Depression Apples In The Big Apple
Month: December 2014
Good Morning, Starshine
God got His paints out again this morning, and my pal Jeff snapped this great shot!
When Your Cat Hates You
To be fair, all cats hate you. The contempt is thinly-veiled. For those of you unfamiliar with the wide-eyed Brazil nut pictured here, it’s Carmen Miranda, aka The Chiquita Banana Lady. And wide-eyed she was!
She may have danced her way to fame with a pile of fruit atop her head, much to the chagrin of Latin nations who felt stereotyped, but she had the last laugh. By 1945, she earned more than $200,000 (over $2 million in today’s money), becoming Hollywood’s highest-paid entertainer.
Numero uno, y’all!
She must have had fabulous posture and core control to forever be balancing colorful edible headgear and bearing the burden of 27 lbs of heavy metal accessories. No pain, no gain.
In August of 1955, Miranda was shooting a a song and dance number for the The Jimmy Durante Show when she fell to one knee. Out of breath, she finished the segment and went home. The next morning, Miranda died from a heart attack at her home in Beverly Hills. She was only 46.
To see her sing and samba, catch this 1943 clip of her in “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat.”
All I Want For Christmas Is For Mariah To Dial It Down
We don’t need to rehash the Rockefeller Christmas Tree incident. Singers age and so, too, their vocal chords. I’ve winced recently when both James Taylor and Amy Grant tried to reach those old high notes. God bless them for trying but sometimes old goats can’t do young goat tricks.
Time catches up with the best and richest of us. And enough already with the 44-year-old decolletage. This is not a vision of love.
You’re a married mommy, remember? Yes, technically still married. You are better than this.
I wish you could stay the lithe, curlyheaded racially questionable five-octave pre-diva chanteuse that you were my freshman year of college, but it’s not possible. You remember her? The one who married the cadaver from Tales From The Crypt?
Ick. I could have told you marrying Smarmy Much-Older Tommy Mottola was a bad choice.
But nearly a quarter century has passed since my buddies and I would pass college bars where drag queens belted out “Love Takes Time” in strapless sequined dresses. Time has been taken, my dear. It has been took.
So just be 44. Use a little more material. Cover it up. Stop trying to splash around in a bikini in the fountain of youth. You’ll just drown. Or worse, flail about pitiably while your middle-aged orbs spill out. From one 40-something to another: honey, just run for dry land. Let the fountain alone.
Mercy, even the trash man is trying to scoop you into a recycling bin. At least let him take the dress. Or the duct tape Borderline gloves.
You still get to be Mariah. You just can’t be Forever 21. So sit back and collect royalties and obsess over glittery butterflies and Marilyn Monroe and raise dem babies. And don’t kick Nick to the curb. He seems like such a nice boy, such nice manners. I’d introduce him to my Nana. Why, I saw him help Lara Spencer on with her pink coat this morning on Good Morning America. With or without his ruby slippers and velveteen jackets, he’s the best thing to ever hit America’s Got Talent. Give him a second chance. You knew he was young when you married him. You knew you’d have to raise him up.
And if you’re feeling perimenopausal and hormonal, feel free to throw shade all over Nicki Minaj. I don’t care if it is her birthday today. Do what you do best.
Look on the bright side: you can still be beautiful with clothes on. You’re not dead like Whitney. You can sing better than all of us poor peons who don’t have a Morrocan-style hookah lounge; you just can’t sang like in days of yore. But that’s First World Problems, girl. While your peers are busy misplacing car keys, you can chuckle in your rainstorm of Benjamins. Who needs car keys when you have a driver?
You can still be the mistress of condescension. Time hasn’t slowed that down.
And look, I’ll go one better. I won’t tag this post “vintage” like I usually do.
Precious Little Pre-WWII Graphs
I got my paws on a December 1939 Fortune magazine this week, which contained several interesting graph results of a readers’ poll. Keep in mind that there was no television then, no internet, no means of learning up-to-date war information other than radio or newspaper.
This question was: Which statement best represents your idea of Germany?
Most Americans believed that Germans were peace-loving, misled by ruthless rulers. Understanding that Hitler was the most ruthless of rulers, impending war led to this question.
I love the body language on these little black bodies. Yes, maybe, and hell to the no.
At this point, the four-term FDR was only in his second term, and readers had no way of knowing if he would go on to serve again. Look how cute they made the innacurately non-wheelchair-bound but accurately chainsmoking president look. Reports say he smoked 20-30 cigarettes per day! And as you recall, he did have polio, so he could not walk unassisted.
The last question simply asked if those polled wanted to keep FDR in the White House at all, which nearly half the readers did. And why not? Did you ever see a happier horse with a cigarette holder, swimming away from a crocodile?
Jeanie With The Flaming Red Hair
Oh, college students do love to have a “cause.” Why would they be giddily high-fiving in the midst of a bonfire? Here’s the explanation.
Fortunately for them, the Japanese dropped a bomb on Pearl Harbor a few months later, and they were sent off to war instead of this foolishness.
The Chuck Norris Of Phones
You don’t drop this phone; this phone drops you.
Fat Shaming & Lubrication
Look, we all have obese friends who ask too much of our heirloom furniture that we just had appraised on Antiques Roadshow by those buff Keno twins, and that stinks, but the good news is that Texaco can MARFAK your car. What on earth?
Snapping wicker=bad
40 Point lubrication=good
Makes perfect sense, right?
Derelict Hobos & The Demise Of The Running Board
Did you realize these unkempt tramps were to blame for the ruin of the running board? Neither did I. Not until today. But this 1941 Chevrolet ad has opened mine eyes to the truth.
Just look at those adjectives: swank and streamlined. Running boards were preventing those adjectives from existing. And look how happy she is! A woman who wears an entire colony of minks on her frame is a woman I can trust. Maybe it’s badgers, wolverines–I don’t care, as long as they keep her warm.
And did you know there was a real fear of package-carrying tweens in knee breeches and dress shoes attacking your windows if your car had running boards? It was practically an invitation.
Here I was thinking auto makers had simply stopped caring about style, but all along, I was wrong. I had never stopped to consider the peril involved in taking TWO STEPS.
This is what they mean when they talk about light-bulb moments, friends. Running boards were downright dangerous.
It’s December, folks. Some of you Northerners can relate to Trenchcoat Trent and the loss of his dapper derby. Should that really happen in a civilized country? God bless Chevrolet for hitting CTRL+ALT-DEL on the cursed running board.
Ads That Almost Changed My Mind, Part II
If it’s toasted, it can’t be that bad.
And what about these couples from a 1929 Camel ad? Don’t they look cozy and warm in the amber glow of a Prohibition-era eatery? If I couldn’t drink, I’d be smoking, too. Enjoy your finery and walking sticks while you got ’em, folks. Nine months ’til Black Tuesday…
For The Person Who Has Everything!
I Pledge Allegiance To Pure Evil
I just got this February 3, 1941 copy of Life. I have TONS of Life magazines; I even have a room we call the “Life room” because it has glass cabinets housing piles of vintage mags. But I’d never seen this one. The U.S. was a few months shy of entering WWII at this point, but we were well aware of The Führer. Don’t you just wish you were there to smash his face in?
The frenzy caused by his presence is disturbing and unnerving. What brainwashing of a country to treat him as their savior.
Have you seen these images before? I hadn’t. Are those beaming teenagers still alive? Have they since seen themselves in these images, so joyful, so radiant, so hopeful? Little did they know.
I Don't Get It 