Tuesday Morning

There's a folder of bookmarks at the top of the browser window, labeled "Anytime now."  I've had similar folders in the past with other names, like "Read sooner" and "USA" (not as descriptive, but it didn't take up much space on the bookmark bar either).

The majority of the bookmarks in those folders probably never did get followed up, but this morning I opened one of dozens saved under "Anytime now," and the following is what I learned.  

Source:  "Show Girl", J.P. McEvoy, 1928

Skillabootch?  Here's where I found out more about McEvoy, whose writing style likely would have fit in well a hundred years later.  

A few pages earlier, he'd referenced a business that was clear from the context, but I went down the rabbit hole anyway...

... and found a 1938 article from the New York Times that served as The Rest of the Story about Cain's Warehouse.  Big in '28, closed for good in '38.

"In the old days, [Cain] continued, there was always the rental from shows stored for the Summer. But soon he found consignments left overtime, and he had to sell them. Electrical fixtures might bring a fair return, but there wasn't much of a market, say, for the tropical love setting in 'Congai,' or a chariot-wheel from an ancient Klaw-Erlanger 'Ben Hur.'"  

  --  "Curtain Is Rung Down on Cain's, Warehouse for Closed Shows," 9 February 1938, no byline

Nope, not really close

From time to time I look for interesting rabbit holes at Duke University's Library, the Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions (ROAD).  Last night, I saw a photograph of the illuminated billboards at Broadway and 37th Street in New York City.  

Inexplicably, its date is given as 1898, considering that one of the billboards promotes a production that claims it has been seen by President Taft, Vice-President Sherman, and Speaker Cannon.  It took a few seconds to confirm William Howard Taft was President from 1909-1913 and that the play, "Tillie's Nightmare", ran from May 5, 1910 - July 09, 1910 for 77 performances, and again for 8 more in December 1911.   

It should come as no surprise that a popular Broadway show was turned into a moving picture, although under an altered title.  The female lead remained Marie Dressler, while the male lead role went to a rising star who had already appeared in dozens of short films for producer/director Mack Sennett.  

It just so happens

To create that post a couple of days ago, I went into my cache of 20th-Century photos taken in NYC.  There was one image that showed huge marquees for On The Waterfront, Brigadoon, and one I’d never heard of, entitled Susan Slept Here.  Guess what I’m recording right now from TCM?  

Beyond this point is more detail which I want to remember, but that I recognize will be of interest only to me.  You’ve been warned.

I don’t usually go into Bluesky, but this morning I did, and almost immediately saw a post from the New Yorker from one of their film critics.  It said that he’d been discussing Susan Slept Here with someone, and how it was a sharp portrait of mid-1950’s capitalist America, and… it was going to be on TCM in about 15 minutes.  I powered up the TV and the TiVo just after the opening credits began.  

Photographic memory

I remember hearing about the documentary "The Automat" a few years ago, and when it was on the TCM schedule, I recorded it, or so I thought.  When I tried to play it back, there had been a problem with the cable that left the picture scrambled and the audio garbled.  But recently, I got a second chance, and this time it recorded properly.  

Above, a still from the film reminded me of a photo I'd seen online and saved.  Not exactly the same, but likely taken moments apart from the same spot on the same rainy day in 1943.  

Wonder what the "E" billboard next to the Automat sign was promoting?  Was there an "E" war bond? 

At the end of the day

Another day with my best friend of 40 years.  

Watched half of the 1958 Playhouse 90 color videotape (with B&W film inserts and commercials) of The Nutcracker.  Saw a Kimberly-Clark commercial with Richard (Dick) Cutting as "Manners", the butler.  Had to shut it off to go for dinner.  

Sometime in the DVD days, I bought a box set of Ed Sullivan shows with the Beatles.  In February 2014, at 8:00 p.m. on the exact day plus 50 years, I watched the first of the shows, and predictably thought, "Fifty..."  Now I'm watching television shows that aren't kinescopes, and that first went on the air 66 years ago.  

Petted a soft young cat.  Went outside for fresh cold air and spotted a rabbit dashing for cover in underbrush.

Back home after sunset:  put away the leftovers -- now what?  Practice?  I get to practice, and that's good, but remembered something I like more.  Looked in the January 2025 folder and went over all the kitten photos; selected 4 for the body of the supporter letter and one more for the elongated header picture.  Practice is interesting, but the kitten supporter letter means something in the real world.  

