A $100,000 Space Suit, Almost

International Talk Like A Pirate Day has rolled around again. Where does the time go? Soon enough, it will be Millard Fillmore’s birthday and then National Gorilla Suit Day.

The art of the headline isn’t one of my strengths, but I understand the tendency to fudge just a bit for the sake of grabbing those eyeballs. Take the “$100,000 space suit.” That’s what the reader will see, the thinking goes, relegating “almost” to a second-place consideration, if that. The text will clarify.

Unless it doesn’t. I don’t know whether formal studies of the matter have been done, but they don’t need to be. It’s clear that the exaggeration is more easily retained by human memory than the small-print facts of the matter. You could argue an evolutionary advantage in that kind of big-picture perception for savanna dwellers of yore, but I’m not smart enough to know whether that’s the case.

Here’s the fine print: the item I’m talking about isn’t, in fact, a real space suit, and probably not selling for $100,000. The other day I saw a snippet about an auction to be held next month by Heritage Auctions, “The World’s Largest Collectibles Auctioneer.” The item for sale: Astronaut Space Suit (6) Piece Ensemble from 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM, 1968).

At a starting bid of $80,000, the item might indeed sell for $100,000 or more, so my headline isn’t completely off base.

More detail, according to Heritage: “Vintage original (6) piece astronaut space suit ensemble including…  helmet, metal neck ring, tubing and applied ‘United States Aeronautics Agency – Clavius Base’ decal, leather lined interior retaining a label handwritten ‘Sean Sullivan’… These space suits can be seen prominently during the Moon crater and Moon Bus shuttle scenes… This epic piece of film history exhibits age, paint cracking to the entirety of the coveralls and gloves, crazing to the left side of the helmet visor, paint chipping to the backpack, and heavy production use.”

Cool. I hope the likes of the Seattle museum formerly called EMP acquires it for display; that would be a good outcome for the auction. I am, of course, a longstanding fan of that movie. I will not, however, ever find myself the proud owner of a faux space suit associated with it.

Rotary Botanical Gardens, Janesville

Time for another summer break. Good to take those when you can. Back to posting around August 6. Or maybe the 7th. Not good to structure summer too much.

Didn’t get around to seeing either Oppenheimer or Barbie lately, though I’m much more likely to watch the former in a theater. I actually read The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1987) back when it was fairly new, and before that (’83) took an undergraduate seminar on the Manhattan Project, which involved much interesting reading, of course, and watching an excellent documentary, The Day After Trinity (1981), all of which inspired awe and dread.

As for Barbie dolls, I share the indifference that most men feel – though I suppose if there are men who like My Little Pony, there must be secret Barbie admirers as well, and not just out of solidarity with Ken. Ann, on the other hand, has a sentimental attachment to the dolls, even nostalgic feelings, whatever that can mean at 20. So she went on the movie’s opening night, helping it set its high box office. She reported enjoying it.

I did get around, yesterday, to finishing The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Well worth watching, though uneven to the end. The arc of Midge and Susie and Joel formed the core sympathetic heart of the show, to good effect. The older characters – Abe and Rose and Moishe and Shirley – pretty much went off the rails in the later seasons, which was too bad. Old people are just a hoot, eh?

Still, Abe did have a few touching moments toward the end of the last season, especially at dinner in the company of other old men, with mortality as the unnamed character at the table. My favorite minor character was Lenny Bruce, and his appearance in the last episode was a heart breaker, with addiction the unnamed character joining him. The drug that killed the real Mr. Bruce in 1966 was reportedly morphine, which strikes me as a little old-fashioned for the 1960s, but the comedian always did things differently.

Last Sunday I stopped at the Kansasville Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Wayside Park again for a quick look at the adjacent cornfield.

Much higher than a month ago. It’s a little hard to tell from the Drought Monitor, but I think that part of Wisconsin is on the border of moderate and severe drought. The corn looks healthy enough to this non-farmer, however. Northern Illinois/southern Wisconsin’s gotten some rain lately, including a storm that blew through yesterday around noon.

