LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat 2014

I'm posting early because there's a storm en route and I expect the power to go out. I just do.

Father's Day was a delight, as it always is. Amusing card ("Dad, you're like a Father to Me") with heart-melting sentiments inside. My favorite breakfast; a book of history photographs of a nearby neighborhood where I once lived. Then off for an afternoon with Daughter. She's now old and wise enough to see the pleasures in the antique store I visit every other month, although she makes fun of my matchbook "hoarding." I have to explain that it’s not hoarding until the stairs are impassible because of big trash bags full of useless matches that have no value. And these have value? Obviously, because I am willing to pay for them. Also, it’s not hoarding if I scan them, put them in boxes, and put them in the storage closet in a box marched MATCHBOOKS. And remind me again who had 30 Hello Kitty dolls?

She likes buttons, and found a Retro Vintage Button (c. 1987. Sigh) and a hand-painted grocery sign from a collection of hand-painted signs. I forgot what it said. Also found an ancient Bokar Coffee (A&P) coin bank in the shape of an old coffee container, which goes with my Eight O’Clock Coffee bank, right in the Closet of Mysteries.

And then we had coffee, sitting outside, watching the traffic, feeling very Urban. She likes these places, and dreams of an apartment on a busy corner overlooking a place with shops and cafes. I raised a city kid.

Good.

Then . . . mulch. Every year. Five trips, ten bags a trip. You may ask: can’t you pay someone? I had someone bid the job. One thousand dollars for labor. No. I mean, the bid was $1,250, and I spend about $250 on mulch. Perhaps he expected to pile it up a foot thick. Daughter knows how much I hate Mulch Duty, and it’s because I hate to lug the bags around. They’re always sopping wet from being stored outside. A big bag of wet wood. At least I impressed her, I hope, by heaving them into the car like sacks of peanuts: STRONG LIKE BOOL, as I used to say when performing feats of strength.

She likes going to Home Depot for paint swatches and little potted plants. An ordinary thing I will forget some day. After my middle name.

I also bought a replacement rod for the closet shelves, which collapsed. The entire unit relies on one rectangular sleeve that connects two halves of a pole; everything else hangs on the rod, as well as hangs on brackets in the wall. The rectangular sleeve snaps, everything falls down. So you’d think the sleeve was made of metal, stern enough not to bend. Hah! Fargin’ plastic. When it snapped a while ago I glued it and taped it and braced it and did all the other things that you know, deep in your heart, will only lead to a repeat of the sorry event, and sure enough. The entirely of my wife’s seasonal wardrobe and her collection of flattened boxes and bows and ribbons and tissue paper, all came tumbling down.

So I replaced the rod.

Parts in the package: two halves of the rod; six hooks; six screws; pads for either end of the rod; plastic connecting sleeve.

Part used: the plastic connecting sleeve to reattach the parts of the old rod. I put it together easily, and thought “The Rod and Bracket” would be an excellent name for a British pub.

As usual, I took pictures at Hunt & Gather; let's see what the museum turned up this time.

Peanuts had to be famously, horribly greasy for this ad campaign to work. They even said it twice.

Really seriously they're not! They're not! Note: NOT GREASY

Is it possible the "Franklin" character in the "Peanuts" strip was named because of this product? Don't bother googling the address; no trace of the nuts remains, to borrow from modern package warnings.

Pensive chap:

And familiar, too. It’s Hadrian. I wonder if the beard was something unique; it’s certainly rare in Roman busts. I seem to remember something about that. Googling . . . ah.

Another of Hadrian's contributions to "popular" culture was the beard, which symbolised his philhellenism. Since the time of Scipio Africanus it had been fashionable among the Romans to be clean-shaven. Also all Roman Emperors before Hadrian, except for Nero (also a great admirer of Greek culture), were clean shaven. Most of the emperors after Hadrian would be portrayed with beards. Their beards, however, were not worn out of an appreciation for Greek culture but because the beard had, thanks to Hadrian, become fashionable. This new fashion lasted until the reign of Constantine the Great and was revived again by Phocas at the start of the 7th century.

It's a reproduction of a Louvre item, the tag says - but I can't find any bust that looks like this.

Unless it's not a reproduction. Which would make this a steal at $255.

Another bust:

Daniel Webster, looking glum about his forced enhattenation. No, that’s not a word. This too is a "reproduction." Googling turns up nothing with that short and coat.

So it's probably an original, too.

A little visitor from the Uniblab era of industrial design::

Looks like Sputnik, doesn’t it? A Constellation, from 1955. Don’t you wish they still made things like this?

They still do.

There were two - TWO - women’s hairdryer machines from beauty salons. Both Helene Curtis. The first is huge and looks like an industrial brain sucker. The nameplate:

Helene and Curtis were the first names of the co-founder’s wife and son. The company was originally called National Mineral Company, a rather grand name for a firm that sold facial mudpacks. During WW2 the company changed its name to National Industries, the most generic name imaginable - and they switched to making gun turrets and radar equipment. Makes sense. After the war they went back to beauty products, changed the name to Helene Curtis, and it’s been soapy suds ever since. They make Suave, by the way - that low-price brand people think popped out in the 70s, but has been a company mainstay since the 30s.

