LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat.

Or, if you're one of those tedious scolds who insist on unmediated reality:

Since it’s Restaurant Postcard day, I thought I’d put up some also-rans. You might think that everything gets dumped on the site, but no. Some cards just don’t make the grade.

Above: the Headline restaurant. Below, the Headline Bar.

Below: AI upscaled. Is that wrong? I suppose so.


		It was in the Hotel Times Square, a 1920s hostel that’s ridden the usual peaks and troughs. This postcard was leftover from its original days as the Claman, named for its builder. Spent time as a welfare motel in the Ratso Rizzo era. Still an SRO, it seems.

		Spent time as a welfare motel in the Ratso Rizzo era. Still an SRO, it seems. There are so many hotels that look like this across the country. The standard Commercial style pasted in dozens of cities, varying only in size.

The back of the card says "A Favorite Rendezvous of Newspaper and Theatrical Personalities." Those are two very different tribes. I wonder how well they mixed. I wonder, for that matter, whether any good New York newspaperman would be caught in the Headline Bar. Especially if it was advertised as a placemwhere you could find Newspaper Personalities. There'd be all these out-of-towners with their heads on a swivel, looking for Winchell, or Sullivan.

Or . . . did they actually frequent the place now and then, to bask in the faces that gleam as they recognize the FAMOUS NEWSPAPERMEN? How it must have rankled the middle tier of society-column / Broadway beat newspapermen to walk through this place without lighting up a single face. You could have more readers than the number of people in their podunk towns, and it's not good enough. There's the Winchell Tier and all the rest.

Don't think Pollock got recognized at the Headline.

Looking at the Perigrination for this Thursday, I see we're continuing the New York columnist / entertainment theme, for some reason. Would you like instead to hear about my experience at the AT&T store, where I made small humblebrags about my ability to transfer data and manage storage, as well as my opinion on various USB plugs? No? Okay then.


		So! What's the journey that takes us from this image . . .

		. . . to this one?

Sometimes I come across an ad I snipped, and I’ve no idea why.

I didn’t attach a date. Or a paper. Good work! Maybe I thought it could be found with ease, since it’s obviously the New York Daily News, and I could search for the author.

And that’s exactly what I did.

The story ran on March 19, 1933. Let’s go find it, and let's not get distracted by other stories . . . hey, here's an interesting tale on page 8:

That’s not true. He left an estate of a quarter billion dollars. ,Ever heard of him? I hadn’t. The wiki bio is a mess, especially when it gets to the kids, so perhaps it was written by a descendent who translated the $30 mil into modern money. Let’s just say he left some hospitals and such. Or, as the warnings on the bio say:

I should note that his wikipedia biography has two warnings:

This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably.

This article may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience.

A fair assessment.

Paging through the paper, no Joe Cook yet . . . what's this?

When you see something like this, you never know if it’ll be page one tomorrow, or you’ll never see it again, because she turned up.

Why wasn’t she page one? Not the right class?

Anyway, Joe:

Joe Cook (born Joseph Lopez; March 29, 1890 – May 15, 1959) was an American vaudeville performer. A household name in the 1920s and 1930s, Cook was one of America's most popular entertainers, and he headlined at New York's famed Palace Theatre. After appearing on Broadway he broke into radio.

Not many movies; he didn’t like the medium. But we have this. (Embedding disabled.

Ah hah, here it is.

The piece explains the shower-bath phone.

This is literally what happens.

That last line kills me. I’d like to know more about the logistics, the mechanics of flour-spewing phones, and also WHY? Again, the wiki bio:

Cook, from 1924 to 1941, made his residence at Lake Hopatcong, in Hopatcong, New Jersey, which was then a popular resort. His house was appropriately named "Sleepless Hollow" for the many parties he gave and celebrities he entertained. One visitor, his librettist Donald Ogden Stewart, later recalled that "Joe lived on a mad gag-infested estate in New Jersey which bewilderingly expressed his genius. On his three-hole golf course one drove off confidently into what looked like a fairway only to have one's ball rebound sharply over one's head from a huge rock that had been cunningly camouflaged.

The "butler" was one of the contortionists, acrobats, midgets, or other show-business people whom Joe had picked up his years in Vaudeville. Poor Mrs. Cook lived bravely in this cuckooland and struggled apologetically to bring some degree of common sense into the madhouse.” The Cookhouse still survives at Lake Hopatcong but is not open to the public.

The newspaper piece also mentions Cook's assistant, the amiable stooge:

Sound familiar?

Here’s the town whose paper we read yesterday. A going concern, it seems: “The town is best known for its art festivals, historic restaurants and buildings, and as the home to Berea College, a private liberal arts college. The population was 15,539 at the 2020 census. It is one of the fastest-growing towns in Kentucky, having increased by 27.4% since 2000.”

Remember, I usually start on the outskirts, so you don’t always meet the city at its best.

I think I snipped this to indicate the change in elevation, and how they got around it.

You know, with what they had left, they did the best they could.

The reddish-orange bins stand out nicely, but it’s probably not a permanent installation. Unless it’s street art!

The view through the windows would seem to indicate it’s living quarters for someone. Nice windows.

When all the buildings downtown are given over to coffee shops or nice boutiques and Arts Councils and galleries, it’s not a bad thing. It’s just not as useful.

Built in 1929, with an eye towards economy.