Another beautiful weekend. Blessed interval of perfect mid-early autumn. family reunion out in the exurbs on Saturday, football with the lads on Sunday, all blessed by strong sun and blue skies. I don’t have that urge for “sweater weather” and “the delightful possibilities of layering” so this is all good. Nor have I need for pumpkin spice. Or a need for Halloween. Or a need for anything but just sitting in the backyard, listening to the crickets. Heard the last cicada of the day at 6:46, so faint it seemed certain it was the last of the season. But tomorrow morning may have another, as loud as though it was the first day they woke up.

Update: just got bit by a mosquito. Screw this, bring on the snow

Occasional criticism of YGH: “You just worship the past and think everything was great and cool.”

Nnnnno. I frequently find things that make me wince, at the least. Here is a wince-producing design I found while going through some 1967 Architectural Records. (Nevermind the company's name, which sounds like A Clockwork Orange technique.)

 

I don’t know what effect they’re aiming for. The faux stone, the steeply pitched roof that almost touches the ground, because . . . I don’t know, the winds of Irving, Texas blow so strong it may be ripped from its foundation? It’s uninviting. It’s turned its back on the glass-wall look, the open floating transparency of modernism, and bunkerized all the new ideas. I hate it as much as the brutalist college buildings you see inside the magazine. Always college buildings. Few corporations sprung for the gray, windowless hulks.

Well, I’ll leave that for another day. I was just cleaning out a folder and realized I’d put that aside for some day, and best to make that day today. The folder, by the way, is automatically generated by a program that gathers everything on the desktop at a certain hour and tucks it away. It will do this even if there is nothing on the desktop, if you want a “There Will Come Soft Rains” vibe. (Next August 6, if you recall.) This automation forces me to sort through the digital detritus, and I find things I completely forgot, even though I downloaded it a few days ago. Why, here’s the Film Daily for 1937, filled with movies no one recalls, some of which no one has seen since they were first projected on the shimmery wall.

 

 

		Gabe: “Gabriel Heatter (September 17, 1890 – March 30, 1972) was an American radio commentator whose World War II-era sign-on, "There's good news tonight," became both his catchphrase and his caricature.” So: “the critic and sometime rival Alexander Woollcott composed the doggerel couplet: ‘Disaster has no cheerier greeter/than gleeful, gloating Gabriel Heatter.’”
		Also: And so, my friends, a Daffy Duck line may finally be explained.
		Mark Hawley, apparently the voice of ruin and fire. But he was a lesser god compared to the fearsome . . .
		Gregory Abbott, it seems obvious to say, reported from war zones. Or his visage appeared to signify the Rule of Pitiless Veangence.

 

A concept no longer in vogue: everyone goes to the movie theater and sings along! Perfect for a season when the nation is both college- and football-mad.

 

 

This is just brilliant:

 

 

There was another page that touted the movie, but everyone knew who this was.

Chick flick, so go with the watercolors.

 

 

I am still surprised to remember that I knew someone who had an affair with Tyrone Power.

Is there anything related to ads for modern movies that has the same diverse imagination and appeal? We'll see some more this week, just because I went mad and clipped a lot.

 

 

We continue with a small amount of manufactured enthusiasm to explore the trademarks of 1925, because we've been locked into this feature for a year and a half and don't know how to break free without feeling as if I've taken something away.

I wonder what this patriotic figure might do:

		He's a water meter.

Last Monday of the month, so . . .

 

 

 

By the way, the Reds are referred to this time by the narrator as “The Subversive Group.” Okay. So the SG tried to steal Element X, again, and there was a fistfight, again, and gunplay, again, which pierced a pipe that spewed refrigerant all over our heroes. They’re frozen to death!

Or not

 

 

Hey, someone didn’t get the memo:

 

 

There is more running and pursuing. The Subversive Group, having spent the last few episodes attempting to steal Element X, and having done so successfully, decides to throw it out the window while being pursued, so they can come back for it later. When Blackhawk overtakes them, they say ha ha we gave it to a guy at the plant. Psyche!

SO BLACKHAWK LETS THEM GO

But:

 

 

Because that won’t be conspicuous at all. They follow them in the air to the hideout. The Subversive Group lead guy dispels his confederates worries about a plane; t’ain’t nothing. It’s not as if we’re up against a group of crack pilots who fight for truth and justice.

The SG gives the gas to a Scientist who’s on their side, for analysis. My God they’ve invented Dark Beer

 

 

Blackhawk bursts in, and I’ll cut to the end of the fight where the chemist tries to get in on the action:

 

 

 

If you can believe it, we go back to the fargin’ gas works for about the 16th fistfight these two groups have had in the last day, and more running over rooftops, ending in possibly the worst cliffhanger ever:

 

 

Friends, we’ve endured many a nadir together. This is nadirrific beyond description.

 

It's the Diner!

That will do for today. Matches and a free Substack await; it'll be up around eleven. Thank you for your patronage, as always.