If the inaccuracies of AI art become commonplace and accepted, people will think that 1950s downtowns had lots of trees. Or, in this case, strange metal-cellulose hybrids that began as street lights but turned into trees. Also, couples walked in the street to avoid the chamberpots people emptied from the second floor!
Thursday night for the first time I watched the NFL Draft - a reprise of football season Sundays with the Giant Swede and the Crazy Uke. I'd never watched the draft before. I had no idea what to expect. Put it this way: it's like a football game without the football. Pageantry, painted fans, hype, spash, highlights, stats. Just no football. Get this:
The 2023 NFL Draft in Kansas City had a total unduplicated audience in the United States of 54.4 million viewers for the three-day event.
FIFTY FOUR MILLION. For the draft. A quarter of a million people in Detroit standing outside to watch it! And I get it now. It's fun. And we have a new quarterback to whom I will transfer all loyalties and hopes and regard as One of Us and a symbol of our state and culture, and will watch the first game of the season as if nothing that has gone before matters at all, because THIS IS THE YEAR WE GO ALL THE WAY
Let's see, anything else? No. Podcast in the morning, Diner in the late morning, fixed an architecture column, filed a newspaper column, worked out, got groceries, napped so hard I had to drag myself from REM with the sort of deep-sea retrieval winches they use after an oil platform accident, then the Draft. Solid day all around, but will the fact that I had pizza on Thursday ruin the special ritual of pizza on Friday?
Hah, no.
Now, the end of the month round-up of Web Detritus, or, just . . . I don't know, stuff.
This goes nowhere, and there was no reason for me to clip it, except . . .
Did you know there was a sequel to Old Yeller? IMDB reviews indicate that this was more marketing than anything else. But it just shows that IP sequelitis is not unique to our time.
If only they'd made a third: "Walt Disney's Son of Sam"
It became a TV show. It aired when I was a kid, but I've no recollection.
Anyway, it looks like good wholesome fare. The author of the original book also wrote Old Yeller, so there was some connection.
Walt Disney bought the film rights to the novel for $25,000.
Gipson was then hired to write the screenplay. He started in October at $1,250 a week. Gipson was an alcoholic by this time and he was frequently incapacitated by rages.
On June 14, 1962, Mike Gipson, Fred Gipson's son, found the Gipson family dog, the inspiration for Savage Sam, chained and clubbed to death in a shed behind the new family home. The next day, Mike returned to university in shock, and committed suicide that weekend. Gipson's wife would leave him a month after the premiere of Savage Sam.
OKAY MOVING RIGHT ALONG to the other film: Steel Claw. Ever heard of that? Me neither. It looks as if it's sold as a horror movie, when it was actually a war pic. And maaaaybe you watch the first one with the kids and then leave. Or hope they sleep in the backseat, which they probably will.
I have been shopping for lawnmowers. I wonder ow this one stacks up for durability . . .
I think I'll go with four thanks
This was the illustration on a Cosmo piece about the fate of Stay At Home Girlfriends who get dumped.
The article notes that they are worse off after being dumped, because they weren't advancing their careers. They were just staying at home being Influencers. I only note it because of the appliances.
Well, that's your GE circa 1962, right?
But modified.
Not the 62, but same era.
I know it only because I grew up with it.
Makes you wonder why that column earned the dour take:
In London, sleeping. It was interrupted by housekeeping, and when I fell back asleep I dreamed that there was a masher creeping around the hotel in red socks, a pedophile who’d been in all the news. But in my dream I spelled it paedophile, which I think is fascinating: my brain used the local spelling.
Prompt: Victorian-era engraving, a masher skulking in the hallway of a hotel
This is . . . something.
And now, the Friday BTF, sans the Dream Compendium - I'm saving that because this Bleat is just going on forever.
The prompt for the week's banners was just small town and a different decade.
They do love their streetlights in Everyville:
"Did you see the show at the Hates Theater?"
"No, we went ot the Sralt last night."
You can get good deals at Endbcan's.
Too bad it would later be purchased by Federated, renamed to fit a new strategy of elevating larger regional names, and closed in 1993 when debt overwhelmed the company.
I love the very thin building on the right. It's not completely unbelievable.
The AI has no idea those streetlights wouldn't be particularly effective and illuminating the gloom. Too high. It also seems to think people should sit in the street, and curb cuts were common in the 40s.
And that's it for Fridays! Ha ha kidding, of course it's not.
Last year I cut out the tunes, but heck, why not bring them back. We'll be counting down the bottom 50 songs as listed by Whitburn. It'll be fun! Stuff you've never heard. A grab-bag of styles.
You know, gals, you could . . . ease into it a bit more.
A few notes:
In a documentary film, Muhammad Ali: The Whole Story, Sharp claimed that in 1964 she was engaged to Muhammad Ali shortly before he converted to the Muslim faith; when she was told that she herself had to become a Muslim before she married Ali, her mother ended the engagement.
Also:
She had a brief career resurgence during the disco era and hit the charts again with her version of 10 CC's "I'm Not In Love."
