Got an email kindly chiding me for my RSS feed: it’s insufficiently descriptive. Agreed.

It’s been years since I mentioned that your site’s RSS feed was sub par, and, alas, it still is. You probably know this. I want to enjoy your content, I really do. But when it comes out in my RSS reader looking like this:

This is intentional. Intended to be tantalizing, perhaps. Who’s Rena? Who are her boys? Click and find out.

It’s a shame: I really like your site and your writing, and I’d love to know when you post new matchbooks and comics and such, but the RSS feed is awfully uninformative.

I admit that’s so. As for when there are new Matchbooks and comics and such, there’s no mystery. These things are scheduled, and never vary.

Moreover, a good RSS feed should pretty much supplant the need to look at the website itself.

dingdingdingding

I want people to look at the website. That’s why I redesign it every week, to reflect the seasons, or set a mood. I put work in the look of this thing - and it’s the only site I ever go to that constantly revises to look fresh.

Maybe I’m missing something, some secret URL that’ll show me when your site’s content is updated, or that’ll allow me to read your content from the comfort of my RSS reader. Or maybe there’s some reason you’re withholding your stuff from the magic of RSS. Ad views? I wouldn’t know. I block that stuff.

Why?

Look, this site costs me money. I have to pay for server costs, right? I buy fonts. I spend time on this; ad revenue helps.

Why would you block my ads? Seriously, on behalf of the internet content providers: how are we supposed to pay for all this?

Read a news story that said 43% of the people in my city live alone. That sounds so sad. Living with other people is a skill, like learning to bite your tongue without drawing blood.

There’s the cliche for living alone: Hello, kitty. Have some milk. While you drink, may I pour all my displaced emotions into you, and mischaracterize your dependance as a bilateral relationship of emotional equals? Fine. Well, let’s turn on the TV and invite all our friends into our home for another night of drama and comedy. What’s that? Will Mr. Leno be along later? Why, I think he will!

Of course that’s not really how it goes. When you’re young, living along is AWESOME, if you can afford it.

When I was young I moved into a new apartment, and the first order of business was setting up the stereo. Turned on some tunes! to help me unpack. (Either New Wave or The Outlaws; as ever, I was all over the map. Aren’t we all?) After five minutes there was a knock on the door, and there stood the Kindly Looking Neighbor Lady, a small elegant senior citizen with a lovely smile.

“Oh my,” she said. “No, no.”

That was all it took. Don’t think I ever played the stereo loud again. I’d learned a lesson: there are human beings on the other side listening to every move you make. On the one hand, you get the feeling of a community. On the other, you tire of sneezing six times and finding half a dozen bowls of chicken soup outside your door. So I moved back to a dorm, lived with two guys, then moved to an apartment with a roommate, then the PrezRez with almost a dozen people . . . and then my very own deel-lux apartment in the sky, an efficiency in a high rise. Floor to ceiling windows. Magnificent view.

Horribly alone. Horribly so.

Then I moved into a place by the U, kitty-corner from Ralph & Jerry’s. The Giant Swede lived in one unit; I took the one vacated by the Crazy Uke’s girlfriend. (It’s been almost 30 years and I still remember the names of everyone’s girlfriends at the time. Is that common?) From there I went to my favorite apartment ever, the Uptown place where there’s a murder in Autumn Solitaire. By then I had enough of a social network not to feel Alone in the World, and was fancy-free & single. It wasn’t sad at all.

It was wonderful.

Then you get married and have a kid, you move out to the suburbs. It just happens. The OB-GYN towels off the squalling newborn and hands you a card for a realtor.

Anyway, that’s not what made me sad, although it did. This did:

 

 

It’s a shot from Life mag showcasing a new drug store in Hollywood, an Owl / Rexall. The most modern of its kind! Ever! Bigger than anything else!

Here it is today: a fargin’ Popeyes Chicken.

 

 

 

Friday Mummy: all month long, a Mummy movie at the end of the week.

 

 

You may be wondering what they can do with the Mummy story - as others have noted, it's just a guy staggering around threatening to strangle you. Run! Just run. How do you revive the franchise?

Comedy.

 

 

 

So it's an adventurer with a sidekick meeting up with one of those itinerant magicians with a lovely daughter that just happens to be passing through Egypt, and they go looking for A Lost Tomb.

 

The Mummy:

 

Not Karloff.

Strangling ensues. The girl is saved. Annnd that's about it for the Mummy's Hand. Next up: the Mummy's Tomb. I expect te same damned thing - without the comedy.

 

 

 

See you in the usual places!