crude futures

A velour Dior on a 2x4

Browsing my aforementioned piles of The New York Times Magazine last night, I paused to enjoy this 1980 advertisement for Christian Dior velour (click to enlarge):



Page 24 of The New York Times Magazine/Part 2 (Men's Fashions of The Times), September 7, 1980.

The Great Stone Faceless, New Hampshire

At the beginning of September, Katie and I drove to New Hampshire's Franconia Notch State Park to visit the historical site and metaphysical home of New Hampshire's state symbol, The Old Man of the Mountain (aka The Great Stone Face). Despite years of preservation efforts, the Old Man finally collapsed on May 3, 2003 after a heavy snowstorm. Today, New Hampshire is in the process of designing a Great Stone Face memorial. The face, which was discovered in 1805 and popularized by an 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne story, will be retained indefinitely as the New Hampshire state symbol.

Here's Katie in front of The Great Stone Faceless:



Here's Katie pretending to be The Great Stone Face:



Here's me with a knob of wood resembling a screaming face. Katie noticed this knob-face on a tree in Franconia Notch State Park:



This post's title owes a friendly debt to Tal, the author of this 2005 crude futures post.

Lone Wolf and Mo

At the end of August, Mo and I found several bundles of the New York Times Magazine on a curb around the corner. We brought all the bundles back to our apartment—about 100 magazines total, I think, dated 1976 to 1996—and have since enjoyed browsing them in our leisure time.

Yesterday I read the May 17, 1992 cover story by the late Spalding Gray — an early edited transcript of his Gray's Anatomy monologue, with a pithy sidebar about Gray's riffy creative process — and the September 11, 1994 story (not a cover story) on Shannon Faulkner.



Mo and I have thought about trying to sell some of the NYT Magazines on eBay, but there doesn't appear to be a market, yet, for issues published within the past 50 or 60 years.

We'll probably keep a few (such as the Shannon Faulkner issue), scan or tear some pages out of a few, and give the rest away. Let me know if you'd like me to mail a few to you. Suggest a year or years (or topics) if you like. There's an early 90s issue here, for example, that celebrates 50 years of NYT crossword puzzles. I'm sure someone else could appreciate this issue a lot better than Mo and I could. We also have three up-for-grabs May 1979 issues of the New York Times Book Review. Skimming these, I discovered that my birth year, 1979, was the International Year of the Child.

Seven Hybrid Nouns... a fun Crude Futures list-intermission

[Steev: forget about your cares and blog something. You'll feel like ten-thousand bucks — or at least a $10,000 credit limit — in no time.]

prayhole (pray + a-hole)
Mildly offensive term for a spiritual person who tells unspiritual people he is praying for them, fully knowing that the subjects of the prayer are either agnostic or atheistic.
I trust Ian with my life, but I feel bad because I don't think he knows how big a prayhole he can be.

helload (hello + load)
The allotment of greetings one gives and receives.
The celebrity guest expects to endure an enormous helload at the executive retreat.

critischism (criticism + schism)
A social rift caused by criticism.
Avery's accurate and scathing remarks about Clark's fiancée at the 2005 Christmas party led to a critischism: Clark is now single and Avery no longer feels at ease in Clark's company.

freealize (free + realize) *BONUS VERB*
To realize at apparently zero cost — financial, emotional, or otherwise.
Soon after Cruel John freealized that he wanted a new girlfriend and job, he changed girlfriends and jobs, no big deal.

kidicule (kid + ridicule)
A child's unchecked and/or unwitting ridicule.
Colin was embarrassed by his young nephew's kidicule: "My brother says you're fat, Uncle Colin."

Chéhole (Ché + a-hole)
Mildly offensive term for a person who wears or otherwise enjoys garments incorporating the likeness of Ché Guevara.
I like Ian as a person, but he can be such a Chéhole. How does he make a living as a personal shopper?

authentishitty (authenticity + shitty)
1. The crappiness associated with usage of words like authentic and authenticity.
Her outspoken desire for so-called authenticity is the hallmark of her authentishitty.
2. The quality of being truly shitty.
The obese plumber's work jeans have an authentishitty about them.

destroyalty (destroy + royalty)
A dividend, windfall, or other bounty received as a direct or indirect result of destruction.
Flavor is a destroyalty enjoyed by chewers of food.

Disguises You Can Make: Old Man, Old Woman

Katie and I discovered Eve Barwell's Disguises You Can Make (1977) at a thrift store in Vermont several months ago.

I just bought and I look forward to receiving a 24¢ Amazon copy of Barwell's other 1977 book, Make Your Pet A Present.





Pages 71 and 74 of Eve Barwell's Disguises You Can Make (Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Co., 1977). Drawings by Richard Rosenblum.

Copy Editor newsletter — Smaple Issue

Today at work I received an unsolicited sample of Copy Editor newsletter.

The back cover refers to the sample issue as a "Smaple Issue":

The spirit of bathrooms yet to come

Detail:



From Sunset Bathrooms: Planning and Remodeling (Lane Publishing Co., 1983). Photo by Tom Wyatt.

Popcorn: before & after

This lovely & lively popcorn diagram appears on page 43 of Mary Elting's The Answer Book: Complete Answers to 300 Questions Children Ask Most Often (Grosset & Dunlap, 1963).*

The diagram accompanies Elting's answer to the question WHAT MAKES POPCORN POP?



WHAT MAKES POPCORN POP?

Steam makes popcorn pop. That seems like a queer thing to say. Everybody knows popcorn isn't wet. So where does the steam come from? It comes from inside each grain of corn.

Before you put a grain of corn in a popper it feels very dry. But there are tiny drops of water inside it. Each drop is so small that you can't see it. Each one is wrapped in a little white jacket that holds it tight.

When a grain of corn gets hot in the popper, the drops of water get hot, too. Soon the water turns to steam. Then pop! The steam bursts out and flies away into the air, leaving a fluffy pile of little white jackets behind.

The American Indians discovered popcorn. Here are some other foods the Indians gave us: Tomatoes, chocolate, squash, pumpkin, pears, potatoes and beans.

* The title page credits five illustrators: Tran Mawicke, John Ballantine, Erwin Hoffman, William Bryant, and Stanley Polczak. I'd like to say who drew the popcorn, but the book's numerous illustrations are not individually attributed.