Now we start September in earnest. Yesterday was the beer frame. And yes, because I just said a cliché, I am obliged to tease it apart with boring literalness. Is there a city called Earnest, and if so, do they have regular celebrations for things that are starting? For some reason I thought “sounds like a Kansas town,” and, well:
History
Earnest was issued a post office in 1882. The post office was discontinued in 1889. There is nothing left of Earnest.
Good weekend, all in all, with the usual mix of favorite meals and chores. Got takeout from the local Thai place, and was reminded - with a wince - how I’d written a column about tipping on take-out. I don’t do it. I will tip someone who brings the food. Transportation must be involved. The shortest distance is from kitchen to table. If someone takes a bag from a shelf and turns around and hands it to me, this does not deserve 20% of the bill. Sorry. I made the error of referencing a sign one sees in small cafes and diners about Tipping, and it caused the column to be pulled. Supposedly this had nothing to do with subsequent decisions. So I was told.
I wrote a lot. I overhauled two big websites, which will be noted by no one. It’s the silliest thing, really - has to do with Comic Sins. For a while in the Oughts there was a tendency to append an exclamation point! to everything comics-related! referencing the cliches and iron laws of old comics! I still remember the first time I saw a speech balloon end with a period - a paradigm evaporated before my very eyes. Suddenly everything seemed serious and real, and it made every other sentence look overwrought!!
It was a geeky nerdy thing to reference, and I got rid of it. I’m annoyed by just about everything that relates to geek culture these days anyway. I am a Man of Two Funkos - Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks and Booker from Bioshock Infinite - and I have a Space Ghost action figure at the office. That’s it. Anything more and I'd have to wear a fedora and do YouTube monologues from a room lined with unopened Star Wars toys.
I mowed the lawn, as it had been a fortnight since it got a good shave. I dispensed with my clever scheme for carving it up into parts according to terrain, because I had an idea: what if I just went back and forth, end to end, making little feints and moves where needed?
I swear it took 20 minutes off the job. The whole problem came from my desire to avoid an inevitable aspect of mowing a hill with trees and sudden changes in elevation, but no matter now I did it it was always going to be a matter of pushing it up and pushing it down. I just made a lot of work for myself. But since I was the one working, I don’t mind. Bottom line: it’s mowed and I got a good workout.
We did not grill on Memorial Day, or have sherbe(r)t. Those traditions have fallen away, although I am still close to all the people with whom we shared the day. We just don’t do it anymore. But we will, I know, do it again.
STONE UPDATE: Four stones were moved from the Oak Island Water Feature to the front, and placed with care. This now brings the total to seven stones of varying size and all, of course, are characterized by intentionality.
BIRCH UPDATE: Still limping. Still soaking his paw at night. He seemed to be getting better but then my wife gave him a walk - what started out as just around the block went longer. And of course he’s running around the backyard all the time as well, chasing this and that. I am at a loss as to how we get past this without the surgery.
Fans of Dateline, the show that still manages to make you wonder if the husband did it, probably are enjoying “Morrison Mysteries,” in which the gravitas growl of Keith M, austere Canadian bard of sin, reads a story. They’re using the classics. First it was Christmas Carol, then the wonderful “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and now something called “The Dead Alive.” I groaned when I heard the author: Wilkie Collins. Oh, he’s famed in the detective-novel lit history for “The Moonstone,” and the gothic mystery “The Woman in White,” but mid 19th-century popular literature is so saturated with sentiment and stilted scenes where people fall over themselves to have the proper conversation.
“I know you will forgive me, kind sir, even though I must ask that you do so with a glad heart, and with the kindness in your heart that I know is there, but if you will bear with me a moment more, as I pray you must, I beg of you to tarry and hear what I have to say.”
“Say nothing of it, dear child. Whatever can be the matter?” I said, thinking of the look that old Sirus had given her across the porridge at breakfast. What act had prompted that malevolent look, that expression of contempt? Her brothers had seemed not to notice, sullen and lost in thought for reasons of their own, which might have pertained to the previous evening when one coughed loudly during a game of whist, prompting his brother to stand and slam his hand down on the table and say he would have no more of his mockery. What strange angers passed between the two, I thought. “Speak your mind, as always.”
She twisted her handkerchief and looked over her shoulder, as if expecting someone. “It is Mr. Sanderson, from the village. I fear he may speak to me in town today.”
“Speak to you? Of what?”
“Oh I cannot say, do not ask me to say. Do not think me cruel for not wishing to tell, I can only say - but hush, here comes my brother. Say nothing of this, I beg you!”
“You have my word.”
Rufus was striding across the lawn with a cudgel in one hand. He had fire in his eyes and the demeanor of a man who had a cudgel and fire in his eyes.
I mean, it just goes on and on like that.
UPDATE: I finished it and it ended exactly as everyone knew it would. The plot was lifted entirely from an actual story. At least Collins said as much in an afterwards.
When you watch old TV you realize how many archetypes we have lost. Whether these people existed for real in sufficient quantity to populate every other story in the world, I don't know. But you may recognize these from old shows, and less from new ones.
