Store-brand cereals and their mascots

My friend Sara meditates on store-brand cereals and their mascots: “They’re A-Okay.”

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The Old Reader, about to disappear Maybe not yet.

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, July 31, 2013.]

Says Hi, “Housewives used to dress up to greet their husbands when they came home from work.”

Yes, and houses used to have their kitchens not in the living room. See the three little windows? You can’t tell me that that door isn’t front. It’s possible that Hi has walked around the house and entered through the kitchen — which would make him a back-door man in his own damn house. But that’s still a front door. And yes, there aren’t enough chairs.

And why is Hi under the impression that Lois is a “housewife”? Wake up, Mr. Flagston: your wife has been working since 1980. A 1984 chart tracking the strip’s history marks the event: “Lois Joins the Women’s Movement and Gets a Job Selling Real Estate” — aka Etatse Laer.

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All Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

[The chart appears in Mort Walker and Dik Browne’s The Best of “Hi and Lois” (1986).]

Antique music, antique phonographs

From WFMU, a podcast worth your attention: Michael Cumella’s The Antique Phonograph Music Program, old music played on old machines. Try the July 16 show, which explores the differences between acoustical and electrical recording, with back-to-back records for comparison.

I like this podcast for the expertise of its host, for the unfamiliarity of (most of) the music, and for the chance to think about what people not that long ago found entertaining. And guess what — much of it is still entertaining.

A discovery by way of this podcast and YouTube: the Bratislava Hot Serenaders. Try “Crazy Rhythm” (after Ben Bernie) and “Happy Feet” (after Paul Whiteman). Hot indeed.

Thanks to Mike at Brown Studies for recommending this podcast.

Domestic comedy

“Isn’t that pretty?”

[Rolls eyes for comedic effect .] “Beautiful. Put it on Pinterest.”

“I found it on Pinterest.”

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All domestic comedy posts (Pinboard, not Pinterest)

Populaire

Coming this fall, a new film with Bérénice Bejo and cinematography by Guillaume Schiffman:

Populaire takes place in the late 1950s and tells the story of Rose (played by Déborah François), a clumsy country girl who moves to a small city in the hope of becoming a secretary. She is hired by Louis (Romain Duris), an insurance agent, for her typing skills. As their relationship develops, Louis enters Rose into a regional speed-typing competition, becoming her coach and trainer with dreams of winning the world title.

Ms. Bejo stars as Louis’s childhood friend and former lover who champions Rose’s romantic interest in her boss.

Weinstein Co. Will Release a Movie Focused on a Speed-Typing Competition (Wall Street Journal)

It sounds wonderful.

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Life Without Reader

Searching for a satisfactory replacement for Google Reader (GR) has prompted me to rethink my online reading habits, in two ways:

Do I want to depend on RSS for my reading? No. That’s become clear to me as every GR substitute I’ve tried has turned out to have one or more problems: delays, downtime, missing posts, botched formatting.

Do I need to check most sites on a several-times-a-day basis? No. But that is, in effect, what I’m doing by checking a reader throughout the day.

So I’m trying Life Without Reader, any reader. I’ve created a Pinboard bookmark to hold the URLs for sites I’ve been following in GR and replacement readers. I will visit these sites on a regular basis, not daily but two or three times a week. Thus I’ll be able to read what people have written as they’ve chosen to present it, with distinctive typography, sidebars, the works. (How much one misses out on with RSS — comments too.) That I won’t be seeing posts in the timeliest way is of minor concern to me: very little of what I read is in any danger of turning into yesterday’s news a day or two after publication.

Life Without Reader is my suggestion for greater engagement with those whom one reads online. I’d like to see it catch on.

The Old Reader, about to disappear

The Old Reader, one of the more appealing substitutes for Google Reader, is closing the doors to most users. Details and further explanation here.

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July 31: “We have received a number of proposals that we are discussing right now. Chances are high that public The Old Reader will live after all.”

A banner in TOR announced the service’s imminent closing. It would have been helpful to see this new development in a banner as well. Instead, the news appears as an update on TOR’s blog. The Old Reader is an amateur effort, in the best and worst ways.

Earl “Fatha” Hines on film

At Vimeo: Earl “Fatha” Hines, a 1975 documentary filmed at Blues Alley in Washington, D. C. This film is a great depiction of a musician off the bandstand, playing and talking in the afternoon hours before a night’s performance. I waited years to see this film again.

[Why “Fatha”? Because Earl Hines is considered the father of modern jazz piano. I have fifty-one Hines LPs.]

A Route 66 mystery guest

Can you identify this actress? Leave your best guess in the comments.

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8:58 a.m.: The answer’s now in the comments.

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