A few days ago we were supposed to get 10 inches of snow on Friday, right? I spoke yesterday about looking forward to a big storm. We had a post-work event Thursday night, and some were concerned people who’d RSVPd wouldn’t show up because of the storm. Which supposedly would happen the next day.

Latest forecast: 1.2 inches. Pathetic.

 

Say, would you like a cookie? A branded cookie? A branded cookie in our brand color? That's what our party guests got today. Custom cookies the size of your hand.

Why?

 

It was for the launch party. For our magazine.

A newspaper launching a Sunday magazine is the opposite of what you think is possible in today’s print market, but they’ve run the numbers and found the sweet spot. It’s going to be a fantastic product, and it’s exciting to be

Oh, I sound like a marketing guy spinning out rah-ra boilerplate, but it’s true. Especially if one recalls our lean dark years. The launch party was held in the lobby of our building, around the fire pit, with the LED lighting bathing everything various shades of StarTribune green. Finger food and a bar and lots of people in advertising and marketing, potential advertiser. Ping-ponged around the room meeting and greeting. Great fun.

So that was my post-work day, and before that? Well, work. After? Work. But it's all fun.

 

What's cluttering up the screengrab folder? All this. Here's some linkchum nonsense that annoyed me as I went around the wonderful world of the web.

Huh: I had no idea we were about to be out.


I guess it’s a given that we will live in Post-Water America. Did you get the memo? There will be no more water. Well, there will be some, but not enough. We will be sponging ourselves out of buckets and using the grey water to flush toilets once a day.

I swear, the entire early 70s came back all at once, and brought along for fun everything that was being said by the nervous and disaffected types in the early 80s:

The world has gone to hell, but not because of Turkey’s drift towards authoritarianism or Venezuela’s collapse or fighting in Africa or Libya, or the Syrian Civil War, and certainly not because of the annexation of the Crimea. None of these things would be bad, and in fact, taken in total they would be a call for serious people to have conferences. The very fact that conferences were taking place would mean that progress was being made.

There’s a special type of internet commenter who tries to play dumb to indicate that the topic is archaic, and they always come off looking stupid. You know what I mean: “what’s a DVD?” As if to say I am from a time so advanced the knowledge of these things have faded out of memory, but it just makes you look like someone with no sense of history. No one would say “what’s a telegram?” unless they honestly didn’t know, and then you could hoot at them, if they were over 16. (I just messaged daughter to ask if she knew what a telegram was; she does)

I don’t know if this guy is shooting for that, or if he’s real, but he comes across as a boor in either case:

Oh, I’ll bet you don’t have a TV, either! You read Melville by whale-oil lamp because all those contemporary forms of entertainment are mindless drivel for children.

Speaking of the opposite of Mindless Drivel: take a look at this opening credit sequence for Nobel, which I finished last night. The show is first rate. I didn't like the song at first, but then I got interested in the show, and the events of the credits gained weight.

One thing about the show I wish I could explain: now and then the characters drop an English phrase or word, but they consistently say “The Norwegian Way” to indicate the national character of their mission. It seems odd that a phrase meant to convey an essential element of one’s country would be spoken in a different language.

More link chum:

   
 

Typical ad: big idea, then two ads with buttons you click thinking you’ll start the slideshow - they don’t, of course - and a picture that makes you think “she disappeared?” I think we would all be aware that Penelope Cruz disappeared.

She’s had eight movies - in Hollywood - in the last three years. So Buzzwuz is full of it.

 

     
  This just made me laugh. It sounded so weary and full of Gallic resignation. It’s the way the Gannett template displays headlines, and since the verdict from on top made all the local websites look the same, no one can do anything about it.
   

It's getting big.

 

I always think that the buildings have come to life when the lights glow at night. One evenign they're dark, and then . . . the quickening.

 

Once again, we get no feel for the scale or nature of the project; it'll be spring before we start to get a sense of the building.

 

 

 

This year we're examining the custom-made music cues for "The Great Gildersleeve." There were lots.

Today we've something quite unusual.
   
 

This isn't it. Don't you love it when a mode of transportation has its own musical cliches?

   
   
   

   
  And this isn't it. Music for a fat man to fiddle around by.
   
   
   

 

   
 

This is it. The show was preempted by war news, but they didn't turn off the mikes. Peary and Tetly stay in character, but don't, but they do.

There's some dead air; they cut back in at :43. They're not doing the script - they're winging it.

   
   
   

He's addressing Tetley, who played Nephew Leroy, as his character, but everyone in the audience can see that Tetley isn't a little boy.

   
 

This is quite brief, but possibly the most honest cigarette ad ever.

   
   
   

   
 

No, not the Bioshock character. He's singing "That Old Gang of Mine."

   
   
   

Wikipedia says:

On The Jackie Gleason Show, he played the always-inebriated character "Crazy Guggenheim" during Gleason's "Joe the Bartender" skits. His trademark was a bug-eyed grin and the same silly laugh he had done on Jack Benny's radio show. At the end of his Guggenheim sketch, he would usually sing a song, demonstrating a surprisingly good singing voice.

But he had to make that face, or no one would buy the record. The end:

Fontaine died of a major heart attack on August 4, 1978 in Spokane, Washington. He had just completed a live stage benefit show, had accepted a check for $25,000, which he planned to later donate for heart research, when he collapsed and died. He was married and had 11 children.

Eleven!

   
  New this year: end-of-show aphorisms. And so we end the week.
   
   
   

That will do, I hope; come back Monday and we'll do it all over again.

 

 

 
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