Doris Day amid objects

[Click for a larger view.]

Behold Doris Day in a scene from The Glass Bottom Boat (dir. Frank Tashlin, 1966), in the company of two pillars, four lamps, and one slightly bent telescope. And for good measure, there are half a dozen tall candles on the patio table, now out of view. Elaine and I watched this film last night (it was a new arrival at the library) and turned to each other several times in, well, stark incredulity. Stark, I say. People bumping, pressing, vibrating against each other; hoses and seltzer bottles spraying through the air; a messy banana cream cake; a robot vacuum cleaner with a long, predatory hose: the wink-wink moments and double-entendre props must have seemed racy (to someone) in 1966, but now they look clumsy and juvenile. Which is not to say that The Glass Bottom Boat isn’t worth watching: it’s a nice adventure in cultural studies and sort of, sometimes, funny. With Arthur Godfrey, Dom DeLuise, Paul Lynde (in cop drag and drag drag), Dick Martin, Alice Pearce (Lucy Schmeeler in On the Town), and many more. Collect them all.

Related posts
Diane Arbus meets the Platters (from another Tashlin effort)
“Doris Day parking”

November 11, 1922

[From a letter by Percy S. Bullen, Honorary Secretary of the League of Remembrance. Published as “Two Minutes’ Silence: Plans for the World-Wide Celebration of Armistice Day.” New York Times, November 9, 1922. ]

Two minutes of silence: at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

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November 11, 1918
November 11, 1919
November 11, 1920
November 11, 1921

Recently updated

To the next! A new development in the never-ending battle against spam comments.

WHAT?

[Mark Trail, November 6, 2012. Click for a larger view.]

I lost track of Mark Trail this week, but little has changed from last week: Mark is still being held for ransom. His friend and editor has been told to bring back two million dollars in small bills. I wondered: how will Bill get those bills? By asking other comic strips for donations? Today’s strip brings the answer: the magazine’s insurance policy will cover it. But Bill will have to cash the check to make good on the ransom. Tens and twenties, please. Nothing larger.

Note to Mark and the cartoon syndicate: There is no “good way” to tell your wife that you’ve been kidnapped.

Related reading
All Mark Trail posts

Sharked up

A friend recounted the story of a carelessly assembled bibliography he recently had the pleasure of reading. One of the works listed was a United States government publication. The entry began:

White, H.

See what happened there? The technical term to describe this sort of quick and undiscriminating effort: sharked up .

Domestic comedy

“It’s a Braeburn apple — that’s the brand.”

“No, that’s the model.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

MEME license-plate meme

Psst: pass it on.

[Crummy photograph, I know: all I had with me was an iPod Nano. I’ve zapped the registration date.]

Election thoughts

The results of yesterday’s voting make me more confident and more hopeful than ever about my country’s future. All the dollars and words devoted to depicting Barack Obama as the destroyer of the American economy and western civilization were for naught. I am happy to have voted for him for the third time.

President Obama’s reëlection makes me think that a majority of people in this country are, after all, thoughtful and compassionate. They know that climate change is real and nothing to joke about. They know that health care needs to be affordable for and accessible to all. They know that electrified fences and self-deportation are absurd and dehumanizing proposals and that there should be a path to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. They know that perpetual war is not the stuff of sound foreign policy. They know that PBS and Planned Parenthood serve the public good and are worthy of the government support they receive. They know that women should be able to make decisions about their own bodies. And they know that the ultra-wealthy are better positioned that anyone else to pay something more in taxes.

I am heartened too by results from other contests, with voters saying no to the likes of Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Joe Walsh, and Allen West (whose outré pronouncements on sundry matters bear no repeating) and yes to Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, and others. And to see voters rejecting a constitutional restriction on marriage and supporting referendums on equal marriage suggests that the right to marry the partner of one’s choice is well on its way to becoming a cultural norm.

I am happy today. But I am also amused — by the frequent characterizations in media commentary of ”older white men” as the bastion of the Republican Party. You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me ?

Related posts
Obama thoughts (2008)
Reality distortion fields

“Dear Sophia”

A letter from Barack Obama to a ten-year-old girl gives a good idea of the character of the man just reëlected.

[I’m sorry, but I’m powerless before the umlaut dieresis.]

Forward?

Forward!

NBC News just called Ohio for Barack Obama.