Happy to have been there
That’s what many thought when they first saw the poster for Hassle House, in Durham, North Carolina, back in ’76 or so. As soon as any of the posters went up, they disappeared, becoming instant collectors’ items. At the time, all I wanted was to hire the cartoonist who did it, so he could...
What I’d like to say on the subway
When I was young, New York subways were dirty, noisy and with little risk of improvement. But, even if the maps weren’t readable (as with this 1972 example), there were lots of them. Now the subways are much nicer, on the whole, and being improved. But there is now a paucity of maps. In fact,...
Train tracking
I just ran across some research I did in December 2008, while working on the 10th Anniversary edition of The Cluetrain Manifesto: Google Book Search results for cluetrain — 666[1] Google Book Search results for markets are conversations — 2610 Google Web Search results for cluetrain — 394,000 Results for Web searches for markets are conversations...
Advertimania
“If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own,” Scoop Nisker says. (I first heard him say that when he did news for M. Dung‘s morning show on KFOG in 1985. Great show. Sorry most of you missed it.) The same goes for words. Today I wanted one for advertising mania,...
Happy Anniversary, Mom and Pop
My parents, Eleanor and Allen Searls, were married 65 years ago today. The wedding was in Grace United Methodist Church, in Minneapolis.* Mom’s family, all descendents of Swedish immigrants to homesteads in Minnesota and North Dakota, were the primary attendees, as I recall being told. Pop’s family was from New Jersey, and that’s where the...
Many years of now
“When I’m Sixty-Four” is 44 years old. I was 20 when it came out, in the summer of 1967, one among thirteen perfect tracks on The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. For all the years since, I’ve thought the song began, “When I get older, losing my head…” But yesterday, on the eve of actually...
Royal pains
The Royal Wedding isn’t my cup of tedium, but olde blog buddies Eric and Dawn Olsen will be covering the show for The Morton Report, so I urge you to follow it there. I’ll do my best as well. Not speaking of which, I am old enough to remember the last Royal Wedding, which happened...
Geology by plane
I’ve been looking gratefully and often, over the past few years, at Louis J. Maher, Jr.’s Geology by Lightplane. The shots themselves date from 1956-1966, and he put the page up in 2001; but their subjects are the sort that don’t change much over a span of time so short as the last thirty-five years....
A good man is hard to lose
Here’s a post I put up in 2003: A pain in the friend I haven’t seen my old friend Gil Templeton since his brother David’s wedding, whenever that was. Ten years ago? Twelve? Both Gil and David worked for me — Gil as a copywriter in North Carolina and David as a PR account executive in...
