Closing In on the Car Heater

A few years ago I realized that automobiles weren't magically invented with heaters already installed. By coming across random references to motor robes I became aware that car heaters were uncommon until at least 1940, and the earliest reported sighting of a car heater that I could find was in a 1951 Plymouth (thanks, Gary!)

I'm pleased to report that we can narrow the field down even further, thanks to "The Boys' Book of Engines, Motors, and Turbines" by Alfred Morgan. Published in 1946, the book lists "car heaters" among the devices in which a curious suburbanite boy might find an electric motor...and since their inclusion in the list is totally blase, I assume that they were quite common by that time.

Therefore we can safely say that car heaters became standard devices between 1941 and 1945, based entirely on anecdotal evidence and my sort-of-quirky and extremely lucky reading habits. Anybody care to find a patent or a catalogue to back me up?

PS: This book is fabulous. When I started reading it I had no idea of how engines, motors, or turbines worked, and now that I'm halfway through I even know what a camshaft is, how hydroelectric power is harnessed, and that if you try to blow out the fire in your miniature steam engine you'll scatter burning alcohol around the room and "singe your whiskers."

Recently...

Many things have prevented me from blogging recently, not least my own laziness and ennui. My computer's hard drive totally died after my post about the importance of backups, requiring a trip to the repair shop (and then a total update of everything to Snow Leopard which does kick ass).

This misfortune was immediately followed by a five-day heatwave. Despite my perverse resistance to installing my window air conditioner -- and therefore many nights spent sweating buckets into my sodden bedding -- I learned two things about humans and heat:

1. When people who live in an extremely HUMID area -- like those of us in Southern Ontario -- complain about 35-degree temperatures that feel like 42-degrees due to the humidity, people who live in DRY areas say -- repeatedly and disdainfully -- "Ha! It's that hot here ALL SUMMER!" To which I can only say: try going out in that heat with a wet towel wrapped around your nose and mouth.
2. When people complain about the devastating heat, a subset of other people say "Ha! In the winter you complain about the cold, now you complain about the heat! You just like complaining!" This is like saying "You complained that you were thirsty, so you'd better not complain when I throw you in the pool and drown you!" However illogical it is to complain about the weather -- since nobody you complain to can actually change it -- it is NOT illogical to complain about temperature extremes.

I only mention this because people say these things all the time, and it's tiresome.

Anyway, I'm also living with a cat who is a bit like the Tazmanian Devil, only more hyperactive and noisy. She is a fearless destroyer of bookshelves. She has learned that the best way to send me leaping out of bed in the morning is to sharpen her claws on my mattress, which I imagine her doing with a big grin on her face.

As of this morning, Muffet is forbidden from entering my bedroom. This is difficult because I haven't lived with closed doors for over ten years, and also because I don't think she'll adapt quickly or quietly to this change. Her favourite window is in my bedroom, and so is the sock drawer. I foresee many challenging nights ahead.

Third obstacle: constant pain in my shoulders. Sometimes it's barely there, and other times it feels like my biceps and shoulders are being held together by old rusty rivets made out of bubbling lava.

When I told my family doctor that I was on a three-year waiting list to see a shoulder specialist, he had a fit of furious Irish passion and booked me for a series of examinations. Yesterday a delicate lady held an ultrasound paddle to my shoulders and we viewed the inside of my pathology: wavy lines of bone and fat surrounding ominous black holes of encysted fluid.

Then I crossed the hall to get some X-rays done. It was a much more respectable operation than the last place I went to, though it ALSO had a cupboard which emitted terrifying scrabbling sounds.

Most interesting was the woman who took the X-rays. She was brusque and businesslike, but every time she prepared to take another picture she'd say "Hold your breath!" in an incongruous sing-song way, like the way you'd speak to a mischievous child. I felt weird, standing there in my lead girdle, with this extremely professional lady buzzing around who would suddenly disappear into a booth and sing out -- as though she were offering me a popsicle -- "Hold your breath!"

