It's a good stick. It put up just enough of a fight to make that good successful tug seem as if it was earned, a proper victory. Everything else gave up without a struggle, and then he was bored.
One of those days. One of those ball your fists and chew your cheek days. At a certain point in the near future I expect I will actually push my fingers through my palms and be able to stick my tongue through the side of my face through a brand new hole.
The end result of this, for the moment, is an extreme aversion to practicing my craft, but I should stop there. I started writing about this for a Monday Bleat and by the time I was done I had decided to quit everything and go work for Home Depot as a greeter. Oh don't be a fool, you say. Home Depot doesn't have greeters. No, but they have guys who gather the carts from the lot and return them to the long lines of carts and arrange them in a neat row for other people, and at least that's useful work.
So let's just chalk this one up to a bad run of unfortunate hours (which are unfortunately characteristic of Things In General) and leave it at that and move on to something I wrote in a more genial mood.
So! What's the journey that takes us from this image . . .
. . . to this one?
When I saw the opening credits . . .
. . . I thought sigh, we have to find this. So. Lots of car dealerships. That hotel sign in the back, the Mayflower. Googling . . . could it be this?
I tell you, I tried theater names, restaurants, everything. Nothing came back. It was like I’d stumbled across an AI generated version of LA that jumbled all the real things into a new tableau.
Perhaps we should just let it roll and see if any obvious landmarks are visible . . . .
Oh.
It’s not LA. It’s New York. Well, that helps, but I feel stupid for not just letting it roll.
Two things: I’m always surprised that the Bond building is still there.
So few Times Square landmarks survived, but the Bond podium - the International Casino - is still there, a low-slung building has to be worth a gazillion dollars, but no one’s knocked it down and built a tall tower?
Then there’s the Hojo, which should’ve been my first clue. I thought about it, but then figured, no, there had to be one in LA. But now that I think about it, I don’t ever remember seeing the logo in old visions of LA.
A Bronx: gin, sweet and dry, vermouth, orange juice, orange bitters. A Perfect: a martini with equal parts sweet and dry vermouth. Orange Blossom is a Bronx with only sweet vermouth.
It’s not a particularly amusing name for a drink, but beggars can’t be choosers, especially not sweltering ones. People back in the 1830s, when the Cobbler first turned up, didn’t have air conditioning, or even Vornado fans. This drink was all they had when the weather turned repulsive (well, OK, they had it and the Mint Julep). While we like to think that back then, before there were cars and traffic lights and iWhatnots, you could be as drunk as a boiled owl and still go about your day, there were a few poor souls who couldn’t.
For them, since there’s nothing more endrunkening than a Julep, there was the Cobbler. A good-sized splash of sherry, which has all the flavor of booze but less than half the horsepower, a little sugar and a slice or two of orange, shaken with ice like the Devil himself was whipping you on. Serve with a straw, if you like. (It was probably the Sherry Cobbler that got us using those suckers in the first place.)
Nothing more refreshing has ever been created.
The Mamie Taylor: scotch, lime juice, ginger beer. The name might have come from a late 19th century opera singer. Seems likely. I ran it through newspapers.com, and there was a Taylor Opera company with a Mamie Taylor warbling away.
By the way, here’s the location today.
It was in the Brill Building. By the way, who is this guy?
The property on which the building sits was leased by the Brill Brothers, who owned a men's clothing store dating back to the 1880s. In 1929, the Brills sublet the property to Abraham Lefcourt, a prominent developer, with instructions that he have a completed building on the site by November of 1931. Lefcourt soon announced plans for the tallest building in the world, a 1,050 foot skyscraper that would cost the developer roughly $30 million.
Lefcourt found himself in a competition with the builders of the other two structures, who were racing to build the world's tallest building. But as plans were still being worked out for Lefcourt's building, his teenage son Alan died suddenly. Lefcourt was apparently devoted to his son, and whether Alan's death was the deciding factor or not, Abraham ultimately decided to build a ten-story building, which would be named the Alan E. Lefcourt Building, in honor of his son. Lefcourt hired Victor Bark, Jr., to design the building, a striking Art Deco structure. In a niche over the entrance, roughly 20 feet above street level, is a bronze bust of Alan Lefcourt.
The building would have been the tallest in the world, at 1,050 feet. No plans were ever submitted, though. We can only imagine what it would have looked like.
Here's the opening. Fantastic 1957 Times Square.
Five thousand, seven hundred souls. As for the name: "Anadarko got its name when its post office was established in 1873. The designation came from the Nadaco Native Americans, a branch of the Caddo Nation, and the 'A' was added due to a clerical error."
Five thousand, seven hundred souls. 