The last place we went in Janesville early this month was the Rotary Botanical Gardens. Saw it on an electronic map, looked it up, decided to go. That’s the way to find places in our time.

We were well rewarded for the effort. How often do you see golden Hakone grass (Hakonechloa macra) pushing through a pile of small boulders?Rotary Botanical Gardens

That flow of grass was part of one of the Rotary Botanical Gardens’ centerpieces, its Japanese garden. Good to find those in the heart of North America.Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens

Complete with the styles of bridges that tend to be in Japanese gardens, across a large pond.Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens

I don’t believe for a minute that evil spirits are too cowardly or disoriented to cross a crooked bridge; or rather, I don’t believe that belief is the origin of the design. I believe it is aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics.

The Rotary is a large place. Besides the Japanese Garden, it includes (among other sections) an English Cottage Garden; an Italian Garden; French Formal Rose Garden; Scottish Garden; Alpine Garden; a Shade Garden; a Sunken Garden; Fern & Moss Garden; and seasonal displays.Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens

Bursting blossoms rise from the grounds. Or so it seems.Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens

Along with arrays of other glorious summer blooms.Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens Rotary Botanic Gardens

Curious name, Rotary. Do Rotarians have anything to do with the Rotary Botanic Gardens? Yes, they do.

The garden opened in 1991, occupying “the site of an abandoned sand and gravel quarry on Palmer Drive,” the garden’s web site says. “In 1988, the original site between Lions Beach and Kiwanis Pond was covered with debris and used as storage for the Parks Department and a BMX bicycle racetrack.

“The Gardens’ founder and original visionary, retired orthodontist Dr. Robert Yahr [d. 2021], approached the two Rotary Clubs in Janesville and inquired about their interest in developing a botanical garden for the community to enjoy.”

That they did. Nice work, Dr. Yahr.

Das Volkswagen

RIP, Marianne Savalli Vanness. I knew her at Vanderbilt during my senior year, when we both worked on the student newspaper, the Vanderbilt Hustler, and had a number of friends in common.

I hadn’t seen her or had any contact with her since 1983, except for a nominal link on Facebook, but her obituary isn’t exaggerating about “her warm and generous spirit and her love of laughter.” We weren’t close, but I knew her well enough to know that was true even then.

Not mentioned in the obit, because why would it be – she played a part in the movie Das Volkswagen. Forty years ago, on April 21, 1983, I attended the world premiere of Das Volkswagen, in fact its only screening in front of an audience that I know of. For the film class that I took at the time.

During my last semester at Vanderbilt, one of my easy classes was Film. We watched movies (Bonnie and Clyde, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Meshes of the Afternoon, among a number of others) and wrote papers about them. Also, in groups of three, we were lent 8mm cameras and made three different movies throughout the semester, which were then shown to the class.

By definition, they were collegiate efforts, some better than others. Our first assignment was to make a silent movie with a certain number of shots, not very many. I partnered with my friends Dan and Steve, who were also in the class, to make The Going Away Party. In it, Dan’s character has taken a bath; he puts on a towel and emerges from the bathroom, only to find a party in progress that he clearly hadn’t known about. A girl in a frilly black blouse and black slacks, wearing the kind of fancy black mask you might see at a masque, immediately pays attention to Dan, including stroking his newly shaved face. Through emphatic gestures, Dan tells her to stay right there; he’ll get dressed in the bathroom, and be right back. So in the bathroom, door closed, Dan hastily dresses, opens the door and finds – nothing. The party is gone.

The inspiration had been, and more than one person noticed this, “Splish Splash,” the Bobby Darin song. It was a fun little movie. We had filmed the party sequences during an actual party one Saturday evening at our rented house, the fondly remembered 207 31st St. N. in Nashville, where we threw a half-dozen parties at least, including the Lonely Existential Blender Blues Party (it’s good, I think, to have a few named parties in one’s past).

