Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 81

One of the problems with looking for hotels on the internet is the way that you get all of the "helpful travel" sites popping up before you can find the site for the actual hotel. Many of these sites allow you to post your own hotel review, which means that many of them are slathered with the ravings of the sort of cranks that I try to avoid while on vacation. I generally try to ignore them except in cases when the poor reviews seem unanimous.

I suspect from the online reviews that the Brazilian Court was being renovated in or around 2004, and that those renovations were going poorly (as renovations do). The only reason that I mention that is because here in the 1986 ad we see them trumpeting the then recent renovation. It's like we are seeing the circle of life.


Those children are scaring the crap out of me. But not as much as the idea of a camp that advertises in the New Yorker that it is for "Intelligent Children" (read: the parents believe that the children are intelligent). And the slogan "Self-esteem is key to a productive life" is the frighteningest of all. Rest easy, campers of today: Camp Killooleet now seems to look like every other camp. I went to a YMCA camp in Wisconsin. I see little difference. It makes sense that they've gotten all sensible. The parents of today were the campers of this era, they know that all that purposeful self-esteem stuff is a bunch of hooey. Their kids want to run around, do stuff and have fun just like they did.

Well this is definitive. Norman T. Simpson died in 1988. Here's his obit. The headline is "Norman Simpson, 69; Wrote a Guide to Inns."

Here's me not thinking straight. I looked at this ad and thought that there was a place in the Caribbean called "Bicycle St. Kitts." No. You go to St. Kitts and then you can bicycle. Bah. I want to go to "Bicycle St. Kitts." Anyway, Progressive Travels LTD seems to have either shut down or moved (Progressive Travels seems to be an increasingly popular name for a business these days). Here's a site that tells you all about going to St. Kitts and riding a bicycle. If you're willing to settle for that.

I have quite wide feet. My usual method of coping with shoes is to buy normal shoes a couple sizes too big for me. When I ordered my first pair of shoes from Hitchcock, I was amazed at how bizarrely small my feet seemed. It creeped me out. Plus they're expensive. They've been around for more than 50 years, so they might come up some more times. I'm running out of things to say.

The Country Walking Holidays folks seem to still be in business, but they have no website. This article indicates that they are still there at the same address. Write them and get a brochure. I'm not sure if the brochure is all the information you need, or if it's their sales brochure. Only one way to find out.

I give in

The package tracker says it shows up Monday. Let's see how my life will change.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 80

A Cotton Duck Shower Curtain? Is it a shower curtain made from ducks, or a curtain for the sorts of showers that ducks use? Turns out that the term comes from the Dutch doek or "linen canvas" (the term seems to have also been the derivation of "duck tape."). The Vermont Country Store still has them.

Society Expeditions! We just saw you, remember? I wanted to learn about Project Space Voyage. So here's what I've found. "Project Space Voyage" seems to be related to a paper delivered at the Fourth Annual L5 Space Development Conference in Washington DC, April 1985. The abstract reads as follows:

The day of passenger space travel is approaching, first to Low Earth Orbit and then to circumlunar distances. Details of the NASA citizen-in-space project are reviewed, along with a report on the Shuttle Passenger Module studied by a major travel agency. Passenger flight into Earth orbit, weekend stays in a globe-circling vacation spa, and eventual translunar excursions are considered in an evolutionary way.

You can read the whole thing here. I am presuming that the Society Expeditions folks were putting an effort into getting on the ground floor on the process. As I hinted at a couple of posts ago, we have an example of how history can throw a wrench into a business plan. Fifteen days after this ad originally appeared in print, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on lift-off. I'm sure that the brochure that must have had the same illustrations of rows of seats in the cargo area of a space shuttle kept folks away from investing in this plan.

Pregnant? Don't go into space. I think you can't go to ReCreations Maternity either. It seems to have gone under.

I can't find a website for Special Odysseys, but I see from the interestingly named www.comebackalive.com that they now offer trips to the North Pole.

