Fritinancy

New writing on Medium: How Johnnie Walker kept walking

An obituary for Ivan Menezes, CEO of global spirits corporation Diageo, jogged my memory about something I’d written many years ago about Johnnie Walker, the Scotch whisky brand that Menezes helped revive with the enduring effective “Keep Walking” campaign.

I revisited that campaign—still going strong 24 years after its launch—in my latest story for Medium, “The Man Who Kept Johnnie Walker Walking.” That’s a friend link, so you’ll bypass the paywall; if you’d like to read everything I’ve published on Medium—70 stories so far—as well as all the other Medium stories, here’s a referral link. (I’ll get a percentage of your membership fee—thanks!)

Blog bonus: Here’s a bit of Johnnie Walker history that didn’t make it into my story.

New writing on Medium: In 1953, you didn't need AI to listen to Socrates

An AI-generated “conversation” between Bill Gates and Socrates jogged my memory. Hadn’t the ancient philosopher been revived decades ago for a different mini-drama? He had. The drama was part of the “You Are There” series, broadcast in 1953 by CBS. I wrote about it—and about why a 70-year-old reenactment remains more effective than cutting-edge AI—in my latest story for Medium.

Read In 1953, You Didn’t Need AI to Listen to Socrates. Don’t forget to clap (up to 50 times!), and check out my referral link to join Medium.

New writing on Medium: How BlackBerry got its name

BlackBerry, the new feature film from writer/director Matt Johnson, opens in theaters on May 12. I saw it last month at the San Francisco International Film Festival, at Lucasfilm’s Premier Theater in the Presidio. (Driving directions specify “Look for the Yoda fountain.”) I enjoyed it a lot, and I bet you will too, especially if you loved your BlackBerry as much as I loved mine.

Blackberry 7280, circa 2003

 

I did notice one missing plot point, and so my latest story for Medium, “How the BlackBerry Got Its Name,” fills in the gap. Click your little keyboard to read the story and then tap the clap icon if you liked it—up to 50 times per story! That link will give you a free pass, but if you want more goodies, you can join Medium with my referral link.

April linkfest

A personal plug: I have a couple of new stories on the EatDrinkFilms site about an upcoming screening, with live orchestral accompaniment, of the classic silent film Pandora’s Box (1929). Pandora’s Box was made in Germany, but it starred a young American actress, Louise Brooks, whom the film historian David Thomson has called “one of the most mysterious and potent figures in the history of the cinema.” Read my story about Pandora’s Box and the sidebar about Club Foot Orchestra, the remarkable ensemble – now celebrating its 40th anniversary – that created the score for the film and will perform it, along with students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, on May 6 at Oakland’s Paramount Theater. The event is being presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Hope to see some of you local cinephiles there!

Louise Brooks as Lulu with Gustav Diessel as an anachronistic Jack the Ripper. Her hairstyle had lasting influence.

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I’ve been enjoying “Stiffed,” a podcast – not to be confused with Mary Roach’s book Stiff or Susan Faludi’s book Stiffed, both of which I also recommend – about the rise and fall of Viva, an erotic magazine for women that briefly flourished in the 1970s. Founder/publisher Bob Guccione died in 2010, but host Jennifer Romolini managed to interview his son, Bob Jr., as well as many of the women who worked at Viva and tried their damnedest to inject feminism into the mix. Related: my March 2022 post about “Minx,” which name-checks Viva and also rival Playgirl, for which I was a contributing writer..

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Another podcast worth your attention: A Way with Words, hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette. The April 16 episode examined, among other topics, why Southern Californians insert “the” before freeway numbers (“take the 405 to the 5”) and whether there’s such a thing as a “neutral” accent.

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“We are currently in the midst of a radical reinvention of English. Not perhaps since the 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries has the English language shifted faster, with the rapid introduction of loanwords (borrowed from other languages), neologisms, buzzwords, slang and a host of acronyms.” (Steven Mintz for Inside Higher Ed)

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New from me on Medium: From Burma-Shave to Burma-Gram

It’s been 60 years since Burma-Shave rhyming ads last entertained and instructed drivers on U.S. highways, but their spirit lives on in a quirky Instagram account I discovered a couple of years ago. In my latest story for Medium, I write about Burma-Gram, which updates the “verse by the side of the road” concept with clever online messages for 21st-century readers.