In other news, I have joined the board for the condo corporation, which is a story I'll tell someday. I also joined the board for the Open Ears festival. I have added "The Toronto G-20" to the list of topics which must not be discussed in friendly company. I walked past my old apartment and saw that the vegetation grew back but the junker cars remain. I read "Babbitt" by Sinclair Lewis, "Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham, and a beautiful book about undeciphered ancient scripts by Andrew Robinson. If I go on any sort of vacation this year it will hopefully be to Easter Island, because I want to see what their discos are like.

The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen

In January I read an extremely positive review of Elizabeth Bowen's short fiction in a 1930s New Yorker magazine. Unable to find any of her short stories at the time, I instead read "The Heat of the Day," which I found tedious in its obsessive examination of people's thought processes. In short, I was impressed by her approach and her zeal but I found the book extremely annoying.

Now, after a long slog, I'm finishing off "The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen," which apparently contains all of the short fiction she ever wrote...and let me tell you, she wrote a lot. Many of these stories were ones that the New Yorker reviewer raved about. How has it been?

Complete collections of a prolific writer's short fiction should come with a big warning, which unfortunately I know I'd disregard anyway: "Do not read all these stories in a row. They were not meant to be read this way. They previously appeared in diverse periodicals and smaller collections. You have been warned."

So I'm warning you: just as the complete short fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and Jorge Luis Borges can drive you insane, so can the complete short fiction of Elizabeth Bowen. Not because it's BAD -- it's brilliant, in fact -- but just because there's too much of it.

And like the complete works of ANY writer I found myself noticing the trends in her work, most particularly:

• The trauma of moving to different houses, particularly among the upper classes. Her characters suffer the sale of the ancestral homes and the purchasing of newer, awkward, unpleasant homes which turn out of have sweaty plaster.
• The trauma of living off another person's charity, especially when the other person isn't charitable and -- in reality -- just keeps people around to traumatize them.
• The strange boredom of off-season luxury resorts.
• The thought processes of alienated, troublesome children.
• Aunts. Everybody's got an aunt who is the most significant secondary character.

These are things that you wouldn't notice if you read her stories occasionally, and they're entirely superficial to the plots themselves, but when you're reading them all in a row it's like "Oh yes, a new house, a strange aunt, now let's get to the heart of it please."

And the hearts of these stories are devastating, especially the ones written during the '20s and '30s. Most of them are about the slow, mundane grind of everyday relationships and the hidden compulsions that modernists so loved to write about. Bowen has a particular ability for troubled children who are so lifelike that you almost want to turn away. The precocious Maria (in the story of the same name) the crying little boy with his ducks (in "Tears, Idle Tears") and the absolutely doomed Hermione (in "The Easter Egg Party") are permanently stuck with me.

Bowen's style isn't one that relies on an all-encompassing statement to make its point; instead, the drama builds and builds through successive examples, leaving you squirming with the terrible, truthful awkwardness of it all. Here's a description of Hermione, viewed through the eyes of a pair of aunts who are trying a last-ditch attempt to integrate her with other children.

She shook hands with a rigid arm, on which all the bracelets jumped. She looked straight at everyone, but from a moody height: what was evident was not just fear or shyness but a desperate, cut-off haughtiness. In her eyes existed a world of alien experience. The jolly, tallish girls with their chubbed hair, the straddling little boys with their bare knees, apt to frown at the grass between their sandshoes, rebounded from that imperious stare. Either she cared too much or she did not care a fig for them -- and in either case they did not know how to meet her.

And that's before things get bad. You see, it's both normal and abnormal, expected and unexpected: it's the odd part of people and everyday life that you try not to look closely at.

Elizabeth Bowen writes almost all of her stories about these situations.

Then there's the other, somewhat less satisfying trend, the one that the New Yorker reviewer had particularly liked: the ghost stories. These appear from out of nowhere in the collection and they disappear just as quickly and bafflingly. Why did Bowen write about ghosts as often as she did?

Well, most of the ghosts are catalysts for the emotional outpourings of her characters, and likewise the reader is uncertain as to whether they're REAL ghosts or not...except in two stories, one of which (Green Holly) is surprisingly gruesome.

