The Wintrust Building & The Grand Banking Hall

Posted on October 30, 2024 by admin

I don’t know that much about Wintrust Financial, which is a bank holding company that specializes in community banks and has about $63 billion in assets. But I understand that when Wintrust acquires a community bank, which are by necessity locally oriented, the company does not slap the name Wintrust on it, thus sacrificing that local identity on the altar of branding – one of the idols worshiped by corporate America, but not apparently the bank.

I’m not suggesting that brands have no value. Clearly they do. But there are examples of consumer-facing companies gone national that have paved over long established and well-regarded local names.

The consolidation of the department store industry comes to mind. Somehow Macy’s persuaded itself that Chicagoans would respond to their name (which is a New York name) better than Marshall Field, as storied a local store as Chicago has ever had. There are a number of reasons the department store biz is a shadow of its former self, but that kind of thinking is surely one of them.

On the other hand, Wintrust has put its name on 231 S. LaSalle St., which is right at the T intersection with Jackson Blvd., across from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

That’s a better use of a brand, I believe. The building was developed as the Illinois Merchants Bank Building exactly 100 years ago, with a grand design by Graham, Anderson & Probst, which is in the top ranks of name architects from the early 20th century. Since then, the building has been named for a succession of banks, making Wintrust merely the latest in an established pattern. Besides – who gives a fig about Illinois Merchants Bank or any of the others any more anyway?

Wintrust participated in Open House Chicago this year. The grandly named Grand Banking Hall was up a golden escalator.

Grand, all right.

Add a statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and take away electricity and you’ve got a Roman temple. Not just any temple, but one of the (that word again) grandest at which the likes of Caesar might have made offerings.

Notes the AIA Guide to Chicago (2004): “[The space] prompted Louis H. Sullivan to suggest that bankers here wear togas and speak Latin” (p. 78). I didn’t know the great Chicago architect Sullivan had a sense of humor, but it seems he did. The bankers shouldn’t take acting Roman too far, however, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to use zeroes.

Wintrust moved in after the building was restored in the mid-2010s. The bank uses the space for retail purposes. That’s pretty cool for a bank. Beats leaving it vacant.

The bank also rents the space for events. But not (according to the bank web site) for:

Weddings
Casino nights
Gambling

Public events
Political fundraisers
Religious ceremonies

Extremist group gatherings
Restaurant expos

Below the Grand Hall is a whopping bank vault. Among Chicago Open House visitors, it was a hit.

The main attraction is the door.

The vault itself, unlike the one under the Chicago Board of Trade, wasn’t open. Instead a bit of artwork covering the door depicted the rows of lock boxes inside. What’s going on in there? Time Tunnel experiments after hours at the bank?

A digression: A gritty reboot (is there any other kind?) of The Time Tunnel could be an exceptional show. What about it, Ronald D. Moore? You’re a little younger than me. That and Space: 1999 are waiting for you.

One more detail.

Time, the bank might agree, is money.

The Port Huron Blog Post

Posted on October 24, 2024 by admin

Every time I visit Ontario, or at least a beach in that province, I scratch a message in the sand for Geof Huth, and promptly send it to him electronically. This time it was from the sandy beach at Bruce Peninsula NP. Why? Why not?

My knowledge of the New Left is fairly sketchy, I must admit. As long ago as my own student days, in the early 1980s, it didn’t seem new, but old hat. I’ve never even read more than a few paragraphs of the Port Huron Statement, though I could get around to it, since it’s easy enough to find. Such a tract doesn’t need to be mimeographed to reach an audience anymore.

At least I’d heard of it when the Dude mentioned his connection to it. As I understand it, there was no second draft, compromised or otherwise. But the Dude inhabits the Coen Brothers universe, where surely there was one.

As for my knowledge of the actual city of Port Huron, Michigan, that’s a little better than it used to be, informed by a short visit on the way home from Ontario earlier this month. It’s one of those places I stopped because I’d never been there, but had long seen it on maps. There’s an endless supply of places like that.

Downtown, especially Huron Ave., made for a pleasant walkabout.

Huron Ave. crosses the Black River – one of a number of rivers called that in Michigan alone – at a drawbridge, just before the river flows into the St. Clair. As we wandered along the riverfront, bells went off.

When you see a drawbridge in motion, watch it if you can. Again and again. Just another of the little maxims I live by.

There are hints that hipsters have discovered Port Huron. Maybe a scattering of them who have been priced out of Ann Arbor.

