No, there wasn't any particular reason for the Bleat graphic. Why do you ask?
Notes from a charmed existence:
So I woke with no small amount of fear. Jet lag: the bane of travel. In Copenhagen we awoke at 5 AM, and ended up walking around the empty city as dawn broke, with a few zombie party-people for company. What would it be now?
6:15 AM
I never get up at 6:15. But my body had other ideas. I had a cup of room coffee, showered, and headed out in search of pancakes and wifi. About two blocks away from the hotel I realized that I was that strange, shunned creature: a pedestrian. The intersections admitted my existence, but grudgingly; the WALK lights turned into the Hand That Says Halt after four seconds, leaving you to traverse the expanse of lanes at a motivated pace, and I imagine it also serves as legal cover should the motorists decide to strike you down as an infidel. Then - there - in the distance -
McDonald’s! They’d have pancakes. They’d have wifi. I got out my headphones and iPod mini and thought I’d find a radio station to keep me company, and -
hey
Hold on. No iPod. I’d put it in my pocket. I knew I put it in my pocket. One of the 24 pockets in these damed cargo pants. Well, maybe I’d just hallucinated that in the strange crepuscular light of California at 6:30 AM in November. (During a heat wave.) I pressed on, had my flapjacks and wifi, and went back to the room intent on finding the Mini in some seat cushions.
Turned the room upside down. Went through every pocket. It was gone. I’d had it for two weeks. I don’t think I’ve listened to it more than 20 minutes. Gone.
Grr. Well. It was 9:25 and blazing, so I went down to the pool and read the Economist under the sweltering sun for an hour. You may ask: what the devil is this all about, anyway? Simple: six hour radio gigs as a “person in studio” for the Hugh Hewitt show. Eventually I got the call about my pickup time, and I headed back towards the McDonald’s vicinity to pick up some stuff from a grocery store. I went over the fake knoll in the fake park past the mirrored-glass office tower by the eight-lane street across from the shopping center - if you’re in Los Angeles, you know just where I mean - and I looked down at the grass, thinking “maybe I’ll see my iPad Mini,” and I saw: my iPod mini.
Three hours later, it was still there.
I have a charmed life. The fact that I get to come here and hang out by the pool in the morning and then natter on the radio and then find myself on a ferry to go to an island -
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The show was great fun, even though everyone on the GOP side vacillates between Steely-Eyed Confidence and Barely-Contained Terror. I’ve been on this show for ten years and never seen the studio, and now here we are. After six hours of talking I got in Hugh’s car and we drove to some magical little community with a ferry boat -
that took you to an island full of lights, with shops and bars and restaurants and everything you’d need or want, providing “other humans” wasn’t on the list. Twilight-Zone vibe: high. We go the storied bar celebrated in Joseph Wambaugh novels, walking down the street - no humans - past the Fun Zone - no humans, no fun - to the bar, which has been renamed, and has a bartender and waitress and no humans.
In other words, we’re dead, and this is the tailor-made afterlife designed just for us. But! I’d invited Michael Walsh, friend and writer-guy, to join us, and he showed up, and he’s not dead so this isn’t hell and hey, the happy-hour meal prices are good through nine o’clock. So it all turned out for the best. We talked and talked and had fine food and spirits and walked back to the ferry. Passed four loping toughs peering at the world with casual malice, heading somewhere that wouldn’t be glad to see the. Ferry dock: no ferry. Maybe it wouldn’t come back. I thought “well, we can call a taxi.” Then I remembered that this was a Twilight Zone episode, and those four youths would be tormentors from my childhood, come to exact revenge? Provide an opportunity to redress some grade-school humiliation? It all depended on what Rod Serling thought of me, didn’t it. If I was a character in need of comeuppance, I would be humbled. If I was an underdog, I would be redeemed.
Rod was pretty blunt about these things, so I’d know soon enough -
But no, here comes the ferry. Back to the hotel. And now to bed.
Hey, it's Product Tuesday!
Not like anything else is going on, is there?
Swan Soap:
It’s no longer made. One of those brands that just died. Lever Brothers made it in the 40s and 50s; it was an Ivory soap foe, since it too had the properties of Flotation. (Hence the name.) I don’t know why it was so important to have soap that floated; that would seem to indicate it was suffused with bubbles or some non-soap aspect that provided buoyancy. But Ivory made the connection between Floating and Purity, and since there was a residual post-Upton-Sinclair-Jungle panic about impurity, well, there you had it.
The floating head of Joan Davis reminds you that Swan was her sponsor. Joan Davis was a comedic actress whose career suffered a great reversal when she died. At age 53.
Bathroom tissue:
Actually, they’re quite frank: it’s TOILET TISSUE, and it has that popular property of Firmness. This was intended to counterbalance the Softness, since apparently people doubted a soft paper could stand up to the rigors of the job.
I’m not sure where I got this - except that this is the most awesome washing machine control panel ever.
Lipton! Tea and Soup:
A natural brand extension; both were liquids.
Elmer isn’t wearing pants.
This wouldn’t be a problem except that sometimes he does. In this ad, there’s another picture of the Borden Cow Family saying goodbye to guests, and they’re all standing erect on their back hooves and have no pants. Their tails cover their buttocks.
Here Elmer grills sausages made from pigs and other cows, legs splayed. Pantless. Again, this wouldn’t e a problem except there are fully-clothed humans behind him. Humans who may have had cow for a meal earlier.
Elmer is now a whizz because he drinks HEMO! Which looked like this.
Finally, from 1960: the other Alka-Seltzer:
It’s Alkalized Instant Seltzer, pitched - as was the other blue-and-white fizzy product - as an aide to “over-indulgence.”
See you around - I'll be posting some election-themed pictures up at Lint.