Unfortunately Bowen had an occasional tendency to doddle, in which case her longer stories end up in the same vein as "The Heat of the Day," seeming directionless, obsessive, and far too inward-looking. Her writing was at its best at ten pages or less. I found every story that was longer than 15 pages to be virtually unreadable (and believe me, I have a high threshold for this sort of thing).

Rather than tell you to go out and read the whole book (which I don't recommend) or tell you NOT to read her work (which would be a disservice), I suggest you pick up her Collected Stories and only read the ones from the '20s and '30s, and only the shorter ones. If you have a personal interest in the London Blitz then you should read the War-Time stories as well (and at least give "Mysterious Kôr" a try, which harkens back to her best creepy character studies).

If any Elizabeth Bowen fans read this, please let me know which novels YOU would suggest. I have another one lying around someplace but I don't think I can handle it right at the moment.

Elizabeth Bowen, "The Heat of the Day"

I read a glowing review of an early Elizabeth Bowen short story collection in a 1930s New Yorker magazine, so I picked up one of her well-regarded novels: "The Heat of the Day." Written in 1948 and covering the London Blitz -- a period that fascinates me -- it should have been a satisfying read. Unfortunately it drove me crazy with tedium and frustration.

"The Heat of the Day" follows the complex interactions of a small group of characters in wartime London, none of who is unambiguously who they claim to be. Surrounded by the unique rules and sensations of a country at war, they both rely on each other and threaten each other, using ominous and largely-unspoken powers and secrets to make life difficult for everyone around them.

On the surface it has the plot of a thriller (an intelligence agent is blackmailing a woman because he knows her boyfriend is a traitor), but that's only the first layer and it's the least important. The second layer is the constant uncertainty of who is who, why they say what they say, and what sort of ominous secrets do they hold, not to mention the influences that war and secrets and uncertainty have on people's behaviour.

Unfortunately even THAT layer of plot is subordinate to the novel's real, central focus: the extremely complicated mental and emotional interplay between the characters whenever they gather in different combinations. I say that's "unfortunate" because the bulk of the novel is dense, head-to-head dialog that veers into psychology and philosophy for dozens of pages at a stretch. People come together, they debate, and they debate some more. They talk about their own thoughts and impressions in such an artificial way that it's like witnessing a therapy session for neurotic poet-philosophers:

"Anything one must say, one must say as soon as one can. One cannot time feeling--at least, as you know, I can't: I suppose that's where to women most men seem to blunder. No, you must face it: all along the line I'm not half so clever as you seem to have thought--or half-thought?"

And on and on and on.

People don't talk like that. It's not even artificial in a "deeper level of language" sort of way. It's not the kind of language that resonates, it's the sort of thing you'd read in the rough notes for a textbook. Everybody in "The Heat of the Day" both talks and thinks that way...and most of the novel is them talking and thinking, alone or in pairs, in a succession of increasingly dreary rooms.

But there's something else underneath it all which manages to hold it together: the mood. A sense of approaching danger and a deep, wicked, selfish wartime hopelessness. Most fascinating is Louie, a character so tangential to the plot that she need not even be there...but her petty, stupid uselessness is what informs the rest of the book and puts everything else in context. It all begins and ends with her, even though she has no actual influence ON anything.

That tells you something important about "The Heat of the Day," but I'm not sure exactly what. I found the book befuddling; though I'm impressed by Elizabeth Bowen's writing, and though I found the more tangible and restrained sections of the book to be beautiful and slightly terrifying, the book itself was an annoyance.

I've gotten my hands on a complete collection of her stories and I look forward to reading it: my impression of Bowen is that her obsessive and searching eye is much better suited to short stories.

"Stinkin' at the Club Savoy"

Since I didn't do anything last night except schlump around the house, I am not currently dealing with a hangover or the inevitable post-party regrets. But for all those who are I present Virginia O'Brien singing "Stinkin' at the Club Savoy." It proves the timelessness of certain things.



