He will drink no wine before its time

And it's always time somewhere, it appears.

Look, I admit that I feel guilty about laughing at this. Orson Welles made two of my all-time faves, Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil. So enjoy this while cringing for the genius that was.



BTW, I was never able to understand the Paul Masson slogan: "We will serve no wine before it's time" (i.e., before it is time to serve the wine) or "...before its time" (i.e., before the wine's time)? Neither way particularly makes a lot of sense. And I think the wine was pretty bad, too.

Via Gawker.

Greetings!

It's time for a quick tour of my hometown!!

If I add enough exclamation points, it'll be very exciting!! Promise!!!

The Greetings from Large Letters with Pictures in Them is a whole subgenre of vintage postcards. Riverhead isn't exactly a resort town, so I'm kind of surprised there are so many cards from the era (late '40s/early '50s), especially one of these.

My dad graduated from this high school, as did both of my siblings. By the time I came around, though, it was a middle school. There are a bunch of this same exact building on eastern Long Island--several towns shared the plans.

A trip to Riverhead isn't complete without a visit to the fire department.

And surely you'll want to remember our beautiful Post Office forever! Come on in, and check out the Most Wanted posters!

I have no clue where this is. And this card appears to be older than the others--probably the '30s, perhaps even earlier.

A very nice (if rocky) beach on the Long Island Sound.

The Catholic church I grew up attending. Well, sort of. When I was a kid, there were so many members and the church was so small that I grew up going to mass in what was the parochial school's gym. Not very inspiring.




Don't forget to visit the Big Duck while you're in town!

OK, I may have been lying about the exciting part.

(Click to enlarge.)

You know that dream, right? Or, Why I will never be asked to write a restaurant review for The New Yorker

From the Sept. 11 write-up of a place called The Little Owl:

The crowd is equally motley: Times readers in natural fibers, an interior-decorator type wearing white slacks printed with sprigs of coral. As in a scene from a weird dream, you might spy a friend from college sitting at the bar with Mandy Moore.

The review is two-thirds over before the food is mentioned. As as far as the dream ... well, I didn't go to college with Zach Braff, so it seems unlikely.

(And you know I often dream of celebs.)

For the many people who have landed here after running Google searches, hoping to find information about what's wrong with Deborah Norville's left eye

Jane Pauley's off her meds and poked it out.

The woman holds a grudge, I tell ya.

HALLOOOO THERE

I try to get vintage postcards from places I've visited. I bought this last year in Quebec City. It's a rather dreary card, as you can see, but I bought it for the message on the back.

June 18, 1945

HALLOOO THERE.

So far, I have fallen in love twice, won a dollar on the horses--and put my hair up umpteen times a day. Keep the homefires burning.

Luff,
Tink

Saw St. James', which is an exact replica of St. Peter's in Rome, only not as as perfectly beautiful.

Only a few words, but I feel like I know Tink. (Well, it looks like "Tink," anyway. If someone can decypher the signature better than I, chime in.)

As always, click to enlarge.

If a tree falls on The Velvet Blog in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Yes, a soft whimpering noise.

It really isn't very interesting when they give you low-cal chicken fat--there's so little left

A clip from the Ernie Kovacs show.

Ernie Kovacs - The Poet Watch Video Clip

There's a commercial first. Sorry.

Ernie was an ahead-of-his-time TV comedian who had several short-lived shows in the '50s. The character in the clip above is poet Percy Dovetonsils, a regular. Probably the most famous of his recurring bits involves the Nairobi Trio, three gorillas--Kovacs and two others, one said to be Jack Lemmon--who mime in cheap costumes and masks to playing music and hitting each other over the head. Did I say ahead of his time? He was downright surreal. (BTW, I was reminded of Kovacs the other day when Mark at the Biomes Blog--see blogroll at left--linked to a clip of Harry Nilsson, in which he spoofs the Trio while singing "Coconut." There's a Nairobi Trio clip here. And the Nilsson clip Mark linked to is here.)

I became a fan during the '70s when Kovacs clip shows were a staple on the local PBS affiliate. There are remarkably few clips of Kovacs on YouTube, Google, Yahoo, etc.

Quotation of the day

The Watchdog quizzes our hero, Milo, on how he became mired where he didn't want to be:

"I guess I just wasn't thinking," said Milo.

"PRECISELY," shouted the dog as his alarm went off again. "Now you know what you must do."

"I'm afraid I don't," admitted Milo, feeling quite stupid.

"Well," continued the watchdog impatiently, "since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking." And with that he hopped into the car.

"Do you mind if I get in? I love automobile rides." --from Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth

A kid's book, perhaps, but very wise. And filled with all sorts of life lessons.

The Velvet Poll

Sorry, had to take down the poll. Something about it was making TVB take forever to load.

For the record, the final vote: four in favor of the glass being half empty, three for half full.

If sock monkeys wrote "The Raven"

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted--
On this home by horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore--
Is there- is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Now, give me that banana."

Surrealism in the mail

I look at this and feel like I'm tripping. I have never seen anything like this while in Pa., by the way.

Click to enlarge--and you really ought to.

(No. 1,237 in the TVB vintage postcard series. Collect them all!)