We spent some time in a sizable, multi-room antique shop on Huron Ave. Not quite as entropic as Reid’s Corner, but nevertheless stocked with all sorts of interesting stuff, including vinyl records (more evidence of hipsters about).

The First Family was first in a bin, offered for only $2. I didn’t buy it. I have a copy that my brother Jay gave me, and he said that he paid about 80 cents for it. I’m glad to have it around, though we have no record player any more. It functions as a reminder about eggs and baskets.

Two dollars might have been the nominal price in 1962, or a dollar or so more. As a collectible, First Family hasn’t even kept up with its original price in inflation-adjusted terms (nearly $21 now), though if you look at eBay or the like, people are trying to get ridiculous prices for the album. The supply of disks is vast, with 7.5 million units reportedly sold before the president’s death.

1962. The same year that the Port Huron Statement was published. Is it a mere coincidence that I saw this record in Port Huron, or is the universe trying to tell me something? I’ll go with mere coincidence.

One-of-a-Kind Montana Shops

Posted on September 18, 2024 by admin

US 287 north from Helena, Montana, is a little short on signs of human habitation.

Eventually, you come to the Census-designated place called Augusta, pop. 300 or so. Part of its Main Street is US 287, featuring the sort of things you expect in a small-town main street.

A main street in Montana, that is.

There are other ideas about what the flag should look like, and considering the wave of new state flags, it might be changed.

Then there was this house stuffed to the gills with stuff, offering that stuff for sale. A lot of stuff. A resale business dealing in stuff, let’s say. No formal name that I could see.

We couldn’t pass that by. The mind boggles at how this accumulation accumulated, and you should boggle your mind every now and then. The place was so jammed that I had to be conscious of every movement, lest I bush into something and cause of avalanche of stuff.

Lots of stuff outside, too.

Say, whatever happened to Lash LaRue?

Just curious. I’m not enough of a fan to buy a beat-up $20 comic book, though I bought a few postcards unrelated to LaRue or Westerns or even movies.

In fact, I didn’t know much about LaRue, so I later read one of his obituaries. He died only in 1996, with B Westerns having long passed him by. Even by the early ’70s that was the case, as reflected by the Statler Brothers’ catchy 1973 bug-in-amber song, “Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?” (Who died in 1987.)

Just west of the western entrance of Glacier NP, on US 2 in the town of Columbia Falls, Montana, is Ten Commandment Park, a.k.a. God’s Ten Commandments Park. I hadn’t read that Roadside America article or heard about it in any way. But I saw it. Couldn’t pass that by either. Not retail, strictly speaking, but there were items for sale inside. Or, I suppose, available for a donation.

The welcome center is along a U-shaped driveway that sports many billboards.

Some exhorted one and all to follow a specific Commandment; others were pro-religious quotes from famed U.S. presidents; and yet others lauded Jesus.

I had to go in.

A fellow of about my age, large and gray bearded, was there to greet me. Frankly I expected a bit more witnessing from him. Instead, he told me to look around, let him know if I wanted to buy anything, and he offered license plate-sized Ten Commandments and Jesus magnets for free. Also, a few free snacks. That was it.

Devils Tower National Monument

Posted on September 16, 2024 by admin

Days are still fairly long in mid-August, so spending some time at Badlands NP before driving to Wyoming wasn’t a bad idea. As long as we got to our campsite with some light left, setting things up wouldn’t be difficult.

I’d checked the weather for our destination, Devils Tower National Monument, and the only time rain was expected was the late afternoon on August 19, exactly when we would arrive. Ah, well. Nothing to do about that but press on.

Skies were cloudy and the wind was up by the time we got to Wyoming.

The monument isn’t far from the border with South Dakota. Take I-90 to Sundance, then US 14 and then a short stretch of Wyoming 24 to the monument. Soon after we got off the Interstate, that ominous gray cut loose some fierce rain, so heavy at times that it was best to find a wide place in the road to stop and wait for it to pass. That happened more than once as the rain variously intensified and slacked off.

Even so, we got the the entrance to the monument – and the campground just outside the entrance – well before dark. No worries. Did it snow here while it was raining on us a few miles away?

No. That was hail. Some fairly big hailstones, too; not quite golf ball-sized, but not too far off the mark. We went in to register to find that the campground had lost its power.

