Monday, and back to it. The whole week stretches out, its opportunity and obligations. So many possibilities! Yet we know how it will unfold, don’t we? It will proceed as ever. No one will get into the elevator, stare straight ahead, make no conversation, then, when the doors open, thrust an envelope into our hand and say “tell the doctor the moon is green,” then hastily exit.

We will not look at the envelope with confusion, thinking he must have mistaken me for someone else, and stop the elevator door from closing and call after the man, only to see him disappear down the hall of a floor in the building that does not seem occupied at all, only the bare framework of columns, no furniture.

We will not try to return to that floor after lunch, the elevator buttons will not respond. We will not think about it with a nagging sense of unease for the rest of the afternoon as we go about our work, finally putting it out our mind by closing time, and we will not note with concern that someone seems to be following us from our office to our car. We will not remember the envelope, still in our pocket, nor will we think of the cryptic message. We will not, 48 hours later, find ourselves in South Dakota being chased by a crop-spraying plane equipped with a machine gun.

We will probably have a salad for lunch on Tuesday, or intend to, but the line is too long because it’s “back to the office” day, the pretend day, and all the gals are going for the healthy stuff, so maybe it’s the pizza restaurant today, and sure enough it’s all guys in line, with four uniformed officers from the cop shop. Not one of them gives you a second look because he’d seen your mug in a BOLO handout at the morning briefing. We will probably enjoy our pizza and leave most of the thick crust on the end because carbs, and then get a Milky Way at the convenience store and wonder if the swirl of chocolate on the top is different for every one, whether they are like snowflakes, no two alike, or whether the swirl is meant to impart a sense of uniqueness that is actually standardized across the line, like so much of the way we regard our own existence.

We might go upstairs, back to our office, and think about how the guy who invented the Milky Way really made his mark in the world, and here we are, twitching like a Pavlov pooch when the Outlook chime tells you the boss sent an email and the Slack notification sound says there’s a meeting at two to discuss how to onboard the stakeholders for the reorg. We might realize that everyone has these ordinary lives, earning imaginary shekels that pile up on a webpage we can’t access unless we enter the code our phone gave us, and you hate to look at those numbers because it’s an illusion when they go up and all too real when they go down. Everyone. All of us. Our collective epitaph could be salad for Tuesday.

So you put some blank pieces of paper in an envelope and put it in your pocket and when you’re heading out of the office for the day you pause in the elevator and press them in the hands of a stranger and whisper “the Doctor says the moon is green,” and walk quickly away. At least someone will have an interesting day. A week later you see a story on Google News about someone from the reinsurance firm in your building found dead in South Dakota. The family has a GoFundMe, and you open up the link. Well, at least the kids are grown and out of the house. You close your browser and clear your cache.

I’m looking at a normal week. And that’s fine. Another Scapes in the paper on Friday, probably a rewrite on Monday, then I peck away at the next one for four days, la-de-dahing the whole time. Gym. Podcasts. And, all the while, beavering away at The Other Things, and planning the next leap out into the world.

But that’s another day, another Bleat.

Overbrook was really cranking out the brands in '34.

I wonder if there was a dime's worth of difference between them.

This is not a “lost gem” or an “under appreciated noir masterpiece.”.

It’s a standard studio product - which says a lot about standard studio product, because it’s entirely entertaining and great to look at. It’s a bit flabby in the middle, and relies on a trope of the times: a guy’s been shot, and he’s telling the events that led up to it before he takes the long goodbye.

Anyway: the start of the movie just looks fantastic. So very farkin’ forties you could plotz:

Actual footage shot outside!

There’s a nice touch. The A. S. Beck stores sold shoes in elegant surroundings, and noted to this day for a famous storefront that defied anyone to use it for anything else.

The interiors have that overly fussy crawling-baroqueness that you saw a lot, in case anyone thinks it was all lean and clean.

But it was also a time when rich people lived in big old houses . . .

. . . , usually occupied bya no-nonsense Mother who had outlived her husband by a few years and was now, oh, pushing 65.

I recommend it, because it’s a good way to while away some time, and the antihero is an interesting actor to watch. At some point I had to google to see if he was actually Jonathan Frakes’ grandfather:

I mean, c’mon, he has to be.

The surprise comes in the form of Broderick Crawford, playing an ominous shamus.

Nightclub scenes out of Buck Rogers:

Chanteuse leering and posing against the emptiness of the soul:

All that in a completely standard B movie that attempted to make no statements about the human condition, but wanted to tell a tale of a love triangle. Just another piece off the assembly line.

Then again, so was Casablanca.

Annnd, once again, the Diner.