An uncertain future for the Museum?

The Museum's halls have been fairly quiet lately, I admit. Don't worry; I'm not closing the place down yet. It's simply that 1) life has been demanding a lot more of me than usual, and 2) I'm running out of Items to post! I'll keep doing the Revisited series when I can, but I need to look for more things. I'm about to go on a vacation to Florida in a few weeks, so I'll look into hitting a couple of flea markets and resale shops while I'm there. Making no promises, but they should yield some interesting results. I do have "Dracula 2000," "Godzilla 2000," "Pokemon The Movie 2000," and the series "Millennium" at the back of my head, but most of those should be for Halloween. Ooh, here's an idea: Saturday, June 7th, is the 30th Anniversary of Ghostbusters. It might be a good idea for me to review the 1999 "15th Anniversary" DVD, and its first DVD release. As far as I know, it was one of the first titles to really show off what the format could do, because it's packed to the gills with documentaries, concept art, storyboards, animated menus, and scads of other features. The standout is the "Video Commentary," during which writer Harold Ramis mentions the New Millennium. I'm not saying a word about the context, but let's just say that it casts the movie in a whole new light.

FO-O-O-ORE! It's the Masters' 2000 Journal!

Let me begin this article with an admission: I am not an avid sports fan. Certainly, I’ll check in on the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Olympics (though Sochi was the first Olympic Games that I actively avoided), and I’ll take in the awe and spectacle, but afterwards, it’s all just a game to me.

The same applies to the Masters, which is, in a word, the World Cup of golf. I bought this journal not because I follow golf, but because 1) it’s a Year 2000 item, and 2) that year, the Masters opened on my birthday (April 3^rd). It came from the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store in Midlothian, IL, where I've found one or two very good Millennium Artifacts in the past year. 

(Oh, just as a heads-up, the Masters Tournament will start next Monday.)

…So, the Masters 2000 Journal. At the time, Citibank (or Citigroup, as it was known) provided backing for the tournament, and there are one or two ads for the corporation. At the time, Citibank had just bought Travelers Insurance and undergone a huge rebranding effort. Gone were the days of the italicized, all-caps “CITIBANK” logo—gone were the days of “CITIBANK,” actually—this marked the age of “CITI” and “CITIGROUP” in a simple, all lower-case font. Also, the red Travelers umbrella appeared at the end of the word “Citigroup;” it’s now a stylized red arc that sits on top of the “t” and covers the two “i’s.”

Enough about banking and financing; what about the rest of the book? It fits the “time capsule” mandate of the Millennium Museum quite well. It starts out with a five-page section about the Masters’ humble beginnings, and after that there’s a decade-by-decade “potted history,” which recaps each year’s tournament, tells us who won that year, and offers up a few interesting highlights. For example, in 1997, a 21-year-old Tiger Woods became the youngest winner in Masters’ history.

The entry says, “…Tiger Woods re-wrote [sic] a good portion of the tournament’s record book. His 270 total and 12-stroke margin of victory were two of 20 records the 21-year-old established. His play in Amen Corner—seven under par for the four rounds—was instrumental in his becoming the youngest Masters champion” (Masters 25).

The book only goes up to 1999—I assume this is because it was released well before the 2000 edition had even begun. The winner that year was Spain’s Jose Maria Olazabal, who had previously won the British Boys’ tournament; the British Amateur Championship; the British Youths’ tournaments; and the 1994 Masters (Masters 44). Few people knew at the time that Olazabal was playing through a foot ailment that first started in 1993, and after he won in ’94, it got so bad that he needed surgery.

By 1995, he was almost completely debilitated.

In 1997, he sought the help of a Munich-based specialist, who diagnosed him with “nerve pressure in his lower back that was affecting muscles in his feet” (44), and so began his recovery. Though he was always humble, Olazabal’s illness put everything into a new perspective: “After what I have been through, golf gives me a different feeling, a determination…I’ve had the chance to have the best cars and to be able to build a house with enough room to bring my parents to live there with me. I am paying them back. That is what I enjoy, to see them happy” (45).

