I’m looking at the list of things I meant to do this weekend, and 5 out of 6 boxes are unticked. This does not trouble me at the moment. One of the items was simply too large, and I think I put it on the list to remind me to make some vague, general motions that implied I was beginning to consider whether to think about deciding to do something. The other was a reminder to update some credit card information. I could do that right now! Be right back.
Okay, that’s two out of six! Feeling the momentum now. So let’s watch some TV.
Ah, here’s that movie set in the TV control room at the 1972 Olympics. I’m sure it’s an interesting perspective but I have something of a counteraction to anything that tries to make the media the star of an event. The reviews are mostly positive. The ones that give the movie scant stars are the ones that are queasy about telling the story of the Black September murderers without, y’know, context. Or slotting into current events. Bah to that. Extra bah.
(Later. Watched it. Fine enough movie.)
After which, what? Another olllllld movie, I guess. I could do the third episode of the serial for 2026. It’s pretty good. Well, it started good, then fell off. As do they all. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t do a 12-part serial if I’m planning to shut down the Bleat in the middle of 2026.
It would be thirty years.
Isn’t that enough?
So I watched an episode of Landman, simply because I would watch Billy Bob Thornton in anything, but really love it when he gets to smoke a cigarette and tell people off, and then I wished it was Monday so there’d be the last episode of another show I’m watching. Hulu. Paradise. Very tight eight episode season.The penultimate ep nailed me in place on the sofa for 55 minutes. A remarkably harrowing show.
But there isn’t one available, so I could start Severance.
Thirty years is a long time. 2027 would be 30 years at the paper, but I don’t think I’ll make it. You might think "no, without the newspaper, you'll really need the outlet of the Bleat" but what if the last year has just soured me so completely I don't want anything to do with words and maybe will sit at the airport as a greeter and direct people to the rest room, which at least is useful
Just started Nosferatu. The new one, not the original. It began with an ad for Ameriprise, and showed the company logo - which is a bit weird, since that’s the logo outside the empty tower I pass through on my way to the office, or home. I wonder if there are any vampires in the vacant upper floors.
They took the art off the lobby wall, remember? It looks like this now.
It’s not as if I wish to be freed of this website - not at all. If I made more money from it, it would be harder to walk away.
Let me be clear: not the end of the Bleat, necessarily, but the Bleat as we know it today. Maybe.
Okay, Nosferatu is interesting but I think I need to watch it in a different mood. Let's see if there's a Hitchcock presents I haven't seen . . . ah.
He's a young and frustrated fellow who wants a better job. He's driving a truck through the desert with his father and doesn't know where his life is going anymore. Then crooks show up.
HEY
Fifty-seven years later.
Then again, if I stopped, who would go through the Annual Corporate Reports for bygone drug store chains, looking for pictures of a bygone world that still holds such a pecular appeal, such a magnetic draw for some?
The Dutch Oven Fountain would be augmented by sit-down restaurants in a few years, where tired shoppers could get a bite away from the noise and commotion of the store. They were much junkier, and didn't have Sputnik light fixtures.
In those days, Gray Drugs did not stint when it came to cigar options.
It's been a while since the drug store had a Cigar Department. I assume this meant they had a Cigar Manager, as well. Or someone whose duties included the management of the Cigar Department. Maybe I could get a job as a Cigar Manager.
I have to write a piece tonight about the Twin Cities skyline and was instructed to find a Skyline Expert to quote instead offering my own thoughts on the matter.
Oh - Gray Drug also handled pharmacies for larger department stores. Ever hear of this one?
Consumers Mart of America. Look at that sign! Look at that madhouse crowd! CMA would go bust, and folded into Zayre's. The name of that chain - also gone - came from Yiddish, by the way. Zehr gut, very good.
I'm tired.
Our theme this year: The trademarks of a 100 years ago.
I am surprised they took this long.
Remarkable to think that a recording device has been around this long.
One of our periodic features this year: the Library of Congress silents.
A Bronx morning is a portrait of a place and time, simultaneously a documentary, an avant-garde experiment, and an amateur film--although its compositional beauty and complex editing disguise that it is a 21-year old's first attempt at moviemaking. Architectural abstractions are only part of Leyda's portrait. The film soon naturalizes its abstractions into a vibrant vision of children's games and adult commerce on the summer streets of the Bronx, the New York borough northeast of Manhattan.
Every city had one of these guys, who doubt had a little Barton-Finky need to tell the story of the common man, Chollie, the poetry of the streets.
Jay Leyda (February 12, 1910 – February 15, 1988) was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film historian, noted for his work on U.S, Soviet, and Chinese cinema, as well as his documentary compilations on the day-to-day lives of Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson.
The artistic scenes aren’t particularly interesting, to me. I too have shot lots of train tracks running together and fancied myself an artist. The street life, the scenes of a 90 years ago, yes. That’s the appeal.
I would never in a million years guessed that the heads in the shops did this.
Seems like a permanent sign for a temporary condition:
Sometimes it's just unforced scenes of people in the city . . .
Then it's a random view that appears to be a composition:
Then it's some tantalizing ephemeral information. Boston Road theater:
That's a good branding strategy:
Early 20th century hand-made typography:
RANDOM THINGS THEN BIRDS
The last sequence is pretty sharp. I'll bet audiences clutched their chair-arms. If there was any audience.
Got it, kid, you saw Potemkin
Actually, after seeing this movie, Eisenstein offered him a chance to study with him in Soviet Russia, and he took it.
This posed a challenge: where is it?
A subsequent close-up has a street sign with “Fox St,” so that’s easy enough to find. But where is this? Easy and/or peasy: consider the angle of the shot. That’s right. He’s up somewhere.
He’s up on the El.
And so.
Close-up in the same area:
We are blessed with a close-up of a magazine rack:
This lets us drill down to perhaps the only thing in the movie that's not a building, and still survives.
Here's the whole thing, if you like.
This week's Diner!
And, because I was on the road and couldn't do much, last week's Diner!
That will do. As I noted, some small interface changes this week, for anyone who's paying any attention or cares at all. Maybe that's all of you! So I'd like to think.