The girl in black, who wasn’t in our film class, was a frequent attendee at our parties, and rumored to be a bondage enthusiast, something I did not confirm one way or the other. She hammed up her part just right, though.

I made another movie with a couple of underclassmen I didn’t know that well, and it was forgettable. For the third and final movie of the class, a sound movie – it might have even counted as the final exam – I partnered with Steve again, and a girl in the class who didn’t actually want to help much in making a movie. But Steve and I didn’t mind, since we knew what we wanted to make: a parody of Das Boot, which had been screened at the Vanderbilt Cinema not long before.

That was possible because Steve drove a Volkswagen. So we made Das Volkswagen, the story of a crowded small car out on a vaguely defined mission on the dangerous-for-some-reason streets of Nashville. To make it more submarine-like, I made a periscope from a empty paper towel roll and a couple of empty toilet paper rolls, taped together.

Like Das Boot, our movie kicked off with loading the crew into the car, including jamming (by simple trick photography) an impossible number of items (suitcases, skis, etc.) in the front trunk. We filmed that scene at our rundown driveway at 207 31st St. N.

Steve was the driver. I sat in the front passenger seat, operating the camera most of the time as we drove along. Crammed in the back were variously three or four people we’d recruited with the promise of lunch, one of whom was Marianne Savalli. I filmed their antics sometimes as well.

During post-production, we added the voice of another friend of ours, who did a decent comic German accent, as a narrator. I don’t remember exactly what he said during the scene loading the crew, but something like, “It vas a virgin crew, and exzitement vas high.” Periodically through the movie, he narratived further, and he added some actual German, including some obscenities, and told us (off microphone) that “Der Volkswagen,” not Das, was grammatically correct. Our answer to that: who cares?

We had the sound library of student radio station WRVU available for the production, and so added music and sound effects. We used part of “The Imperial March,” (Darth Vader’s Theme) for the movie’s opening, because it was ominous-sounding, and we also used the immortal song “Da Da Da” for one or two of the driving scenes. Because it was German rock ‘n’ roll whose lyricism transcends mere language, I guess.

After loading Das Volkswagen on the driveway, we filmed driving around a few streets and making odd faces with odd sound effects thrown in. Sometimes I’d pass the camera to the back seat, and one of them would film me pretending to look through the periscope. Then came my big moment: I turned from the periscope to the back seat, and announced to the camera with a demented face, “Das McDonald’s!” The crew responded enthusiastically.

I then filmed the car inside and outside as it went through a McDonald’s drive-through and got the lunch we’d promised for everyone. Which we ate as part of the movie.

Afterward, we returned to the streets, but soon Das Volkswagen crashed into another car and, presumably, all hands were lost. Of course, it was a simulated accident. When we approached cars stopped at a light, I zoomed the lens toward the car ahead of us, as quickly as I could; then cut to black. Later, we added the sound effect of a comic car crash, something you might hear in a cartoon, with tires screeching, breaking glass and the sound of one of the hubcaps rolling away. The End. Or rather, Das Ende.

It all sounds juvenile. And it was. But damned if it wasn’t funny. April 21 came around, and we showed it to the class, who laughed hardily at most of the gags. Among my in-class moments at college, it was a high point. Even the professor laughed. We got an A.

Springtime Thursday Musings

Warm again early in the day. Thunderstorms rolled through in the morning and again in the afternoon. Cool air came back late in the day.

Ahead of the rain, we walked the dog around a pond, where a good many red-winged blackbirds flitted around. Hardly our first encounter with them, though there don’t seem to be as many after spring is over.

Moths are back in the house. How did this happen? There’s no lasting victory over moths, looks like. So I put out fresh glue traps, and some dozens have been caught. I still see a few flitting around, and slap them when I can, but I hope they too will either die in the traps, or die mateless and without descendants.

Rabbits are back in numbers too, often in the back yard, but I leave them alone. The dog does too, seemingly not interested in chasing them any more. Such is old age.

