The skyway map from its heyday, reflected in the marble of the Ameriprise building. That's all. Caught my eye the other day.

It's the side of the lobby that used to have a little coffee stand and some tables and chairs. Empty now. At least the coffee shop in the rival building, the 333, has been filled - but it's doomed. They sell fudge. Big store. Nice furnishings. Fireplace. Fudge.

Nothing much to report. It was a day of revising more than writing, and that's no fun. Had a hamburger patty for lunch. With mustard. I've lost interest in ketchup. I don't know why. I feel like less of an American for it. Perhaps with a McDonald's hamburger, but I don't eat those anymore, either, because unless it was made 17 seconds ago, it's awful. Nothing seems to match the memory of a small King Leo's with pepper and MSG and a steamed bun.

I'm still angry about the failure of the King Leo Revival in Fargo. I was disappointed at the time, but I think that was a cover for being mad. One shouldn't be mad about such things. But for BOG'S SAKE they rebuilt the classic King Leo:

. . . and then they served big thick burgers indistiguishable from any other fast-casual joint, instead of the small thin "buy 'em by the sack" variety. Augh.

I had such hopes. So did others. It lasted two years.

Appropos of zilch: If you're wondering what the time elapsed between reading an unfamiliar cultural reference and understanding it via serendipitous newspaper browsing: 23 hours

When looking for news in 1933, I found this.

		I figured it was just some free-floating popular name for an addled or comic academic type.

The next day, perusing some comics, I found this.

Well then. You’d be surprised how little there is on Professor Whattaschnozzle. The first few entries are Tijuana Bibles, with - thank Bog - no examples of the art. Googled more, and landed on a page about reused sequences in animation.

Jack Kinney pulled the same trick as the “Land of the Lost” cartoons whenever he decided (frequently) to have a time travel episode with Professor Whattaschnozzle. Every episode would begin with a nearly identical reuse of wraparound animation of the professor at a weird machine with a giant eyeball, and a hand that would extend out of the building on an endless telephone extender to capture Popeye at his home (who was always listening to the same jazzy recording of his theme song and saying, “I loves this classical music”) and electronically knock him out to be carried back into the machine.

Errrr okay. Two things I did not know about the Popeye creator: his full name (I knew he went by “E. C” but did not know it stood for Elzie Crisler, which is quite a moniker) and the fact that he kicked at 43. Popeye has lived twice as long.

Do we have to do this again? We have to do this again.

Oh, I could talk about this ad I just saw for Ring systems. A Christmas ad. There's a guy trying to hang lights, and he's doing it poorly, and his wife calls to see how he's doing, and he pretends he's competent. Then we go to a family in a minivan, and the dad asks if he set the alarm, and the wife - who has the Ring app open - arms it, and lies that he did. I think at some point the quantity of "highly competent and indulgent wife who keep silent about things to protect their husband's fragile sense of his self" will exceed the number of ditzy-ninny wives from the old days.

Why, it's possible that it already has.

Oh, I could talk about how I was watching this documentary about Albert Brooks, featuring Albert Brooks, and a host of comedians who proclaimed him the greatest ever and an absolute genius opened up the realms of Comic Possibility for them all, and yes, I can see that. It's just odd that I can admire the hell out of his concepts and not necessarily laugh, a lot, at the bits themselves. It's just odd. I ought to be the biggest fan but I've never connected with his work. It lands but it doesn't get me where I live.

I could discuss the new season of Bosch, which is welcome, but I am tired of having this opinion about the daughter character, then having that opinion. It's still Dollar-Store Bosch compared to the Amazon series, and I wish he had the weight of the law behind him. It was simply more interesting.

No, instead I'm going to do this again.

Explain to me, again, why this color infects everything. Why this is considered appealing and attractive. Do you want to live in this world?

The shot above is a kitchen. Doesn't that look like a lovely, inviting place to gather everyone and bond over vegetable chopping? No?

Well, let's go down to the club and play some chess.

If you'd rather go to the office, I regret to inform you that it is a dim, sulfurous place with That Color suffusing everything.

After work, let's hit the club!

If the color gets you down, for some strange reason, we can go to the doctor's office, where it's a bit lighter.

These are all . . .

. . . taken from the same ad.

It’s 1949.

Okay then

The “treat instead of a treatment” line refers to all the other ads that told you DOCTORS SMOKE ‘EM and the T-zone BS and Chesterfield’s “no case of irritation” booshwah. Old Gold just cut to the chase: you want to smoke? So smoke

Oh, sure, Moms love that first thing in the morning.

Okay, some do, because they slept on a particular brand of mattress. Spring-Air. Get it? It's not exactly a double meaning. One-and-a-half, tops.

The photos make it look like a mortuary slab.

Spying Spouse vs. Snack Sneaker: I guess she was mystified by where all the mustard was going, and decided to investigate.

It’s the Dagwood ritual, the midnight sandwich. An entire extra meal at the late, late hour of 11 PM or so.

It’s not a bad idea. I mean, I have something around 11 PM. I just wouldn’t think of making an entire sandwich, because that seems like an admission of something or other.

YOUR CAR SEATS, NOT YOUR SPOUSE

Plastic fabric was a new post-war miracle substance, and you could get new wonder VELON in other forms, too. I wonder when the culture turned against it. At some point we’d just had enough, and it became regarded as tacky and déclassé. Perhaps it always was.

“How much breakfast ham you makin’?”

“Enough”

Pancakes and sausage. Bacon and eggs. Ahh. Nothing better for breakfast, is there?

Did they really have to advertise this?

These are penny-pinching times to buy Spun-Lo quality undies:

A product of that romantically named lingerie company, INDUSTRIAL RAYON.

She looks like she’s checking her pulse to see if the constriction of the garments is causing unusual fibrillations:

Wear it knowingly.

Bourjois is still around. At the time of this writing, the “Russia” product page reflects current events:

Served at the home, the modern mirrored home, of Sid Luckman!

Sid had quite a career. Afterwards:

After departing the NFL, he went to work for Cel-U-Craft, a Chicago-based manufacturer of cellophane products, eventually becoming its president.

Wonder if they considered branching into Velon competitors.

		Now two ways to chip in!

That'll do. Now enjoy the mirthless neurotic Woody Allen comic! See you around.