If today’s ExtraSecret Strib project works out in my favor, it will turn my life upside down, requiring me to walk on my hands and tape the bottom of my sport coat to my butt. So I won’t be wearing a sport coat. A tie, perhaps, that’s why tie clasps are for. Been decades since I wore one of those, though; they went out of style, along with all the other cool details that were part of the Swank Guy Vibe Code. Tie clasps, 8-ball cufflinks, that sort of thing. The comb with a clip probably doesn’t count, but that was high-style for the guys who stuck a comb in their back pocket. A clip. To keep it from sinking into the depths of your zoot-suit pockets and going sideways, which made sitting down uncomfortable. But few men ever used the clip.

And fewer use the comb now, I suspect. I recall you’d find a plastic can of combs at every drugstore counter – gas stations, too, back in the days when you’d wander inside to pay actual cash, maybe pick up a Zagnut and an air-freshener from that big cardboard display with the va-va-voom blonde. She was the kind of gal who went for a guy who had evergreen air. The combs came in two varieties: regular and unbreakable. The former would lose a few teeth in the first few weeks, but you could rub your thumbnail across the top – brrrrrrrrrp – and this was somehow enjoyable. The unbreakables never lost a tooth, but they were al dente all around, and the very thing that made them desirable – their eternal life – ensured they’d be gunked up and greasy after a few months.

Each comb had two halves, with different spacing on the teeth, as if there was someone out there who had hair the thickness of spaghetti. I’ll bet this guy had a comb:

That’s from this week’s Minneapolis site. There were a few things I didn’t add, such as this ad from 1929:

Charles “Buddy” Rogers died eventually, as is often the case, but he hung on seventy years after this movie. He died in 1999 at the age of 94, having not made a movie since 1957. I’m sure he kept himself busy, though. He was also a singer and bandleader – he didn’t sing this one – Bob Hannon makes with the crooning -  but this is his band. From 1938, it’s Lovelight in the Starllight, which peaked at #184.

Gene Sheldon and his Serenaders? Might they be related to the Gene Sheldon at the bottom of the bill? I suspect so. Gene went on to enduring fame as Bernardo, the Mute Servant of Zorro, thirty years later. (According to the photo on the wiki site, he was some sort of Harpo-Marx crossed with David Ogden Stiers,)

“Charming Sinners” featured “Eloise at the Organ,” if that isn't redundant. If you think your job is challenging, imagine playing a soundtrack to a movie all by yourself in a 4,000 seat movie house.

Anyway, if I get the job, I may wear a tie, but it’ll have to be loosely knotted. I hope I get it, because I’m really in the mood for something New, and this qualifies all to hell.

Other than that, as I always say, a fine day, as I am lucky & blessed to say as well. It was sprinkler-blowout day, which is always sad; the truest sign that the season is over, and the time of dead cold ground upon us. I learned I will get a Mac at work, which is a great joy. Everyone’s getting new machines, but my old machine died before I could get the upgrade. Died right in the middle of writing the stuff for the New Thing Audition. Up and died. Poof. It tried to reboot, but it dies at various points in the process, and the power supply appears fubared. Next step: fighting IT for the rights to have local admin privileges on my office Mac. I’m the kind of man what don’t cotton to bein’ told he lacks sufficient privileges to do something. Way I see it, it’s a free country, and we’re all equal, and I don’t stand for some feller saying he has the right to tell me I ain’t got the right to custom screen savers. I probably won’t get a new desk, though; forever I’ll be stuck in the absolute backwater of the newsroom. It makes sense, since I belong to no Team, no Pod, no division, but it means that any trip to talk to anyone requires a hike across the endless carpeted steppes. I could stay away from the office for weeks and no one would notice. Unless there was a bad smell from the back of the room. Even then, I’m so close to the bathrooms it wouldn’t cause a stir until the flies became a problem. Even then, the buzzing would create a pleasant “white noise” effect that calmed the nerves of your modern, jangled, mainstream-media-type person. So I’m thinking I should get some sort of implant that makes a car alarm sound if exposed to air, and have it fastened to a bone.

Off to write a column; see you at Buzz.mn for a Lance Lawson Thursday. Also a new ad in the Archive. Have a grand day.