Researched converting 8MM videotape to digital, and realized that not only would it be easier to spend the cash and have someone else do it, but also that it might be the only practical way anymore.  Sure, I have a camcorder, one that I bought in 1995 and haven't used for a long time.  If it still works, then what do I use to connect it to the PC?  Sure, I have a Dazzle converter, which I acquired in 2010 and whose label proclaims compatibility with Windows Vista.  Sounds like less than a sure thing.

I didn't have the PC hardware back in 2010, and in 2025 I don't have the video hardware.  Anyway, the video transfer that cost $32 a few years ago has dropped to $20 per tape.  Even with 23 2-hour tapes, it's still not a super expensive decision.   

Tomorrow looks like this:  (1) clean the humidifier and refill it with distilled water, (2) spot-treat cat urine stains on the upstairs carpet and the steps, while starting to research the cost of ripping up the carpet and replacing it with the vinyl floor tile left over from the downstairs project this past year.  (3) with a flashlight, take a closer look at the ceiling of the shed out back to confirm whether there's as much water damage as there appeared to be in dim light a few days ago.

Along with that research, there are a couple of months to go before the power company contract runs out, and so am doing some research into home electricity rates.  

Like I said, the mundane events of everyday life.  

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A few days ago, I was looking for this clipping from a 1914 Life magazine.  Took me a while, but I found it.  The military-industrial complex was around back then, too.

Way back, waaay back...

Not absolutely sure of the above assertion, but the two things I remembered about the first MLB game I attended were that Norm Cash homered and a 36-year-old rookie named Hank Izquierdo was catching for the visiting Twins.  It was his only season with them, and with the help of Baseball Reference, I found that he played only 3 games in Tiger Stadium, with two of them the nightcaps of doubleheaders.  The single game was on Thursday, August 24, and Norm Cash did homer that day.  

Yeah, I did the math, I know how long ago that was...  I can also sing commercial jingles from that era as though I saw them yesterday.  (Since I've watched a number of them on YouTube, it's entirely possible that I did.)  And I've used Izquierdo sometime during the past year in Immaculate Grid.

Adding to the sum total of human knowledge

 

Are there enough clues on the scoreboard to determine the date of the photo?

Yes.  The Pittsburgh-New York game with its high score was the biggest clue.  Also, since the Braves were still in Boston, that meant it was prior to 1953.  Since the Pirates had a terrible record in 1952, I skipped that year and instead checked 1951 for the 11 Pit-NYG games at Forbes Field.  

The pictured game was Milwaukee-Indianapolis.  Also on the scoreboard is Minneapolis at Toledo, but less than a week later, on June 23, Mud Hens owner Danny Menendez moved the team to Charleston, West Virginia, leading to his indictment.  

When the Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee in 1953, the Milwaukee team in the American Association moved to Toledo, where they were first known as the Glass Sox, but soon settled on Sox.  

 

Way, way back when

Shortly after my 2nd birthday, NBC, whose compatible color system gave them a big lead in the early decades of commercial television, broadcast ("in living color", as they liked to put it) The Kraft Music Hall, starring Milton Berle.  

Only recently, a Berle family member provided it to UCLA's Film and Television Archive, where it became the oldest known color videotape in existence.  Until then, An Evening With Fred Astaire, from later in October 1958, held that title.   EDIT:  Network color videotape, I should emphasize.  Or maybe, full-color videotape.  Neither of which applied to the dedication of color studios at WRC, Washington DC in May 1958.  

The Astaire show was rightfully viewed as an event and worth keeping.  The Berle show, not so much.  But it's color videotape from 65 years ago, plus it contains a brief clip from Bill Cullen's The Price is Right, so it's catnip to me.  

Adding to the sum total of human knowledge

First came this...

...and I contributed the bit on the right below.  Which was followed a few hours later by the post on the left.  (Click to embiggen)

 

Focus

I was just reading an article from today's Le Monde, and I was doing fine with the language.  Not quite as smooth as English, but I knew what was going on.

But while I'm reading something in another language (one of the stated activities set for retirement) I'm not practicing any of the variations on the half-time shuffle; I'm not watching a tutorial on OpenShot; I'm not creating a video in OpenShot.

