Buying the New Yorker 1996 - page 83

Books on tape is a division of Random House. Back in the day, you could rent the full-length tape set from them, but now they've discontinued that (oddly it is because of competition from public libraries, and not from naughty old file swappers). You can still purchase tapes, CDs and download Real Audio files. The Horse Whisperer is not in stock, but there are other Nicholas Evans books available. He wrote a book about smoke jumping! I had no idea! It's a love triangle, with smoke jumping. Nothing perks up a love triangle like smoke jumping.

An octopus pot is a type of fishing trap. You lower the pot to the sea bed, and octopuses/octopi/octopodes climb in. I imagine that the folks ordering one from the back of the New Yorker were probably just going to stick it on a bookshelf and perhaps keep the spare set of house keys in it. Clayton's International Trading Co seems to have gone out of business. Sleep easy, octopuses/octopi/octopodes!

Google went nuts on me when I tried to figure out who Roger Nichols was. Turns out that in addition to his jewelry business, he's the guy who wrote the music (generally teamed with lyricist Paul Williams) to a bunch of Carpenters hits. Here is his website. Furthermore, he is different from this Roger Nichols. That Roger Nichols is the sound engineer who won a big pile of Grammys for producing Steely Dan albums (He also seems to have done a fair amount of work with John Denver, meaning that both of these Roger Nichols' are one degree of separation from the Muppets). I'd like to say that the ad shows up twice to honor both of them, but it's really because I wasn't paying close enough attention with my screen grabs.

Remember back when we saw the website for London flat rentals that took us to a site about Park City, Utah? Here's that same domain again. And this time the ad really was for Park City, Utah! It all works out.

You know, we've seen so many Canadian river raft holiday package tours that I am now completely unable to say anything new about this one. Moose! Bears! Ice Beer! Hockey! I'm just flailing randomly now.

Cuba on the other hand, we have yet to see. Near as I can tell, this bunch folded up around 2004. It is a pity, because I think the idea of a "cigar adventure" could easily be melded on to any one of the other package tours that we've looked at here. (I have visions of the bike trip from Paris to London - a bunch of cigars will make that fly! And for the adventure, you can be chased by gangsters! With cigars!) I managed to find some old articles about Wings on the World. Here's one and here's another. My favorite thing about the ad: They're open Sunday! They might be tying themselves up in legal knots to sidestep all sorts of travel embargos and tariff restrictions so they can fly rich people to some slum for smokes, but they laugh in the face of blue laws. Always good to be able to pick your battles.