BIG announcement of a new thing today. But you'll have to wait for the usual quotidian palaver.
I was walking in the skyway, headed to Dayton’s.
Note: I haven’t been able to say that phrase, and mean it, since 2001, when the stores were rebranded as Marshall Field’s. A remarkably stupid idea. The sort of thing you do when your managers look down on the very thing they manage, and think that giving the local department store a name from another city will make us cosmopolitan and big-time. We weren’t Chicago. The name had no local currency. Everyone knew Dayton’s. But you get Frango mints now! Up yours, Marsh.
We’ll get to why and how I as going to the lost retail name later. What I noted on the way was something that raised alarms: it sounded as if there was trouble ahead. A hubbub. Lots of excited voices. Since the lockdowns, the skyways have been notable for the lack of hubbubbery. What was this?
Normalcy.
There were three restaurants at this skyway intersection, and each had a line. There were people walking through the skyways, in groups, talking. In other words, what I heard was the normal sound of lunchtime in the skyways, and it was wonderful. I had completely forgotten what it sounded like. And then you think: what else have I forgotten? What else have I become accustomed to accepting?
The crowds were mostly maskless, if you’re curious. Also, when I walked home on the windy streets, everyone I passed, outside, wore a mask. I took had masked up in the morning to get my booster shot, and that was fun: it hurt just a little bit, enough so you’d notice, but nothing like the railroad spikes they used when I was a kid. Also got my flu shot. I imagined them mingling in my bloodstream with clipboards, looking at mugshots of the suspects they were supposed to find.
Odd how we have no visual image of The Flu, but we all know that horrid knobby thing that stands in for the Coronavirus. All those red suckers waiting to fasten on you.
Anyway, I did not understand the words the shot-giver was saying, and asked him to repeat his jowly mumble twice, at which point he took off the mask and spoke clearly, two feet from my face: you may experience fever and fatigue.
Ah, the rote warning. Yes, yes, I know. I may sag. Or I may bound out of here with renewed zest for life, and go forth with my brazenly naked visage into the bracing wind.
I think I've posted this before. It bears repeating. An early 60s Ad for - well, you know.
I think we all know that dad's pants and underwear are about to fall down, right?
It you don't know, it's the celery in the bag. I could say more, but if you don't know, trust me: the answer is somewhere on this site.
Mom's got some crazy eyes going on here, and she also appears to have broken in several places and carelessly arranged on the sofa. Grandma seems lost in a reverie when she was Yank magazine's gam-gal of the week:
Dad's hairstyle, which reminds me of Steve Ditko drawings, is no longer popular. It's as if this just . . . stopped happening to guys.
Anyway, a good message! Our children's heritage is the future. Because we are having children. Lots of them! Children are good.
Of all the freedoms Coke chose to illustrate the idea, they chose Church. Not the freedom to fish or drive or vote or write a letter to the editor, but the freedom to go to Church.
There was no domestic threat to churchgoing, of course. It was not a hard-won victory for most. This was in contrast to the godless Reds.
Church-goers in seasonal ads used to be common, until the advertisers realized they didn't have to do it anymore. It would be jarring if they did it today.
It's not that Coke necessarily believed in any of this, although I'm sure the bottlers did. Coke was thankful for the things you liked, and if you have a different set of preferences, or the culture insists that you should have a different set, or the zeitgeist of the ad industry wants to elevate another set, then Coke will be thankful for those things, too.
Any commercial historian who wants to chart these things will probably see that Coke pulled back on the Churchy Stuff before the culture did, in the same way advertisers in 1940 and 1941 went all in on defense-and-preparedness ads before the culture mobilized post-Pearl But back then I think they were good at sniffing the wind. Now I think they believe it's their job to set up the fans.
The revolutionaries, inspired by liberalism and socialist ideas, did not hand over power to Soviet-style councils as the Bolsheviks had done in Russia, because the leadership of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) opposed their creation. The SPD opted instead for a national assembly that would form the basis for a parliamentary system of government.
Didn’t stop the Communists from organizing and doing everything they could to take over the government.
Not in a forgiving mood, are we?
WHERE IS YOUR HUN GOTT NOW
Hi Ma, I am fine, took a round in the arm but NBD
All of Gotham is a-rage over this catchy new tune:
And here you go:
Stop or I’ll shoot
Okay then
Finally: KEEP ‘EM STABBIN’
What a beast. That wasn’t just a TV. It was furniture.
That will have to do. Now head back to the Fifties! A generous portion - eight pages - of car ads.
And it goes without saying, but should be said anyway, that I hope you have a grand Thanksgiving.