The Floozy. She’s blonde, pushing mid-30s, a drawling slurring drunk, quarrelsome when in her cups, and bitterly miserable when sober. There’s a few hours when she shines, and that’s when she’s between the first and the fifth drink. You’d best catch her then, but if you know what’s good for you, you won’t. But then again if you knew what was good for you, you wouldn’t be in the bar at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
She is usually accompanied by The Bartender, a figure of stoic reserve who spends most of his day wiping a glass with a rag. He usually built like a bull, says little, and commands a silent authority. You know you’re on the verge of alcohol poisoning if he hesitates to refill your glass, and says don’t you think you’ve had enough.
The middle-30s executive drunk. In those days, people got really boiled - you could have your tie askew, hair plastered on your forehead from anxiety sweat, eyes glassy and tongue as thick as a Delmonico sirloin, and you’d still keep drinking. You might end up at a dive joint at 3 AM, where you might meet a version of the Floozy, who was remarkably sober, took you home, and subsequently ruined your life.
The Milquetoast. Prissy, bespectacled, gay in a sexless sort of way. Lived alone in a boarding house, with a hotplate for a kitchen. Usually a bookkeeper who was let go a month for reasons that were not his fault, which made him plot some careful revenge.
The Sickly Wife. She was confined to the bed for reasons that were never made clear, but one could assume it was because of her heart. She always wore a frilly nightgown and either bossed everyone around, or played for sympathy with a never-ending series of Atttacks. She was usually attended by a kindly physician who had known her all her life and also suspected she played up her infirmities a bit. The Sickly Wife was often seen off by a tired husband who longed to be free of her whining demands.
The Boss. A figure of unchallenged authority. Brusque, irritable, beset by economic forces you could not know or comprehend.
I was thinking about these archetypes while watching a scene from AHP:
I've seen her in many roles, playing a breathy blonde who may or may not be as dumb as you think. She's trying to get a letter back from the post office, and has to deal with another archetype: the East Coast Civil Servant.
Put all that aside and consider the poster. I can't find it.
I know what it says and I know what it's for, but nothing comes up on searches. You can try, if you wish.
It’s 1971.
Another installment in our look at the potpourri years of popular music.
1 This one ran in constant rotation. Great song! He had a string of hits, million sellers.
Another traumatic incident, which reportedly affected Preston deeply, occurred in the early 1970s, while he was engaged to actress/model Kathy Silva. At this time Preston had become close friends with musician Sly Stone, and made many contributions to Stone's recordings of the period (including the album There's a Riot Goin' On). According to Moore, Preston was devastated when he came home one day to find Stone in bed with Silva (who later famously married Stone on stage at Madison Square Garden). According to Moore, Silva's affair with Stone was the trigger that led Preston to stop having relationships with women. It was after this incident that he began using cocaine and having sex with men, and Moore has stated that she saw his drug abuse as his way of coping with the internal conflicts he felt about his "sexual urges”.
“A healthy child of the earth.” Yes, it’s certainly; 1971, isn’t it.
Give her an ear. Because if you ain't heard Dianne, you ain't heard nothin' yet. And since you ain't heard nothin' yet anyway, you might start by listening to the singles release from the album:
This seems to presume right up front you haven’t heard of her.
https://livesessions.npr.org/artists/dianne-davidsonhttps://livesessions.npr.org/artists/dianne-davidson with mainstream success eluding her.
Tommy Tate passed away on January 20. Tommy never got his rightful dues. He was a prolific songwriter and he released dozens of impressive and soulful records, but only three of them enjoyed a moderate chart run. In this case true talent didn’t correlate with commercial success. There were numerous reasons for that - such as wrong business choices, coincidences and bad luck, even naiveness, industry exploitation and setbacks in personal life – and they all must have caused that melancholic undercurrent, which so much characterizes his music.
We seem to have a theme today, don’t we.
Ah, here’s a cheery story! Buck’s always good for a pick-me-up.
How we sneered at Hee Haw back in the day! Because it was ridiculous and corn-pone. And Buck was, you know, your dad’s music.
But Buck - and Roy, of course - were awesome. We just didn’t know it.
The Nugget was in Sparks, if you’re curious.
8-Tracks. Gah.
“Simulates the most expensive rare book-bindings.”
The Musical Miniature Mint:
Black and white ad, but not a black and white machine.
Stop giving your ad campaigns to the office stoner, I beg you
Some help decoding this:
"Jungle Fever" is a 1971 track performed by Belgian producers the Chakachas, written by pianist and arranger Willy Albimoor (as Bill Ador) and first issued in Belgium by Swineyard, an independent record label.
About Mr. Kruger I don’t know, and I don’t know why anyone would care if he was in New York. The Dorset, where I had drinks once with an agent in my very early days, no longer exists. It was a beaut.
Ads like these were meant to stand out, but too many ads looked like this after a while - and you couldn’t tell at a glance what it was about.
No Wikipedia page. Their LastFM page describes the band as “short-lived.” Subsequent side-man and producing work seemed to go better for them.
