Walking back to my car from the office, something happened. Have you attention yet? Oh, I have to work for this? Something happened that summed up an unnerving and somewhat depressing emotion I’ve been feeling for a while. We could call it the Evil Peeing Calvin syndrome.

You know the decals on trucks, right? Calvin looking over his shoulder with a nasty leer while he pees on a brand name or concept. It irritates anyone who loved the comic strip: you don’t get to own that. That belongs to people who have the proper opinion about the strip.

Eventually you realize that it’s a regrettable sign of the times, and often used by people who have no idea what the strip was, and now think of Calvin primarily in terms of insulting micturition.

I have this feeling with avatars on social media - you see something charming, or winsome, or clever, or just familiar, and it’s accompanied by someone who’s a high stack of jackfruit, a real piece of . . . work, and you realize again that lousy people, mean people, arrogant people who believe everyone who’s not like them is bad and should be cancelled - these people like the same things you do.

The avatars are often cheerful, too. Perhaps that’s what grates from day to day - a growing sense of disconnect from the culture, either because I’m late middle-aged, or because nastiness these days often comes in such gleeful forms.

Anyway. I’m walking to my car, and there are two guys sitting outside the hotel down the street. It’s an old hotel; goes back to the 20s, when the area was residential. Decades ago new owners covered it up with faux timbers and busted stucco for a Ruined English-Type Place look; it’s not a hot-sheet joint, and the clientele ranges from people on a budget to earnest well-scrubbed high-school marching bands in town from the plains for a convention.

Two guys sitting outside. Thirties, I’d say. Laughing, relaxing, enjoying a smoke, taking in the nice warm day. There was something about their cheer that was heartening - something simple and basic and human, two friends making the most of a Thursday afternoon. As I passed I heard two sentences of their conversations.

“But the Jews, man, they’re the ones that got their shit together.”

“Yeah,” said the other. “The Jews control all this shit.”

No one will ever convince them otherwise. Comes down to this: it is good to be happy, but just because you’re happy doesn’t mean you’re good.

There is no Friday Detritus because I just didn't collect any interent or cultural lint. Well, no, I did, but it's in the form of 265 ads to be shoved into the 1950 site, when it debuts.

The 50s site will be the culmination of the 20th Century Project, if not the entire lileks.com site. It will not have anything about the 90s, though. Things today aren't that different than the 90s. Music, sure. But if feels as if we've been in a cultural slowdown, a stasis, since the late 90s. Computers got good and everything turned inward.

While walking around downtown today I noted that the Andrus restoration is finished - at least the outside. OH GOSH I WAS DYING TO KNOW ABOUT THAT you say and I say shut up and don't be that way.

It was renovated - poorly - in the 80s, in a half-arsed "classical" style.

New owners did the best they could with the lower two floors.

Solved the awkward problem of the corner. The firm doing the redesign, having found this site via googling Andrus, sent me some pictures of things they uncovered.

The old Bond Clothiers! Obviously not original, like the tile in the first picture. It's like finding something under yards of volcanic ash.

Alas:

It's covered up again. It'll never see the light again in our lifetimes.

Meanwhile, the big two-block site is coming along. This extremely short clip should tell you how things are coming along, and how the two projects relate to one another.

In the background you can see the Wells Fargo towers, whose progress we chronicled together . . . oh, a million years ago.

Who it she? Same cross-eyed "I smell something bad" expression as Lori, at least in panel 2.

Don't underestimate Tiny.

Solution is here.

Back to the music at the Blue Note Cafe. Casey, Crime Photographer, is talking with Ethelbert the Bartender.

Ready to be jarred and confused? This aired in '47 or '48.

		Have another opening. This is the writers calling out in despair, or letting everyone know they know.

		The usual stock opening, with custom music for the episode. Notice how it has the "Casey" chord.

		There's that motif again . . .

		And again.

2019 returns to the bins, and the records dumped back into the world when someone dies and the kids give the contents of Mom and Dad's entertainment system to the Goodwill.

		I

Also: :By the time of the scheduled recording of the album in May 1957, drummer Buddy Rich had long since left James's band. But knowing Rich's admiration for Basie's music, James asked Rich to play on the album. Rich was billed as "Buddy Poor" since he was still under contract to Verve Records. Harry James was so pleased by the results from the first day of recording that he wore the same black-and-white striped shirt on the other sessions for the album."

		Friends. we don't have much in the way of Medicine, so we're going to pretend this is some sort of wonder drug.

That'll do - see you Monday! And remember, Bleat+ members - small update today, but they'll get bigger soon. If you haven't gotten your credentials, send me an email - my last name @ icloud dot com - with the subject line DILLWEED. I appreciate your contribution and want to make sure everyone gets to experience the most exciting site on the Internet.