A tip for debate-watching
The best choice for watching a presidential or vice-presidential debate is C-SPAN.
Perry Mason’s office
“The aim of this project was to make a floor plan drawing of Perry’s office suite based upon a careful analysis of what can be seen in the show.”
Streetside gum machines
Wall-mounted gum machines.
Okay, swell, lousy
Slang and I Love Lucy.
Downton Abbey, third-season trailer
At kottke.org, a trailer or partial trailer for the forthcoming third season of Downton Abbey.
Molly Dodd, Mongol user
Notice that even in a videotaped-from-TV blur, the Mongol’s ferrule is immediately recognizable.
Molly Dodd, Molly Dodd, Molly Dodd
Elaine and I share a great affection for this television show, which captures like no other the lonely pathos and sudden surrealism of life in the city.
“Medium talk”
Larry David: “I’m trying to elevate small talk to medium talk.”
Andy Griffith (1926–2012)
Another reason to remember Andy Griffith: his performance as Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes in Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957).
Perry Mason and Gilbert and Sullivan
Anything goes.
Telephone exchange names on screen: Naked City (4)
The TW exchange.
Telephone exchange names on screen: Naked City (3)
A GRamercy payphone.
Poetry and Naked City
Two grown-ups, quick, allusive, and crazy in love.
Indy serendipity
Only after the fact did we learn that we had met Hal Fryar, Harlow Hickenlooper of Indianapolis children’s television.
Overheard
“I’m gonna give you three seconds to put that violin down, nice and easy.”
Tonight's Mad Men
“Watching Mad Men is not like watching a television show set in the 1960s; it’s like watching a television show that has been made to appear to be set in the 1960s.”
The picky ones
Jewelers everywhere advertising themselves as “le difficile.”
Chris Matthews disappoints
Every time I think I should be more generous toward Chris Matthews, he disappoints me anew.
Domestic aspirations
A plaintive line from Modern Family.
I envy Mary Richards
“I have been watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Me-TV, and I must confess: I envy Mary Richards.”
Hazel Frederick
Perhaps the most famous television bystander of all.
Art imitates life imitates art (M*A*S*H)
M*A*S*H in east-central Illinois and Infinite Jest.
Television antennas and other relics
Diane Schirf is remembering relics.
They don’t write ’em like this anymore
A bit of over-the-top dialogue from Murder, She Wrote.
Stubbs’s Corollary
“Time is infinite. Television is not. Thus there are reruns.”
Telephone exchange names on screen: Naked City
Looking up the life on the man who's name is on a sign, Loft for Rent.
Telephone exchange names on screen: Naked City
GRamercy 7–9166.
SafeLite, SafeLite, SafeLite
A commercial (or series of commercials) sometimes gets in my head — and my brain begins to dissolve.
Word of the day: omnibus
A word, a television show.
Recently updated
Anthony Bourdain’s hilarious commentary on Food Network stars.