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  1. Inkstainedwretch

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    There is something innately compelling in the really vile, slummy, violent cities and districts that draws us to them. Dickens' London is perhaps the most famous, but Hugo's Paris is not far behind. New York's Five Points of the 1850s is notorious. Look up the Old Brewery sometime. San...
  2. Inkstainedwretch

    Movies that had Great Initial Success and, then, Chirp, Chirp, Chirp

    The first season of "Star Trek" (1966) was sponsored by a color tv manufacturer (RCA, I think). Watch a first-season show sometime and notice the bizarre colors, with different-colored light coming out of every doorway on the Enterprise. It was done deliberately, to showcase color tv.
  3. Inkstainedwretch

    You know you are getting old when:

    Yeah, what is it about cameras these days? They always make me look much older and fatter than the guy I see in the mirror!
  4. Inkstainedwretch

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    A bit of movie trivia: Paul Muni shooting up his boss's office in sheer elation over the firepower of his new Tommy gun was replicated in 1969 by Sam Peckinpah with General Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) shooting up the town square with his new Browning machinegun. The enthusiasm of these child-men...
  5. Inkstainedwretch

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Was the letter opener the free gift the Fuller man gave the housewife to get in the door? The guy who invented Brillo was a Fuller guy and he tried to figure out what to use as the get-in-the-door gift. The cheapest cleaning item they had was steel wool. In a moment of inspiration he thought of...
  7. Inkstainedwretch

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Do door-to-door salesmen still exist? I remember the Fuller Brush men and the encyclopedia salesmen, but I haven't encountered one in many years. It seems like it would be a risky job in these paranoid times, when knocking on a stranger's door might get you shot.
  8. Inkstainedwretch

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Remember paperweights? They existed because office buildings and houses used to have windows and transoms that opened to let air circulate through. This allowed in gusts of wind, which could scatter papers, thus paperweights. They came in many designs but they were all small, compact and heavy...
  9. Inkstainedwretch

    Autumnal Thoughts........

    You have a drought in Maine? We have one here in New Mexico, but it's been going on for years and may, if some climate scientists are correct, last another 300 or more, a real Anasazi-killing drought. Of course, I'll probably miss most of it.
  10. Inkstainedwretch

    Science Fiction Genre - Religion vs Scientific Origins, and the Nature of Self Destruction

    Yesterday Elon Musk outlined his plan to colonize Mars within the next couple of decades. It's straight out of Heinlein. No candyass NASA program to send 3 or 4 astronauts and bring them back. He wants to send thousands at once and they stay there until they can manufacture fuel for a return...
  11. Inkstainedwretch

    Movies that had Great Initial Success and, then, Chirp, Chirp, Chirp

    Lizzie, say what you will about "Viva Villa," James Wong Howe's B&W cinematography was superb. On the subject of classic vs. forgotten, anybody know which of the Oscar nominees for Best Film of 1952 won? Was it "High Noon" or "The Quiet Man," long recognized classics? Was it "Ivanhoe" or...
  13. Inkstainedwretch

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    Not to belittle our canine friends, but cats are carnivores, dogs are scavengers. Dogs can tolerate a much wider variety of foods than cats. Dogs have been around humans for hundreds of thousands of years, cats only for a few thousand i.e. since our practice of hoarding grain produced an...
  14. Inkstainedwretch

    Movies that had Great Initial Success and, then, Chirp, Chirp, Chirp

    The Godfather came out just a year before The The Exorcist, so that's another early-70s classic. In fact, the period of 1967 (Bonnie & Clyde) and 1975 (Jaws) was a sort of mini-golden age that saw the debuts of directors like Spielberg, Coppola and Allen.
  15. Inkstainedwretch

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    I can remember when I was a kid, old people being aghast that people would actually buy food for a cat. Cats were supposed to earn their keep by hunting their own food. Dogs were supposed to subsist on table scraps and butchers' leavings. You fed your horse, and it was supposed to work for it.
  16. Inkstainedwretch

    Autumnal Thoughts........

    I just turned on the heat, put on a long-sleeved shirt and changed from sandals to shoes and socks. Fall is officially here.
  17. Inkstainedwretch

    DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

    There was a Golden Era movie if ever there was one. The ultimate neo-noir.
  19. Inkstainedwretch

    Terms Which Have Disappeared

    I don't think the alcohol sublimates off that quickly. I've had many an Irish coffee that retained its requisite effect nicely.
  20. Inkstainedwretch

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    There are things you should be able to count on in life. One of those things is the color of M&Ms. In a properly run universe, they should be brown, tan, green, yellow and red. For a while orange replaced red during the hysteria over red food coloring, supposedly carcinogenic. Red came back...
  21. Inkstainedwretch

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    When I first saw a blue M&M I knew Armageddon could not be far off.
  22. Inkstainedwretch

    Autumnal Thoughts........

    As a kid I liked Halloween because at the department store candy counters you could get a bag of jellybeans that were all orange and licorice. These were the only flavors I really liked. I still do but the candy counters are gone. Drat.
  23. Inkstainedwretch

    Sounds of the past

    In the early '50s radio station KFWB was the first rock n'roll station in the country. They invented the Top 40 format and pioneered the station jingle. Now I can go online and hear : "K F W Beeeeee, Channel 98!" and it takes me right back to SoCal at midcentury.

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