Is everyone done with Facebook yet? What with all the privacy / data scandals that will blow over in a year - by which I mean, three days. I keep meaning to post things, just to alert people to what I’ve written, and I’m encouraged at work to do more posting. Trouble is, I loath Facebook.
Whenever I go there I feel as if I’ve entered a different internet - standardized, controlled, sanitized, with its worst elements amplified and its best channeled through a template that pushes the kaleidoscope vision of the web into a prism that reduces every pattern to stripes in primary colors. Maybe it’s just me. It’s obviously not most people - unless there are millions of users who just can’t stop checking it because there’s someone there from long ago, waving hello, or they need to update Update Update UPDATE, lest anyone think they sank back into the cold dark depths of real life.
The picture above is from Friday night, when I did the movie introduction / panel. I should have posted that to Facebook, so it could have been Liked, but I don’t care if it’s liked. I like it. You see it. If you like it, fantastic; we move on and that’s that. My entire effort here over the years has been to provide something for you to like, on your own, without feeling compelled to share it or click a button - and since it’s here in my own sandbox, I can shape the experience without submitting to Facebook’s UI. I could have made the picture above my banner - and sent out notifications! James has changed his profile picture! Alert the media! - but it would go away the next time I changed something, because Facebook makes itself over constantly, the endless scroll pushing the past into oblivion while making you hungry for new stuff to appear at the top.
To hell with that. This site is constructed the way we live our lives: day by day.
Facebook is now under criticism for this data-sharing-breachy thing; apparently we’re supposed to be outraged that all the information handed over to FB in exchange for the opportunity to romp in their Elysian Fields with all our friends was supposed to be locked away, never to be used. Oh, they’d sell us some ads, but that was okay; they’d be great ads! Because they knew what we wanted.
I don’t know what I want to see, ad-wise. Do you? Isn’t it interesting to see an ad that doesn’t have your name on it?
More to the point, when everything gets targeted to you You YOU, you special person, the internet seems to wrap around you like a benevolent boa. It’s warm and snug.
Why would you ever leave.
Let me say the obvious: WE NEED A NEW PLATFORM.
Anyone want to give me a call, I have ideas.
Note: everyone has ideas. It's not because everyone hates Facebook. It's because no one loves it.
There was a column in the Strib for many years: After Last Night, by Will Jones. It ran daily, as columns should. It had a certain amount of filler, because it ran daily. But people liked filler, I think. They were like airplane peanuts. The more I read the old columns the more I'm amazed at what they got away with - printing press releases, quoting reader mail whole without a comment or added value, banal observations about commonplace ideas - like bitching about Facebook!
Cedric Adams, perhaps the most famous of is time, would run the addresses of people who had puppies to give away.
Oh, by the way, apropos of nothing, really - I had the name of the new novel wrong. It's The Angel Game, not Dance. It's a reference to something that happens on the high iron on a skyscraper construction project. The other day I wrote a scene in which the protagonist walked past the chair of a young reporter sleeping off the previous night's revelries, and he gives the chair a kick to wake him up. It's Ole Olsen, the One and Ole as a young man, writing a "college humor" piece for the Citizen-Herald.
Ole has always been a cipher to me; he's the one character who never showed himself completely. Always had a publicity-photo smile.
Anyway. Will Jones' gimmick was a Day Brightener and a Day Spoiler, later accompanied by a sun that was smiling or frowning.
This one . . . this one made me stop dead and say WHAT.
Someone played Fred Allen on the Benny show?
It wasn't always Fred Allen?
And who was this Hayes guy?
He appeared in films throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and had a significant television career in the 1950s. He often appeared with his wife Mary Healy. In 1946, Hayes opened at the Copacabana in New York. This led to an engagement with the Dinah Shore radio show.
Here's the morning show they did. They seem charming.
I've Got a Secret. If you don’t find this to be substantially more grown-up and sophisticated than modern TV game shows - well, alas for you.
Finally, What's My Line, 1958.
And now you know about these two everyone else has forgotten. Mary died in 2015, having outlived her husband by 17 years.
I'm still wondering about that throwaway line: he played Fred Allen on the Jack Benny show. Fifteen times.
Which one? Can anyone tell?
It’s 1937. The magazine is Cosmopolitan.
What this really says is obvious: circus people hate their work.
How else could one interpret this? That happy moment when the show is over. When the maddening roar of the crowd has been stilled, the unhappy animals fed and put away, the invisible but heavy masks discarded for one’s true self. The self that hates the circus.
You’ve been invited to a swimming party at the Gotrocks’ summer place! Your toes must look their best!
Misty-tint. Bizarre copy: beware, young women, of our product! For it is an unscrupulous flatterer. Makes it sound as if the bottle of Glazo will run off with your best friend the minute your back is turned.
But back to Edna. She married the painter, and retired to a life as a hobby farmer, raising basil and other herbs,
She begins slowly selling them to local farmers. Later, she has a chicken coop built, and is soon breeding livestock which she grows and sells at substantial profit to New York City restaurants, over three hours away by train. Over time, she finds uses for the herbs — flavored vinegars, for instance — and publishes small recipe books as premiums. Juniper Hill becomes House of Herbs.
. . . which she sold to McCormick for another nice payday.
You must exercise your face - for beauty! Because you know how men look at pretty girls, and say “man, there’s someone who chews a lot of gum.”
What dogs hate are stupefied fleas, I guess.
Dust your dog completely! God knows what was in the stuff.
Speaking of stupefied: Can you honestly say your gin is good enough to drink without adulteration?
“A Swallow tells the difference" between this and the gins you can't get past your mouth, because they burn too much.
We don’t smell it, but we know it’s there! Because we’re hammered now.”
This was before vodka, remember. Vodka wasn’t a popular drink, so if you wanted something that didn’t give away your morning tipples, gin was your go-to drink.
Man, they loved their gin in the 30s. Or at least Cosmo's audience did.
“Soft-stilled,” so it defied the effects of ice.
MAN THEY LOVED THEIR GIN
Drinks never taste thin with Gordon’s Gin. Doesn’t quite scan, but you got the point.
There you go; hope I didn't start anyone on the gin too early. Scoop, "the Strip That Will End Up Surprising You" as no one called it, awaits. (BTW: it will. Someday.)
How was your Monday? Mine was fine. I wrote some stuff, I walked, I listened to music, played with the dog, dropped off my taxes, had a good nap. I had dinner. PLEASE LIKE THIS UPDATE OTHERWISE ALL IS FOR NAUGHT