A famous Burma-Shave rhyming ad: “Within this vale / of toil / and sin / your head grows bald / but not your chin/ Burma-Shave.” (Via Legends of America)

 

A recent Burma-Gram:

 

Read “Burma-Shave Is Dead. Long Live Burma-Shave,” and be sure to scroll down to the end, where I attempt my own Burma-style rhyme. Don’t forget to clap (up to 50 times per story!), and if you feel moved to join Medium, here’s my referral link.

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Blog bonus #1: A 2012 article in Print magazine, “The motion-graphic ads of Burma-Shave, 1927-1963” (the URL calls it “morbid roadside ad poetry”).

Blog bonus #2: Post–Burma-Shave, but long before Burma-Gram, U.S. political campaigns borrowed the roadside-verse format for their own ends. In 2008, Poetry & Popular Culture blogger Mike Chasar wrote about some of those efforts in “Burma-Shave Politics.” 

New from me on Medium: All about Oscar

How did that gold-plated statuette get its name? I dive into the theories—is “Oscar” industry jargon for “oscillation”?—and pick a favorite, just in time for the 95th Academy Awards ceremony on March 12.

Read All about Oscar (friend link)

July linkfest

I’ve been gradually expanding my newsletter diet to include some lighter (but still substantial) fare. A few recommendations:

The Department of Salad, by Emily Nunn, is, yes, about salad and salad lore, but is also just a very chatty, very funny from an excellent writer. If you haven’t made Spicy Cherry Salad (aka Israeli Cherry Salad), you must do so immediately, before cherry season is over for good.

How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, “philosophical and practical advice for anyone who’s ever looked into a mirror,” is written by Valerie Monroe, who was the beauty editor at O magazine for almost 16 years. She’s on an extended stay in Japan right now, and I’ve been enjoying her reporting on the local scene, from Japanese toilets to “love hotels.”

The Unpublishable, by Jessica DeFino, a freelance beauty journalist. Subtitle: “The beauty industry’s least favorite newsletter.” DeFino covers topics like “how the ‘5-minute face’ became the $5,000 face” and why the words “THAT ACTUALLY WORK” are so common in beauty headlines. (It’s because most beauty products don’t work.)

“Potent, powerful skin care that works”? Probably not. (My photo; Walgreens.)

 

All three of these newsletters are published on the Substack platform, which means you can read them for free but paid subscriptions are what keeps the updates coming. 

Name in the wild: Lurline

I spotted this container ship as the San Francisco Bay Ferry was pulling out into the Oakland Estuary, and did a double-take when I saw its name.

The Matson Lurline, 2022. Photo by me.

 

“Lurline” is a storied name in San Francisco, in Hawaii, and in the history of the Matson Navigation Company, which was founded in Honolulu in 1882 by Swedish immigrant William Matson. But for most of its history the name was associated with passenger travel, not cargo. In the middle of all that history it was the name of two San Francisco heiresses. More about that in a bit.

Word of the week: Soused

Last week marked the 110th anniversary of the sinking of the “practically unsinkable” H.M.S. Titanic, which struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on April 14, 2012, and sank the following day. If your knowledge of this event is limited to the romanticized 1997 movie*, you may be unfamiliar with some basic Titanic lore, such as what the first-class passengers ate.

Here’s the menu of the last luncheon, from a postcard that I bought at the splendid Molly Brown House Museum in Denver.

 

It’s a real time capsule, isn’t it? You don’t expect to see baloney—excuse me, bologna sausage—on a first-class menu. And you don’t see brawn on any menus these days; in fact, I had to look up its culinary meaning. (“Fleshy part of a boar’s leg”; from Old French braon. It’s related to German braten, as in sauerbraten.) I had to look up brill, too, but that’s probably because I’m not British: Brill is a flatfish, related to turbot, that swims around the southern and western coasts of England and presumably is still eaten in those parts.

But the item that most piqued my curiosity appears in the Buffet section, under “potted shrimp” (which I’d heard of but never eaten): soused herring. I knew “soused” only as one of a gazillion slang terms meaning “drunk.” What was its connection to herring?

Word of the week: Revenge dress

Revenge dress was all over the celebrity/entertainment news last week, capping a year notable for its revenge compounds.