I'm sure that this model was delighted to see the ad and discover the words "Natural Unplucked Beaver" right next to her head. I was tempted to leave it at that, but I'm on a research roll, so I found my way to this site which explains:

The water-hairs of beaver are either cut level with the rest of the fur (unplucked) or entirely removed (plucked beaver). Here is an extremely durable fur, heavy-skinned and long-wearing like all aquatic pelage. Deeply-furred pelts are most prized, and such are found in this far corner of Uncle Sam's attic, for they are evidence of hard winters sturdily survived. You would expect " the engineer " to have a well-built double-service coat, as well as his cunningly contrived two-story house, and these he surely has.

It's wintertime. Wrap your neck in one of these babies. They cost $12.95 now, but they're on sale.

The York Harbor Inn still has tons of Classic Coastal Charm. Look what's coming up next month: One of those murder mystery dinner things:

February 24, 2007 - Marriage can by Murder
If you survived Valentine’s Day, it’s time to indulge in a gourmet dinner with an unsolved marital murder plot. What could be more enticing than fine food paired with fascinating intrigue? And what better way to celebrate the Valentine month than with a hot and haunting mystery?

They're looking for some housekeepers too.

Ardsheal House seems to have given up their website. www.ardsheal.co.uk is now up for grabs, should you be interested in it. The hotel itself seems to still be operational. It might even have wi-fi.

Starting to come together

What I have so far:

"Calphalon" is an acronym.

It either stands for:

C = Corporate, Al = Aluminum, Phalon = something

or

C = Corporate, Alph = something, Al = Aluminum, On = something

I'll keep you posted!

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 79

This is a Hilton now. It seems like a very attractive place and so it's a bold move on the part of the advertising agency to show it off with the use of this puffy cartoon. I think that by 1986 Sonny Bono was the mayor of Palm Springs, not that had any impact on this ad campaign. But you never know.

These are a few of my favorite things

In the last post I said that I thought that Calphalon would be a great word to hear Colin Meloy sing.

This reminded me of a conversation that I had a year or so ago with someone from England about words that sound good in other people's accents. I said that my favorite word to hear with an English accent was "solenoid."

She looked at me like I was crazy and said "solenoid" a couple of times to herself, then leaned forward conspiratorially.

"I like hearing Americans say the word 'panorama.'"

This could be the start of a much huger list.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 78

Ah, Calphalon.

My kitchen overflows with these lovely dark aluminum darlings. They do work nicely, but they aren't the last cookware I'll ever buy. (We're slowly switching over to All-Clad. Sorry Calphalon).

On to the research: I have no idea what, where or who "Calphalon" might be. It is an interesting word. I keep on thinking of The Anabasis. I also think it would be a great word to hear Colin Meloy sing. The credit for the jewelry (That's jewelry scattered around the pans there. I notice that many of the ads in The Complete New Yorker aren't scanned as well as the, well all the other things that everyone is supposed to be paying attention to) is for J Kiechel. The best I could find about J Kiechel is that they are still in business and also in Ohio.


Remember a few posts ago when I finally came across a hotel that was so average that I could find absolutely nothing interesting or extraordinary about it? Here's Appleseed's. They sell clothes.

Society Expeditions has been absorbed by an outfit called Pacific Island Travel. But forget about that. I want to know about "Project Space Voyage." It's been discontinued. Not surprising: January 1986 was not the best time for a space voyage.

When I did the 2006 installment of this project I came to an ad for Replacements Ltd and said this:

Oh no! We broke Grandma's favorite Hummel figurine! That's what happens when you play football in the house. Better go to Replacements, Ltd. for another one.

Then there was the 1996 installment:

There was an ad for Replacements Ltd. in my 2006 version of this. Their website says that they've been in business for 25 years. So perhaps we'll see them again when I go through the 1986 version. They will be all embarrassed about how the ad shows off their mullet haircut and parachute pants.

And look, I was right! Here they are again. When I was in North Carolina last week, I kept passing them as I went back and forth on the highway. I waved at them. Hi Replacements, Ltd!

I can't tell if the residence that's advertising as Home Away is still taking people in or not. I'm guessing not. They seem to still have the same phone number though. Someday I'm actually going to call one of these outfits. Just not today.

Is everybody sort of rocking?

A chunk of last week was spent supervising small children, and as such I was forced to enjoy the opportunity of watching a decent sized slab of the Disney Channel.

