Retrosnark

Just call me the blogger version of Madonna

Just when you think I've finally disappeared for good, I put out a new batch of crap. (I'm gonna skip the usual "Blahblah day job, blahblah book project, blahblah baby on the way" excuse stuff, since I'm sure everybody has read that enough to wear scan lines in their retinas.)

This latest batch is even more of a slacker enterprise than usual. I don't know anything about the pictures they came from, except the folder label "Consolidated Trimming, 1960." So I hope nobody see this and decides they want to offer me eleventy-jillion dollars for the pictures, because I probably couldn't find them if I tried. But maybe they'll be mirthful enough for your Monday enjoyment.

My cool rooms. Let me show you them

I wantwantwantwantinfinity these two rooms. Side-by-side, if necessary. They're just perfect. Top image: that almost-clashing blue-green juxtaposition, impossibly impractical glass shelves and equally impractical glass decorations, capped off by those wickedly awesome blue and green cabinets.

Bottom image: Gold-medal, bull-moose, trophy-retiring winner of Aunt Matilda's Wholesomeness Award. You got yer bakelite wall phone, your little ball thingy fringe, your picture of your Model T, and, most importantly, that weird roll of paper thing for note-taking, which nobody in the history of the world has ever used but which was in every home I ever entered when I was growing up.

Bonus cool points for the phrase "Scalloped Bestpleat."

What grandmothers think little girls like

Oh, the heartache this picture makes me feel. I can just see a loving grandmother laboring over a guest room so little Sandy would have a nice play to stay when she came to visit. And I can also see Sandy putting on a supremely fake smile/grimace and forcing herself to say, "I love it, Granny!" while really thinking, "This room will torment me until I'm six feet under."

Murals, aka "Crayon attractors"

I can imagine every kid who ever got within a 25-mile radius of that mural (or whatever you call that) making a beeline, burnt umber crayon in hand, glassy-eyed with determination, straight for that thing. They no doubt didn't rest until it was more defaced than a Brooklyn subway train.

Not too enamored with those drapes, either.

My snarking powers...they're fading...why?

This should really be good snarkbait for me, but for some reason, I can't. It's just kitschy-cool enough to make me step back and admire it. Particularly that polka-dot tablecloth with glasses of green punch on it. I must be mellowing as fatherhood nears. (T-53 days and counting 'til birth-off.)

Can you go to jail for stuffed-dog abuse?

Because if you can, somewhere there's a decorator on the lam. I feel sorry for that poodle and beagleish-looking thing on that hideously patterned bedspread, surrounded by more hideously patterned accoutrements. The final insult? Pegboard. Nothing says "creepy dented-can store" like pegboard.

Spartans! Tonight we decorate in Hell!!!

A few disclaimers are in order. First, I haven't seen "300," so I don't really know what that quote about dining in Hell is all about. Second, I don't know what kind of pattern that blocky thing is, but I'm fairly sure it's not Spartan in derivation. Third, I'm not that smart. Fourth, I am that lazy.

So, after adding up all the disclaimers, dividing by Harmadoit's Constant and interpolating past the polar axis, then carrying the 3, we arrive at this conclusion: This blog is the definition of a halfhearted enterprise.

Instant whimsy*: Just add water

"Ferguson, that's not a very welcoming room you've cobbled together. Looks...I don't know...sterile?"
"I got you, Big Guy.** What if I threw in a few pillows shaped like street signs? Would that warm it up enough?"
"Ferguson, you magnificent mental marmot***, you've done it again!"


*In honor of Dave Barry, who gave me a blog nod the other day, I have to point out that Instant Whimsy would be a good name for a rock band.
**Copyright 1978, Herb Tarlek, WKRP in Cincinnati.
***The Big Guy is known for alliteration, and for metaphors that slight miss the mark. Marmots are, as everyone knows, actually quite dense.

I'm still not dead yet

Sorry for the hiatus (as an aside, but "Sorry for the Hiatus" would be a really good name for a rock album; you have my permission to use it), but things been a mite busy over to the Dunn house. I'm still working on the book, which I still can't discuss, and my wife is still the center of mitosis regarding my nascent offspring. Plus there was that business of having my colon spelunked, and a bunch of other stuff. So it took a while, but here's some more from that 1909 edition of The Century.

And if you've emailed me, I promise I'm getting toward responding. Keep those cards and letters coming, in other words.

Have you checked your oral pH lately?

I wonder just how golly-gee this seemed back in 1909. It wasn't every day that you had a few sheets of litmus paper to stick in your mouth, so I have to assume that taking the Lehn & Fink folks up on their offer was tantamount to becoming the neighborhood Mr. Wizard.

Note also that the L&F boys engaged in other forms of chemistry, too.