So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Fading Fast]

When the thread jumps to a new page and you have to go back to the prior page - and then scroll down the bottom few posts - to catch up. A very, very trivial annoyance.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Something that shocked me when I was a boy was that Dick Tracy didn't shoot a bad guy's gun out of his hand like the Lone Ranger. He very sensibly shot them through the head, usually while doing something acrobatic like ducking and rolling. The shot was depicted quite graphically, too, with a line indicating the path of the bullet, the bullet hole, and the bullet exiting the bad guy's skull, usually meandering and doing flips. Before Gould went completely gaga ("the nation that controls gravity controls the universe") it was an amazingly gritty strip.

 

[ChrisB]

There have been movies that contain small town elements, meaning contemporary to my own experiences, that I could sometimes identify with but rarely did they "work" for me. Even if the main characters were teenage boys, which I was once upon a time, there's usually something that I can't quite put my finger on that makes me uncomfortable. To Kill a Mockingbird has a little of that and it's not a happy film. I don't think Gregory Peck was ever in a happy film, although once in a while he did smile.

Having grown up in a rural area outside a small town, ( pop. @ 6000, it annoys me to hear towns of 50000 or more referred to as small), I can say that everything that happened in Peyton Place will happen in any small town sooner or later. It just won't come in such a concentrated dose. Not that they are like this all the time, but there is that side of things along with the virtues of small towns.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Something that shocked me when I was a boy was that Dick Tracy didn't shoot a bad guy's gun out of his hand like the Lone Ranger. He very sensibly shot them through the head, usually while doing something acrobatic like ducking and rolling. The shot was depicted quite graphically, too, with a line indicating the path of the bullet, the bullet hole, and the bullet exiting the bad guy's skull, usually meandering and doing flips. Before Gould went completely gaga ("the nation that controls gravity controls the universe") it was an amazingly gritty strip.

Gould was insane in the way he depicted violence in the strip -- which is a big part of why it lost so many papers in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps his most graphic slaying was the fate of "The Brow," a Nazi espionage agent who was dealt with in 1943 -- he was thrown out a high window and landed on the spear-pointed tip of a flagpole, which impaled him and he slid right down the pole to the base. Without getting any blood on the flag itself, or getting tangled in the lines. Pretty impressive scene, if you don't care about physics.

And then there was the fate of blackmailing crime lord "Shaky," who was trapped by ice under a wharf and depicted slowly freezing to death over the course of a week. And if that wasn't enough, the gruesome rediscovery of his decayed corpse became a story point about six months later.

Some of the death traps Tracy was put into were pretty fierce too -- the best was the one rigged up by "Mrs. Pruneface," widow of Nazi agent Pruneface. Tracy was staked to a floor underneath a blade-studded plank supported between two large cakes of ice, with the blade aimed straight at his heart. A full-sized refrigerator was then placed atop the plank, and all the radiators in the room were turned on full. Mrs. Pruneface and her lackey then left the room, confident that as the ice cakes melted, the weight of the fridge would press the plank and its blades down into Tracy's chest.

(I wonder what Dick really said there.)

Of course, Tracy figured out a way to escape from this trap by sheer force of will. He was very lucky in running up against villians addicted to elaborate S&M play -- somehow he never was captured by a common thug who just wanted to shoot him.

 

[ChrisB]

Something that shocked me when I was a boy was that Dick Tracy didn't shoot a bad guy's gun out of his hand like the Lone Ranger. He very sensibly shot them through the head, usually while doing something acrobatic like ducking and rolling. The shot was depicted quite graphically, too, with a line indicating the path of the bullet, the bullet hole, and the bullet exiting the bad guy's skull, usually meandering and doing flips.

Satirized in "Fearless Fosdick" from Li'l Abner, where people tended to end up looking like Swiss cheese.

 

[tonyb]

Gould was insane in the way he depicted violence in the strip -- which is a big part of why it lost so many papers in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps his most graphic slaying was the fate of "The Brow," a Nazi espionage agent who was dealt with in 1943 -- he was thrown out a high window and landed on the spear-pointed tip of a flagpole, which impaled him and he slid right down the pole to the base. Without getting any blood on the flag itself, or getting tangled in the lines. Pretty impressive scene, if you don't care about physics.

And then there was the fate of blackmailing crime lord "Shaky," who was trapped by ice under a wharf and depicted slowly freezing to death over the course of a week. And if that wasn't enough, the gruesome rediscovery of his decayed corpse became a story point about six months later.

Some of the death traps Tracy was put into were pretty fierce too -- the best was the one rigged up by "Mrs. Pruneface," widow of Nazi agent Pruneface. Tracy was staked to a floor underneath a blade-studded plank supported between two large cakes of ice, with the blade aimed straight at his heart. A full-sized refrigerator was then placed atop the plank, and all the radiators in the room were turned on full. Mrs. Pruneface and her lackey then left the room, confident that as the ice cakes melted, the weight of the fridge would press the plank and its blades down into Tracy's chest.

(I wonder what Dick really said there.)

Of course, Tracy figured out a way to escape from this trap by sheer force of will. He was very lucky in running up against villians addicted to elaborate S&M play -- somehow he never was captured by a common thug who just wanted to shoot him.

Reminds me of the out-and-out absurdity of the murder scenarios in gangster movies, "The Godfather," notably.

They're Rube Goldberg-esque in their totally unnecessary complexity. Makes for a more dramatic story, I suppose, but if what you really want is to kill an adversary, there are far simpler and more reliable ways to accomplish that.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Reminds me of the out-and-out absurdity of the murder scenarios in gangster movies, "The Godfather," notably.

They're Rube Goldberg-esque in their totally unnecessary complexity. Makes for a more dramatic story, I suppose, but if what you really want is to kill an adversary, there are far simpler and more reliable ways to accomplish that.