The next section of the book is a play-by-play dissection of the course. Each of the eighteen holes takes its name from a flower (Holly, Azalea, etc.), and each has its own difficulty grade. You may recall a passing reference to something called “Amen Corner” earlier, and now is a good time to explain what that is—in fact, the section opens with “Prayers at the Heart of Amen Corner.”

Though it’s officially named Golden Bell, the twelfth hole on the course has quite a nasty reputation. To put it simply: As Blackbeard once struck terror in the hearts of merchant sailors, Amen Corner strikes terror in the hearts of hardened professional golfers. If you beat it and still remain under par, it will be by an act of divine intervention, hence “Amen.”

Its reputation is fourfold: First, Rae’s Creek serves as a giant water trap. Second, the putting surface is “100 feet wide but just 27 feet deep at its narrowest point” (72), which is itself surrounded by three sand traps, or “bunkers.” Third, the course is designed so that the hole is on top of a small hill. Fourth, and finally, an ill wind can send the ball rolling down that incline.

Here’s a good article about this most feared part of the tournament: "Amen Corner: What's in a Name?"
 

The final section of the book is a list of the 92 competitors that year. Among them were Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer, as well as Vijay Singh from Fiji and Nick Price from Zimbabwe. I’m not going to go into detail about this part, but Masters.com has plenty of information available.

The first in the "Revisited" series.

When I first opened the Millennium Museum, the original intent was simply to catalogue and comment on items I already owned or had yet to encounter, and there was a heavier emphasis on “collecting.” It wasn’t until much later on that I started to notice and pick up on recurring themes within each item.

From there, what began as a checklist gradually turned into a jigsaw puzzle; the weekly posts served to complete the larger picture. (Is it a conventional jigsaw puzzle or one of those “Puzz-3D” things that were so popular around 2000? I’m not really sure.)

With the new focus in mind, I looked at the older stuff from almost all of Series 1 and 2. The articles lack content, depth, and plain old “good writing,” but within that you can see how the Museum itself has grown and changed over the course of a year.

The “ABC 2000 Millennium Highlights” video should be the best place for me to start. I’ll be blunt: I’m sorely, sorely disappointed with what I wrote for it—a picture and a short paragraph with a snarky, unprofessional tone. In context, though, the Museum started as a Cake Wrecks-type blog, and I thought I wouldn’t need to put too much work into it. 

 

I bought this videotape in June 2012 at our local Salvation Army Thrift Store. I’d already been there several times, and the place had at least three dozen copies on the shelves. Naturally, I looked right past them every single time…until 2012, when the different concepts and items that would eventually form the blog that you’re reading right now first came together. In fact, this was the first thing I actually bought specifically for the site. The original idea was to report on things I already owned, but I realized that sticking to that plan would mean exhausting my material.

Right at the beginning, this is a record of recent history; a snapshot of a moment in time. We’re seeing the classic ABC News lineup—Peter Jennings, Diane Sawyer, Sam Donaldson, and the others, all at the height of their power and jubilant at the prospect of a new century. Together, they take you all around the world, and you get to see how countries such as Russia, Australia, France, the United Kingdom, China, and many others rang in the New Millennium.

The program on the tape looks primitive compared to what we’re used to today, but I think that’s only because it’s actively trying to look high-tech. We’re marking our journey around the world with a spinning CGI globe, which was actually pretty well-detailed and lifelike for 1999/2000. The set looks a little bit old-fashioned in places, but again, that’s what we were used to. Nowadays, everything looks modern by virtue of looking timeless. (I’m convinced that much of the “set” we see on the major network news shows is a green-screened background with a few physical elements.)

Our first stop is the island nation of Kiribati, which competed with the neighboring Tonga to be the first one to ring in the New Millennium. The small nation successfully petitioned to have the International Date Line, at the 180^th Meridian, moved so that all of the islands within that area could celebrate at the same time.  Fourteen years after its little victory, however, Kiribati is in some major trouble: Sea levels have risen thanks to climate change. Most of its inhabitants have fled to neighboring Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji, but they no longer have a place to call home.

