I was wearing a new sweater on Sunday to watch football. Not my usual purple sweater, because it is thin and the weather is cool. The game was going well, but the Giant Swede noted that we were in the Red Zone and this raised the spectre of a Darnold INT, whereupon - for some reason I cannot identify - I said that if that happened, he had cursed my new sweater, and I could never wear it again.
However, I quickly clarified, that applied to this play only. There was no interception, and my future sartorial choices were not diminished. It's all ridiculous fun, of course, but here's the thing: if there had been an interception, I would never have worn the sweater to watch football again.
The vision of lovely gold above was the Saturday chore. I've paid someone to clean the yard of leaves already. Twice. But they came before three big trees dropped their amber burden, and for the first time since we moved here I've had to rake. It was a fine fall day, bright and mild, and one might enjoy the task if it wasn't so great. It took me an hour to move the leaves down to the curb with the odious blower, and even then I didn't get them all. Some were wet and prefered to stay right where they were, thank you, we're quite comfy. Ahhhh, think I'll decompose, right here. Or maybe not! Perhaps I will just maintain my present form for the whole winter, revealed when the glaciers abate. In either case I'm not going anyHEY WAIT NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING
I'm raking, is what I am doing. I was almost finished with the long broad slope when, to my dismay, something came up. And that would be the wind.
It ripped the leaves from the trees, gathered the wastrels in the gutter, summoned the comrades from the trees across the street, and recarpeted the lawn. O the despair.
I stopped to talk to a fellow who was taking an afternoon walk, and we chatted about the leaves and the clement day, and then he said: "so, are you still writing?" Why yes. Why not? jameslileks.substack.com. He said he'd wondered if I would keep writing after my retirement. No, no, t'wasn't that. Not at all. The management decided it did not fit the new vision of the reimagined, rebranded paper. He did not agree, but I said we do have a cannabis-grower columnist, so you lose some, you win some.
Once a day I find myself telling someone I did not retire. Why would I retire?
There was more home maintenance to do, of course. Never stops. Wife accidentally kicked the cover off the baseboard heater in the kitchen family room, and noted that it was dusty. "It," I should note, consisted of a pipe piercing a thousand or so thin metal squares, intended (I assume) to increase the area that heats up and radiates warmth. She got out the vacuum, but it didn't do much. An hour later I enter the kitchen, and find her cleaning each square, individually, with wet Q-tips. I have two reactions:
1. You're insane
2. I'd better pitch in
Any fellow married long enough knows it's #2. So I got a bowl of water and some Q-tips and started at the other end. She had the Homepod set to NPR, so I listened to a first-person documetary about a woman who ended up in prison for driving drunk and killing someone (Prison bad, misses kids) and then an interview show that featured a guy who wrote a memoir we were assured was brilliant but lacked excerpts, and mentioned his wife, his kids, and his "queerness," but did not elaborate - again, wouldn't be relevant except it's a memoir. He did talk about watching TV a lot as a kid, though, mentioning the impact of "Three's Company," but then said "don't get me started" and the subject was dropped. Seemed like a nice guy, though.
We finished the job in an hour and I only sat through one top-of-the-hour news segment, which led with the big breaking story that Trump's cabinet nominees are raising eyebrows in DC. That was the top story on Saturday night, 9 PM. Top headline on Google at the time: Xi says he will work with Trump team as he meets Biden in Peru
Seems important.
You may recall on Friday I head a sound that made me think of another sound.
You will recall this from Monday:
And what was it? My brain heard the sound and added this.
Glad I remembered not to keep you in agaonizing suspnse over that one.
Also in my notes for Monday: "Pathe news chicken." This always cracks me up. Leo the roaring Lion it is not. I believe it's named Chanticleer, or is a reference to the character in the old fables.
Constructional Bead Pull Toys, of course:
The bag of money makes me wonder if this wasn't something intended to be sold door-to-door. Ads in the back of magazines telling guys how they could make big money.
It’s a B-movie from the Dragnet era of realistic cop shows. A suite of plots, rather than one. Our hero is juggling a variety of cases over the course of a day or two, and we see how he plays his cards. It’s . . . okay.
Eddie G! And? You may not know the man on the left, but the minute you hear him speak, he’s familiar.
The snivelling little man who wasn't the voice of Piglet.
There’s a madam whose call girls may have heard some stuff. She’s cheerful! All brass!
And she’s not very good.
Pity, that, but I remember her mostly from a Chaplin silent. She also flirts with Eddie G in a way that suggests they have a history. It’s forced and unconvincing, but you don’t really care.
Hey, it’s Frank Lovejoy!
But . . . he sounds different. That’s because - well.
Another (lesser) source of disgruntlement for Binns was, that he found himself often mistaken for the actor Frank Lovejoy,
Who’s the psycho in this gang? Ooooh boy, someone’s gonna get stabbed
There’s a kidnapping at a bank when the job goes awry. How awry? They didn’t know there was a guard upstairs, and he has zero compunctions about doing his job:
The victim of the kidnapping:
For some reason she reminds me of the lady cats Pepe LePew thinks are skonks:
Okay, enough of the talent. There’s inadvertent documentary! It’s not exactly hard to tell where this is:
9600 Santa Monica Boulevard. But what’s the cross? Bedford, which gives us some nice then-and-now. Check the above pic, compare:
Perfect post-war rehab, with the thin bricks. And it survived. I always feel like I’m seeing an object in the wreck of the Titanic when I come across these details.
This?
I’ve no idea. Or rather I do, but I’ll let you see if you can find what might be it.
That will do for today, Bleat wise; Matchbooks, the Substack at 10 AM, and a Diner await. See you around!