One of the genres popular on the Disney Channel is the "psychedelic live action adventures of pre-fab kid-friendly rock band." Imagine the Monkees with a lobotomy and foam hands.

The one that I saw most of all was The Doodlebops. If you dare to look at their website, you will get an idea of the sort of thing I'm talking about.

These folks actually go on tour to play live gigs and the footage from the gigs shows up in these shows to lend what I think is meant to be verisimilitude. Should you ever find yourself watching one of these things, a word of advice: When the camera cuts to the audience, ignore the enraptured four year olds and have a look at the faces of the parents. You can actually see the moment that they feel their souls getting sucked out through their ears.

She Had A Funny Kind Of Smile, Cheddar... Three Rows Of Gums

Enjoy the closing credits to an episode of the Ernie Kovacs show.

Don't forget!

More info here

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 76

The second edition of the Grove Dictionary is 29 volumes and only costs $995. You can also Subscribe to the online edition for $295 per year. Or you can just go to your local library and enjoy it for free.

The price of Brown & Jenkins Coffee seems to have gone in the other direction. There are about ten different samplers now coming in a range from about $22 to $50. As a bonus the front page gives you a code that you can enter in the checkout. This is a special deal only for folks who order online.

Keeping on the price thing, the Boston Traders' Apparel company seems to have none listed. The deal seems to be that they now only sell to other outlets. There's some implication that you can order bulk from them, but I can't figure out how. And most of their stuff is named after dogs, which makes it fun to try and navigate.

Over the years, I've known a few bow tie aficionados. The thing I've noticed about people who are inclined to wear bow ties is that they are always wearing bow ties. I think that part of the deal is that when you wear a bow tie, lots of people come up to you and say "I see you're wearing a bow tie." Then if you show up the next day with a normal tie, people come up to you and say "So, no bow tie today?" I imagine that it is like being trapped in some sort of Stating the Obvious Jail. Anyway, it seems that John Fields has gone out of business. If you want to go completely nuts on bow ties, check out the International Wooden Bow Tie Club instead.

Archaeological Tours is still going strong. They even have the same logo. There are a few additions to their tour list that might have seemed a bit risky in 1986 -- the Libya trip looks so interesting that my head hurts. You have to call or e-mail for pricing, so they lose a few points for that.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 74

A confluence of phenomena.

First in America. By 1986, the large metropolitan museums had gotten very efficient and the traveling blockbuster exhibit. Starting with the King Tut thing in the seventies and on to the present day, museums have made a good chunk of their livelihood on displays that are either an assload of bling, or marketed as something that you could sell for the cash to buy an assload of bling.

Meanwhile in Europe. In the course of the twentieth century, the forces of economics converged to make it almost impossible to maintain the enormous manor houses that had sprung up over the last couple of centuries. In England the creation of a "National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty" had become the most popular solution for those families that had suddenly become incredibly house-poor. But a few manor houses have remained totally in private hands, and as such need to constantly come up with methods of leveraging their grandeur as a money making opportunity.

One such method was this:


Send all the goodies on tour.

This show was a success. An enormous success. I know this because the catalog from the show is on the bookshelf in the hallway with all the art books and a poster from the show is on the wall in the guest room.

Here's Bob and Stan having a look at the catalog:



The Treasure Houses are still working together for more opportunities for you to pay money to enjoy their property. This is their website. When you go there the text begins with this sentence:

The Treasure Houses of England are ten of the most magnificent palaces, houses and castles in England today.

Now take a moment to count the Treasure Houses that they have listed.

In case you need to remove your horny

via Japundit

Unused Trunk Sticker

Great-Grandpa took White Star both to and from Europe, so I'm not sure which trip this tag was for:



I am presuming that the big "Y" in the middle was for the first letter of his last name. A clever trick for identifying baggage - I think it's due for a comeback in this age of colored ribbons on handles.

If you look closely, you can see the fold. This tag has been folded for almost a century. The glue on the back also seems pretty intact - I was worried about the heat from the scanner lamp causing it to get stuck. It all worked out.

The blogging has slowed to a crawl

And for that I apologise.