PS: O'Brien was known as "Ol' Stone-Face," because her schtick was to sing with virtually no expression whatsoever. This strikes the 21st century viewer as totally bizarre, but I'm sure in the '40s it was easier to deal with.

L'Accordéoniste

You can never go back. Your childhood, your high school days, your moments of great epiphany and discovery...all gone.

It's the same with those eras we have nostalgia for, especially those we're too young to remember. We're simply buried under too many layers of history and context (and irony, even) to be able to REALLY relive swing, or the renaissance, or cabaret.

So I was hesitant about seeing L'Accordéoniste tonight at the Registry Theatre. I was worried that it would be an austere, overly-cultured, documentary-style gloss of classic cabaret songs. I imagine there's a fine line when performing cabaret; a point where it becomes pure mugging camp or even -- God forbid -- tacky.

But I shouldn't have worried. These folks know where that line is and they walk it perfectly, thanks either to careful planning or just plain passion.

There were no heavy-handed attempts at REALLY invoking a cabaret (if such a thing would even be possible with such a varied repertoire of periods and styles). The Registry Theatre is a wonderfully relaxed place, but even so I doubt they would go for dinner, booze, and pungent cigar smoke. Another of my cabaret stereotypes is that the performers are all tragic and slightly soiled; you expect they're involved in shady love affairs, and it takes every ounce of stimulant they can ingest to keep them going through the daily grind of schlock, torch, and double entendre.

But unless they're hiding it well, the L'Accordéoniste performers do not come across as tawdry people who live tawdry lives. They're highly-regarded musicians with symphonic backgrounds and I bet they've NEVER slept in a bed full of cockroaches.

As for austerity...well, things were a bit upright at first, but once they hit the Kurt Weill selections -- which seemed to be leagues beyond the first numbers in terms of craft and arrangement -- they began to loosen up. Their Latin set was pure fire, and by the time they hit the French Cabaret...well, even the stoic percussionist was cracking a smile, and the audience was firmly in their hand.

Kimberly Barber obviously loves (and feels) this music, and she did a good job contextualizing the selections. Accordionist Mary-Lou Vetere is the most expressive musician I have ever seen, and she's got a classy accordion-gauntlet to boot. I particularly liked the moments when Vetere and Julie Baumgartel eased into tremolo-heavy duets; hearing a violin and an accordion together on a CD is nothing compared to the way they sound up-close and personal.

Peter Tiefenbach and Carol Bauman anchored the songs on piano and percussion, and even added their own comic touches when appropriate. But it wasn't all fun and novelty; some of the best moments were the tragic songs..."The Sailor's Tango" and "Chitarrata Abruzzese" especially.

I leave you with an interview and a performance by the band themselves...enjoy! And if they come to your town, be sure to see them. You can buy their debut CD here.

Dee-Yadda Diddy-Aoh Scat!

This weekend King Beckett loaned me his copy of "Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer." And though there's not much in the documentary that I didn't already know, it DID increase my respect for her jazz-stylings from "I don't know how to evaluate this vocal style" to "Holy cow, she was SPECTACULAR."

Do yourself a favour and watch her interpretation of "Sweet Georgia Brown" during the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. The director spends WAY too much time focusing on the audience, but persevere until she really gets going. It's more than worth it.

The Computer History Museum

Johnniac, Sage, Enigma...the Computer History Museum is where I want to live.

Dr. Couney's Babies at Coney Island

File this one under "Did you know...WHAT, he DID?"

From 1903 to 1943, Dr. Martin Arthur Couney had a very unusual show at Coney Island: an incubator full of human babies. Dr. Couney would take in premature babies, incubate them in public, and charge money for people to come and watch.

According to the July 6, 1929 issue of The New Yorker, here's how it all started. Previous to Couney's incubator, nobody had figured out how to keep premature babies warm while still providing them with clean air. In Breslau, Silesia, Couney built a tall chimney which could suck in dust-free air from above the rooftops. It worked!

An American exposition was travelling through Europe then...and the manager persuaded him to come to this country to exhibit his invention as a sideshow. He first set up in Omaha, Nebraska. Eventually Fred Thompson, the old showman who started Luna Park, brought him to Coney Island. That was in 1903. He has been there since and saved about six thousand lives.

