In case you didn't notice, the main index page has a movie of all the March banners. It's a 1950s ad image for, of all things, suspended ceilings, and I just ran it through an AI upscaler with the "Creative" slider pitched at 30 percent, over and over again.

It could not shake its interest, and eventual obsession, with blue butterflies.

A Two Diner Monday, because I forgot again last week. D'oh, as the man said. Here's the first.

The second follows at the end. Of course, you can always subscribe.

A social weekend. A whirl of parties. Dinner on Friday night with wife’s relates, b/c mother-in-law was in town for her brother’s 80th. I use the term “relates” because it is a personal affectation and generally useless in conversation, because jeez dude, what is up with that. It’s something I picked up from a 1940s rural radio comedy.. The reference is lost on everyone, as it should be; we are not in Arkansas, 85 years ago. That said, I like it. Relate. It's like Aunt Jenny calling recipies "receipts."

There was venison chili. Personally shot by the host. That does bring a different aspect to the meal, now that I think of it, something of the ancient ways in which the tribe gathered around the fire knew that Ogg had brought down the deer on which they now feasted. And they nodded their thanks. Or stuck their fingers up their nose in thanks, who knows what they did.

Why is it always Ogg, though?

AI Google, which I hate, says it’s from the GEICO ads, but no, it precedes that. It goes back to old comics or movies, says a reddit thread. Cavemen were dumb and inarticulate, so they just had monosyllabic names. We also know they were required to wear orange hides with black spots. I've no idea what creature that was, although if you asked anyone who grew up when I did, they would somehow blurt out SABER-TOOTHED TIGER

Anyway. On the way home Friday there was lightning, and lots of it. Vast branching arcs that either connected different parts of the sky or revealed the fracture in the whole. The high that day had been 74 degrees, but as I noted on a Tweet, nothing sums up life in this part of the world like this:

Forty-degree plunge.

The cold rain pounded down all weekend, but the temperature was 32.01 degrees, I guess, because it never turned to snow. Just torrents of rain. Cold spring rain always seems so irritated with everything. Irritated with you for being irritated with it. The snow finally arrived on Sunday afternoon in the form of sleety needles dashing into my face as I did some shopping - a useless errand in search of low-acidity coffee for Wife. I have now established that four grocery stores in the southern suburbs do not have low-acidity coffee. While standing in the aisle googling to see if anyone had it, I noted there was a brand I could order from Amazon. Of course. But the hunter-gatherer in me wants to find it. Ogg need purpose in life.

There was also a question in the Google results: does low-acidity coffee do anything? or something like that. The first answer was "no," and the source was a study . . . funded by the brand that made the low-acidity coffee that came up in the shopping results. I guess they shrugged and said "people will trust us more because we freely admit the studies showed no difference, but they're the type of person to believe there has to be an effect, because Acid Bad."

Eventually there was the white smothering snow that said Third Winter was here. I went out to shovel. The sidewalks, it seemed, had kept the memory of spring, and melted everything that landed. <gandalf.jpg> You shall gain no purchase here! Hoorah for that, I guess. Hoorah for that.

Saturday, two birthday parties, one for the Giant Swede, and one for FFBiL, or Former French Brother-in-Law, who is Still French. You know him as the fellow who used to call the grocery store "Traders Joe," which I adopted and use to the slight amusement and / or faintly discernible annoyance of all. At the Giant Swede's party I passed around a video of watching football at his place in the early 90s, back when we could still make a convincing claim to youth. Four of us in the room at the time; mortality rate so far 25%. But we always think he went early, partly because he did, but partly because he was not of the age where it was entirely surprising. And hence we are all now at that age. But for now, cake.

Cake in cups. Cupcake. Technically, a paper sleeve cake. No one who asks for a cup of coffee expects you deliver a paper sleeve full of coffee.

Heh: googled.

The cupcake, as we know it, originated in the late 18th century with the publication of Amelia Simmons' "American Cookery" in 1796, featuring a recipe for "a light cake to bake in small cups". The term "cupcake" itself emerged in 1828 in Eliza Leslie's cookbook, "Receipts". 

We've come full circle, so perhaps that's a sign to end for now. Except I should add that the cupcakes were frosted, and there was an additional bowl of frosting in case you wanted more. Who wouldn't?

The trademarks of a 100 years ago is our theme this year.

This is quite detailed, but I suppose you had to be.

Were they indeed Sunfast? Probably not.

I am fascinated by this. It’s three minutes of women getting their time cards at a factory in 1904.

The fleeting glimpses of faces and personalities, the ubiquity of the Work Hairstyle, the question of where they all go when they go down the stairs, the one moment when someone screws up, the mystery in the last second - I love it!

Where was it? It’s probably this place:

The Westinghouse Lamp Plant located in Bloomfield, New Jersey, was one of the lamp manufacturing plants of Westinghouse Electric Corporation.The plant had a major involvement in supplying uranium metal for the world's first self-sustaining chain reaction in Chicago (Chicago Pile-1) in the early phase of the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb.

That meant it had to be decontaminated eventually, demolished, then turned into perfectly non-radiated housing.

By the way:

Personally, eh. The cameraman was Billy Blitzer, who did a lot of work with DWG, and probably - I suspect - invented things with which Griffith was credited. I say that only because there’s so much Griffith worship - MY GOD HE INVENTED THE LANGUAGE OF CINEMA and so much skepticism about that from people who know the era well. I mean, here are some Blitzer innovations:

His film The Jeffries-Sharkey Fight of 1899 is the first known use of artificial light. Rip Van Winkle (1903) features the first known close-up. Advances in lenses and filters developed by Bitzer made soft focus possible. He was the first to use split-screen photography and backlighting, contributing to the development of three-point lighting. He improved in-camera fade and dissolve effects and invented what came to be known as transition tools. Even after the Bell & Howell Model 2709 production camera became the industry standard, he continued to use a Pathe.

So there.

But hey, as long as we’re here, let’s look at the last movie in his wikipedia bio: Lady of the Pavement. People think old movies are all static and stagey. This is a scene where the hero discover his fiancé has been cheating on him with a nobleman who disappeared behind a secret door. (Which is locked.) Watch the camera move. (Bad print in need of restoration, but towards the end he's looking out a window at the street below.

And here, again - backing out from the room.

The language of cinema was spoken with fluent sophistication long before a lot of people realize.

Diner the Second:

That will do. Matchbooks, of course, and the Substack - free! - around 11 AM.