Why yes, I've always liked Richard Estes. Thank you. Of course, he was a painter, which is leagues beyond me, Mr. Shootencrop. He's still alive, at 92.

Snowed this morn, so it was shoveling before work. Wasn't much. When I left for the office I saw a neighbor's sidewalk crew removing the snow with a gas-powered leaf-blower - don't see that often. Seems like a cheat. You allow that, you've no arguments against flamethrowers.

Walking to work I noticed that there's another mountain in the hotel parking lot:

Looks worse than it is. A student of snow and its varieties will note the powdery coating, which indicates a fresh dusting; the grey outcroppings indicate dirty snow scraped from the parking lot, and subject to a melt-freeze cycle that turns them into boulders. This, in short, is painful water.

You can get painful water if you boil it, but for the most part in places where people wish to live, painful water does not occur naturally. I should also note that the temps occupied a particular niche where there's lots of slush in the gutters and street corners, so if you don't watch your step you soak your shoe with cold, grey water.

"It's the last month of winter!" said the clerk at the store the other day. I gave her a long look intended to express concern for her mental well-being.

"The last month," I said.

"Yes!"

"You're not from these parts, are you."

"Born and raised! In March you have St. Patrick's Day, you spring forward, and you remember last yeat it was in the 60s!"

"True. But there's also false spring and second winter. Late blizzards. Snowbanks on tax day."

"Just wait," she said.

I suppose there's no harm in living in hope. Eventually you're right. Or dead! So there's that.

What do you think?

No, I’m not doing engagement bait for money. Well, we’re all doing that in one way or another, but you know what I mean. What do you think?

It’s a proposal. Reading around here and there I infer that the current MSG in in bad shape, and there’s talk of relocation. Some scoff at the matter of relocation because it’s right on top of a transportation hub, which is good for getting people into the facility, and it won't move. That means the neoclassical overhaul is just a facade, a skin for the old structure. So? All facades are skins for a structure.

If you’re thinking of the old Penn Station facade that faced the Hotel Pennsylvania, this is the other side. The Hotel is gone, having been demolished for a proposed tower with the worst name ever: PENN15. In this date and age I don’t know how anyone didn’t realize what a ribbing they’d take for that. What a reservoir of ribaldry waits to be released. Tip: run all building names past someone with an adolescent sensibility.

Anyway, sure, I’d like it. But only if it felt solid. Don’t clad it with blocks of ersatz stone. Use materials that weigh a ton, because we can tell when it’s fake and when it’s real.

Speaking of a juvenile, immature, adolescent sensibility: the other day they attached new chains to the fire hydrants on the hotel next to my building, and I couldn’t resist.

A No-Prize awaits the first to explain this to the rest of the class.

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Aptent sem nulla curae posuere potenti eleifend. Massa primis rhoncus inceptos torquent sodales posuere. Elementum fames velit risus; inceptos conubia tincidunt metus. Pellentesque dapibus amet fermentum hendrerit erat nam vulputate id. Sem nullam sollicitudin dis fusce rutrum tellus augue nostra ligula! The opening music tells you whether this is an ordinary crime episode, or one of the unnerving kids-today eps that dives into the crazy, drug-fueled world of Today's Youth.

Those guitar-crazy kids with their sinuous saxophones.

There's a shoplifting gang working the department stores. Or rather a gang that uses shoplifting as its initiation. They catch a kid who begs Friday and Gannon to let his friend bring the clothes he stashed at a gas station, so he can change before his mother picks him up.

I mean, look at him! The very picture of degeneracy!

We meet the ringleader, who has that smirky contemptous attitude that makes him the most punchable person you'll see on TV tonight:

He'll get a good speech before the day's over. But the encounter leaves Gannon unnerved:

Yes indeed it is, Joe. Yes indeed.
 
   
 
 
   

 

It's 1947.

The model of modernity: plaid wallpaper and an automatic oven.

Snooze some more! Breakfast will be ready when you get downstairs, because you put everything in the oven and set the timer before you went to bed.

Here’s a picture of the actual machine, with its peculiar little . . . vent hood? No. Light? Perhaps.

Avoid the problem of Sudden Nightclub Strangulation Syndrome!

Sanforizing prevented shrinkage, according to government standards. Yes, there was a Standard Government Test for shirt-collar shrinkage.

No nick, no burn, no tricks to learn:

Tricks? The ad alludes to the razor’s flat learning-curve, which suggests that previous models required some expertise or great manual dexterity to keep from nicking an artery and bleeding out on the tiles.

 

Look, pal, I didn’t hire you to be Salvador Dali, I just want some paintings of - saaaay, these aren’t bad

TEXTRON! HQ at the Textron Building, 401 5th Avenue. Handsome structure.

That’s because it was built as the Tiffany store. The Wikipedia entry thinks it explains the difference in ground-floor stone hue, but it really doesn't.Stanny White design, although I think he was hung over and just turned in a copy of a Venice palazzo.

Did you know this?

Textron Inc. is an American industrial conglomerate based in Providence, Rhode Island. Textron's subsidiaries include Arctic Cat, Bell Textron, Textron Aviation (which itself includes the Beechcraft, Hawker, and Cessna brands), and Lycoming Engines. It was founded by Royal Little in 1923 as the Special Yarns Company. In 2020, Textron employed over 33,000 people in 25 different countries. The company ranked 265th on the 2021 Fortune 500 of the largest United States corporations by revenue.

From Special Yarns to airplanes.

It’s a test to draw blood!

Prolon bristles put the old hog bristles out of business. Trust the Photo-Micrographs!

That handle looks like the tail of some alien oceanic creature.

Say it ain’t so! Look before you buy! Be prepared to fight!

It can’t be the same / if it ain’t got that name

English teachers everywhere wept.

Soft white hands were a sign of status, or at least of proper detergent choices.

I don’t know why brands on the market left your digits looking raw and flayed, but they couldn’t have been that much cheaper, could they? Was an entire class of women doomed to red mitts because they couldn’t find the dime to buy the better stuff?

"Cupid can’t miss with ammunition like this."

So the shirts explode and scatter shrapnel over a large area? Nah, of course not. Just a reminder that they may have demobbed millions of young men, but soldierly figures of speech are still in play.

That'll do - time to visit Eddie's Friends. A new (or old, if you must) Joe Ohio story for subscribers. See you around!