“Storm knocked out your power?” I asked the clerk, a middle-aged woman. It had, she said, and done a lot of other damage, including to vehicles parked in the campground. She also explained that the places where tent campers go was probably covered by melting ice. She offered to do a refund for the day’s worth of camping we’d paid as a down payment on two days — as soon as the computers were up again.

And she did. Cell service was possible in the area, to my surprise, and I looked into a couple of motels in Sundance, about 20 or 30 minutes away. The Bear Lodge Motel had what we needed: two nights at a middling price. The motel was a comfortable independent with a fairly traditional streak when it came to motel décor and amenities, though (damn it) no bottle opener attached under the sink outside the bathroom and no Sanitized For Your Protection ribbon. Nice beds, though, and bathroom for that matter.

The next morning was clear and after a simple breakfast in the room, we returned to Devils Tower with the idea that we’d hike the trail that circles the tower. This time I had the leisure to document the approach to the monument.

Soon we discovered that the monument was closed. People from their cars and tour buses found out the very same thing.

I asked a NPS ranger at the entrance about it, and he said that a lot of trees and maybe rocks and other debris had fallen on the road inside the monument, and he didn’t know when it would open again – though he guessed not today, stressing that that wasn’t the official word. I thanked him and we figured, not today was about the size of it.

We wandered around a bit, taking a look at the thing. “Bear Lodge” is the translation of native names for the tower. The reference to the Devil was a Victorian-era creation (another of the four fonts of the modern world, and a particularly big one).

Impressive. If I understand what I read, scientific opinion isn’t quite solid on the exact process that caused the rising of the tower, but there it was: an igneous tower rising over sedimentary plains. Lording over the plains? There’s nothing that can’t be anthropomorphized.

Speaking of which, bipedal and stretched-body space aliens of a distinct green hue can be found in the main gift shop outside the entrance (not a NPS shop).

Remarkable, the ongoing influence (though admittedly minor) of a movie that came out nearly 50 years ago. Guess that shows the value of putting a catchy tune in your movie.

I hadn’t thought about that movie in years, much less seen it. In fact, I’ve seen it only once, as a new movie in late 1977, in those heady first months of having a drivers license, which meant I could take girls out. I did to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, though I’m not quite certain now which girl I took.

If you asked me, the gift shop had too much space alien bric-a-brac and not enough Teddy Roosevelt. His name is on the presidential proclamation creating the monument, the very first one under the Antiquities Act of 1906.

I sent a picture of the tower to my old friend Tom.

Tom responded with a text: *Hears the movie theme to Close Encounters*

Me: Looking at the gift shop, you’d think there was a permanent alien settlement on top.

Tom: *Looks around shiftily.* Isn’t there? Have you actually been up there to find out? They could have their own Starbucks up there for all we know.

Me: The truth is out there.

Tom: And it might be caffeinated!

NYC ’83 Debris

Posted on August 11, 2024 by admin

After returning from Europe in mid-August 1983, I spent about 10 days in New York City, a kind of coda to the longer trip. Expenses were low, since I was house sitting – apartment (co-op?) sitting in Greenwich Village – for Deb, a woman I’d met in Germany, while she was on the Jersey shore with her parents. A place New Yorkers went in August, Deb said, because their analysts were out of town. I think she was only half-joking.

If I were a different person, I would have spent late nights at the likes of CBGB, the Palladium, Danceteria, or the Peppermint Lounge (or the Village Vanguard or the Bitter End, for that matter), staggered back to Deb’s apartment, and slept most of the day. That would have been quite the time and place for that kind of activity. But no: I didn’t take a stronger interest in live music in small venues until I lived in Nashville for a few years, and I never did latch on to the alcohol or cocaine components of those kinds of nights. So any stories I’d tell about the NYC club scene 40 years ago would be necessarily made up.

I did a lot of walking. Mostly Manhattan, but one day I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and spent some time in that borough. I also made it up the Bronx.

The zoo was a little run down in those days, but nothing like the south Bronx territory I saw from the #5 IRT. The zoo guide above, looking at it now, is a model of compact information, unfolding to offer a good map of the zoo’s 265 acres on one side, and on the other side, other information about the zoo, and the various trails in the facility one could follow to see different kinds of animals: the Wild Asia Trail, Africa Trail, Reptiles and Apes, Bird Valley Trail, etc.

I see that elephant and llama rides were available for an extra fee in those days. I wonder if that’s still the case.

Back in Manhattan, there was always Art to see.

