What amazes me most about 20th century life is the amount of time that people wasted preparing food. Before the days when crops and livestock were genetically engineered to grow pre-cooked and bacteria free, cooks spent hours in kitchens like the Great Master's, chopping, mixing, cooking, and cleaning.
Slingsby was demonstrating one of the most popular utensils of the day. I believe he called it a 'salad shooter'. Bits of radishes flew around the room.
"One of the more curious customs of the Stewartian Era was to give as gifts items that you would not dream of buying for yourself. It was the culture's way of expressing repressed animosity in a socially acceptable manner. This particular device was a Christmas gift from the founder of Arista records. The Great Master reciprocated in turn with....let me check my notes here....something called a 'Chia pet'."
A perfectly julienned carrot slice bounced off my nose.
"Why were the people of that time so undiscriminating?" asked one man.
"Oh, many reasons. Lack of comprehensive education, susceptibility to advertising and hyperbole, peer pressure. The arts in particular were in shambles. It was not called the Age of Mediocrity for nothing.
"Mind you, some very fine works were produced as well. They were merely difficult to discern in the low signal-to-noise ratio. The Great Master was fortunate in that he achieved a modest level of popularity while still alive. Many of his loftiest contemporaries, such as Mann and Reinhold and TMBG, toiled in relative obscurity. And this was the norm for many decades."
"Until 2054, right?" chirped one little red-haired girl.
Slingsby patted her on the head. "Very good, sweetheart. You've been sleeping well through your history somno-class! And I hope the rest of you kids haven't been staying awake in school, either," he added sternly.
"In 2054, engineers from Henwood-Conway, Inc. patented the world's first device capable of positing objective aesthetic evaluations -- the Dreck-B-Gone. Instead of waiting generations, or even centuries, for scholars to reach consensus on artistic worth, the Dreck-B-Gone computes it instantaneously. It rates anything on a perfectly normalized scale of 0 to 10.
"Nothing has ever achieved a perfect 10. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony comes the closest at 9.9936, followed by the Mona Lisa at 9.9928 and the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show at 9.9915. The Great Master's life works are fourth at 9.9907. This caught aestheticians of the time by surprise and resulted in their performing a complete reappraisal of his oeuvre. You know the rest of the story," he finished with a smile.
"Has there ever been a zero?"
"You mean works with utterly no value whatsoever? Yes, there've been three: The Ricki Lake Show. The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And album reviews by Adam Sweeting."
We all nodded. You can't get any more pathetic than that.
As Slingsby fielded questions, I furtively poked through the Great Master's cabinets. Eating utensils, glassware, potholders, nothing of much interest. Until, that is, I came to a large drawer holding a collection of sundry household items. Among them were an egg timer, a transistor radio, a torn Metroliner ticket, a tiny crystal ball, that sort of stuff. And, all the way at the back, a faded coupon for cat litter.
Cat litter? Why would he need that? The Great Master was allergic to cats. I pulled out my magnifying class and, just after the words 'Cash Value: 1/20th cent', was the following:
1995 ASML BOAP: Most Overrated Al Songs:
# Song Album Votes ---------------------------------------- 1 Year Of The Cat YOTC 24 2 Time Passages TP 18 3 Nostradamus PPF 10 4 Song On The Radio TP 8 5 Trains FLW 4.5 6 Love Chronicles LC 4 7t Roads To Moscow PPF 3 7t Where Are They Now LDOTC 3
Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. The magnificent 'Cat', overrated? The landmark 'Passages' as well? Barbarians! But then, I knew of the folly of ascribing modern-day sensibilities to ancient cultures. I replaced the coupon and took a few deep breaths to regain my composure.
Slingsby, meanwhile, was still pontificating on the folly of our ancestors. "Turn-of-the-Millennia people celebrated the lowest common denominator. Take cuisine, for example. A truly outstanding restaurant would have a single location. Good restaurants might have two or three. Average restaurants, several dozen; poor ones, perhaps a hundred. But the truly odious restaurants, those using the cheapest ingredients and shortest preparation time, had upwards of several thousand franchises.
"Naturally, the Dreck-B-Gone put an end to that. One multinational chain went out of business overnight when their 'Chicken McNuggets' were rated at 0.0034. That was slightly above scented magazine inserts and just below Amy Fisher movies.
"Even the Great Master's contemporary admirers overlooked some of his treasures. One delightful children's song comes to mind immediately."
Again, we all nodded. No lost survey results were necessary to tell us what was already common knowledge.
I continued to explore the kitchen cabinets. Next to a primitive electromagnetic energy transferal chamber was a cabinet containing old toys. No doubt they belonged to the Great Master's children and grandchildren. There was a teddy bear, a locomotive pull toy, a rubber Norse sword, a sailboat, a plastic lute, and a faded school calendar from Sen. Violet Stewart's kindergarten days. There were also two pairs of shoes -- one pair for jogging, the other open-toed beach sandals.
And, of course, there was a stuffed purple hippopotamus. I smiled. No doubt some of the poll results would elude me, but finding this one was, ahem, child's play. I aimed my temporal sight restorer at its underside:
1995 ASML BOAP: Most Underrated Al Songs:
# Song Album Votes ------------------------------------------------- 1 Hipposong FLW 10 2t Last Days Of The Century LDOTC 4 2t Samuel, Oh How You've Changed BI 4 2t Sand In Your Shoes YOTC 4 5t Accident On 3rd Street RAA 3 5t Merlin's Time 24C 3 5t Old Admirals PPF 3 5t Running Man 24C 3 5t Trains FLW 3
Quite a landslide. I wondered what the Great Master would have thought of that.
I missed his explanation, but Slingsby was clapping his hands to show how he could cause the kitchen light to turn on and off. "A birthday gift from the American Bar Association," he said cryptically. "The Great Master sent them a box of fruitcakes in return.
"Let's move on, shall we? Next stop: the Great Master's study."...