There was a character in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" named Garak, an alien intelligence agent who was well known for his elaborate plots and plans when dealing with an enemy. Then they introduced his doppelganger from an alternate universe -- who was well known for stupid, obvious plans that never fooled anyone. A clever lampshading of the trope there.

 

[BlueTrain]

Flag waving is never risky, either. It's pseudo-patriotism. It's a bumper sticker that says "support our troops." But on he other hand, one does see national flags displayed in other countries, too.

 

[BlueTrain]

Small, as in small town, is relative, of course, but I think a lot of towns and cities shared certain characteristics that are mostly gone these days. I'm reminded of this when I think of the old Hardy Boy books, the early ones, of course. I think the population of Bayport, for instance, was supposed to be around 50,000, but it had some characteristics of a small town. It certainly had a lot of interesting neighborhoods that my small hometown never had, like a waterfront complete with dives, tattoo parlors and so on, yet the boys could hop on their motorcycles and in five minutes be out of town. That was certainly the case in my hometown--at one time. Bayport was well served by transportation, having not only bus and rail service but a nearby airport and coastal steamers. Except for the coastal steamers (we weren't on the coast), we had all those things. Where we differed, however, was that my hometown was all but crime-free compared to both Bayport, with all its smuggling, counterfeiting operations, car theft rings and I don't know what all, as well as Oxford, England, which must have one of the highest murder rates in the world.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I grew up in a town with a population of about two thousand. We though of towns with populations of 500 as "small towns," and places with a population of 5000 as "the city." Portland, with a population of more than 70,000, was the metroplex.

 

[ChrisB]

In my county we had a township with a population of 6. They called it quits a few years ago and merged with a neighboring township. Small is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

 

[ChrisB]

Flag waving is never risky, either. It's pseudo-patriotism. It's a bumper sticker that says "support our troops." But on he other hand, one does see national flags displayed in other countries, too.

My father used to say that the best way to support the troops was to not get involved in new wars.

 

[sheeplady]

I grew up a mile outside a village of less than 200 people. "Going to town" meant taking off your smelly chore boots and exchangin them for cleaner ones.

Going to "they city" meant the 50,000 person city 45 minutes away. The "big city" was 3 hours away and had 100,000. If you went someplace bigger than that, you called it by its name to impress people.

 

[MisterCairo]

Speaking of bumper stickers, and this is trivial, lettering so small you can't read the damned things while driving!

What else are you supposed to read at 60 mph?!

 

[Fading Fast]

There was a character in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" named Garak, an alien intelligence agent who was well known for his elaborate plots and plans when dealing with an enemy. Then they introduced his doppelganger from an alternate universe -- who was well known for stupid, obvious plans that never fooled anyone. A clever lampshading of the trope there.

A variation on this are some of the insanely complex and intentionally misleading plots employed by high-quality TV mystery shows like "Foyle's War" or "Endeavor." While the writers will plant clues, in truth, you basically guess against the obvious to try to figure them out as the answer is almost always driven by some convoluted, obscure fact about, for example, two people who knew each other 40 years ago and just met by chance a month before the murder / theft / embezzlement / etc.

As noted, there will be a clue somewhere for the TV audience - and once in a blue moon I'll get lucky and catch it - but there's normally so many overwrought twists and turns going on - and false clues and innuendos - that if you missed the one small reference in the first five minutes, you're out of luck all episode. I enjoy these shows as I, now, only devote a small amount of effort to "solving" them and, instead, just go along for the ride, which is usually enjoyable enough.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Cities can grow so fast that their institutions remain at the small-town level for years before modernizing. Dallas grew enormously in the post-WWII years. I was there in 1963 when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement garage of the Dallas police station. This has been fodder for conspiracy theorists ever since, especially in Europe where, when a prisoner dies in police custody the assumption is always that the police are in on it. The fact is, though Dallas had grown into a major city, it still had a small-town police department, very casual and careless in handling the major suspect in the greatest murder of the postwar era. The answer is in the famous photographs. Two detectives are literally shoulder-to-shoulder with Oswald. Another is right behind him. Nobody stands that close to a man they know is abut to be shot.

 

[tonyb]

Cities can grow so fast that their institutions remain at the small-town level for years before modernizing. Dallas grew enormously in the post-WWII years. I was there in 1963 when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement garage of the Dallas police station. This has been fodder for conspiracy theorists ever since, especially in Europe where, when a prisoner dies in police custody the assumption is always that the police are in on it. The fact is, though Dallas had grown into a major city, it still had a small-town police department, very casual and careless in handling the major suspect in the greatest murder of the postwar era. The answer is in the famous photographs. Two detectives are literally shoulder-to-shoulder with Oswald. Another is right behind him. Nobody stands that close to a man they know is abut to be shot.

Met a guy a few days ago who is certain that the Kennedy murder wasn't Oswald's doing. I saw no point in discussing the matter with him, so I didn't. It's almost a religion with some people, you know. Not subject to reason.

 

[Stearmen]

The new cult of men that see everything in the media as anti male. It's still a mans world, for god's sake, put on your Big Boy Pants and grab some of the gusto!

 

[GHT]

Speaking of bumper stickers, and this is trivial, lettering so small you can't read the damned things while driving!
What else are you supposed to read at 60 mph?!

It says: "If you can read this, you're too damn close!"

 

[vitanola]

Spare tire covers, the Era equivalent to the bumper sticker, are legible at a far greater distance than are their modern counterparts.

This is not necessarily a good thing, though, for one can more easily trumpet to the world one's foolishness with the larger canvas.

When I was younger I had a cover made up for my Flivver which bore the slogan: "186,000 Miles Per Second. Its not just a good idea. Its the law!