I already know what I want to do first.  Months ago, I saw a WWII cartoon with a character like Private Snafu.  In it, there was a section of gibberish consisting of a speeded-up human voice.  I recorded the audio and slowed it down in GoldWave, and found it was the same voice as the lead character in the cartoon.  It shouldn't be difficult to put together a video that reveals this fact to anyone with ears to hear.  Call it my latest contribution to the sum total of human knowledge.  

OK, kid, focus.  Back to Le Monde.  The rest can wait until tomorrow.  After you clear the latest snowfall on Saturday, and before you visit the cats on Sunday, there'll be time for creative activities.  (After you visit the cats, there'll be photos to go through, tag, file, and touch up for publication.)  Remember that Monday's an off day, too.  You can't do it all at once, but you can do it all at one time or another this weekend.  

Back in time

This is genuinely for me only.  Most if not all of the other posts in Before I Forget can be read by anyone, on the off chance anyone else finds them.  But considering the miniscule chance that anyone will find this, and the even smaller chance they'll be as interested in early videotape as I am, I recognize this one's for me and me alone.

Back when I watched broadcast television, there was some special probably related to the history of a network.  I saw a clip of Sinatra and Bing and my mind snapped to attention.  From the live look of it, I could tell it was a videotape, and I knew that black-and-white clips from early TV were always in the form of lower-quality kinescopes.

On YouTube, I learned that it was a clip from The Edsel Show, which aired on CBS on October 13, 1957.  More about the difference between videotape and kinescope at Kris Trexler's website, King of the Road, as well as the story of how he helped make The Edsel Show available.

Also at KOTR is the story of An Evening With Fred Astaire, broadcast just over a year later on NBC, "in living color" as they used to say.  That used to be on YouTube, too.  

It also used to be the oldest existing show nationally broadcast on color videotape, until the announcement of the Kraft Music Hall that was on October 8, 1958, nine days before the Fred Astaire show.  

I have a little list of YouTube-available shows from way back when.  Some are videotapes, some are kinescopes dating back to 1948.  Near the top of the list:  the oldest color videotape of any kind:  dedication of WRC-TV studios, May 22, 1958, featuring President Eisenhower.  Here too, Kris Trexler had a hand in putting that up for everyone to see.

As of tonight, 13 of the shows I put on the list aren't available anymore, including the Playhouse 90 telecast of Judgment at Nuremberg.  When Rod Serling complained about serious shows that were interrupted by six bunny rabbits selling toilet paper, that was one of the commercials on this show.  

Also, this show was sponsored by the gas company, and for that reason, all references to gas chambers were muted.  Someone with a black sense of humor could come up with something far worse to take their place.  My sense of humor only goes so far:  I liked it when margarine ads, which were forbidden to use the word "butter", made the most of it by referring instead to "the high-priced spread."

It was a good day

Didn't sleep well Thursday night, but made up for it Friday night.  Stayed up going down rabbit holes until after midnight, and when I finally went to bed, I slept the sleep of the gods for 7 1/2 solid hours.  No bathroom visits overnight, just blissful slumber.   This happens very rarely.

So I woke up at 8:00, and the sun was shining, and I showered and put on clean clothes, and I felt like doing stuff.  Not Immaculate Grid or Spelling Bee, but breaking down boxes to recycle at the township and loading the car with them.  

That was the first task on the list, since all the boxes piled one on top of the other blocked my view of the rear view, so getting rid of them had to be first.  After that, to Wegmans for the standard list of groceries; milk, sugar, salsa, and bananas (yes, we had no bananas).  

Stopped at the Wild Birds Unlimited a couple of blocks from the Wegmans, and was impressed that the manager behind the counter remembered us, even though it had been weeks since our previous visit.  I mean, not only did he recognize us, he pulled up our frequent shopper account and helped remind us what we usually bought.  He had a shaved head and a bushy beard, but he's as good a businessman as any clean-shaven man in a gray flannel suit.

Returned home, dropped off the groceries, had half an apple with peanut butter, and back out again to shop.  First, though, to the new car wash a couple of miles from home.  We had been mass-mailed a card containing a code for a free wash, which I had forgotten but which PG remembered, saving me thirteen bucks.  You bet I thanked her.