This location had a surprising benefit.

One lady, expectant, took a ride on a roller-coaster, had her baby prematurely, and was not more than a block away from an incubator. Pretty handy!

How could Couney afford to do this? The way EVERY sideshow performer did.

The gate receipts have always been adequate, and the twenty-five cents which the public pays supports the institution, gives Dr. Couney a profit, and enables him to employ two physicians and eleven nurses and provide free board and lodging for his little red beginners.

I wonder if the nurses wore spangly outfits and, for an encore, juggled the babies.

Some final information that you may find interesting.

Every three hours the babies are taken out and fed. They get only human milk, from wet nurses, and occasionally a drop of whiskey...

The babies are always grateful, but sometimes the parents aren't. One father, seeing his tiny son attracting boardwalk crowds, demanded that he be given a percentage of the gate.

"An Awfully Big Adventure" by Beryl Bainbridge

First "Harriet Said," then "According to Queeny," and now "An Awfully Big Adventure." Beryl Bainbridge has a real facility for troubled, unreliable, inscrutable, dangerous, and somewhat sociopathic pubescent girls.

Since I discovered her writing last year I have been slowly collecting her work...a used book here, a reprint there. Something has kept me from devouring them all in one sitting, as though each one must be read at exactly the right time and long after the previous one. Each of the three novels I've read have left me totally satisfied and a little stuffed; they're delicious dinners, the kind you don't want to eat every night.

"An Awfully Big Adventure" is amazing. Bainbridge has a touch of Vladimir Nabokov to her, an art of setting up a logical sequence of characters and props, and then allowing them to operate quietly behind the main action of the book. The perceptive reader catches glimpses of these background objects and tries to guess their trajectories, and it seems that when everything comes together in a Bainbridge novel it must be a tragedy, but a PERFECT tragedy; something that the victims, two hundred pages ago, should have seen coming.

Let me try to describe this better: these books are beautiful, witty, vicious, and true. They're about the unreliable memories of others and ourselves. They're about the disconnect between what people say and what they actually feel, and the effect this disconnect has on other characters (and the reader).

But on top of all that the stories are GOOD stories, they're well-formed and satisfying. Like, "An Awfully Big Adventure" may be unconventional under the surface, containing layer upon layer of translucent meaning, but on top of it all it's about second-rate actors in a scruffy British reperatory theater, coping with postwar shellshock and unrequited love and...well, I won't say anything more. You should just read it.

I notice that the local video store just got the movie adaptation in, starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. I have a feeling I'll hate it, but I'll watch it anyway.

Motor Robes Revisited

In July I was puzzled by a 1929 advertisement for "motor robes." We decided -- on anecdotal evidence mainly -- that these robes were for keeping passengers warm in the backseat, in the days before cars had heaters.

By way of confirmation and with a tip o' the hat to synchronicity, here's the paragraph I read last night in "Medical Center" by Faith Baldwin:

Danny and the McDonald car rolled for them at a quarter past seven. Sophie, smiling into Danny's interested eyes--she couldn't help smiling at any man and any man's eyes would have been interested--settled herself under the robe with a sigh of comfort. She said, "This is what I call luxury."

What's interesting here is not the confirmation of the "car robe theory," but rather the fact that this book was written in 1940...and they still hadn't designed a car heater. I wonder when this amazing innovation finally came about?

Well Blow, Roy, Blow!

Here's a happy Sunday treat: Anita O'Day and Roy Eldridge with Gene Krupa's band performing "Let Me Off Uptown." This was their first big hit and the one that briefly solidified O'Day and Eldridge as a popular team.



You just can't beat her "window-washing" dance routine, can you?

See the AMAZING way she vamps at Roy? In O'Day's autobiography ("High Times, Hard Times," my copy of which sports a truly frightening autograph), she has this to say about the group dynamic, and the limited options of "girl singers" during the '40s.

