Historically, clowns go back thousands of years, and for that whole time, they were creepy, just as they are today. It’s only for a brief historical period in roughly the 1950s and 1960s that clowns were considered wholesome children’s entertainment.
Where can African Americans find this lost golden age? Do we discover it during the first centuries of the Republic when slavery was the law of the land? Do we fast forward to the Red Summer, Jim Crow laws and “strange fruit” hanging from poplar trees?
I’m glad to see the release candidate iPhone and Watch OS betas are now available. Every year, I install the betas when the first public betas hit, and every year I regret it. I never encounter major problems, but the minor bugs are annoying.
Pundits like to say that every Presidential election is the most consequential election in our lifetime. I recall a panel of historians discussing what the least consequential election of our lifetime was.
The consensus was rapid and unanimous: The 1996 election. Clinton was a good, but not great President. Bob Dole probably would have been a good, but not great President. The 90s would have proceeded exactly as it did.
I’m busy with work and other aspects of life and don’t have a lot of time for social media right now, so here is a photo of a palm tree in our backyard, which just got a trim and a shave and is looking beautiful after its spa day.
Throughout the classical Hollywood era, moviegoers dropped in on a film screening whenever they felt like it, heedless of the progress of the narrative. In the usual formulation, a couple go to the movies, enter midway into the feature film, sit through to the end of the movie, watch the newsreel, cartoon, and comedy short at the top of the program, and then sit through the feature film until they recognize the scene they walked in on. At this point, one moviegoer whispers to their partner, “This is where we came in,” and they exit the theater.
This is how I remember watching when I was a little boy being brought to the movies by my parents in the 1960s.
Alfred Hitchcock changed the national moviegoing habits with the release of “Psycho” in 1960. Hitchcock was a brilliant publicist for his own products, and a big publicity gimmick for “Psycho” was the demand that movie theater owners bar the doors and refuse to allow new audience members in after the movie began. Guards were stationed at the door.
I like finding out about how other people do blogging. It gives me ideas.
And I like the layout of Kwon’s home page, separating different types of posts into sections. It’s bothered me for a while that my blogging is mixed-up and spread across Facebook, Micro.blog, Tumblr, Mastodon and Bluesky.