At Costco, it seemed like every space in the parking lot had been filled, so we gave up and instead got a few things at the nearby PetSmart.  Then home again for the rest of the day.  We made a pot of chili and ate some of it, and I took a nap in the rocker/recliner with Good Queen Swirly on my lap.  She got down eventually, I woke up soon after, and fiddled around with the drumsticks on shuffle beats for some time.  Play for awhile, watch a video lesson for awhile, play some more, watch some more.  Nothing intense, just a low simmer.  

PG wanted a kitchen gadget from Amazon, so I ordered a couple and added some small stuff for myself.  We'd just bought a set of kitchen chairs to replace the worn-out set we'd gotten in 2006 or so.  That purchase was good for 5% cash (or store credit) back, so today's much smaller purchase cost us nothing.  

Today's mail brought the yearly letter from our accountant, providing a checklist of required tax documents.  We'd been dumping the W-2, the 1099's, and cumulative statements in a tray, and today I went through them, organizing and listing them on a cover letter that will go out soon.  Not expecting a big refund; in fact we try to break even or owe a little bit, hanging on to our money the way tax advisors recommend rather than make interest-free loans to Uncle Sam.  

One last thing:  in the Philip Wylie rabbit hole last night, I learned about a 1915 book which described a superweapon that strongly resembled an atomic bomb.  Immediately I went to Gutenberg and downloaded a copy of The Man Who Rocked The Earth.  The book looked a year ahead and described the destruction caused by the world war, and while I don't know my history that well, I bet the story wasn't way off in its predictions.  I don't take for granted having near-instant access to documents and information that were out of reach the first forty years of my life.  What a time to be alive, y'know?  

Progression, or One Thought Leads to Another

It's after midnight, December 6.  A couple of years ago, I used to wait up and do the day's Wordle right after midnight.  Not anymore. 

I also used to play an online game where you have to guess the year a photo was taken.  After awhile, I could tell a 20's photo from a 40's from a 60's.  But all 21st-Century images look alike to me.

There's a website run by Duke University with photos of billboards over several decades.  Here's my favorite, taken in 1939, and which must have been known as the Esso Bee:

..............

Later that day, I opened Facebook, and among the on-this-date memories was one from 2022, featuring the Esso Bee.  December 6 is Esso Bee Day!

Ding Dong School - NBC - November 17, 1954

YouTube has multiple examples of early television that were before my time, but I still heard about them in my childhood.  Only now am I getting to see shows like Kukla, Fran and Ollie (I knew the song "Here We Are Again" but not until now did I know it was the theme from KFO) and Ding Dong School.  Miss Frances puts me in mind of Fred Rogers in her warm, patient delivery, although without the unconditional positive regard of Mr. Rogers for the very young viewer. 

Of course, there was no PBS back then, and even non-commercial NET was just getting started in 1954, so the show was sponsored, in this case by Ovaltine.  When she slides from the program into the commercial with barely a pause, she uses the same warm tone of voice that signifies she's telling the little members of her audience about another Good Thing.  At least Paul Harvey put a "Page Two" between the content and the sponsor's message.

Here I Am

No idea who else would do this, but an analysis of this imperfect Immaculate Grid can be revealing.

The player knows next to nothing about the Colorado Rockies.  Jon Gray is on the Texas Rangers, who are in this year's World Series, and the player vaguely remembers seeing in Baseball Reference that Gray began his career with the Rockies.

The player doesn't know much about the Milwaukee Brewers, or more accurately, he knows more than the average fan about the 1969 Seattle Pilots.  Talbot played for the White Sox before joining the Pilots, Baney pitched for the Reds after the '69 season, and Brabender won 13 games in the Pilots' only season.  It can be safely assumed that the player has read Ball Four more than once.

Like he did with the Pilots and the Brewers, the player has resorted to choosing members of the Montreal Expos, the previous incarnation of the Washington Nationals.  Stoneman was the best pitcher on the Expos in the team's first two seasons, 1969-70.  But Alcala, briefly on the 1977 Expos, was never a star, or even an above-average pitcher.  The player liked to refer to him as Santo Claus, based on the extra-base hits liberally strewn across his 1976 Strat-O-Matic card, a season, it must be added, in which his win-loss record was 11-4.  (And, the player further adds, an ERA of 4.70, facts recalled without any need of reference materials.)  Alcala was frequently matched up against the other team's top pitcher, and while it can't be said that he "outdueled" the other man, he was the beneficiary of the '76 Reds high-powered offense.  And finally, Edwin Jackson is one of those "when in doubt" answers in IG, so the player has been playing this game long enough to have obtained some savvy about it.  See also:  Octavio Dotel, Mike Morgan, Matt Stairs, Darren Oliver, Tommy Davis.