Circumstances have pulled me to North Carolina for the week. I was hoping that it would be the sort of trip where I could be helpful some of the time and spend the rest of the time working and blogging. The helpful has dominated the week, and working has filled up most of the rest.

So to help you all out, I've decided to add a few more links to the old sidebar.

While I am more literate in the world of comics than many, I am still just a dabbler. Beaucoup Kevin/BlogMachineGo is the best of the comics blogs that I watch. He has a great eye for the details, both beautiful and ridiculous. Be sure to stop by his photoblog, Whiskey and Failure, and keep an eye out for posts in the oddly delightful Thor's Jukebox series.

Frequent visitors will have noticed that I'm a fan of Dave Gorman. You can get to his blog from his homepage.

You will notice that one of my labels is Satellite Photos. Again, I am just a dabbler. The best of the genre is Google Sightseeing.

There are some blogs that I can only follow out of the corner of my eye because they just put so much stuff up. Bedazzled is amazingly full of music, video and ephemera. Click only if you know you have some free time ahead of you.

Not only was Ksenya Gurshtein nice enough to blog about one of my posts, she put me up in her "Random Blog Goodness" section. The Blog (Version 3.14) reads like a marvelous Saturday afternoon spent at a coffee shop with a friend of a friend who is in town on business and doesn't know anybody else.

Catching up with the Comic Strip Project

Long term readers will recall that I spent much of the past year on a quest to watch the entire Comic Strip Presents DVD box. I did indeed finish up every episode, but the final disk (the one with all the extras on it) was gouged up. So I'll get to it when I can reinforce the disk and have a player that I'm confident in. Soon.

In the meantime a couple of tidbits to share:

The astonishing Mr. Dante Fontana brings my attention to the video of the Alexei Sayle tune, "Didn't You Kill My Brother," which I mentioned in this post.

In this post, I wondered about the whereabouts of Alan Pellay (aka Lana Pellay aka Lannah Pellay aka Alana Pellay and so on). At the time, I thought that I had done my best detective work, but I had not considered that someone who has changed their names that much would not have continued to do so. So, thanks to kitty_advanced, I can now give you a link to The Wonderful World of Al Pillay. Be sure to check out his "Demented Diva" line of greeting cards, and his health and beauty product reviews. And great news! He's got an album coming out, and he's shooting a couple of pilots.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 72 & 73

A new format: One column on the left hand page in black and white balanced by a color full page on the right.

There's a lot of information on these two pages. Information that I could spend a lot of time researching. But I can't as I am too busy laughing at the photo, which seems to show Jack and Jenny looking on in horror as the owner of the quaint inn that they have just arrived at (you can see that they have just set their suitcases down) has decided to check Ellen for lice.

The Top Ten Lamest Superheros

I've been going back and forth for about a week trying to decide if I really wanted to post this link. It was this entry that put me over the edge:

#6. Dogwelder - Dogwelder was a character from Garth Ennis' "Hitman" series. Dogwelder was part of a superhero team known as Section Eight which was a band of these crazy guys that fought crime in rather inane ways. Dogwelder is my favourite of the bunch. He's this madman in a silver welder's outfit that basically just goes around welding stray dogs to villains' faces. That's it. That's how he fought crime. Welding dogs to people. Mind you it would be a bitch of a thing to have happen to you. You try to rob a bank and you end up with a Lhasa Apso welded to your face, yapping for eternity. *shudder*

That and "Arm Fall Off Boy." I like him too.

An open letter to the people who are going to be moving into the new building that is being built two miles down the street

You are going to pay close to three quarters of a million dollars for that condo. Your balcony will have a view of the interstate and a liquor wholesale warehouse. Welcome to town!

Overheard at the supermarket

Bagger: Yeah man, so this guy is going to adopt me. And he's rich, so I'll get to live in this mansion. And it's got a swimming pool, so I can swim all the time, and a bowling alley so I can go bowling whenever I want.

Cashier: Dude. You hate bowling.

Bagger: Well, if I have my own alley, I can practice and get really good. Then I'll like it. And this guy that's going to adopt me is on the board at the University there so I can go for free, even though he could totally afford it. So I got that going on.

Cashier: Hey, I can come by and visit.

Bagger: Well, like, this is in Phoenix, so there's no way you can just stop by, 'cos it's so far away.

