One of those timeless days devoid of the dreary details of modern life – no burbling phones, no BONGs to announce an email, no b’ding! from your DVR to warn you that it would like to change the channel and record something else, no meek triple-beep from the coffee pot to inform you it’s shut itself off. So the power went out, you ask. No. Spent the morning at my daughter’s track-and-field event as a judge, if you can call it that – mostly had to impose Rules, Ruthlessly, so that the teams could be ranked in order: First, Second, Third, Participant (loser) and Participant (other loser.) A perfect day to be outside – warm, blue skies, a few clouds scudding above like ships en route to foreign ports. The kids were all enthusiastic – everyone loves track and field day, it seems, and that’s partly due to the great PhyEd teachers they have. Old-school male role models.
As I may have said before, I had two gym teachers who were figures of terror. The first was serious business, and swear to God his name was Mister Dick. I remember disappointing him in general, but he radiated general ire. The second was Mr. Garilla. Harry, as we called him behind his no-doubt hirsuite back. Yes, Mr. Dick and Mr. Gorilla. My daughter’s teachers inspire by example and a perfect combination of discipline and encouragement, and the result was a broad field filled with kids running their hearts out, leaping, kicking, and having the best day in the best spring at the best school EVER. A joy to see. Timeless, too: change the shirts, and it could have been eighty years ago. Change nothing, and it could have been the 70s – when did kids start to wear their hair like characters from the Hey Mikey commercial?
DID YOU KNOW MIKEY DIED FROM EATING POP ROCKS? TRUE
No, I never believed that. But some kids did, just as my daughter was convinced that Invader Zim was cancelled because the animator snuck something into the show and Comedy Central got mad and cancelled the show. I said no, it was rating. No, she said, I read on the internet -
Stop right there. I showed her some pages on the internet that contradicted the assertion, and reminded her that Yahoo Answers was not exactly the last word in these matters.
Anyway, it wasn’t entirely modern-world-free – in order to do this in the morn I’d written a bunch of posts, queued them up in the Strib system, and fired them off via iPhone between heats. The game was simple: the team had to run to the cone carrying a blanket, pick up an item, put it in the blanket, run back, put the item in a hulahoop, and repeat until they had all the items – and then put the items back in the blanket, return them, run back, and sit on the blanket. Enthusiasm was high. I had to disqualify one team for not getting everything in the hula hoop, and another for sitting on the ground instead of the blanket. When it’s close, these things matter.
Everyone is not a winner. The kids know it; they always know it. That’s why they tried a hard as they did.
Spent the rest of the day writing in the backyard and arranging this and that. After supper we went down the street to a neighbor’s house for a school fundraiser; came away with a custom shirt that said MPLS – Natalie wanted it – and an iPod-charging clock radio she can use to get up in the morning. Made her night, even though it means the Hello Kitty radio has to go.
“It doesn’t have to go all the way out,” she said, clinging to childhood just a bit more. “It can go in the closet.”
She had a moment of tearful recognition the other night that life was going fast. Came to sobs over not being a kid some day, and some day SOON. It was wrenching, really, and I don’t know where it came from, but in a way it had to have come from happiness, from wanting these good simple times to roll on and on. She has a point. It was wacky hat day at school this week, and you just don’t get these in the workplace:
–
Earlier this week I pointed you to the Duke commercial archives, and noted how I’d fallen on the Texaco ads with particular devotion. Where, you ask, are the screen grabs? Okay then. Here’s the classic Texaco station my dad had:
Recognize the pump jockey? No? How about this:
Don Adams. The logo changed – and so did the spokesperson. Rowr:
Who is she? More on that next week.
–
Linkage: BleatPlus is up, and I fully intend to send passwords for those who need them by noon.
100 Mysteries is here.
A few new ads in the 30s section, here. (It dead-ends at page 8, so don’t write me about that, I know.)
Finally, I was going to debut the 39 World’s Fair site today, but all I have is the introduction – so I might as well put it here.
Here you go. I’m using home-movie color footage of the Fair, correcting the hues, cleaning up what I can, re-editing it, applying some filters. This isn’t the final version, but it’ll do for now. The ’33 Fair was interesting, a spasm of optimism in the middle of the Depression, but the ’39 Fair has always haunted me: it was supposed to be the future, but it was the end, really. The architectural vernacular that emerged after the war was much more vibrant, American, and individualistic. But there was so much hope in this clean white world.
Have a grand weekend! See you at Tumblr, and PopCrush, and back here on Monday.
Pass it along, if you wish
68 Responses to The Star. You can trust your car to the man with it
Host with the Most
@swschrad:I assume you are correct, I would not have much patience explaining copyright or trademark infringement to a bunch of stoners.
On the other hand, I assume the alignment folks traveled in such different circles as Deadheads that by the time they found out, it was too late to make a complaint.
The old switch the corporate spokesperson trick! Really, who is she??
bgbear: The stuff about “explaining copyright or trademark infringement to a bunch of stoners” reminded me of the old Simpson’s episode where Homer needed to smoke marijuana for medical reasons, and they tried to get it legalized in an election. The only problem was, they had their “get out the vote” rally the day after the election, because they “spaced out on the date.”