While we were playing different theaters, I'd kept developing my part of the act. What was I to do? Stand there doing nothing? Or the same thing every time? That's not the way I live or think. So I'd embellished my part, thinking I was making something better of the show from the front... But from Roy's point of view I got to dancing too much during "Thanks for the Boogie Ride" and "Let Me Off Uptown"...

...Roy finally got to the place where he stopped talking to me offstage. I didn't care whether he talked or not. In fact, I was glad. If he was really pissed off, he'd say out of the side of his mouth, after he finished a solo, "See what I'm talking about" or "You're at it again."

O'Day's book is a candid and entertaining expose, and if you're interested in the big band and jazz eras seen from the perspective of an intelligent, talented, under appreciated, and terminally hopped-up broad, buy it and read it now.

How to Write a Non-Fiction Book About Technological Innovation

Recently I've been on a "history of computing" kick." I've always been fascinated by the explosion of possibilities during the early days of computing -- Whilrwind, the PDP series, the Alto, the Arpanet -- so I have been reading (and re-reading) some wonderful books about the subject.

I started with "Crystal Fire" by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, which describes in meticulous detail the development of the transistor (and, by extension, the microchip). These sorts of books often try to "play up" internal conflicts in order to add tension to the subject, but this time it must have been easy; William Shockley -- whose mismanagement skills resulted in an exodus of researchers who eventually built Silicon Valley -- sounds like he was a real jerk.

Right now I'm re-reading Michael Waldrop's "The Dream Machine," which I highly recommend. It follows J. C. R. Licklider's extraordinary career, from MIT to ARPA, touching on all of the people he inspired and the technologies they in turn developed. These people conceived of -- and built -- everything we know about personal computing today: graphical user interfaces, object-oriented programming, plasma screens, laser printers, mice, networking, word processing. I'm particularly interested in the information about PARC, an institution that has fairytale connotations in my mind.

Eventually I'll be re-reading two more classic works -- "Hackers" by Stephen Levy and "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder -- but I'm already experiencing a sort of "computer book" fatigue. I notice that there are common methods for presenting information in these books, and I can't help getting slightly annoyed every time I run across one...it's gotten to the point where I can see them coming ten pages in advance.

Here are a list of cliches to avoid when talking about the history of computing, both to improve future books on the subject and so I can get them off of my chest. Each cliche will be presented as a title followed by a paraphrased example.

Introducing a New Person Who Eventually Became Famous and Who Will Be the Subject of the Next Chapter

Pensive, John Doe found himself wandering the hallways in search of inspiration. Eventually he found himself face-to-face with a nondescript young man in bluejeans and sandals...a young man named Bill Gates.

(Chapter break)

Gates' grandparents moved to the American midwest in 1895...

Mentioning a New Person Who Eventually Became Famous Whose Biography was Cut From the Book For Reasons of Space

John Doe never thought to patent his invention, believing that all mankind should benefit. Other people certainly DID benefit, especially a nondescript young man named Bill Gates.

But that came later...

Mentioning Important Forums and Research Papers

John Doe published his research paper in a tiny engineering journal, expecting nothing to come of his insights. This paper is now considered to be one of the landmarks in computing history and is still read by students today.

Revealing an Innovation to Be Something That We Now Take For Granted

What should he call his new discovery? John Doe spent weeks trying to find the perfect name. Fortunately for us, names like "Spunkonet" and "Poopertron" were rejected offhand. But one, submitted by a nondescript young man named Bill Gates, finally stuck.

"Those other names are silly," said Bill, standing fashionable in his sandals and bluejeans. "Why not call this thing...The Internet?"

Fred Waring: "In My Arms"

If you're a fan of old time radio you simply MUST pick up the (almost complete) collection of "Command Performance" episodes. Smarmy at times and often sounding somewhat rushed to air, it featured ALL of the best-known and best-loved performers of the era, spitting out strings of silly GI mailbag names, along with heavily scripted puns about killing Hilter and Tojo.

The music in "Command Performance" is particularly good, with at least one gem per show. During the special "Broadway edition" of December 21, 1943 the gem is provided by Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians in the form of a song called "In My Arms."