Cashier: Dude. My uncle lives in Phoenix. The next time I go out there, I can look you up. Where in Phoenix does the guy live?

Bagger: Yeah, well here's the deal. They guy can back out on adopting me if I don't get good grades this semester. And I'm probably going to flunk. So he can back out and none of this could happen.

Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 71

This is probably not where I want to go with this, but the phrase "The coach for him" sounds to me like a threat.

"We found this spy lurking around the heavy water facility. What should we do?"
"The Coach for him!"
"No! Anything but the Coach!"

This was around the time that ATM cards were becoming more and more popular and most places were suddenly able to accept credit cards. As a result, some pundits became convinced that by the 21st century there would be no need for paper money, so a wallet would look sort of the way you see here: a bunch of slots for cards, but no big area for paper money. (These were the same folks who believed that today's children would have no conception how to read an analog clockface, thanks to these new fang-dangled digital watches.) Of course a quick look at my wallet reveals the flaw: Where do you put the hundreds of little receipts that accumulate? Sure enough, Coach (It's now just Coach. They must have closed the factory.) does not have a man's wallet that cannot accommodate bills. I'd also like to draw your attention to the horrifically masculine colors available. They seem to have discontinued the Mocha, Putty and Tabac as color options for their wallets made from water buffalo, but I notice that they have what seems to be ostrich hide in a nicely patterned blue.

Campton Place looks like a very nice place to stay. It looks, in fact, like every other luxury hotel on the planet (except the funky ones). I can find nothing remotely interesting to say about it. Sorry.

In the interest of finding anything that I could possibly say about Michael Feinstein, I found my way to his official website and saw that a link that says "Listen to Michael's Podcasts."

The phrase "Michael Feinstein's Podcast" filled me with not a little dread, but I clicked through, brave soldier that I am. It's not really his Podcast, but rather links to all the podcasts at the iTunes store that have interviews with him.

I'll admit that I've never payed much attention to him, but on the basis of his wikipedia entry, I'm considering taking his autobiography out of the library. (He spent six years "excavating" Ira Girshwin's house. That impresses me.) He's not at the Algonquin anymore. He has his own place now. But Feinstein won't be playing there for a while because he's on tour.

Something I've been waiting for

Chevy Chase talks about Gerald Ford.

Turbulent! Turgid! Tempestuous!

I have a tendency to go through phases, and currently I am in a Jean Shepherd phase.

Nowdays people know Shepherd primarily for the film A Christmas Story, which was based on his "semi-autobiographical stories." His genius was as a late night DJ. He was one of those guys who could grab the mike and go. Some of his broadcasts were completely improvised and others were scrupulously planned and rehearsed, the beauty being that, unless he was doing a bit that he'd done before, there's really no way to tell which is which.

Here is a huge archive of his broadcasts. Hit the "random" button and go for a ride. If you've never heard him before, give him about ten minutes -- that's how long it takes you to get hooked.

Somewhere in the '50s, Shepherd became irritated by the way the publishing industry was tracking bestselling books. At the time they added book requests to actual sales, presumably so that a book that is about to be released and is having good advance press can have a leg up on the charts. Shepherd thought this was absurd, because it was theoretically possible for the bestseller list to have a non-existent books on it.

So he decided to prove it.

He came up with a non-existent book, with a non-existent author. The non-existent author had a fake bio and the non-existent book had a plot outline. The listening audience was told what was happening, why he was doing it, and then given their marching orders: walk into bookstores and ask for this book. They did, by the thousands. Publishing insiders who were in on the gag fed the buzz. People pretended to have read it at cocktail parties. Book reports on it were turned in to unsuspecting teachers. Fake reviews appeared in newspapers. On the basis of what the book seemed to be about, the Archdiocese of Boston had it put on their proscribed list.

And after less than two months, I, Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing was on the bestseller list.

Once the hoax was exposed, there was still enough notoriety around the book that one day over lunch Shepherd, publisher Ian Ballantine and author Theodore Sturgeon decided to put the book out for real. The book is now a notoriously rare item, and is unlikely to ever be republished (of course, as soon as I post this, a reprint will be announced), but here is (of all things) the audiobook version.