Note the adult admission price: $3. Or the equivalent of about $10 these days. And what is the adult rate as of 2024? $30. That’s just gouging, MoMA. You have no excuse.

Vistas. I don’t remember what I paid, but the ESB price now is absurd. I’m glad I’ve already been there.

I went to the top of the Empire State Building at night, and marveled at the glow of the city, but also at just how many vehicles on the street below were yellow cabs. I was at the World Trade Center observation deck during the day; a lost view.

Thursday Updates &c.

Posted on August 8, 2024 by admin

Cerulean days. Thursday dusk on the deck.

It’s come to my attention that Jim Varney did occasionally perform live with Gonzo Theatre. At least, the Tennessean posted an image of him doing stand-up at the Municipal Auditorium in downtown Nashville on November 14, 1982, describing him as a member of the troupe. So maybe he was sometimes; but not specifically on the night we went, and he isn’t in the publicity shot I have in my possession. A Tennessean article about Gonzo Theatre from the year before doesn’t mention him either.

Argh, we could have seen Varney live but, being ignorant young’uns, we didn’t know about the show. Bet he was a hoot and a half.

We were out and about the evening NBC broadcast the Olympic Parade of Nations nearly two weeks ago, so we didn’t see that. Since then, I haven’t felt much like following the Games. But occasionally I look at the medal counts. I see that the UK has 57 and France 56 thus far. Is that the count that the French really care about? No hope to best China or the U.S. (or even Australia), but maybe they’ll top the limeys.

What do the French call the British when they’re in a derogatory mood, anyway? One source says rostbifs.

I also checked the nations that so far have a single bronze. They are:

Including one for the Refugee Olympic Team. How about that.

“Boxer Cindy Ngamba became the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team athlete to win a medal this week, giving the team its first piece of hardware since its creation nearly a decade ago,” NPR reports.

“Ngamba was born in the Central African country of Cameroon and moved to Bolton, England, at age 11, according to her official biography. She took up soccer at a local youth club, where she discovered boxing by chance at age 15.

Ngamba, who is gay, cannot return to Cameroon, where same-sex sexual relations are punishable by up to five years in prison… Ngamba qualified for the Refugee Olympic Team earlier this year, becoming the first boxer to do so.”

Good for her. Hope she gets to stay in the UK.

Bloomington Ramble ’24

Posted on July 29, 2024 by admin

Want good soft serve ice cream in an unpretentious setting? Look no further than Carl’s Ice Cream, a plain-looking shop deep in the heart of Bloomington, Illinois. Also, look for its anthropomorphic soft serve cone rising over the parking lot.

Yuriko and Ann had strawberry, I had chocolate. Carl’s in Bloomington – there’s also one in Normal, with an ice cream muffler man outside – was an early afternoon stop on Saturday. We spent part, but not all of the weekend, in Bloomington.

Something we (I) also had time to do was take a better look at the impressive three-legged communications tower in downtown Bloomington. It’s visible for quite a distance, and makes me wonder, why aren’t more communication towers this interesting?

Much of the day was hot, or at least very warm, and sunny, a prelude to heavy rains early Sunday morning. So Yuriko was content to stay in the car – with the AC running – when I took in a few closer views of tower.

Pantagraph articles about the tower are paywalled, but snippets poke through from search engine results:

In the last 30 years of telephone, radio and other network service, the Tower Center became a sort of landmark for downtown Bloomington, lovingly nicknamed the city’s “Eiffel Tower.”

Bloomington’s ‘Eiffel Tower’ changes hands after 30 years

The McLean County Center for Human Services Recovery Program is gaining a new home beneath the iconic 420-foot communications tower in Bloomington…

Another source tells me that the tower dates from 1989. The Tower Center is the two-story building under the tower, now belonging to McLean County.

After the rain cleared away, late Sunday morning was as toasty as Saturday had been, but more humid. I decided against a walkabout at the Park Hill Cemetery in Bloomington. It’s good to ration your time under those hot and copper skies.

Still, we drove around a bit through the cemetery. Not a lot of memorial variety, but not bad.

Now I can say I’ve seen Mike Ehrmantraut’s grave. But not that Mike Ehrmantraut, of course. The fellow offed by Walter White, being fictional, must have an equally fictional grave.

Adjacent the cemetery is the sizable Miller Park, which includes the Miller Park Zoo. We didn’t want to use our ration of intense sunlight at a zoo either, but in the park itself.

When you see a steam locomotive in park (and its tender), you really ought to get out and look.

