I took that picture last week. Height of the end of autumn and all that. I regret to inform you that it is not an accurate representation of the current situation.
It began last night and had the audacity, the sheer cheek, to still be around in the morning. Since we had the parade of confection collectors coming, and I didn't want the walk to be slippery, I shoveled everything. Shoveled. Before November. And it was cold, too.
Such cursing! I was appalled. But at least I had the opportunity to wear my new ear-flap cap. Very rustic chic.
Had a good run of trick / treaters. Mostly thankful, and if they weren't, the parent nudged them, and if the parent didn't, I did. It was all a barkfest, though, since Birch for the guard-dog routine and takes issue with these minions, these interlopers. I suppose I made it worse by setting the chime to a howling wolf. And I'll forget to change it, as always, and when someone comes by in two weeks the doorbell will announce their arrive with a Halloween sound.
How to break the sugar fast, though? So many wonderful options. There's the white-chocolate Hershey Fangs, which frozen Reese's peanut butter cup okay just cut to the chase here have embedded flecks of dark chocolate. Or the 100 Grand, an unjustly ignored bar, a most solid frozen Reese's peanut butter cup c'mon you know that's going to be it product with a variety of pleasing textures. Ah: there's a York Peppermint Patty, the most grown-up of all the offerings. Perhaps I'll try frozen Reese's peanut butter cup dude who are you kidding the Milky Way dark chocolate "Midnight" half-Fun-Size nodule.
Or, maybe, just maybe, I'll have the Reese's Peanut Butter cup.
For Halloween fun, I watched the Kenneth Brannnnnaaaauugh 3d Poirot movie, set in Venice. He’s a great director and a fine Poirot and surely this will be a nice respite from the dead dread flat dark teal that smothers every commercial with its unnatural patina, and -
My God I am losing my mind over this
Yes of course that's exactly what Venice looks like
Note to post-production she was wearing a red hat for some reason can you adjust the tint thx
You could say "it's meant to imbue the story with dread and mystery!" and perhaps that's so - but what director or art director says "we need to set everyone on edge in this carefully reconstructed period piece. Get me that color from the Geico ads."
I'd show you more, but I'm saving my latest collection of That Color for another day.
I have 45 examples.
Maybe I should start adding it to the Bleat banners, eh?
Speaking of Halloween, which I shouldn't because it's so damned over: the other night I revisited, out of some old nostalgic impulse, the Charlie Brown Halloween special. Loved it as a kid! Now, along with the Christmas special, it's the last piece of Peanuts that has any presence in the culture.
Quite the influential strip, although if you read it not as a series of comic misadventures but the sad plaints of a chronic depressive, it seems like a daily cry for help.
It’s 1929.
DESTROY ALL MONSTERS
PROBE ALL LOBBIES
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A reminder that the news of the day, which seems terribly important, can seem like cave-wall marks as time passes. Credit here for “Solons,” a word seen only in newspapers. |
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Investigation to be sweeping! Action spurred! If you must know, Sen. Caraway demanded an investigation - a sweeping one - into all lobbying, because of a kerfluffle over “big navy” advocate behavior. The ACTION would also scrutinize the lobbyists for tariffs, and for Prohi.
Which was short for Prohibition. Took me a while, too.
And here, you suspect, hangs a tale.
Wikipedia:
Barbara Newhall Follett (March 4, 1914[2] – disappeared December 7, 1939) was an American child prodigy novelist.[3] Her first novel, The House Without Windows, was published in January 1927, when she was twelve years old. Her next novel, The Voyage of the Norman D., was based on her experience on a coastal schooner in Nova Scotia. It was published a year later in 1928, also receiving critical acclaim in many literary publications.
However, in the same year, Follett's father abandoned her mother for another woman. The event was a devastating blow to Follett, who was deeply attached to her father. Aged 14, she had reached the apex of her life and career.
“My dreams are going through their death flurries. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money.”
Wikipedia doesn’t talk about her mother leaving her at the Y. I gather from other news stories that she was supposed to go to school in LA, but didn’t want to. She’d never been to school and hated LA, so she went to SF.
Later:
In the summer of 1931, Follett met Nickerson Rogers. The couple spent the summer of 1932 walking the Appalachian Trail from Katahdin to the Massachusetts border, then sailed to Spain where they continued their walking excursions in Mallorca and through the Swiss Alps. After settling in Brookline, Massachusetts, the couple married in July 1934. At this time, Barbara still wrote, but her work was no longer in favor with publishers.
Although initially happy, by 1937 Barbara had started expressing dissatisfaction concerning married life in her letters to close friends, and by 1938 these cracks had widened even further.[6] Follett soon came to believe that Rogers was being unfaithful to her and became depressed.
According to her husband, on December 7, 1939, Follett left their apartment after a quarrel with $30 in her pocket ($589 in 2021). She was never seen again.
Hmm.
The mother wanted police to investigate, accusing the husband of indifference to his wife’s fate. Nothing came of it.
No one knows what happened.
What happens when an editorial writer attempts to write news:
Okay, I think I know what happened. We continue:
An affray? Websters or one of them says “An instance of fighting in a public place that disturbs the peace.”
The case was not settled, charges hadn’t been filed yet, the police had questioned the man, and so on. The editorial decried the soft treatment given the cop. Seems a bit premature, but was probably preceded by many more instances that provoked the writer to say “that’s enough.”
Letters to the editor discuss the Coat Wars, and whether men in a tropical climate should be allowed to shed their coats, now and then.
The show organizers were allowed to respond, and said that the response to the invitation was quite enthusiastic, and lots of people showed up. In fact, too many. To keep decorum, they insisted on applying the rules for comportment, lest rowdy elements enter.
NEEDS MOAR SIGNS
Trust me, you’re going to need those ships.
Finally, our comic: ha ha he’s going to paint the walls with his brains
Can you read the sig? That’s right: it’s Gladys Parker, who’d refine her style in the long-popular Mopsy.
That'll do - see you around! Head over to 1960s Euroswank hotels to top off your visit. And thanks for the patronage. |
