St. Louis
Practically Family
- Messages
- 618
- Location
- St. Louis, MO
... and I am unanimous in that.
Our local PBS station carries them, along with Keeping Up Appearances and As Time Goes By. They used to broadcast Fawlty Towers and The Vicar of Dibley as well, which are also great shows.
At lunch today with my parents I had to break out my pocket knife as the one provided to me was as dull as dishwater. I actually said this out loud.
Nancy is also apparently used.
Nathan Lane did a production of The Nance on PBS for Live from Lincoln Center.
"I wouldn't give a slick nickel for that!"
You never see "slick" coins anymore -- coins so badly worn from circulation that the design is completely, or nearly completely rubbed away -- but in the Era they were commonly found in pocket change, given the fact that coins were commonly carried in pockets and given heavy daily use as opposed to being tossed in jars the way they are today. Getting a slick coin was not a desirable thing -- depending on how slick it was, you might not even be certain that it *was* a coin, and some merchants refused to accept them for fear of getting stuck. An item for which you wouldn't even give a slick nickel was something really cheap, worthless, or shoddy.
I have an actual slick nickel in my desk drawer -- it's been there since the desk belonged to my grandfather, who no doubt did not appreciate getting stuck with it. It's not as slick as it could be -- you can make out enough of the design to know that it was an 1899 Liberty Head type nickel -- but it's a lot slicker than anything you'll find in circulation today.
Given the general trend of things, it's not impossible to imagine that within the lifetime of people now living, coinage itself -- a mark of human civilization since the concept of economics first evolved -- might disappear everywhere but in the US. It won't happen here though -- look at the rigor with which Americans cling to the penny, even though they have no practical use for it. The only thing that will happen is the designs of the coins will continue to grow uglier and more soulless.
The modern zinc/copperplate penny might be the single ugliest coin ever produced in the US, even worse than the reprehensible beady-eyed Jefferson now featured on the nickel. They look and feel play-money cheap when they're new, and they degrade terribly when exposed to any amount of circulation -- they corrode, turn distasteful blotchy colors that make Lincoln look leprous, and get to where you feel squicked just handling them. Add to that the ham-handed redesign attempts of recent years -- the crude re-engraving of the Lincoln bust that makes his whiskers look like they were scribbled on by a kid with a pencil, the new Bank-Of-Woolworths reverse design -- and you have something that's not just not worth what it costs to produce it, but an active blight on the American scene. Blech.