My error - I didn't tell the AI to put the car on the proper side of the road.
Clammy wet weekend, but there was a window in which I could do this year's exercise in pointless grass seeding. I used Sun & Shade, the seed that's photon-fluid, I guess. We also put in some mulch. It's been a few years since I did the mulch, as we hired a guy to just put mulch everywhere all at once. Lovely cedar aroma after he was done. Now it's faded, and half of it evaporated. So every weekend, many bags, and much strewage.
On a rainy Sunday I went to Home Depot with the Giant Swede to look at lawn mowers. His advice was much appreciated. We talked to a . . . clerk? Worker? I'm not sure of the proper term for the guys in orange vests who wander the aisles. "Employee," I guess, but there should be a better term. Genial Container of Omni-Knowledge. The GCOK told us that Honda had stopped making gas motors for lawn mowers, because Ecology. We noticed that one could no longer buy a gas-powered chain saw. Only batteries.
This was regarded as a bad idea by the people who have a serious need for a chain saw.
But of course they aren't thinking ahead. Sure, you're out in the woods without a charger or an extra battery, but you can get an extension cord that goes back to the outlet.
How much cord will you need? Oh, about this much.
I wonder if the all-electric lawn-mower future will have a special fragrance dispenser that issues the 2-stroke perfume.
Ordered Thai for Sunday supper, a change from steak. By "ordered" I mean I drove to the restaurant to get it, rather than waiting a while for someone to deliver it cold. Every time I have Thai food I ask myself why I don't have Thai food more often. Like, every other day. I made a "Thai" curry last week based on a Traders Joe sauce, but (mocking Thai expression known throughout the country, possibly because it was popularized by a television comedian at some point, but will eventually fade from public consciousness) it occupied a different universe than the actual thing. The same goes with every "sauce" you find at Target. Insuperior simulacra.
Perhaps they should be rebranded as flavors from a nonexistent culture. Thae. Andian. Morracun. Mixicon. Chanase. Sauces from an earlier build of the simulation.
This year we'll begin our weeks with a look at the logos of 1934. The Gazette of the Patent Office printed hundreds of trademarks to nail down the style and look and text for the owners, and thus provided a fascinating record of commercial design. The question for the year: how many of these still exist?
A bit too much work for the slogan, but clever anyway:
The usual language: no, we're not trying to patent the word "Brand."
Given the popularity of the strip, it was inevitable.
We discussed the strip a few years ago in the section of Comic Sins devoted to old forgotten strips. The strip ran from 1919 to 1959 - a constant in American life. There was a silent movie version in 1928 starring the fellow who'd play Dagwood, just to tie things together nicely.
Let’s go right to the trailer!
He’s a year out of high school, so I suppose he’s still a teen.
Not famous at the time. A Broadway dancer. Of course, we had to have the kindly proprietor of the soda fountain, long-suffering, resigned and baffled, a stand-in for older audiences amused by these Youthful Antics:
Harold didn’t go to college, but went right into the newspaper business. Which tells you something about newspapers. But since high school is in the bones of the strip, we go back to . . .
And that was the Covina high school. It was replaced by newer facilities, and succumbed to arson in the early 60s.
All the high school students look too old. Take this guy, for example. Lilacs is his character’s name. He was 29 at the time.
Or this guy:
Shadow, Harold's friend. Wonder what IMDB says . . . Huh. Eddie Tamblyn.
Could he be?
He is. This guy’s the dad of Riff. Or Dr. Jacoby if you wish.
It’s a musical, so there’s a banal happy number in a malt shop. It’s the famed Sugar Bowl of the comic strip!
So many TEENS:
And . . . the location, according to imdb trivia, was in Covina, California, where the comic was set.
The past is coming alive downtown with the resurrection of the famed Sugar Bowl malt shop.
The eatery opened Thursday, bringing back a historic menu of hamburgers, sundaes and phosphates inspired by a 1930s comic strip in a shop that’s dipped in nostalgia.
Pop Jenks’ Sugar Bowl was a popular hangout within the “Harold Teen” universe, and its teen characters attended Covina High School. The strip was popular in the 1930s and ’40s, inspiring two movies and a jazz song.
The real-life eatery remained popular through the 1950s, before it was converted to a different establishment.
The new Sugar Bowl is in the exact location of its predecessor, at 143 N. Citrus Ave.
Characters from “Harold Teen” are hand-painted on the walls, along with historic photographs, menus and other items. An antique cash register and jukebox are on display, and Peterson brought in a working antique soda fountain to serve customers.
That's the 2011 street view. But you might be surprised to learn that a cafe named after a comic strip that hasn't been in the papers for many, many decades didn't catch on. The 2014 view shows a different restaurant.
There was an ancient Yelp page with pictures, with someone’s attempt to draw Harold and Lillums, and of course someone dressed like Marilyn Monroe, because all the past is kinda the same, you know? It was supposed to look “50s,” which wasn’t Harold’s era at all.
The programmer was probably intended to launch a series, but it’s rote, and despite the talent, it doesn’t connect. Maybe people wanted just a funny little movie with a newspaper comic character they knew, having gal troubles, and the usual plots of the strip . . . and they got B-grade Busby sequence that comes out of nowhere.
When I first wrote this for B&W World, the musical number was available. It isn't anymore.
As I wrote: "the end suggests that we can’t go on with Harold Teen, because he’s not that character anymore." I don't know what that means because the source has disappeared.
Whatever the end was, it wasn’t canon. That's the thing about these movies based on strips or radio: no intersection with the original product. They occupied different realms. And you know what? It didn't matter to anyone.