Three million miles. So the train could have, with the right track, gone to the Moon and back a number of times, provided it took its own oxygen to keep that engine going.

And what would the display be without a caboose? Partly because that’s just a fun word to say.

Ignorant fellow that I am, I didn’t know the Nickel Plate Road, so I looked it up later. Once upon a time, it was a major regional RR, spanning northern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

Miller Park features a sizable war memorial.

In its vicinity are some retired weapons of war, such as a captured German 210 mm Krupp Howitzer (in better shape than this one).

As well as a WWI tank. Created for that conflict, at least. An M1917 light tank. Apparently none made it to the front during the war, but were put in service for a few years after the war by the U.S. Army.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of those on display. I’m reminded of my great-uncle Ralph. I understand — from my mother, and maybe even grandma told me this — that he was in a tank corps in France, with the American Expeditionary Forces. Such a posting is said to be fairly dangerous, and I believe it. Supposedly, Ralph was poised to go to the front at the time of the Armistice, which might well have saved him.

Gonzovision ’82

Posted on July 21, 2024 by admin

It’s entirely possible that this is the only place this photograph is posted anywhere. Considering the imponderable size of all the servers everywhere, that would be something. But also completely trivial, since there’s no end of physical images tucked away collecting dust.

I’ve had this physical print in my possession for more than 40 years. How exactly I got it in the first place, I don’t remember. It looks like a publicity shot, with the white border trimmed out for scanning, though nothing was printed there to indicate who they are, which seems like a serious lapse. Maybe that cost extra, or they couldn’t agree on a name yet.

But I know them (mostly). The five people were the members of a short-lived comedy troupe in Nashville, Gonzo Theatre.

One reference to the troupe online I’ve found is at a page on Newspapers.com depicting the July 18, 1982 Daily News-Journal of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

The entirety of the text: NASHVILLE July 23, 31 “Gonzovision” will be presented by the writers of Gonzo Theatre every weekend at The Cannery, 811 Palmer Place.

The troupe name was Gonzo Theatre and the show was called Gonzovision. On the back of the photo, someone else wrote Gonzovision, and I added 1982.

On July 23 that year – very likely, since on the 31st I was caving in rural Tennessee – I went with some of my friends to The Cannery to see Gonzovision (the venue is still around as Cannery Hall). I remember being entertained, but otherwise not much else about the show. At one point, one of the troupe pretended to be Bob Dylan, another pretended to be Ethel Merman, and they did a duet. That was funny.

Also, there was a well-known local politico in the audience, who was red-nose drunk at the time, and the troupe spent some time making fun of him. I wish I could remember who that was, and what they said, but my notes are silent on the matter. Even 20 years ago, I couldn’t remember much more about the skits.

All this brings to mind Jim Varney. Not because he was a member of the troupe at that moment – he had better, and far more remunerative things to do at that time. Rather, some of the members of Gonzo Theatre would soon be in the very first Ernest movie, Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam, a flick that took a bit of my money and about an hour and a half of my time for little in return.

Lee Johnson is at top left of the photo. He’s no doubt the reason we knew about the show at all, since we were tight with his younger brother Mike. Mac Bennett, whose career in movies was very brief, is top right. Sometime later, I heard him recite from memory, at a party and with great verve, a translation of Baudelaire’s “Get Drunk.”

Jackie Welch is bottom left. These days she’s “a professional life coach and president of Visions Manifest Coaching Services,” according to imdb, but whose web site doesn’t exist anymore. She has had a minor career in the movies – including a couple of other Ernest movies, Ernest Goes to Jail and Ernest Scared Stupid, and the short-lived TV show, Hey, Vern, It’s Ernest. Too bad Varney died when he did (2000) or she might have been in such epics as Ernest Goes to War, Ernest Rockets to Mars and Ernest and the Zombie Apocalypse, which surely would have been made in the 2010s.

I can’t remember the name of fellow in the lower center, who looks to be the head of the troupe, but I do know that to the right of him was Daniel Butler, who was also in Ernest movies, but is better known (relatively speaking) for a thing called America’s Dumbest Criminals. Again, too bad Varney’s career was cut short: Butler could have been his counterpart in My Dinner With Ernest.

A Night in the Suburbs Watching A Night in Casablanca

Posted on July 11, 2024 by admin

We had a bit of rain from what might have been the edge of hurricane Beryl earlier this week, as that weather system petered out over North America. Hard for non-experts like me to say, though. Clear today but a high of around only 80° F. Not bad for high summer.