Peter takes us to Tonga, Fiji, Australia, and finally to New Zealand, where he has a chat about possible Y2K problems with Jimmy Walker of New Zealand's National Incident Monitoring Center. Mr. Walker cheerfully states that there are no problems outside of the national analog cell-phone network being jammed (par for the course on Christmas, Mother's Day, etc.) He also pulls out an ATM receipt dated 1/1/00, 3 seconds into the new year.

We zoom to London, where we join Charlie Gibson. Here, in our “preservation of history” segment, we get a history lesson about “Auld Lang Syne.” Way back when, Scottish poet Robert Burns traveled throughout his home country, collecting poems along the way. “Auld Lang Syne” was one of these—it's stated that he overheard an old man singing it, and he immediately transcribed it. Later on, Burns would clean up the verses and add a new melody. Its title literally translates as “for old time's sake,” and it was a traditional parting song. As the people of Scotland left in search of a new world many years after Burns died, they took the song with them. Many people heard that song, most notably a big-band conductor named Guy Lombardo. To this day, ABC's “New Year's Rockin' Eve” special plays that Guy Lombardo recording at midnight (New York time).

 

More interesting is Cokie Roberts’ coverage from Vatican City. At the time, she did coverage for ABC World News Tonight, and, as she mentions in the video, her mother, Lindy Boggs (1916-2013), was the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, a position now held by a one Ken Francis Hackett. In a special mother/daughter interview that went out, Ms. Boggs said that, for her, the best part of the past century was having “members of the family who are able to express what our country is all about; what world peace is all about; and what this celebration is all about….This celebration is absolutely marvelous.”

Meanwhile, in Bethlehem, we hear the following from field correspondent Bill Blakemore: “This is the night they’ve been waiting for a long time…The year 2000 is supposed to be a year of great peacemaking here in the Middle East, with the Israelis, Syrians, and Palestinians, all in different peace negotiations. There is some hope here that, by the time this millennium year is over, it will be, as one Israeli said, ‘a very different Middle East,’ with the Israeli conflict well towards being something in the past.” Unfortunately, this has not come true. On Tuesday, February 12, 2014, the Syrian cease-fire agreement ended, and the fate of the region is uncertain. 

Most touching of all is Peter Jennings’ little chat with perennial New Year’s host and “America’s oldest teenager,” Dick Clark, who had hosted the “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve!” on ABC since 1972 and, for those of us born in the 80s and 90s, he was New Year’s Eve personified. Here he is, in his prime, with a healthy glow about him, and rarin’ to go for the ball to drop.

All that changed in 2004, when he suffered a stroke less than a month before the 2004/2005 New Year’s Eve broadcast (“At the stroke of midnight,” someone no doubt quipped). From that point on, Dick became ever more marginalized until his death in 2012. Ryan Seacrest now hosts the special, but it’s still “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve!”, and so it shall be for many years to come.

(I’ll pause here to mention that 2013’s celebration featured the most amazing tribute to Dick Clark. Throughout 2012, New Yorkers in and around Times Square wrote their memories of watching his specials and posted them in a special exhibit. On that New Year’s Eve, those memories showered out over the crowd as midnight confetti. That there was one of the very best sendoffs anyone could ask for.)

The Jennings/Clark interview carries even more weight when Peter mentions that he’s going to give up smoking as a new century resolution.

On that bright and innocent and jubilant night, the future seemed wide open.

On a bright and innocent day more than a year later, terrorists flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.

On that dark and markedly less innocent day, Peter Jennings’ old habit came back in full force in response to the horrifying events that had transpired.

On August 7^th, 2005, lung cancer claimed Peter Jennings’ life, just as 9/11 claimed the life of the Millennium Era, and with it, the dream of living in a fully interconnected and empathetic world.

