He walked around the city with a carrot up his nose. Dogs found his odor confusing. Yet Harvey Delmonico was the most celebrated optometrist of his day . . .

And I jest because I care. Today’s page had this tantalizing intro:

Shopping , a ceaseless search for the next meaningless object, is for people without purpose. The British are not even good at shopping, having become a nation of shoplifters.


It linked to an essay by Theodore Dalrymple, our Virgil in the journey down the circles of English Hell. His description of the din of this English mall was interesting, because it reminded me of something I noted at Southdale (the Mother of All Malls) last night: the silence. Or rather the stillness. The music store was loud, but not loud enough to infect adjacent stores. One of the department stores was playing one Lindsay Buckingham’s lapidary numbers, “Trouble,” at a barely perceptible volume. (Once home, I went to the iTunes store and bought it. Fleetwood Mac I can take or leave, but Buckingham has this ability to twin marvel and sadness in a single song, and I like a lot of his work.) There was a boom & thud coming from the Abercrombie & Fitch store, but across the aisle in the Hallmark kitsch-o-teria, everything was quiet and content. The Mall of America is different; you always hear the thrash and rattle of the amusement park at the Mall’s center. Galleria, a nearby ultra-upscale mall, is so quiet you can hear a diamond-tipped pin fall on a Coach purse. Dalrymple’s on to something. The louder the store, the dumber the clientele.

Watched two episodes of “Carnivale,” an HBO series that takes the place of “The Wire.” The latter was a cop drama, in the sense that “Crime and Punishment” was a novel about an axe; it was almost impenetrable if you came in late, required constant rewinding to catch throwaway lines, spawned subplots that meandered off and got lost. One of my favorite shows ever, and worth every dime of my HBO subscription. In its place they have the aforementioned carny drama, which features absolutely everything I cannot stand about Important Television: it’s full of weirdness that wouldn’t be out of place in some impenetrable European movie that lasted nine hours and featured monks wearing pig masks; it has a general air of Looming Portentousness that saturates every moment with constant dread; it has the Twin Peaks Midget Guy just to let you know we’re in Red Lodge territory here. And sin of sins: it talks about sin a lot. There’s a great battle shaping up 'twixt good & evil, you see, and behold the archetypes who will feature prominently in the struggle: the Capitalist, the Solider, the Sainted Drifter, and the Corrupted Priest. Also a bear.

Stuff like this makes me grind my teeth. I read reviews of shows like this, and I think: pass. Most of the reviews I’ve read have said: eh. Meh. Whatever.

But here's the thing. I love it. The depiction of a 1930s carnival feel absolutely spot on - as if I’d know, of course. Chalk it up to good art direction: accurate or not it makes you think that this was how the world appeared. Everything looks worn, corroded, beaten and faded; it’s as if ten years of Depression has drained the color from everything, and left only brown and tan and a bitter red the color of old dry blood. I don’t want to oversell it, and it may tank eventually. But I know I fought it for the first ten minutes - you can’t make me like this! You can’t! but eventually I felt that unnerving, spooky dread-soaked quality that made me love the Twin Peaks pilot. Now imagine TP without Agent Cooper, Harry Truman, all the comic relief, the comely friends of Laura, the perfect simple music, and all the other things that grounded the show in the real world. Watching the show feels like you're living your last strange moments of sanity. Soon you're going to go mad.

And then it will all make sense.

Okay, column night. Back to work. (Matchbook tomorrow.)