It's a hiatus week, as noted. No reason. I'm just pretending I'm behind the wheel in the summer, driving off to some holiday destination with a happy family looking forward to the pool at the motel.

Some of these days we'll have below-the-fold features; sometimes there'll be something different.

Today, obviously, we just have the BTF stuff.

OR DO WE?

Well, we do, but there's a payoff coming tomorrow.

It's 1937.

Ah, the source of the main index page banner for a week when the summer began.

And look at the size of those broadsheets! Hence the name, of course.

One of the best logos, and brand names as well - add the streamlined abstracted penguin, and you had an instantly recognizable ad.

I wonder who got the bright idea of adding “menthol.”

“Take a trip to the mountains,” an old friend would say when he offered a menthol. He smoked True 100s, though, a brand notable for tasting like plastic. I gather the slogan eventually encompassed the entire menthol category in the minds of the consumers.

As long as we’re lighting up, let's investigate the smoking preferences of some damp, attractive young people:

For digestions's sake! Smoke and you’ll crap better! Also, you’ll crap right away!

Jane Fauntz Manske; hubba hubba. Olympian. Also, her right thigh is expecting.

Wikipedia:

Fauntz parlayed her Olympic success to a career in marketing, modeling, and professional aquatic exhibitions. She became one of the first female athletes to appear on the Wheaties cereal box; she was also one of many celebrities of the time recruited to endorse cigarettes (in her case, Camels) and beer (Falstaff). Jane also appeared as cover girl for Life and Ladies Home Journal. She worked as a model for Saks Fifth Avenue. As a professional diver, Fauntz appeared in exhibitions at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933, where she met future husband Edgar "Eggs" Manske, an All-American football star at Northwestern University; they married in 1936.

Another Olympian; after her career ended she did a few TV commercials. “In 1968, she was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame."

I visited the Swimming Hall of Fame a few years ago; pretty sure I walked past whatever commemorates her career, or saw her likeness on the wall of caricatures.

Leonore Wingard. Hey, they’re all Olympians.

Harold “Dutch” Smith - “During World War II he served as a captain in the U.S. Navy, and after that worked as a pool manager at luxury hotels in Palm Springs and Santa Barbara." Something of a come-down.

Pete Desjardins. Of the gardens, in other words. Joined the Aquacade and dived until he could dive no more. Why would one retire from diving? Because it hurt? Because your old bones might not stand the impact?

It's that British swim sensation, Mr. Doing Hand-Stands:

Well, no. Gloria Wheeden has one imbued credit, and it’s “Water-Waltzer” in a Jack Benny flick.

In other words, attractive vigorous athletes smoke. Why don’t you?

Finally:

Ah, the work of John Brassefort.

No, you don’t know what I mean, but you will, tomorrow. That's when you meet an artist whose work was seen by millions, and whose work is completely forgotten today - until I found him.

That'll do; see you around.