More King Cake at the office today for the occasional Guild Social. Rather dry. Insufficient frosting, at least the piece I took. Since we cut our own I couldn’t jump ahead a few inches to get a particularly rich deposit. I had a bite, declined to repeat it - yes, I suppose, wasteful, but there were 20 people and two King Cakes the size of car tires, albeit deflated ones. So I had half a pastry, helpfully bisected so you could see what was in it: a gooey fluid whose hue intimated the flavor of caramel, or apple. Possibly carameled apple.

I don’t know what it was, to be frank. The taste had a spice note. All I can say is that the presentation of the split pastry made you think apple and/or caramel, and it seemed to go out of its way to disabuse you of your preconceptions. I am not fond of deceitful pastries.

Other thrilling newsroom developments: To my extensive dismay it appears that the big open staircase that ran through the three floors of the newsroom is being walled off. A literal wall. It's 1000% worse. So I had to take the utility stairs to the 13th for coffee. I hadn’t been in that stairwell for years. Why would I? I always get the feeling in these places that no door will open, and you’ll be trapped for a while, raining blows against the door on the ground floor.

Forty minutes later: the fire alarm goes off. Everyone is instructed to evacuate the building. Sigh. I head down the same stairs I hadn’t used in years for the second time in an hour. There was no fire. There is never any fire. Everyone suspected as much, I think, because there were only a few dozen people in the lobby. Even with WFH, that’s a scant showing for a fifty-floor tower.

Drizzly day. Damp. Big snow on the way to remake the world, as happens in March. Still no working snowblower, which is no surprise since I've done eff-all about fixing it. We expect the snowto be wet and heavy, so this could be it, Elizabeth, the big one, I’m comin’ to join you. News is drizzly as well. I suppose there’s been no Wednesday Review of Modern Thought because I can’t tell what the hell is going on. Well, no, I can, but only after I read three contradictory things, twice, and think about it, then feel a curious sense of apathy and resignation, followed by some news that seems to buoy one’s hopes, which are then dashed into the shoals, after which the storm passes and a new one appears from a different direction.

Paradigm disassembly acceleration is what we’re going through now. If we rewind the tape to 2020 we might find the moment when the starter pistol cracked.

NO no you can’t quit the Bleat! Where would we get information about 1929 theater seats?

As it happens, I was looking through a movie theater industry mag again, and paused at one of the frustrating photos of the Brooklyn Paramount. The magazines were scanned in the early days, and the resolution is utter krep. I’ve seen photos from asteroid landers that had better resolution.

The interiors of the theaters was insane.

For all the rococo effusions, there were rooms described as “modernistic.” This is the lobby to the ladies’s powder room.

I've seen clearer pictures of the current-day interiors of the Titanic, he said, driving the bit into the ground.

Since it’s an industry mag for the theater owners, it has ads for chairs. The Brooklyn Paramount chair: ornate sides, wooden armrests.

By the way:

The named partners were brothers C. Ward Rapp (1860–1926) and George L. Rapp (1878–1941), sons of a builder and natives of Carbondale, Illinois. Their Chicago practice is not to be confused with the Trinidad, Colorado practice of their brothers Isaac H. Rapp (1854–1933) and William M. Rapp (1863–1920) or the notable Cincinnati architects George W. Rapp and Walter L. Rapp, to whom they were not related.

That seems like a lot of Rapps in the same field.

Another ad: give your customers the pleasures of a STEEL CHAIR

There’s a story about audience habits changing in the era of sound, and it provides a sociological observation I’ve never encountered elsewhere.

It said that people in the silent days (which hadn’t gone away yet, at all, but was already regarded as the previous paradigm) came and went as they pleased, often dropping in while the movie was well-underway, confident they could pick up the plot right away. But talkies demanded more attention, and hence people who came late and crab-walked down the row to get a seat were a new annoyance, ruining the flow of your concentration. What’s more, people were still prone to converse or make noise, and again, this hindered the ability to focus on the film.

You’d think it would’ve been the other way around, no? Talkies, you can hear, less need to suss out the saga from the action and gestures. People said things, plainly. If patrons chatted during a silent film, it would take you out of the illusion. The theater wasn’t silent, of course; there was music, sound effects.

Ushers handed out cards requesting silence when people entered the lobbies. Signs were posted.

SHUT UP ALREADY

Nice to know there are some constants.

Finally, this ad warns you what’s coming: a whole lotta teeth, and perhaps more, given the saucy implications of that single line.

If you’re thinking that character looks familiar . . . you are correct.

No, I don’t mean Dr. Sardonicus, the movie that scared me so much as a child the mere sight of the name in the TV Guide caused a shiver. The other guy.

It's odd to think that the suave and hissable Nazi in Casablanca was also the inspiration for The Joker, but that's how things worked out.

It’s 1909. Lots of ads. I know that makes the feature seem a lot like the Tuesday History of Advertising, but we shall do our best to ignore that and muddle through.       Many pieces about impending court cases. No need for the paper to go into specifics, since the case was probably well known. Ninety-nine years.     Tired of waiting for the ergot to cause a bout of St. Vitus’ Dance? Slip a little of this into everyone’s glass! The town had tired of going to the pharmacy with the inert, fly-blown corpse behind the counter. Before you go running off to Google, be assured we will be visiting Pauls Valley tomorrow in Main Streets.       Ah, the school land. A term I remember from childhood. I think my uncle farmed the school land. A section of land was set aside for a school in every parcel of land.     This goes back a ways. Since the enactment of the Land Ordinance of 1785 by the United States Congress, one section (section sixteen) of land in each township has been reserved for the support of the public elementary school known as the common school. After 1848 section thirty-six was also set aside. In Oklahoma Territory (O.T.), according to the Organic Act of 1890, if sections sixteen and thirty-six were claimed by American Indians through allotment or by settlers before the land was surveyed, other land was allotted in lieu of those sections. These "in lieu" lands were known as common school indemnity lands. The Organic Act prohibited leasing the land. Realizing no financial benefit from the school lands, Territorial Gov. George Steele appealed to Congress, which passed an act on March 3, 1891, authorizing the lease of the land. And how about this for Our Democracy: In a 1908 general election Oklahoma voters rejected State Question 5, which would have permitted the sale of school and public lands. However, in 1909 the state legislature passed an act authorizing the sale of school lands. Through the years parcels of school lands have been sold with the proceeds deposited in the permanent school fund. The people have spoken! Right. Well, what can we do about that? An important step. National laws would take a while to be passed, and then they’d be declared unconstitutional, so they’d try again, wait a few years. The states could just cut right to it. Wrapping around the news of the barbershop shedding an Agnew, an interesting attribute: hire us, because we pay taxes. Who didn’t? Perhaps the newcomers, but they were aware of it and promised to pay taxes next year. I don’t think the canal claimed a victim here. His pockets had cards indicating he was an agent for a large land-purchasing firm. What had driven him to this? We know more about him than any of the people who died of ague or fistula, because he proceeded on his own schedule. Well same to you, pal The verbosity was expected. But there's something at the end that sticks out: Did people already have their suspicions about Mr. Hallum? The annual journey through the Decades now shifts to the Forties for March, with one of the most underwhelming subjects in the Finished-but-Not-Posted folder: Ideal Kitchens. Thank you for your visit, and I'll see you around.