That's what the Millennium Museum is all about...keeping the memory of that dream alive.

Adding a new concept: "The Millennium Museum Revisited"

Okay, let me make one thing clear: I'm having major problems with designing an exterior structure for the Museum. (This is why I didn't take up architecture as my major...) I just can't seem to come up with anything that actually works!

Therefore, I'm ditching the whole "how the Museum might look in the real world" concept for now. Instead, I'll dig into the older Items and take a second, more in-depth look at them, this time keeping in mind how they fit in with the larger framework of the lead-up to the year 2000. These articles will fall under the umbrella banner of "The Millennium Museum Revisited," and will appear alongside newer material as I find it.

Life updates that aren't really "connected" to the Museum, but still...

Big news, everyone!

I've started a class at Moraine Valley that looks like it'll take up much of the time I'd otherwise use to design the Museum, BUT it should be invaluable in overhauling the blog site from time to time. You see, it's a class in Management Information Systems, and there's a heck of a lot about web design in it. If all goes well, and if I apply what I learn, then we could be looking at a Millennium Museum 3.0 in the near future! How about that, eh?

Meanwhile, here's something I did for fun a little while ago:

 

 

It's my little riff on the Golden Tickets from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The difference here, is, the Silver Ticket gets you into the Museum at any time you want!

 

I did all of this in Microsoft Word within the space of two hours or so, most of which went into the large logo at the top of the ticket. (A "word" to the wise: Merging a bunch of distinct elements into a single, unified image is more of a pain than it should be. Once you have it all merged, resizing it deforms the image somewhat. Bear in mind, though, that I'm still working from Word 2007.)



First post of the new year.

Hi, everyone!

Sorry it's been so long since I last posted (New Year's Eve), but my internet connection's been on-and-off throughout the week. I blame that sudden cold snap....

On the last night of 2013, my original plan was to shut down for a couple of months, but another idea came up since then: Why not do a "Museum-lite" season? I'll still be online, but you won't see any items. Instead, I'll take you behind the scenes as I design and "construct" an exterior for the Museum. My goal for the next official season, two months from now (this is at the earliest), is to finish off the key illustration for the Museum campus. At the moment, I'm still kicking around an idea or two, but the overall idea is a whimsical cross between the Times Square building and Willy Wonka's factory, with a little bit of EPCOT and the House on the Rock thrown in for good measure.

Happy New Year, one and all!

I know it'll be a few hours until we ring in the New Year, but it's been a l-o-n-g day at work, and I'd like to see my annual tradition through before I do anything else. (If I don't do it now, I'll forget.)

First, the banner. I don't know who did that panorama of Times Square or where I got it from, so whoever made it, I thank you for an absolutely beautiful image! Let's give a big hand to whoever made that picture!

Second, the first official New Year's custom logo.



Third, I'd like to turn back the hands of time before the clock chimes midnight, and ring in a new tradition that I like to call "The Millennium Museum's Personal Best."

Ready? Buckle up, 'cause here we go!

DECEMBER 22^nd, 2012: The Millennium Museum opens. The first Item displayed is a Year 2000 face-towel. The original

DECEMBER 31^st, 2012: The Museum’s first New Year’s Eve; the next Items are Doctor Who: The Movie and a Danbury Mint Millennium Baby.

JANUARY 1, 2013: The Museum unveils its logo!

FEBRUARY 4: The “On This Day” feature debuts. I admit with some shame that it has fallen by the wayside because it got too hard to do without a handy articles database. (I'm taking a class at Moraine Valley in the new year, so with that I should get access to the news databases.)

MARCH 17: St. Patrick’s Day inspires the creation of a prototype “custom logo.” In this case, the banner’s usual silver gradient changed to the colors of the Irish flag. Little else changed, but the seed of an idea was born.

MARCH 31: The Millennium Museum declares its first season finale and month-long break.

APRIL 3: In the real world, the Museum’s curator gets a job!

MAY 5: Series 2 begins! The first item seen is a collection of state quarters, which were part of America’s Millennium celebration.

