Graphic Grandeur (In Lieu of a Breeze Edition)

Oh, who cares how one develops? What the true entrepreneur wants to know is, how best to capitalize on it once it does develop?

Here's one chilling possibility:

 Cartoon by Liza Donnelly

Graphic Grandeur (Dangerous When Wet Edition)

 

Fifty summers ago, this Roger Kastel-illustrated poster made its debut on the exteriors, and in the lobbies, of movie theatres across the nation and around the world, promising filmgoers a terrifying cinematic experience. However, movie posters often promise things that the actual movies then fail to deliver. Did Jaws live up to its poster's promise? Well, if you were a filmgoer fifty summers ago--and most people didn't bother with movies during the summer until this one completely changed the business model--you already know the answer to that question, but play along with me anyway as we watch the trailer: 

Trailers also sometimes promise more than the actual movie delivers, even as it's a slicing and dicing of the actual movie. Trust me, though, Jaws delivered (with a lot of slicing and dicing of a different sort.) Personally, I've always found the film more exciting than out-and-out scary, but that's fine with me. Whatever gets the heart thumping. Based on a then-recent bestselling book by Peter Benchley (Robert's grandson) and only the second feature film by the then-still-in-his-20s Steven Spielberg, it quickly became the all-time box-office champ and remained so for the next two years until topped by another summer blockbuster Star Wars (which in turn was topped a few years later by Spielberg's E.T., the Extraterrestrial which made its debut during--you guessed it--the summer.) One thing that had no chance of topping it--at least not in the commercial sense--was some magazine parody, but that doesn't means my then-middle-school-age-self couldn't get a giggle out of this:

Looks like unsafe swimming conditions all around.

Illustration by Mort Kunstler

 

Blade Runner

 

 August is almost over but there's still time for one more heat wave (which could very well spill over into September.) The "cooling centers" mentioned above are actually recreation centers, community centers, libraries, etc., places that weren't especially conceived of to cool people off but nevertheless are able to do so because of this technological marvel:

Air conditioning has been around since shortly before World War I but didn't become truly commonplace until after World War II. So how did people keep cool during the summers between the wars?

Well, you had to be innovative, I guess. Take these four women, all employees of the St. Paul Daily News. The year is 1936, Minnasota is the grip of a major heat wave, and it's vital that those who work for the paper don't pass out from the heat and stay cooled off enough to report on that day's big story--namely that Minnesota is in the grip of a major heat wave and people have to look for ways to cool off or else they'll pass out. As you might have guessed, this picture came from the Daily News. Sometimes in journalism you are the story. Anyway, as you can see an electric fan is sitting on top of a four-hundred pound block of ice. That struck me as dangerous when I first came across this photo. Ice is actually water, and I was taught at an early age that water and electricity don't mix, one reason why it's wise to turn off the faucet when using an electric toothbrush, or else you might end up zapping the enamel off your teeth. I did some research and found out that water is only conducive to electricity when in liquid form. So what the women in this photo are doing is perfectly safe. As long as the ice doesn't melt. Which it won't because it's got an electric fan sitting on top of it keeping it in a frozen state. It's all perfectly timed. Nothing can go wrong. If by chance something did go wrong, the four women would have again ended up in the paper--on the obituary page.

Quips and Quotations (Vapid Vapor Edition)

 

August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.

--Sylvia Plath

Fasten Your Snorkels

 

As if dangerous heat, dangerous wildfires, dangerous rip tides, dangerous flooding, dangerous spiders, dangerous mosquitoes, dangerous sharks, dangerous new strains of Covid, dangerous Boeings, and dangerous Supreme Court rulings weren't dangerous enough, this summer we also have to worry about a dangerous lifeguard shortage. So, how do we solve that problem? Raise the pay? GET REAL! If you want to talk some high school or college kid into risking their life over some idiot who didn't wait 30 minutes after eating and got the cramps while treading water, then what you need to do is provide that unformed young person with a role model.

What kind of role model? Well, take a job as a lifeguard as the young woman above did and someday you just might end up on...

...Turner Classic Movies.

That's right, back in 1926 Bette Davis was not only a lifeguard but the first female lifeguard at Ogunquit Beach in Maine. Imagine almost drowning and having her come to your rescue!

Unless your last name happens to be Crawford, in which case you might want to think twice before going into the water.

 

Smart Art (Surf's Down Edition)

 

There ain't no cure for the summertime blues.

Sea Watchers, 1952. Edward Hopper