Fashions

I suppose the fashion business is like a spinning top:  it's because it spins around so quickly that it manages to stay standing.

There are two fashion trends I personally dislike:  visible underwear and inappropriate religious accessories.  By "inappropriate" I mean something like wearing a cross around your neck along with a low-slung blouse, and especially wearing the cross on a loose string so that it's close to your cleavage! (It isn't that it offends against religion, but that it offends against fashion!) Both trends are about crossing a line for the sake of crossing the line, and that's tacky.

The "golden age" of fashion was from the 1920s to the 1950s.  There's an exquisite Youtube video of Leroy Anderson's instrumental "China Doll," illustrated with photographs of the '50s Paris fashion scene, and fashion icons of the time like Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn. (I can watch it over and over!) But the sexual revolution of the 1960s somehow had a cheapening effect on fashion, as they turned to obvious stuff like the miniskirt and the bikini.  Or at least that's what I think!

The quintessential 1970s fashion was the sleeveless pantsuit!

Taxis

When you take a taxi in New York City you hear a recorded voice by some New York celebrity (an actor or singer or such) reminding you to put on your seat belt and be careful not to leave luggage behind.  They also advise you to ask the taxi driver for a receipt, so you can be sure he won't rip you off. (That's always a concern in a city like New York.)

I remember reading about the First Battle of the Marne in 1914.  Paris almost fell to the Germans, but General Gallieni managed to save the day, partly by commandeering the city's taxis to transport soldiers to the front! (The motor taxi was new back then, and nobody knew what it could do.) I like history, especially stories like that one.

There was the TV sitcom Taxi. Danny de Vito had a funny role in it.  I remember the scene that showed how he won beer-chugging contests--just before they started he'd say, "Did they find the rest of that rat that died in the keg?" Christopher Lloyd also had a funny role as a really eccentric character.

Elevators

I have a History Meetup group that screens DVDs of historic movies on the third Wednesday of every month. (Next month we're showing Gandhi!) We show them in Debi's apartment building near the Distillery, where she books the recreation room.  That room is on the second floor, but the only way I know to get there from the main floor is by the elevator.  It makes me feel guilty to take an elevator up just one floor!

I remember visiting the Washington Monument when I was little.  In the elevator on the way up, there was a recorded voice that kept repeating the quote, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen."

I recall that in Venezuela back in the 1970s, to reduce unemployment, the government passed a law that every elevator had to have an operator even when it didn't need one!

Mad magazine has done some funny movie parodies.  In The Towering Inferno some people are trapped at the top of a burning skyscraper, so firefighter Steve McQueen tries putting the women and children in an emergency elevator, but it runs into trouble.  In the Mad version Charlton Heston comes along in his Airport 1975 costume and says, "I'm looking for a crippled Boeing 707 that's off course!" McQueen: "Really, I'm looking for a crippled elevator that's off course." Heston: "Wow!  And I thought our plot was farfetched!"

Socks

Someone said that you can tell Torontonians who come from the Maritimes because they always wear white socks! That's true in my case.  I guess we got into the habit back in our school days when you had to wear which socks in gym class.

I remember a scene in Death Wish where Charles Bronson filled a sock with coins and used it to blackjack street predators.  That was a pretty goofy movie--watch for Jeff Goldblum as the hoodlum wearing a Jughead cap!

Einstein stopped wearing socks because he couldn't see any logical reason for doing so.

The word "sock" can also mean hit.  I remember the TV show Batman where in the middle of fight scenes they'd show the words "POW!" and "SOCK!" on the screen.  Remember the idiot sitcom It's About Time, about two astronauts who end up in the Stone Age and meet a family of cavemen?  The schoolboy version of the theme song went, "It's about time, it's about space, it's about time to sock your face!"

Peanut butter

Can't think of much to say about peanut butter.  Does anyone remember the TV commercials with the Kraft Peanut Butter Teddy Bears?

I can talk about peanuts.  I remember this Halloween bag that afterward still smelled of fresh, unshelled peanuts.

There's an old song that goes, "The man who has plenty of good peanuts and gives his neighbour none, he shan't have any of my peanuts when his peanuts are gone!"

And there's the Charles Schultz comic strip Peanuts.  I think my favourite character is Lucy--she's such a monster! They were also in animated TV specials, where I liked the jazzy music and the sounds for adult voices.  If you like sick humour, go on Youtube and find "Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown," a Sam Peckinpah-style Peanuts spoof!

Short films

I remember some of the short films they showed in school. One was Holiday from Rules, in which some kids who gripe about rules get moved to a desert island without rules, where anarchy ensues.  It seems to me that micromanagement vs. anarchy is a false choice.

I also remember this film about two boys in cowboy outfits, where the one in the white hat did things they wanted to promote like eating a hot breakfast, and the one in the black hat didn't.  They had a foot race which White Hat won, of course.  The main thing I remember is that Black Hat tried to cheat by cutting across a railroad track, but got his foot stuck in the ties just as a train came along, but White Hat saved him.  I wish I'd booed at that point!

You can find a lot of those school films online or on video.  I found one titled Manners in School, in which an animated chalk outline on a blackboard, imaginatively named Chalky, teaches manners to a particularly bad child actor.  Among other things he taught him to say "Yes" instead of "Yeah," and "No" instead of "Uh-uh"! They try to give the message that if you're rude other kids won't want to play with you, yet from what I've seen it's the badly-behaved kids who are most popular!