The store also had this beaut.

It also looks like a brain-erasing device, but this time it would put in pleasant memories. I had to point out something to my daughter that explained the era as good as anything else.

Of course this was built right into the arm rest. Of course.

An old fan, with a Westinghouse logo I’ve not seen before:

And because it is an antique store: MOM’S ANGRY CLOWN

Why did people do this? Of all the things people could paint, why this? And why are the flowers always the most incompetent part of the portrait? Unless the obviously fake stem was part of the genre.

The genre of Naive Folk Weeping Clown Art.

Our weekly look at ads, labels, products, displays, and other disconnected piece of commercial culture detritus. If we're lucky, we have a . . .

WEEKLY BORDEN

Sometimes she leaves the house and bothers people, who have to pretend a cow with a huge head and the power of speech isn't giving them meal advice.

There's a term I've never heard before - and you know exactly what it means. Ice Splinters. Perfect!

And DH is rendered un-D, too, because other home-made ice-cream bugaboos are elimated.

If you learn nothing else from this entry: ice-splinters are bugaboos.

THE VERY BEST

It's a case of a brand that everyone sort-of-kind-of knows, but only in context. Say "Nabisco" these days and you might get a shrug from a youth. Say Oreo, and of course they know what you mean. But they might not recognized the Benedictine Cross Logo.

The name is so prosaic, but it hails from the era of Confident Plainspoken Corporate Names. The National Biscuit Company. I love the package, which makes the product practically named.

(Note: that is what I wrote a few days ago when doing the copy for this section. I have no idea what that means.)

CAN O' MEAT

A Swift ad for the Sack o'Sauce in the Can o'Meat was one of the first things from this site ever to go "viral" - and that was in 1997 or so. I keep discovering more meat-can innovations.

This couldn't have been very good.

But, well, she has confidenee that it's okay. I'm also guessing she's leaning the can up against a sheet of glass, because there's no way she could hold it like she seems to be holding it. Also, her hairdresser had just seen "Bride of Frankenstein."

GOLDEN!

It's a summery theme, if you've missed all the subtle clues. Ice cream, cookies, hamburgers, and air conditioner filters:

The ad is from the late fifties. Which means it's quite possible this is Annette O'Toole. I don't know why I thought that, but it suddenly struck me it might be her.

DEATH TO BUGS

Kan we Kil it? Yes we kan!

Oh you clever little death-can, you! It's by Colgate, which seems to be all wrong. Although it makes for great alliteration.

The ad has been remixed here for some reason. Here's the Australian TV ad, which decides it's a great idea to spray the stuff right in your face:

Animated bugs with that comical "dead" expression? Check! Now let's look at another pretender to the Raid crown, Slug-A-Bug:

Safe to use near food! Near babies! Completely non-poisonous! Doesn't work worth a damn! Or did, I don't know. It was made from Pyrethrum flowers, a natural insecticide. The most successful popularizer of the stuff was probably Johann Zacherl, who accumulated a huge packet in the 19th century "selling dried flower heads," as wikipedia puts it. The stuff was known as "Persian Powder" to some, which might explain the architecture of his factory.

DOES SHE NOW

A biographical note from the photos she left behind:

Cecil (Teddy) Kenyon (1905-1985) was taught to fly by her husband, Ted Kenyon, a pilot for Colonial Airlines, in 1929. Teddy received her pilot license after 10 hours of instruction.

After receiving her license, Teddy became a charter member of the "99s" and in 1933 she won the National Sportswomen Flying Championship at Roosevelt Field, New York. During the late 1930s Teddy flew for the Civil Air Patrol, and became a test pilot for Grumman during World War II.

In her position at Grumman she had opportunity to fly the following types of Grumman aircraft as they came off the production line: F4F Wildcats; F6F Hellcats; and TBF Avengers.

Teddy received her helicopter license in 1960 and remained an active pilot well into her seventies.

She stated in an interview that women shouldn't compete with men as fighters, due to strength and temperament, but should war come, they should transport the wounded, carry dispatches, and relieve male commercial pilots so they could fly war missions.

Didn't work out that way, but it would have been an interesting period in comercial aviation if the majority of pilots had been women. And aviatrix is such a cool word.

Speaking of cool:

THINETTE

Thanks to the ad showing us the kid playing in the box; otherwise, wed never know what they looked like. No one kept them. Nice:

The Thinette, you'll notice, still looks like it weights 250 pounds and sticks out of the window a foot on each side.

As I said, a summer-themed Product! entry. Apt; it was 80s and muggy today, until the rain rolled in. It's supposed to be here for the next six days. Stay tuned for me to go mad, or shrug it off. Or alternate betwixt the two.

Work blog around 12:30, Tumblr around noonish or so - see you then! And of course, Richie Rich. Pupdate? Tomorrow!