 

Thoughts While Scrolling

If Ralph Edwards were alive in 2023, would he be amused to hear the phrase a "bizarre proto-reality show" used to describe his creation, "This Is Your Life"?  

Then, there's a report this week that the Steely Dan song "Dirty Work" is appearing in TV shows, movies, and thousands and thousands of TikTok posts.  "Are Steely Dan Songs Secretly Cool?" asks the title of the article.  The author attempts to answer the question in this writerly paragraph:

To someone steeped in proto-punk and indie of the same era, Steely Dan represented everything unappealing about the excess of the ‘70s studio sound — a band so into cocaine and cleverness that they engineered all the passion and energy out of their music. Their overtly literate lyricism was clever but self-conscious, a far cry from the visceral howl emerging from the heart of punk rock, while their musical inspirations — show tunes, easy listening, jazz, funk, and lounge music — were always handled with a sense of fundamental irony and distance, subverted with strange chords and quirky lines to distract from the music’s foundations in kitsch. No matter how complex the songs were, they always felt too clean to stand out. Like particularly high-end elevator music. 

C'est cette chanson que j'aime...

Blogger's stat sheet says that there have been hundreds of hits this week on this humble, unpublicized, quiet corner of cyberspace, and they all came from Singapore.  It makes a fellow wonder.  Stocking up their files for future AI?

I spent my junior year of college in a small city in France.  Lots of memories, kept in some small cahiers and presently residing in a small box at the bottom of a closet upstairs.  

But some of those memories are in the form of music, and tonight I learned that one of the tubes of my stay in France was used last year in a TV commercial for a supermarché named Intermarché. (The link contains both the commercial and the original song, paroles et musique. A cette heure, de toute façon.)  

Back then, with my limited French, I thought it was a song like I Will Survive, where the singer was determined to go on living despite having lost their lover.  Now, I see it more as the singer rejecting that lover due to his own égoïsme.  Like the joke with a sharp point that a female stand-up made about a former boyfriend:  "We had a lot in common.  We both loved him and hated me."

55 years too late

She's got Bette Davis eye.

Lately, before I forget

Films:  Ishtar; Dawson City: Frozen Time

Read:  Queen of Crime; All the Answers

Moments during a 3-day weekend:  four rabbits and a pair of mallards in our back yard; PG has an injured leg and I am helping to pick up the slack; I baked a blueberry streusel cake; driving from Macungie back home, saw a field of tall chicory, not just the stunted kind that grows in the gravelly soil next to asphalt roads.  

Awoke at 3:00 this morning and went downstairs, because PG needed me to feed the cats, and they're used to her getting up to feed them around 4:00.  No big deal, it's a weekend.  During the hour between 3:00 and 4:00, I followed Twitter feeds for info about the mutiny/insurrection/coup in Russia.  At the same time, I read about the release of a copy of The Second Arrangement from the estate of Steely Dan engineer Roger Nichols.  One was big news worldwide, the other big news to just a few people, but I'm one of them.  

Similarly, earlier this month when Canadian wildfire smoke covered our area, darkening the sky and turning the sun into a dim red dot, PG's granddaughter graduated on one of those evenings and we attended the ceremony.  

Easy Like Sunday, print edition

Thoughts while scrolling:  on Twitter, I follow This Day in 1923, the work of a man who is an editor at the Wall Street Journal.  Here's one of his tweets from this morning.

I recognized Cobb in the right photo. (Tangent:  that "Can't yank" billboard was also in the background of a scene from Buster Keaton's "The Cameraman", which was shot in The Yankee Stadium, as I heard it called in radio broadcasts from decades ago.  Like the Pentagon was called the Pentagon Building in the WWII newscasts now on YouTube.  But I digress.)

The man on the left doesn't look like Cobb, and is swinging right-handed.  Baseball bugs, cranks, and yanigans like me know Ty Cobb batted lefty.  A quick visit to baseball-reference.com and the page devoted to the 1923 Detroit Tigers followed.  My answer:  Harry Heilmann, who hit .403 that season and is also a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.   

Getty Images confirms my guess.

Another source of the obscure word above.