Completely by accident, and speaking of rabbits, I learned that today is the 44th anniversary of a swamp rabbit attacking President Carter’s boat (which wasn’t known till later in 1979). Even better, I learned that the photo of the incident is in the public domain, being the work of a White House photographer. This copy is via the Carter Library, though I don’t remember it being on display there.

With the looming deadline for renting more Netflix DVDs in mind, I watched part of the disk I currently have at home, Judgment at Nuremberg. I don’t remember why I put it in the queue, except that I’d never gotten around to seeing it, and Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster are always worth a look.

I didn’t realize that William Shatner was in it until I saw his name in the opening credits. As it happens, he plays a captain. In the U.S. Army, but still a captain.

I also didn’t know that Werner Klemperer played a part, one of the defendants. Naturally, I had a silly thought when he entered the courtroom: Col. Klink was put on trial at Nuremberg? No! His incompetence consistently aided the Allied cause. Call Col. Hogan as a character witness.

I’m reminded of something I once heard about Klemperer on stage: “Kevin D. told me that, during a production of Cabaret at the Chicago Theatre in the late ’80s, Werner Klemperer played [a Jewish merchant not in the movie version], and got the biggest applause of the night. ‘Everyone knew it was because he played Col. Klink,’ Kevin said.”

In the staged revival of Cabaret I saw in 2002, Hal Linden played the same part, and likewise got a vigorous round of applause on his first appearance. For playing Barney Miller, I figure. Such is the power of TV.

Adios, Netflix Disks

No more rental DVDs from Netflix? The bastards. Actually, that’s me just grumbling about change. I’ve been thinking of canceling for a while now, and there’s no use in getting overwrought about entertainment anyway. The operative word in fanboy is boy, after all.

Inertia has been a factor in preventing my cancellation, but so has the notion that streaming doesn’t have some of the more obscure movies and TV shows that are on DVD. Just a hunch, since I’ve never done any actual research on the matter, except look at a few articles like this.

I took a look at the list of my total rentals, which is a subpage of my account. Netflix doesn’t forget. Not until September, at least, when the FAQ section says such lists will be wiped. How many all together? Six hundred and sixty-three disks over 18 years, or nearly 37 each year. So three a month. Considering that sometimes more than one person has watched each disk, I suppose I’ve gotten my money’s worth.

If I’d really wanted to get my money’s worth, I would have quit about six or seven years ago, when rentals had dropped to maybe once a month or so. There were far more in the early years, when (for obvious reasons) titles like SpongeBob SquarePants, Barbie Mermaidia and Drake & Josh appeared in the queue. Obtaining kids’ entertainment was one of the reasons we signed up in the first place, along with finding Japanese titles, though as the years passed, demand in the household for each waned as everyone sought out other sources.

I’ve been active across the years as well, ordering such titles as (in rough order) The Alamo (2004), Ocean’s Twelve, Animal Crackers, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, The Lavender Hill Mob, Chocolat, The Man in the White Suit, Allo ‘Allo, Howl’s Moving Castle, The Blue and the Gray (miniseries)The Bridge on the River Kwai, Inserts, Rome, the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, The Great Race, A Night to Remember, That ’70s Show, Downfall, From the Earth to the Moon, Northern Exposure, The Cat’s Meow, The Battle of Algiers, Jeeves and Wooster, NewsRadio, Ripping Yarns, Bend It Like Beckham, The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), Mad Men (the seasons before I started watching them as broadcast), John Adams, Them!, Firefly, The Steel Helmet, Red Sun, SCTV, Fall of Eagles, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Life on Mars (UK), Slings & Arrows, Fargo (TV series), Bicycle Thieves, In Bruges, Closely Watched Trains, The Office (UK), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Alexander Nevsky, The Phenix City Story, The Artist, The Lost City of Z and The Pride of the Yankees. Just to name a few.

