Things to come II

One time I was walking past the Denver Public Library (long before it was fabulousized) on 13th Avenue where the loading dock and dumpsters used to be, and saw an old guy who looked like Commander Whitehead, the Schweppes Tonic guy, poking around in a dumpster with his cane.

After I scared him off (kidding! but for some reason he left as I walked by muttering and throwing punches at the air), I looked in the dumpster and saw maybe half a dozen cardboard boxes full of old magazines--thrown out, probably, after they were put on microfiche.

Spending some quality time in that dumpster, I ended up with 75 or 80 Look, Life and (mostly) Saturday Evening Posts published from 1963 to 1968.

You're in Lileks Country

Sucker. Yep, I'm going to start posting stuff from these mags together with my no-doubt wry comments, kind of like James Lileks does, except, you know, not funny. Or thought-provoking. Or interesting.

Here's an example:


Wry comment: WTF. I mean, really, WT F'n F? Does this look like fun to you? These two morons are whacking each other with big sticks. While standing in canoes. With no life jackets. And look at the poor girl, hanging on for dear life. She's terrified. This is f'n sick.

Update. Brushes with greatness: My father used to see Commander Whitehead on the train into New York back in the 60s. He always looked just like he did on the bottle. His wife wrote a memoir of their life together titled The Beard and I.

Dad also occasionally saw Peter De Vries, the hilarious chronicler of suburban Connecticut and author of the immortal line (in Reuben, Reuben), "Somewhere, a duck quacked," in the bar car. Dad spent a lot of time in the bar car.

Update II: Lileks was on the radio today. He said Warhol was wrong. Everyone will actually be Hitler for 15 minutes.

Update III: Just realized I don't actually have a "Things to come I" post. What an idiot.

Update IV: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the ad is from the August 24, 1965 issue of Look. See? Idiot.