I don't know how other people arranged this Frank Loesser wartime waltz, but Fred Waring has packed it full of disconnected vocals and that odd "funny frog-voice" that you often hear in novelty songs of this time. Since one of the dialects is a silly Irishman I suppose this counts as a St. Patrick's Day treat.

I've put an mp3 of the song here for your puzzled, kitsch-hungry enjoyment.

That song link is bound to disappear eventually, probably two months after this posting. Get it while it's hot!

Because It's Saturday: Ann Miller

Many people have idols, drag queens especially. There's a lot to be said about the type of idols we choose, but mine is a natural fit: Ann Miller, queen of taps and all-around wonderful person.

If I can be half as sweet, tolerant, and tight-lipped as Ann was, I think I can probably die and go to heaven. She died a few years ago -- still sweet, still down-to-earth, still tight-lipped -- and it's my GREAT regret that I never got to meet her.

Here's Ann in "On the Town." Her life was full of tragedies, one of which that she was paired with lunkheads like Jules Munshin. Ignore that, get a kick out of her "kicking and spinning," and reflect a moment on a B-starlet who never kissed butt or talked sh*t. Ann, some of us cared deeply for you.

Some of us still do the "Ann Miller Hand Gesture," which I'll demonstrate again soon.


PS: Re-reading this, I realize it sounds funny. What I meant was that I ASPIRE to Ann Miller-hood, and I respect her immensely, but I do not think I come close to reaching her Ann-ness. Yet.

I was ALMOST Elected Governor of Massachusetts!

Jon Whitney just told me that people in Massachusetts are driving around with a "Don't blame me, I voted for Muffy" bumper sticker on their cars.

Apparently I got 44% of the vote in last year's gubernatorial race...and I didn't even know the issues! I didn't attend a single debate, I didn't raise funds, and I need to look back-and-forth several times between open web browsers before I can figure out how to spell "Massachusetts."

I'm going to re-ignite my campaign right now, and I'll start by giving the people exactly what they want: a recording of Joan Davis singing -- you guessed it -- "Massachusetts." You'll love it! You'll love me! You'll even build me a Governor's mansion!

PS: I now consider Jon to be my personal campaign advisor, as he's already getting me up to speed with the American political process. He just taught me that it's not a "Governor's race" (as I posted yesterday) but is, in fact, a "gubernatorial race," which sounds like a joke but it isn't!

Next up: Fahrenheit-to-Celsius conversion.

Taxi Dancers

Lawrence Morris Markey joined The New Yorker at the very beginning, and as of 1928 he was still writing his weekly "Reporter at Large" column. His reportage would be stopped in 1950 by a rifle bullet, long after he'd left the magazine and started writing novels.

I look forward to his articles because -- as I've said before -- they're often the only serious note in an otherwise flippant magazine. As part of his "New York Interiors" series, Markey explored the places that New Yorker readers rarely went: flophouses, tugboat cabins, construction sites, phrenologist's offices, choir practice. On April 21, 1928, he investigated a dance hall and -- in particular -- the lives of taxi dancers.

I'm fascinated with this by-gone profession, and I'm happy to hear that it still exists in so-called "Hostess Clubs." I hope they make more money these days; the women that Markey interviewed were making three cents a dance. By the 1930s, Anita O'Day was singing about "Ten Cents a Dance," so I suppose they'd gotten raises.

Markey really brings "The Happiness Hall" to life, along with its customs:

Lack of ventilation and the activity of so many bodies made the heat grow in the room. The saxophone player removed his coat. The faces of the girls were flushed. The odors of bay rum and cheap perfume became thick and unpleasant. In the short interval between dances, the girls talked idly with their partners or, deserted by their partners in the middle of the floor, roamed about in search of others. It was not rude, apparently, to complete your dance with a girl and promptly walk away from her. The girls accepted the custom with good grace.

And what about the men?