Just looking at the complete list stirs some nostalgia. More than, say, a list of my earlier rentals at Blockbuster or Hollywood Videos would, if such a thing existed (in the digital bowels of the NSA, perhaps?). The end of Netflix disks could be the end of renting physical media, which for me goes back to – 1989? I was a late adopter of VHS, as you can tell. Having no TV or VCR in ’80s, until I had a girlfriend who did, had that effect.

Go back much further and renting wasn’t an option anyway. I finished college 40 years ago next month. I’m glad that at no point in high school or college did any of my friends or I ever say, “Let’s go rent a video.”

The Catlow Theater Marquee

Recently I had a few minutes to walk around the smallish downtown of Barrington, Illinois, and I passed right by The Catlow.The Catlow, Barrington
The Catlow, Barrington

That’s the thing-itself theater, including its marquee. On the other hand, this is the theater’s online presence: a plaque saying that the theater would open soon, but in the meantime the marquee was for lease.

It took me a while to figure out that byfs.org isn’t the web site address on the marquee, since it goes to a (temporary?) dead end. Instead, the sign must refer to barringtonbysf.org — the address of Barrington Youth & Family Services. But tickets to what?

Just eyeballing the theater entrance made me think the place has that permanently shut look. I know movies were being shown there only a few years ago, before – ah, that must be it. Temporarily closing in early 2020 turned out instead to be the big sleep for the theater. Unless it actually closed in December 2019, as Cinema Treasures says.

Regardless, considering The Catlow’s location in a well-to-do part of metro Chicago, funds might be raised for a revival of some kind.

“Named for its original owner, a local businessman named Wright Catlow, this Tudor Revival/Jacobean-inspired theater opened on May 28th, 1927,” Cinema Treasures says. “It was designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Betts & Holcomb.

Early on, the venue held live performances and showed movies, but within a few years, it was all movies, and somehow the theater survived into the 21st century. I went there sometime in the 2010s, not for a movie, but to look at the lobby and an adjacent small restaurant. Maybe. Or was that in the 2000s, when I took a photo of the exterior for my magazine at the time?

Never mind, the building seems to have changed hands more recently.

“The owners are currently in negotiations with the Village of Barrington to purchase the theater for use as a Community/Performing Arts Center. New owners took over on October 20, 2022,” Cinema Treasures says, a little cryptically. New owners? Does that mean the village, or someone else?

Questions, questions. If the theater ever starts showing movies again, I’ll make a point of going, provided the movie isn’t too stupid. And as long as the theater doesn’t decide to nickel and dime its patrons (more like quarter and dollar these days).

Reno Riverwalk

It isn’t Vegas, but Reno is part of the national tapestry too. Somehow it wouldn’t have been the same had the prisoner shot a man in Omaha or Biloxi or Yonkers. Then again, if the crime was in Reno, what was he doing in a California state prison? Best not to nitpick great song lyrics too much.

Also, I’m just old enough to remember talk of Reno as a divorce capital. That was already a dead letter by the time I knew much about it, but there were still mentions in movies and on TV. Come to think of it, Betty Draper went to Reno to divorce Don in 1964, I believe.

On the morning of October 3, I arrived in downtown Reno for a look around, parking in a space near the Truckee River, which runs through the city. A riverwalk along its greener-than-expected banks has been developed since the 1990s.

I was eyeing the parking meters, those petty tyrants of auto placement.

“No one checks those,” a man walking a small dog told me. “I’ve lived in that building for four years, and I’ve only seen anyone checking them twice.”

He pointed toward a mid-rise a block or so away.

“I see, thanks,” I said. “Looks like a nice building.”

“Yeah, on the outside.”

This began a discussion of apartment rents in Reno, with the elderly (75, he later said) black gentleman taking the lead in the conversion. After all, he lived around here and paid those rents. The long and short of it: The Rent Is Too Damn High.

Worse, he said he’d left California to get away from high rents. They’d followed him to Reno, where rents had no business being high. And yet, here we are.