MAY 19: The Museum hosts its first-ever video review. It’s pretty embarrassing, but you’ll see a few more of these in the years to come.

JULY 4: The first Fourth of July sees FOUR items posted in honor of the holiday!

SEPTEMBER 11: This issue, a Special Edition, is the game-changer. Here, we learn what all of my previous postings had been leading up to.

SEPTEMBER 29: This issue marked the first time I drew something special for the Museum since the logo. It was a background of fall leaves blowing in the wind.

OCTOBER 13: The “Jack-O-Lantern” variant makes its debut. Also, we look back at The Blair Witch Project.

NOVEMBER 23/24: Doctor Who celebrates its 50^th anniversary, and the Museum responds by commemorating the first-ever Chicago TARDIS convention.

DECEMBER 22, 2013: The Museum celebrates its first anniversary! The week before sees the Museum’s first-ever Christmas celebration—I didn’t mark the occasion the year before because I just didn’t think of it.

DECEMBER 31, 2013:

 

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've been waiting for...the last two Millennium Items before we leave 2013 behind.

 

 

I found this in a St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store out in Midlothian, IL. (My work sometimes takes me out there.) This cassette tape came out in 1999, and the publisher is listed as K-Tel International.  

K-Tel is well-known for producing compilation and “greatest-hits” albums that are mostly sold on late-night TV infomercials. Most of the time, their records are the original recordings, but sometimes they use original recordings: this tape’s songs are performed by the Tony Burgos Orchestra. 

There are at least two Louis Prima standards (“Jump, Jive, an’ Wail” and “That Old Black Magic”); Hoagy Carmichael’s “In the Mood” (later appropriated by Benny Goodman); as well as many other songs from the big-band era. 

The collection of old, mostly public-domain songs more than fulfills the “preserving history” credit, but the new recordings add a new wrinkle to that: It breathes new life into the tunes of yesterday. I can’t think of a better way to ring in a new year than this.

 

 

A quick browse through Microsoft Word’s clip-art gallery for some New Year’s fireworks, for something else I had in mind, yielded these four examples from the Year 2000. It’s amazing that they still have all that old clip art in their archives. There's honestly not much to summarize here; I'm just surprised to have found it! Still, it's one for the books.

 

 

 

When I first opened the Museum, my first rule was “don’t just use pictures from the Internet.” The rationale at the time was, simply using pictures found on the Internet would defeat the purpose of hunting for items. As time has rolled on, I’ve since discarded the rule, mostly because time and money are never on my side. Also, Millennium Items are getting harder and harder to find in the real world; the one-month “season hiatus” is also not enough time to go looking. I may expand this to two months in the new year…something to think about. 

Anyway, case in point: I found this picture of a Times Square puzzle on eBay. It’s a stunningly realistic painting of a Times Square panorama. Besides all the true-to-life billboards and advertisements, there are messages beckoning you to “Welcome A New Century!”

It perfectly captures the exuberant, triumphant mood of the New Millennium celebrations—Times Square has been the mecca for New Year’s celebrations for as long as I can remember, definitely even longer! 

I do remember that there was a Show Boat revival (“Ooooool’ maaaaaan riveeeeeeer…”) at the time, so the big billboard is accurate. Can’t remember if the Broadway revival and the tour revival went along at the same time, or if there was a gap in between, but I do remember the TV advertisements for the “Broadway in Chicago” version.

 

The “…money America is saving with MCI” billboard dates it a little bit, because MCI/Worldcom suffered some kind of a scandal back in 2002 or so, which led to MCI’s bankruptcy.  

Somewhat inexplicably, the Tin Soldier balloons are being pulled by a teddy bear and a white rabbit (blow up the image and take a look at the lower right part of the image).

There’s also a very big ad for “Bloomberg Information Radio.” That’s kind of funny, because Michael Bloomberg has been the mayor of New York City from 2001 until this year, when he will be replaced by Bill de Blasio.