I looked up Sig Ruman the other day. I remembered at least one of his performances – the pompous doctor with the pointy beard in A Day at the Races (1937), who of course is on the receiving end of Marxian wit, especially Groucho’s.

Ruman was in A Night at the Opera as well. Need a pompous German character for your movie? Siegfried Carl Alban Rumann (d. 1967) was one such during the golden age of the studio system. He has 130 credits at imdb.

I looked him up because he also had a part in A Night in Casablanca (1946), the second-to-last Marx Brothers movie. I found it available to view online (with commercials) not long ago, and decided to watch it. I wasn’t sure I’d seen all of the movie, and if I had, maybe on TV more than 50 years ago, so my recollection wasn’t there.

The only scene I remembered at all was typical Harpo. Early in the movie, he’s leaning against a wall, and another character comes by and says, “Say, what do think you’re doing? Holding up the building?”

Harpo nods emphatically. The other character, unimpressed, drags Harpo away, and naturally the building collapses.

A Night in Casablanca has all of the elements of earlier Marx Brothers movies – each of the three brothers doing their own physical and wordplay shticks, a good-looking pair of non-entities as romantic leads, a story that doesn’t matter or even make a lot of sense, straight characters flustered by the brother’s antics (but no Margaret Dumont), a few songs, and a highly kinetic final half hour or so that ought to have the brothers in top form. Such as in Duck Soup, when they go off to the front to fight Sylvania in one of the funnier romps ever put to film.

Sorry to say that A Night in Casablanca is one of the brothers’ lesser efforts. Not a terrible movie, just not a very good one. There are a few laughs. This is the Marx Brothers, after all. Harpo did what Harpo always did, and Groucho had some good lines, such as to the hotel staff:

From now on the essence of this hotel will be speed. If a customer asks you for a three-minute egg, give it to him in two minutes. If he asks you for a two-minute egg, give it to him in one minute. If he asks you for a one-minute egg, give him the chicken and let him work it out for himself!

A lot of the comedy doesn’t work very well. In one scene, the brothers hide in the room of Count Pfefferman (Sig Ruman), a former Nazi trying to get away with Nazi loot hidden in Casablanca. The brothers sneak in and out of hiding to unpack and otherwise re-arrange Pfefferman’s luggage and personal effects, to delay his departure.

It’s comedy, of course, and it depends on Pfefferman not seeing or being aware of the brothers, whom he overlooks in completely unbelievable ways. Even comedy has to have some attachment to reality, and the scene has none, and so it doesn’t really land. The scene had the feeling of being filler, as well, as it drags on.

Ruman has a fairly large part in the movie, but it doesn’t quite work. He’s the main antagonist and villain, and is as nasty as a comedy allows. He’s a former Nazi only because Germany lost the war. But Teutonic nastiness, combined with the sort of befuddled fluster he got from dealing with the Marx Brothers, isn’t a particularly good mix.

Then there’s the matter of the high-octane comic chase toward the end of the movie. That didn’t work either. It was too much like the thrill-a-minute scenes of a cheap action serial of the period, involving the brothers in a truck chasing an airplane down a runway, climbing into the airplane via a ladder, foiling the villain Pfefferman and his henchmen who are trying to get away with the loot, and crashing the airplane in such a way that somehow resolves the story and doesn’t kill anyone. Groucho, Chico and Harpo as action heroes? I don’t think so. The scene was kinetic, all right. Just not very funny.

Still, I’m not sorry I spent an hour and a half watching the movie. I can be a completist when it comes to the Marx Brothers. But I don’t want to see it again, as I do Duck Soup. Or most of the others.

One more thing: an actress named Mary Dees was in A Night in Casablanca as “minor role” (uncredited), according to imdb. That got my attention, but I’m not going through the movie again to see if I can spot her.

Dees is best known, apparently, as a double for Jean Harlow for a short stint. Besides “minor role,” her other movie parts tended to be the likes of “chorus girl, uncredited,” “redhead, uncredited,” “girl, uncredited,” and “babe, uncredited.” After A Night in Casablanca, she quit the movies and reportedly lived on until 2004.

High Summer Thursday

Posted on June 27, 2024 by admin

Fireflies have been spotted in the yard. Actually I saw a few a week or more ago, early ones, but now they’re out consistently. They’re denizens of high summer, at least around here.