He didn’t mention any industry numbers, but he didn’t have to. I can look those up – at least, averages. In Reno, the average apartment rent stands at $1,520/month these days, up from $1493/month a year ago, according to the Nevada State Apartment Association.

After he went on his way, I turned my attention to a stroll along the river.Truckee River, Reno Truckee River, Reno Truckee River, Reno

A bit of seasonal color for early October. When I was there, the leaves were just a touch non-green, like at home.Truckee River, Reno

Can’t have a riverwalk without some public art. I’m pretty sure that’s an important element of contemporary placemaking theory. Impressive, but no information about the artist. Birds liked it too.Truckee River, Reno

“Dual Nature” by Cecilia Lueza (2011).Truckee River, Reno

The descriptively named “Daring Young Man on the Trapeze” by Ric Blackerby (2004).Truckee River, Reno

By coincidence a few days later, I saw most of It Happened One Night on TV in our room. I hadn’t seen it in about 30 years. I appreciate even more now, as a gold standard for romantic comedies. Romcom confections made in our time should be half as good.

Then there was the scene in the bus when the riders broke out in song.

If only intercity bus rides were really like that. If only life were like that. The scene must have done wonders for the sale of the 1932 recording of the song by Walter O’Keefe, another busy and widely known entertainer who has been completely forgotten.

An NFT 42 Years in Development

Not too long ago, I found this poster tucked away in a corner of my house. The year had to have been 1980, considering that April 16 was a Wednesday that year. Not only do I not remember the event mentioned on the poster — a lecture at Vanderbilt — I don’t remember why I saved it in the first place.

So I decided to post it in the downstairs bathroom, which has been pending renovation for some years now. At 17 inches tall and 11 wide, it covers 187 square inches of bald and unconvincing wall.

I remember Oakley Ray, VU professor and text book author, but faintly. I audited one of his classes, attending maybe 10 times at most. I don’t know whether I went to the event or not, but I do remember one other thing from that week, something that stands out a lot darker in memory — a dark star of a memory from April 1980, seeing Eraserhead at a movie theater.

NFT 4.24.22Simply put, that movie depicted a nightmare. That was my take on it 40+ years ago, and I don’t see any reason to revise it now. I emerged from the theater that night positive I never needed to see it again. I’ve stuck to that, too.

Never mind all that. I’ve created a bit of digital artwork that’s an NFT. Bidding starts at $100,000.

Snowy Thursday

As expected, snow followed rain today. But at least yesterday’s rain didn’t leave an ice glaze everywhere. Especially underfoot. I salted a few patches of driveway this morning, but on the whole the surfaces were dry till the snow started around 1 p.m.

Views of the snowy scene this afternoon from the front door.

Wish I could say I wrote this, but no. By a random soul online: It’s only a comorbidity if it comes from the Comorbois region of France. Otherwise it’s just a sparkling pre-existing condition.

I heard a song by a band called Modest Mouse the other day on the radio in the car. Apparently they’ve been around for 30 years, but I miss a lot my not paying attention to much.

Interesting song, though I don’t remember what it was. Maybe that’s because I was busy imagining that Modest Mouse is Mighty Mouse’s lesser-known brother. He didn’t care for the spotlight, and never went into the Mouse family business of saving the day.

Text message from Ann not long ago (edited for caps and punctuation): Seeing Princess Bride at the Normal Theatre.

With this pic attached:
Normal Theatre 2022

Message continued: The sword fight was really great on the big screen.

My answer: Oh yes.

The Normal Theater

One of the things Ann wanted to do when we were visiting was see a showing of Beetlejuice at the Normal Theater, a single-screen moviehouse of ’30s vintage only a few minutes’ walk from her dorm. Since Yuriko didn’t want to see the movie, she stayed in our room with the dog and I went to the show with Ann.