Why blame Mr. Martin? It was your “friend” that set you up for the fall. Sports — a distant finisher in this tale of woe.
Okay… first, let me say that I have loved your site for years, and it’s one of the few I visit every single day. You’re awesome. Motel postcards have always been my favorite, BTW, but I love it all, and I’m glad to see you adapting and adopting (though I cringe at your Apple fetish — such a boorish, angry, frightening company). Anyway… everyone hates a pedant, so I try never to complain about grammar and stuff, but this is one of my biggest peeves, and I cannot let it skate by. You wrote:
“Everyone is not a winner. The kids know it; they always know it. That’s why they tried a hard as they did.”
If everyone is not a winner, then no one won. Everyone is not a winner. There are no winners. The appropriate thing to say is “Not everyone is a winner.” Not everyone is a winner, but someone was. People do this constantly, and I don’t get it. “Every dog is not brown.” By this they mean that there are brown dogs, but there are other colors to. What they are saying is that there are NO BROWN DOGS. Every dog is not brown leaves nothing to interpretation. Every single dog is some color other than brown. “Not every dog is brown” says that some dogs ARE brown, but not EVERY dog.
C’mon. It’s not that difficult.
And please tell me you don’t say “nucular.”
Love the site. Long-time fan, first-time… um… complainer.
#NerveBag: “By this they mean that there are brown dogs, but there are other colors to.”
“(t)oo”! “TOO”, Gol-durn it!
I think the ‘she’, in the ad is Marlo Thomas.
Great blog! It’s rare to stumble across something as engaging. Your film of the ’39 fair made me think of a great book, which given your interests you probably have already read. But just in case, check out “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” (Pulitzer Prize winner). There’s a great chapter that takes place in the ruins of the domed building featured in the film. Keep up the great work!
I hate to contradict you, but, we had wacky hat day in my workplace recently. I work for the Walt Disney Company and we had Wacky Hat Day when Alice in Wonderland came out. I wore a rare mouse ear hat.
I guess the intent is to raise kids to be graceful losers (ha) since there are more losers than winners in life. Keep working, persevering, etc.
Best example is Olympics where it’s often all about gold or go home – well, at least as far as the media is concerned.
And who is Texaco lady? She looks like one of the post-Lennons singers on Lawrence Welk.
#NerveBag — I’m a copy editor, with a whole closetful of spelling, grammar, and usage peeves, but I’ve found that it’s best to wait to be asked (and ideally paid) before bringing them out to play.
And perhaps one should particularly resist the temptation to bring them out on someone’s personal website, and one on which the host is regularly providing vast amounts of high-quality content for free. Come on, it’s not that difficult
The Texaco hexagon was supposedly brought out in the mid 60s to replace the red star and T – which was thought to evoke a “commie” image (this was the same time the direction of Mobil’s flying horse was changed from left to right)
For those interested thre is a miniature animated version of the famous Texaco sign…
http://microstru.com/New-Releases.html
And please tell me you don’t say “nucular.”
Seriously. “Nucular” is a bizarre mispronunciation with no roots in spoken English, indicative of ignorance and incoherency. Because there certainly aren’t any English words (other than particular, circular, molecular, spectacular, ocular, or vascular) which end in -ular.
“People do this constantly, and I don’t get it. ‘Every dog is not brown.’ By this they mean that there are brown dogs, but there are other colors to.”
All that glitters is not gold, NerveBag. It’s a long-standing, perfectly logical, combination of “all” with the negative. Might as well get used to it.
Oh, dear, NerveBag,
If you have a problem with “All dogs are not brown”, you’d best take it up with Shakespeare[1] and then get back to us. The problem, you see, is not with the construction, but with your understanding.
As for objecting to “nucular”, that comes down to nothing more than disliking the fact that someone else pronounces a word differently from the way you do. In American English there are at least two pronunciations each for “roof”, “creek”, “aunt” and “route”. The “nucular” pronunciation is no different, and while it may not be your pronunciation it has a long and distinguished history behind it. And by “distinguished” I mean Edward Teller and President Eisenhower. You may as well relax about that one.
[1] “All that glisters is not gold”, The Merchant of Venice, II:vii.
Lee Meriwether?
To All,
Since NerveBag is a first timer let’s all be a little more gracious. I had some of the same initial reactions to the comments. I may have been a little quick on the trigger a few times jn the past, so I now spend more time looking at what seems to be intent of the poster. NerveBag, you seem like a nice person, welcome to the Bleat and posting here. We all have out hot buttons and I have some big ones. We all tend to be protective of our own little corner of Middle Earth here.
I recall Jimmeh (History’s Greatest Monster) saying “nookyer”, so NYAH.
Hey, it’s Anitra!
Hm, a woman wearing a short vinyl coat and a weird fireman’s helmet? What kind of fetish-porn site have I found here? Actually, on second thought, she has a hairdo sort of like my Mom did when she was in college. EWWWWWWWW