Seriously, why spend money on expensive shades when you know you’re going to lose them or break them? An Ode to Gas-Station Sunglasses, Beloved by Dads Everywhere on Inside Hook.
No mention of the original ode to the thick black frames:
Category: Culture
Fort Couch couch fort? Vacation at home
Commemorate your involuntary staycation with these posters from Duke Cannon and maybe protect America from the confederates with a Fort Couch couch fort reenactment this weekend?
Download high quality pdf posters at Duke Cannon site for free, or purchase the prints.
Flatten the Curve: Duke Cannon PSA Posters
Encourage social distancing and sanitary practices with these posters from Duke Cannon. Free high quality downloads at their site, or purchase the prints.
Also, unsolicited recommendation for their Tactical Scrubber – It’s like a force multiplier for your soap.
What’s the Funniest Number?
It’s hard to argue with that number.
Carl Reiner included an entire, albeit short, chapter (16 – not a very funny number) on the story, including some of the runner-up numbers, in his book I Remember Me. And here’s a fascinating portrait of Sid Caesar originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1953.
I Should Have Known You Weren’t There For the Music
Carhartt – Are You Keeping the Faith?
After writing about Lee’s Union-Alls the other day, my thoughts naturally turned to Carhartt’s coveralls, the archaeologist’s cold-weather friend.
The Carhartt company, coincidentally, was founded the same year as the H.D. Lee Company, 1889, when Hamilton Carhartt started selling bib overalls in Detroit, Michigan. Carhartt’s coveralls appeared by the World War II era, and likely earlier, but Lee’s claim to be first seems valid.
Like the original H.D. Lee company, the Carhartt company proudly proclaimed their support of Union workers. The modern Carhartt company, unlike Lee, is still a family-owned business, and about half of their workers are Union members.
The Ancient Greek Inspiration for the Legendary Leg Lamp?
Does the Royal Ontario Museum have the real inspiration for the Leg Lamp from the classic movie A Christmas Story?
The lamp in the movie was allegedly inspired by a Nehi soda advertisement, but the original source must be this Archaic Greek leg vase, on view at the Toronto museum.
For the more recent history of the leg lamp, see A Christmas Story House.
It’s Still Not Christmas Time Until Darlene Love Sings
Her 1995 performance of Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) on Late Night with David Letterman.
Halloween Cakes at the Woodmere Art Museum
Dreadful Delights: a limited run exhibition (ending November 1) at the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania.
Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled: the 1918 African American Silent Film
With Halloween approaching, here’s a shoutout to an early mummy movie. Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled, is an all-black silent film from 1918. Several silent movies featured mummies as plot devices; The Egyptian Mummy, for example, was released in 1914 but Mercy is likely the only one made by African-American filmmakers for African-American audiences.
The plots of the two films are very similar: a mad scientist is willing to pay big bucks for a mummy to experiment on; a young man needs money to marry his girlfriend; a fake mummy is created. Mercy adds two Egyptian secret agents tracking down their country’s stolen artifacts to the story, all within an 11 minute run time.
Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled was released by the short-lived Ebony Film Corporation of Chicago and is included in Pioneers of African-American Cinema box set (but Mercy is only on the Blu-ray collection, not on the DVD collection) by Kino Lorber. The five discs include movies from as early as 1915 and as late as 1946. See the New York Times review for more details: Black Filmmaking Aborning. Much of the film can also be viewed on YouTube, and stills from Mercy can be seen at the DAARAC site. The Egyptian Mummy, released by the much larger Vitagraph company, can be streamed on Amazon Prime.