Woke Sunday morn in a state of confusion and unease. I had dreamed I was opening Carnegie Hall, doing "Fiddler on the Roof" with Jerry Seinfeld as Tevye. I'd enjoyed the pre-show banquet, but suddenly realized I didn't know my lines. I didn't even know what role I played. Perhaps it would be better if I just didn't show. OR, new idea, I could bring an electric guitar and improve the musical thus. I went back to my hotel and got my Strat and was walking the Streets of New York with the guitar over my shoulder, my confidence ebbing with every step.

Believe it or not, you just got a preview of a new Friday feature, due in 2023.

Beautiful weekend, with all the good things. Weather, pizza, whisky, football, movie, naps, work, interspersed with the occasional consultation with the news streams. Best of all: I fixed something!

Wife’s car had a dead headlight. I remember trying to replace the headlight on her previous car. It required removing the entire front of the car, I think, and hoisting the engine block up. Well, to the internet, Robin.

Ah: seems simple enough. Remove one screw, pull up a tab, pull out the headlight assembly. Turn the dust cover counterclockwise, pull out the light, replace, reverse. Can do!

Really, can do!

First stop: get the bulb. As it happens there’s an Auto Zone in our neighborhood. No one likes it. Used to be a Walgreen’s; they built a bigger store down the block, and the old store was vacant. Everyone was wondering what would go in. A bakery would be nice! Perhaps a restaurant!

AUTO ZONE? Are you kidding me?

It’s right next to a big auto repair joint that did the neighborhood a favor and built a new shop, replacing its old tumbledown shed. It’s not the sort of chic urbanism we would like, but the intersection has been cursed for a long time. There’s a gas station on one corner, which bleeds away the compression you get when all four buildings come up to the sidewalk. Then again, only one building comes up to the sidewalk. The AutoZone has a parking lot. The “Professional Building,” which houses various medical offices, has a parking lot. The old pizza joint burned down years ago, and it’s still a vacant lot. But the grocery store is gorgeous, the old movie theater marquee is still intact, a four-story apartment building replaced a boring old bank, and the strange Tudor-accented office building down the street is being stripped for a spirits store. What will become of the old spirits store - once a grocery store - is not known. If it's a car-parts show people are going to lose their bleep, unless Auto Zone moves in there and their old store turns into . . . probably a CVS, just so they can ruin everything for the Walgreens.

Seriously: they built one next door to the Walgreens in the burb where I shop, and I heard an old lady customer get angry about it. They shouldn't be allowed to do that!

Anyway. I got the bulb. An H11. Went home, took a nap - wife had car on dog walk and errands. I knew I could get it done in time for her to leave for tennis at 6, and I’d be able to make dinner before then. All good.

He said, knowing that you know exactly how it’s not.

When I went down to the garage I looked at the YouTube video to guide me through this simple process. First step: use a 7mm socket wrench to remove a nut.

Get out the big socket wrench box.

There’s no 7mm. Twenty-five sockets, but nothing as small as a 7mm.

Okay. Well. It’s now 4 PM. I have two hours! I can find one. Go to the hardware store, park, but think: surely the Giant Swede has one. Text him; he does. Can I come and get it? I can. Off to his house. He putters around in the drawer of a big cabinet in the garage, and can’t quite tell if he has the right one; the markings are too small. Eventually he gives me the kit from his car.

“You’re prepared,” I said. “You have a socket wrench kit in the front compartment. Does it come in handy? Ever?”

“It might,” he says, sensibly. I also borrow the handle-thing the turns the 7mm part, and head home. I get home, pop the hood of her car, and start fitting the various sockets over the head of the nut until one fits. Then I put the handle-thing into the socket . . . and it turns freely, because it’s too big.

I’ve come this far, and I’m FOILED by a tool. Instant recalibration of what I'll aay to Wife: he gave me this tool! It’s not my fault! Then I realize that the top part of the handle-thing snaps off, because it’s an adaptor. Now it fits.

I have the thing off and fixed in four minutes. Six, if you count taking it apart again and reattaching the dust cover, which I forget. Seven, if you count fishing for the plastic connector part that fell into the deep recesses of the engine. And it works! I have performed Auto Repair!

Then I made the best hamburger I’ve made in a long time. There was some left over for Birch, along with some bacon and cheese.

A grand day for all.

And now, Monday's needless and sporadic above-the-fold feature:

Hitchcock’s first talkie. Off all the names in this sequence of ads, his would be the most enduring.

It was the first British all-talkie, so great claims had to be made. I don't know why; you'd think "first British all-talkie" would enoight, but no. GREATEST FILM EVER etc.

		British poster excerpt: See our mother tongue as it should be spoken!

This is pretty good, isn't it? Sound opens up all sorts of new possibilities, and he knew it.

No, we're not done with these.

Same theme; we’re back to the jaunty old number with the Gershwin overtones and the sudden burst of romanticism. Shall we reacquaint ourselves with it?

		It's so 40s. That earnest theme of yearning is just so 40s. It's as if the composers could toss one of those off at will.

We’re on a train, the San Franciscan. The Height of 40s style:

Hey, look who’s here! It’s the comic mainstay of the programmers. Edward Brodie. He’s playing Goldie Locke - really - the sidekick role played by Allen Jenkins in the early numbers.

Well, we’re not here for the plot. We’re here for the chance we’ll see some inadvertent documentary of old San Francisco, or if it’ll be all rear-projection . . .

Drat.

But that's just one scene. this is shot for the movie. This too:

Rather charmless view. On the other hand:

Remnants of the Expo.

I have next to nothing about this Fair. I'll have to remedy that.

I'm sure there are a million sites about it, but experience taught me that they're either academic and limited in the material, or a fan site ignored fro the last 11 years.

As for the plot, it’s a mess, but it does involve the Falcon getting worked over with more athletic vigor than I’ve ever seen.

One more note: we always get the latest in fashions.

Love the straps and buckles. Keeps the front of the dress from falling down, I'm sure. She is also being mind-controlled by an alien muffin:

Men’s fashions hardly change at all. All they really did was lose their hats.

Aside from the fact that all the men wore suits with carefully knotted ties, all the time.

Anyway, the Falcon solves the crime and acts flirty to the ladies, although everyone today would think he's gay.

That'll do - another week begins. Hope it's worth your while!