So time for a summer break, in honor of the upcoming Independence Day and Canada Day and the idea of summer indolence. When the living is easy. Alas, there are no destinations ahead for us, at least not for the moment. Back posting around July 7. It will still be high summer, unless something funny happens to the Earth’s tilt on its axis.

The living is easy if you’ve got an AC and the means to furnish it with electricity. Got my latest electric bill today, a steep one, with ComEd helpfully informing me that we used an average of 151% more kWh each day in June 2024 (May 24-June 24, that is) than the same period a year earlier, which is certainly a business way to look at things. This June’s been pretty hot, but also rainy. Practically subtropical this year.

I will say this about the utility: only one power loss in recent memory, which was a few months ago, and lasted only about 10 seconds. Before that, the most recent blackout I remember was on MLK Day, maybe 10 years ago, about a hour long. It wasn’t that cold, so we weren’t at risk from the chill. It was daytime, so we weren’t in the dark either, and I think we played a board game.

The view from my temporary bed the other day.

Not long before I’d woken up from a screening colonoscopy, and had enough energy to put on my pants. The end result was good: the doc found no lurking neoplasms. The worst part of the procedure is over by the time you get to the clinic anyway. Namely, downing the vile liquid beforehand.

My last round of gulping was from 3 to 5 a.m., so to make the time pass – when I wasn’t rushing to the bathroom – I watched a couple of episodes of Northern Exposure, which recently appeared on one of the streaming services I pay for. Now I’m working my way through the series. I saw some, but not all of the episodes when it was new, including a few that a friend had sent me on videotape when I lived in Japan.

Those were the first I’d ever seen, watched on the VHS player that fed into my little Korean TV (the first TV I ever bought, for about ¥25,000 on one of Osaka’s electronic retail streets). The very first one impressed me as amusing. I watched another episode and thought, amusing. And interesting.

Then I watched a third one – which happened to be the late first-season episode “Aurora Borealis: A Fairy Tale for Big People,” originally aired August 30, 1990. My reaction: what is this? How can this be on network television? It’s too wonderfully odd.

One of the plot threads of that particular episode involves Bernard, a long-lost half-brother of Chris, showing up in town for reasons he can’t explain. (That episode also happened to be the one in which Joel meets misanthrope Adam, a character played with remarkable comic focus by Adam Arkin, who later became recurring and somewhat more domesticated.)

Early on, before they know they are related, Bernard and Chris are in the Brick, and have this discussion.

Shelly: What were you talking about this morning? Jung and — what was that other stuff?

Chris: The collective unconscious.

Shelly: Do they tour, or do they just cut records?

[That would, in fact, be a great name for a band.]

Chris: Well, I’ll be reading excerpts from Jung and his study Man and His Symbols all week. So — you can catch up.

Bernard: That was you on the radio?

Chris: Yeah.

Bernard: Interesting. Very interesting.

Chris: Have you read any Jung?

Bernard: No. But I’ve had some strange dreams lately. Very strange.

Shelly: Me too.

Chris: Well, everybody does. I mean, Jung says that dreams are the woofer and tweeter of the total sound system.

Bernard forms an unusually tight bond with Chris, again for reasons they can’t explain, since they still don’t realize they are related. Tired after spending time working on a large metal sculpture Chris is building outside his trailer, they bunk down and promptly share a dream. Or rather you, the viewer, slowly realize that is happening, as dreamtime Chris and dreamtime Bernard talk things over in the cab of a truck neither of them is driving; someone off camera is. In the background is the Chordettes’ recording of “Sandman.”

They talk about their father, who was a long-haul truck driver, and are on the verge of realizing he had two families when they wonder who, in fact, is driving.

“Who are you?” they ask the driver at the same time.

“Hello, boys,” says the balding, gray-bearded driver with an eye patch (?) and a brown suit, in a mildly Germanic accent. “I am Carl Jung. And while I know much about the collective unconscious, I don’t know how to drive!”

They all scream as the truck heads out of control. Naturally, that’s when they wake up.

That scene makes me laugh, just thinking about it. It’s inspired. At the moment I saw it, I realized I needed to watch more of the show. And so I did for a while, but not consistently, and then not often for the next 30 years or so.

Fast forward to last month, when a handful of episodes (including “Aurora Borealis”) were available to watch on the trans-Atlantic flights on Aer Lingus. So I watched a few, including “Aurora Borealis,” and later discovered the show is now streaming for the first time ever. About time, I’d say.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Entertainment