It’s titled Catchup by the Pool, and it seems to encapsulate the entire upper-class, White, suburban culture of the U.S., right on the cusp between two equally garish decades. And yet, it’s also kind of…sweet. I find myself wanting to go to this party.
And then, just this morning, in one of those instances of synchronicity that seem to happen fairly often to me (and which I blog about, a lot), I happened to be presented with a YouTube ad (for Speechify, of all things). Before the skip button came up, I had to leave the room, so I paused the ad so I wouldn’t miss the beginning of the actual video I was waiting for. (Just to prove I wasn’t crazy, I did a screen grab, above left.)
When I came back, I noticed that there was something weirdly familiar about the freeze-frame that I happened to pause on. If you look at the background, on the wall of whatever apartment or motel room the ad was apparently filmed in, you can see—lo-and-behold!—the same photo by Slim Aarons.
What are the odds? Like, a bazillion-to-0ne! Talk about synchronicity-on-steroids!
Anyway, it seemed like a magical end to a good trip.
Ash Clifton, Writer 