 Hilarious tales of outdoor work? No. Stories of the grocery store? Sorry. Dog anecdotes? No, but only because my wife took him to Petco to get his nails trimmed and his teeth cleaned. (He submitted to the former, and said oh hell no what are you doing to the latter.) Easter was lovely; beautiful day, family over, lots of ham for the dogs but not too much. (Dogs plural because in-laws’ bundle of manic fur was over.) Ham is apparently Scout’s Best Thing Ever, and you can’t say “no more. You’ll get pancreatitis”
Does pancreatitis come from eating more ham
“Yes.”
Pancreatitis plz
Daughter got up at 3:30 (!) to go to Perkins with friends before singing in the sunrise service. We made a basket for her to see when she woke. I’d bought some SweeTart soft ’n’ chewy flavor nodules, thinking they were gummy in nature. They were not. They were almost grainy. Think loose Jell-o covered in sand. Awful. But there was a chocolate bunny and some speckled eggs, so Easter was saved!
Odd how Christmas is always in danger, but Easter isn’t. You just can’t put out an animated show where they say “looks like there won’t be an Easter this year.” The implications are too dire. No spring, for the secular; no tomb-rock rolled back, for the religious.
No egg hunt. Was last year the final egg hunt? For a few years we went to my sister-in-law’s house for Easter - it’s just a few blocks away - and the menfolk went to the churchyard to hide plastic eggs for the girls. There were always a few tykes, usually European friends of the in-laws. Small sugared Belgians. They found it all novel and fun, and the older girls, being in their mid-teens, went along with the game because, well, Easter! And candy.
Prior to that there was the distribution of egg-shaped confections around the living room, a ritual that spanned the early credulous period of half-understood belief (a rabbit of great size, dispensing candy? Santa-esque, but more towards the Tooth Fairy genre? Okay I guess) I would put jelly beans on the piano keys, as my parents had done. That’s what it always was - jellybeans, church, ham. Year after year, with April either sullen or generous.
One year I’ll never forget: up to Fargo for Easter. Stayed at the Holiday Inn, Daughter played in the pool with cousins, and when we left the hotel a miserable sniping wind blew up and threw ice crystals in our faces. April in Paris it wasn’t.
This morning’s basket was the last vestige of tradition. The rest are gone - although I have to say that Springy Chicken never had the same role as Spooky Ooky; likewise Clanky Claus. These were the Rolie Poly Olie analogues to our world, and they didn’t quite take. But the other day I caught myself whistling some Olie music, just as I find myself occasionally whistling the Couple Next Door theme - old domestic soundtracks.
It’s interesting what you sing when you’re not thinking about singing.
On Saturday I took a nap, and woke before the alarm went off. Looked ay my phone; the lockscreen, for some reason, thought I wanted to hear a selection from the “Grand Budapest Hotel” soundtrack, and you know, I did. I think the movie, and the music, was something that just opened Daughter’s imagination, and it’s one of those things we both instantly got on the same level for the same reasons.
I laid in the dim room looking at the ceiling fan until the music ended, and felt as if I’d spent two and a half minutes in a place I belonged but could never visit.
Anyway. The main accomplishment of the weekend was fixing the Motel site for the 2017 updates - checking all the links, adding the 100 cards from last year to the individual state folders. It’s as tedious as you can imagine.
It's a page of people who do things and say things. This week we have a page of second-tier notables - by modern standards, I mean; they're not household names - from 1938.
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In '38 she published a book: "Men Must Work."
She followed that up with "If Women Must Work." Really.
She has entries for the book on the web - but no bio. |
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Google the name and a murder victim comes up. Probably not her granddaughter. Married the fellow who was the official photographer for the Quints.
I wonder what sort of movie offers were made.
Possibly nurse-related. |
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Some call it noir, but it isn't. It's just night.
The Good Gal: she’s looking for her sister, who was knocked off when she threatened to expose a baby-selling racket.
The heavy:
You forget just how many bad guys he played. Watching him play Perry Mason must have been interesting for those who'd watched him knock people around for ten years. That might be one of the reasons why the character worked: it played on his accumulated menace without exhibiting any of it.
What I liked about it was the inadvertent documentary. Let’s take a look.
The Saunders System was a car-rental company - originally the car-rental company. Utterly forgotten now.
This one’s easy!
I mean duh
And you’re thinking, wow, your knowledge of LA must be minute, detailed and encyclopedic, if you can recall a corner from what it used to be and isn’t now!
Yes. Yes that’s it exactly, but I was also moving backwards from the building a few yards up the street.
It’s the General Petroleum Building, now an apartment building.
They're looking to bust a baby racket, by the way, so of course they go to the Pool Hall district. Again, probably Bunker Hill, or just a seedy area of downtown.
We know how it'll end; happily.
Man, don’t you hate vicious babies?
The movie's okay. It's short and everyone wears hats and the bad guys lose. Sometimes that's all you need.
Here we go for another week of the same, except it's all different. See you hither / yon ~ |
