Friday's pizza came from Galactic - it's pretty good, if pricey. Support your locals, etc. Lovely day in Uptown:

That's Uptown Pizza, not Galactic Pizza. Lake street is the east-west, and this is quite a way from the epicenter of the looting and burning, but the mayhem reached a long ways. The Target where Daughter was supposed to work still hasn't reopened.

Parked on Lyndale, walked to the pizza parlor. At least in this part of town the wood was decorated.

Okay, I guess. Have a nice day.

I'll make a note of it.

Had a nice weekend, but coming after a few days off, it meant less than the usual lockdown / quarantine weekend . . . except hold on wait a minute. Are we still having a lockdown / quarantine?

No! The hardware store was open as usual, and I’d say half the people weren’t wearing masks. But now they didn’t look like DANGEROUS MANIACS, but people who’d beamed in from a parallel dimension. A happier one, at that.

But yes, lockdown / quarantine! No one’s supposed to go to the office tomorrow. If you do go it will be empty and the skyways will be empty and there will be few people on the streets, because . . .

Well, it’ll come to me; there has to be a reason. Just seems remote at the moment.

Oh right, the virus! That’s it. I think they extended the Orders for a while. No one seems sure; no one knows what the Order are, exactly, except that something you probably wanted to do at minimal risk is verboten.

So I went to the Home Depot with the Giant Swede, who’s still replacing all his power tools after the robbery. We had a hot dog and felt like free men. Then I dug up a part of the yard and put down fresh dirt and strewed seed on a patch that was once a carpet of spurge. (Saw Carpet of Spurge open for Fountains of Wayne a few years back) Chopped down a small dead tree with my new saw. Sounds busy, doesn’t it? It’s an hour’s work, but I have the gift for spreading it over six.

I mean, if you finish it in six, then there’s something else you have to do.

Monday will be more interesting, but I cannot guarantee it'll spill over here.

My interest in the popular culture of the 20th century now qualifies me as an antiquarian, I suppose. When I first started this site I felt a certain fond amusement and affinity for the commercial art of the past - the cheerful half-truths, the assurance of happiness if you consume these things, the agreed-upon belief that happiness would follow from the consumption of the products. Assumed, not imposed. There was also a sort of comfort in the relationship the present had to these artifacts: they felt like a . . . a safe space to study and find interesting, if inconsequential, things.

But is it possible now to discuss motel signage and architecture without discussing discriminatory rental policies?

Yes, for now. But later? What if a necessary portion of the conversation ( tangential in the sense that it's unrelated to the narratives of aesthetics and the rise and fall of motels, but surely necessary at some point) is redefined as the primary focus of the conversation, with the intention of making all other aspects of the conversation illegitimate?

That's just in case anyone thought the Bleat banner was provocative because that might be a cop, and requires an explanation as to how policing in the 50s perpetuated inequity, and my refusal to do so makes me complicit.

Or maybe it's just a bus driver.

Fine, but putting that image up without addressing segregation in buses valorizes an imaginary past. The very setting implies the existence of segregated lunch counters.

What the modern hard left wants is the same they’ve wanted since the French Revolution: claim the present in the name of the future, repudiate the past, then own the past, redefine it to their terms, then make it off limits for discussion unless you keep within the lines they’ve defined. Discussion of the past outside of the boundaries is counter-revolutionary, and proper consciousness has to be displayed at all times.

It that’s the case, then writing about Roman architectural motifs without noting that the culture practiced slavery is a de facto endorsement of slavery. I say it’s spinach, and to hell with it.

He’s bad!

So is his movie!

But I’ll watch anything with Lawrence Tierney, because he was one of those few actors as rough as the characters he played. He could have pushed George Raft’s face in without trying.

As the movie starts, the Authority in charge of Parole is barking his disapproval of letting this Hoodlum go. This guy always looked like he was 6’6” and four feet across:

Gene Roth, famed Three Stooges villain.

And shows him the electric chair. That’s his only fate if he returns to a life of crime! As it happens, no. But life of crime? Almost right away. Takes his brother’s best gal . . .

Allene Roberts: “Allene Roberts was born on September 1, 1928 in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. She was an actress, known for Bomba on Panther Island (1949), The Sign of the Ram (1948) and Adventures of Superman (1952)” which is to say she probably isn’t known at all, alas. Left the movies when she got married, moved to Alabama, raised four kids. She died in 2019.

Not much inadvertent documentary; mostly stock footage.

Those gas tanks are always a sign of a bygone LA you can’t imagine driving through today.

There’s a visit to General Noir Hospital; not the biggest set budget, as you can tell.

And of course lots of brandished gats.

The first headline might sell some papers . . .

But this seems to be insufficient to warrant the big wood.

It’s second-rate, all of it. Subtle? Oh completely. Here’s how they shoot the scene where it’s implied that the Hoodlum is about to force himself on his brother’s girl.

I’m surprised it didn’t pull into a garage and back out and pull in again, repeatedly.

That'll do; see you tomorrow.