Not A Dollarshort

Little people in a little world.

The trembling earth and my mention of the Outer Richmond's sandy past causes me to recall the wonderful collection of Panoramic Maps from 1847-1929 at the Library of Congress.

Be sure to check out the city of San Francisco: Birds eye view from the bay looking south-west - circa 1878. (I can't find a way to make a permanent link to this map.)

And for those not in San Francisco:

List of Geographic Locations

Remember to zoom! The details are fantastic.

I'm such a failure.

Vintage Labels: The Lost Art of Travel and the History of the Luggage Label

This is the sort of link that would have appeared in A Day Late, which, you'll notice, is defunct. Getting A Day Late up and running again is dependent on how quickly my clone can be delivered.

You may continue.

Ladies Night Transcript

"I believe I'll be the first contributor with breasts on the site."

So, I wasn't the only person who noticed something lacking from The Morning News.

It has been rectified. All is now good.

--

On another Maggie Berry note: Curses to her for getting this in my head.

Fastball.

A couple days ago, while Ben and I were watching a particularly long Giant's game on television, I expressed a desire for some sort of service which would basically edit all the non-essentials of the game.

It would sort of be like baseball wrap-ups, pitch after pitch of high-speed fun. Because, you know, sometimes you don't have the time to sit through a three-hour game.

Especially when you're just watching it on the television.

It turns out, MLB.com has launched just a service:

"Not just baseball ... fastball! Watch a game's worth of action in about 20 minutes. Watch every hit, run & payoff pitch -- about 85 pitches -- in an action-packed 300K stream."

From the Real Video free preview, I think it's safe to say that what I pictured in my mind was a whole lot cooler.

Of course, the "service" I had imagined also involved hi-tech goggles and data dumps to the brain.

Perhaps if they add the blooper-reel footage music to the background, it would be a bit more exciting.

Link via Raelity Bytes.

Short, but sweet.

I've redesigned, relaunched and moved Sew Wrong to sewwrong.com.

I call the design "studies in Creamsicle."

We beat penicillin

My friends at Amazon made my day this morning -- The Kids in the Hall's Brain Candy is now available for pre-order.

In related news, I may have to sell the two tickets I bought for their Mon, May 20th show. The seats are in section UL1, row EE, seats 106 and 107.

I'm asking for face value -- $85 (including the service charge) for both tickets.

I'm also willing to trade these tickets for 2 comparable-priced Giants tickets.

Let me know via email if you're interested.

It was all right on Alf.

I tell myself that I'm going to sit down and answer the over three hundred emails waiting in my inbox, but then I find myself procrastinating in all ways awful.

Examples?

I spent a good chunk of time today visiting a website about everyone's favorite "confirmed bachelor," Paul Lynde.

As Uncle Arthur, Paul Lynde was the best thing about Bewitched -- and I was reminded of this fact after watching Bye Bye Birdie (where he appears as Ann-Margaret's father) the other day

My visit to Paul Lynde world also reminded me to take the time to look up the birthdate of another Bewitched regular, Bernard Fox a.k.a Dr. Bombay. As a child, I saw Dr. Bombay as an ancient -- he seemed to be in his fifties or sixties. So, when I saw him in Titanic a couple years back, I wondered if he was immortal. It turns out he is one of the only surviving members of the cast and he's only 75.

Next step in my procrastination odyssey was a visit to IMDB to check out the ages of William Frawley and Vivian Vance -- I Love Lucy's Fred and Ethel. I've always known that there was a large age difference between those two actors but it amazes me that they cast an actor, who during their last season, was seventy. This was to Vance's forty-eight.

Fun Fact: Did you know that Vivian Vance was contractually required to remain twenty pounds overweight during filming. This clause was to guarantee that she look older than her actual age. Although I've believed this for years, I have my doubts about the legitimacy of this fact.

After this visit through TV Land past, I remembered I woke up this morning thinking about Lucille Ball -- actually thinking about one of the most traumatizing things I had ever seen on television.

It was a television movie called Stone Pillow -- and Lucille Ball played an elderly homeless woman who -- and this is the traumatizing part -- eats an alley cat!

What a day.

Interesting Biblio.

Laura, over at Interesting Monstah has compiled a bibliography which outlines the resources she used for a previous post about Hollywood and its historical treatment of African-American actors.

The English major in me drools over any sort of bibliographic listing -- especially a great listing of titles that supports a weblog post!

If you're interested in watching any of the films Laura mentions, I recommend viewing Imitation of Life (the 1934 and 1959 versions) consecutively. Two drastically different periods of time yield two different adaptations of Fannie Hurst's book. I find the 1959 version much more difficult to watch -- it seems that the racist (negative portrayals) themes are more subtle and therefore, more damaging.

And, besides, Lana Turner and Sandra Dee blondely traipsing around doesn't help matters much.

Still, I've read that Imitation of Life (1934) was the first Hollywood film to really capture race relations. It's fascinating to be able to see how Hollywood chooses to treat the story twenty-five years later (and especially in the late 1950s).

Apparently, this book contains a continuity script, critical commentary, reviews and interviews with Douglas Sirk, the director of the 1959 version. Since I haven't read it, I can't say whether there's anything valuable included.

Those who can't -- curate.

I had the great pleasure of playing curator over at The Mirror Project.

May I present my gallery, Accidental Stills from Imaginary Movies -- an homage to Cindy Sherman.

Also, the Mirror Project has just reached the 5,000 photo mark -- in terms of collaborative web art, that's quite an accomplishment. Congratulations.

* Despite my hilarious little title to this post, I should point out that I do indeed respect curators and the role that they play in the art world. I just needed a title and that one popped into my mind.

Google It.

This is quite a neat idea. Basically, with one click, you can do a Google search on the topic of each of Scott's entry -- the search terms are pulled from the entry's hidden title.

Now, if dollarshort had a different tone to it, I would do something similar to this in a second. But really, how many searches about "mena's childhood" could you possible stomach?