As it happened, I’d never seen that movie. Neither had Ann, but she didn’t have the opportunity to see it when it was new. Not sure why I didn’t. I saw a fair number of movies in my late ’80s Chicago bachelor days — first run, foreign and arthouse — both highly memorable (e.g., The Princess Bride) and much less so (e.g., the ’87 movie version of Dragnet).

It’s a fun romp. A good example of a movie that doesn’t take itself that seriously, entertainment by a talented cast working from a good script that also includes all sorts of interesting visual detail. Tim Burton certainly has a gift for the visual, which you’d think would be mandatory to be a director, but apparently not.

Lots of weirdness, bright and dark, all mixed in effective ways. For a few moments, I’d swear the look of the afterlife owed a lot to German Expressionism, but also Brazil and Kafka, with B horror movies and screwball comedies and Fellini and Saturday morning cartoons and who knows what else thrown in to the rest of the movie.

Now I believe I need to see some of the other Tim Burton movies I’ve missed, such as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before ChristmasBig Fish, Sweeney Todd and Big Eyes, and maybe re-watch Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Batman, which I haven’t seen since the decade they were made.

Better yet, I saw Beetlejuice‘s rampant weirdness in a real movie theater. Not a multiplex, either. The Normal Theater is one of the scant few survivors of another age of moviehouses: a neighborhood theater from that time when a lot of neighborhoods had them.
Normal Theater

It isn’t a movie palace, but its Art Moderne style is charming to modern eyes, which are inured to bland interiors.

“The architect was Arthur F. Moratz, youngest sibling of Paul O. Moratz, another prominent local architect,” the theater web site says, which also includes some good pictures. “In Bloomington, Arthur Moratz buildings include the acclaimed Art Deco-style Holy Trinity Catholic Church at the north end of downtown, and his own residence, 317 East Chestnut Street.”

When it opened in 1937, the theater had 620 seats (these days, 385). First movie: Double or Nothing, with Bing Crosby and Martha Raye. Soon it found its niche in the world of Normal moviehouses.

“The Normal, generally speaking, did not screen the just-released prestige pictures and big budget epics,” the web site says. “Those were shown instead at the Irvin (and sometimes the Castle), which were both owned by Publix Great States Theatres. After all, why would the chain compete against itself? For its part, the Normal was known for genre and B pictures, especially westerns and musicals, as well as second-run fare.”

Of course, after its heyday, the theater followed the usual course for such places, with the 1960s and ’70 being unkind to it, though the Normal limped into the ’80s, surviving as a discount theater (dollar tickets and later $1.50).

I remember paying $1 at the Josephine Theatre in San Antonio ca. 1974 to see a Marx Bros. double feature, two of their lesser-shown works, Out West and At the Circus (I think, though one of them might have been The Big Store). Later in the ’70s, that theater showed X-rated pictures, which were advertised in small print in the newspapers, and no one I knew ever went there. I’m glad to say that the Josephine was later restored, and until the pandemic at least, was open.

As for the Normal, I don’t know whether it ever showed dirty movies (the web site is silent on the matter), but in any case, it closed in 1991. “The reason we closed it is that nobody went to it,” the owner said at the time. No doubt.

Amazing to relate, the town of Normal then bought the place, and a combination of federal grants, donations and local tax dollars was used to restore the theater, with a re-opening in 1994. It’s been showing old movies, foreign films and art pictures ever since — everything a nonstandard, nonchain theater should show. Admission: $6. A bargain these days.

This month is devoted to various horror and horror-adjacent movies, serious and not. Besides Beetlejuice, on the bill are Halloween (1978), PG: Psycho Goreman, The Witch, The Brood, Nightmare on Elm Street and its immediate sequel, Destroy All Monsters, Dead of Night (Ealing Studios), Mad Monster Party and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I encouraged Ann to take advantage of the theater, and I think she might. The movie theaters I had access to in college, especially Sarratt Cinema at Vanderbilt and the Texas Union Theater at UT, were an entertaining part of my education — something I didn’t appreciate until some years later.