They did not seem like people out for a gay lark. There was no romance in their presence. The procedure was altogether businesslike, and well-ordered. Perhaps the men were, for the most part, the lonely inhabitants of hall bedrooms. Perhaps they came to "Happiness Hall" for no more sinister purpose than to find, for a little while, an acceptable semblance of that pleasant society which all men desire. They did not look upon the girls with greedy eyes.

After having stilted conversations with some busy (and suspicious) taxi dancers -- it's "all about business," they say -- Markey gives a nod to the "working girl" of 1928:

The music was blaring again--the drummer and the pianist had their coats off now. The men standing around the walls were mopping their foreheads. The girls were dancing--they would dance until one o'clock. I suppose only a few of them were able to forget that tomorrow they would be at their counters in Bloomingdale's, or Macy's, or Gimbel's.

These women were paid so little that they pretty much HAD to have a secondary source of income, whether it be gift-giving boyfriends or a "night job."

Ye Olde Novelty Songs: "Slow Poke" by Arthur Godfrey

I listen to a lot of old time radio so I'm bound to hear a lot of weird mid-century novelty songs. Occasionally I get a yen to share a particularly strange one.

So here's Arthur Godfrey singing "Slow Poke," which was apparently a big hit for him in the '50s. This was actually recorded sometime during the late '60s or early '70s -- hence the distinctive reverb -- and I think the guy singing with him was named "Cy." He was probably one of the ex-"Little Godfreys."

"Slow Poke" was actually a pretty popular song -- read about it here -- and it was covered by anybody and everybody. But nobody could sing a weird song like Arthur Godfrey, probably because he was such a creepy guy to begin with.

To future visitors: the link to the song will probably break in a month or two.

Lady Pepperell Sheets

I'm becoming intimate with the weekly advertisers for The New Yorker, particularly the ones that tell stories.

It wasn't unusual at the time for each weekly advert to be different, and for the ad to be a thinly disguised "story" about trendy subjects or current events. They always ended with a product pitch. It's fun to see the copy writers contort themselves in order to bring all the elements together.

Here's a typical "story" advertisement from December 17, 1927. How do you write Lady Pepperell sheets, the Lindburgh crossing, and female pilots into a single advert? In case you were wondering, here's how THEY did it:

Nancy Lee had been brought up to fear neither God nor the Devil. Always two jumps ahead of her crowd when it came to trying something new and reckless--she was the first to get a pilot's license. Apparently no stunt was too difficult for her.

Then came the thrilling achievement of that lone youth who courageously crossed the ocean. Nancy couldn't wait to follow in his path of glory.

Up before dawn on the day of her hop-off for Europe, she started to examine her beloved plane. Imagine her surprise when she saw an infant cozily sleeping in the pilot's seat.

Golden fuzz and pink cheeks, just visible in a snowy white bundle, captivated Nancy's heart completely. But naturally she couldn't take the baby so she took for good luck the sheet in which he was wrapped--a Lady Pepperell.

And after the flight--during which she triumphantly established a flying record for women--she found that Lady Pepperells were as conducive to much-needed sleep as to world records.

The poor writer! What's with the baby? Either it's a reference of some kind to Lindburgh's flight, or it's been slipped in there for readers who think Nancy Lee should become a housewife instead of being a dare-devil pilot.

These "story" advertisements were prominent in the world of radio, where it was extremely cheap to keep the audience's attention by re-writing the brief script every week. Some companies did this exceptionally well -- I'm thinking of the "stealth" advertisements of Lever Brothers -- but others made only a minimal effort.

In the latter case are the Odgen's tobacco advertisements from 1944's "The Weird Circle." The scripted connection between the show's plot and their tobacco is always embarassing to listen to. For instance, their adaptation of Frederick Marriot's "The Werewolf" is repeatedly interrupted by this sort of thing: "Werewolves frequently appear in folk literature throughout the ages. Something else you'll frequently see is Odgen's tobacco...easy to roll, delightful to smoke."

Vaudeville

From February 5, 1948's episode of "It Pays to Be Ignorant"

Lulu McConnell: Before I left home this morning, I rocked my husband to sleep.

Tom Howard: Awww, that's sweet.

Lulu McConnell: Yeah, you should've seen the rock I used.