The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

I’ve been a James Bond fan since I was a kid, when I rented just about every Bond film available (actually my mom rented them, but whatever) and spent countless hours absorbing them.  But for some reason I never got around to tackling any of the source material – Ian Fleming’s Bond short stories and novels.  I guess I never figured there was a reason to dig that deeply into 007, even though I’ve developed a taste for spy novels in my adulthood.

But during a recent trip to a used book store I spotted some older editions of a few Bond novels and decided to take the plunge.  So I’ve finally finished my first Bond book, 1957′s From Russia, With Love.  It’s Fleming’s fifth Bond novel and became, in 1963, the second in the film series.  I think I picked a good one to start with.

Read on Daddy-O…

Since it was written 75 years ago “I Only Have Eyes for You” has been covered by a lot of acts.  But there is only one version that really matters, and it was released by the Flamingos in 1959.  Some words that come to mind with this are ‘beautiful’, ‘haunting’, and ‘classic’.

The tenor lead on the song is Nate Nelson, who joined the group in late 1954 and left in 1961 to form the Modern Flamingos.  He joined the Platters in 1964 and spent pretty much the rest of his career with them until he died of heart disease in 1984 at age 52.

(this is the best-sounding video I could find on YouTube – it’s admittedly not a lot to look at)

There are some names in literature that for some reason intimidate me before I even read a word of their work.  Since I’m not a voracious reader I think I have a tendency to put some authors on a pedastal.  When I do get around to reading something by one of the “greats”, I feel silly for having avoided them for so long.

So it was with science fiction legend Philip K. Dick, whose canon I have finally entered by reading his 1959 novel Time Out of Joint.  Why this one, and not one of his more famous works such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or A Scanner Darkly you might ask?  My wife owns a copy so that’s the one I decided to start with, that’s why.

As I made my way though the story of Ragle Gumm and his struggle to break through what he at first only vaguely feels to be the false suburban reality he is trapped in, I thought to myself, “self, this would make a neat movie.”  Then I remembered, “self, you’ve seen The Truman Show haven’t you?”   It’s the same basic premise really, except that instead of putting the protagonist into a fake world for the amusement of a TV audience, Gumm is placed into an idealized 1950s neighborhood to keep him focused on a very important task – entering and winning a newspaper contest called “Where will the little green man be next?”  It’s sort of a precursor to Where’s Waldo?, but it involves statistics and probability so it’s five times as hard and half as fun.

It’s a fun read, but nothing special really.  Dick keeps the action moving along at a good clip, and drops enough hints along the way to keep things interesting.  After some tentative steps and a few red herrings the central theme of “the world is not what it appears” takes center stage.  Gumm’s efforts to figure out just what is going on around him, and then to escape it, are the most interesting aspects of the novel.

I think what ultimately dulls the impact of this book for me is the big revelation of just why Gumm’s work on the newspaper puzzles is so important that he is forced to live in a fantasy world.  I don’t want to give it away totally, but basically it involves nuclear missiles and lunar colonists.

In the late ’50s these plot devices would’ve been of no small impact, seeing as how instant nuclear annihilation was a very real and commonly perceived danger and the moon was still the subject of much mystery.  But now it all seems rather quaint.  That’s not a knock on Dick mind you – he was merely writing of what he knew, but Time Out of Joint reads more like a time capsule of American phobias now than anything else.

And so we’ve come to the final installment of our second trip through time, via View-Master.  So hop on the tour bus and take a ride to Washington Square…

Located in the famous Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, Washington Square Park has an interesting history.  It was the site of a Native American village until it was taken by force by the Dutch; they in turn gave the land to freed slaves, earning it the nickname “Land of the blacks.” These former slaves owned the land from 1643-1664.

Fast forward to 1797, when the area – still farmland – was purchased for use as a burial ground.  The cemetery once housed there was closed in 1825, but even today there are 20,000 bodies that call the Square home (creepy!).

Fast forward again, to 1889, and that’s when the arch shown in the slide was constructed to commemorate the centennial of George Washington’s election to the presidency.  The original plaster and wood arch became so popular that a longer-lasting marble one was put in its place in 1892.

You can read more about Washington Square at your local library!  Or you can save yourself the hassle and go to Wikipedia instead.

While the signs have changed many times over the years, Times Square is just as identifiable today as it was in 1952.  Of course what seems to have changed is the sheer volume of lights – this image looks positively subdued compared to the garish displays of consumerism seen in the Square today, but I imagine it was still pretty impressive back then.

There’s some businesses I can’t make out, but others are hard to miss.  The ones I can get are:

• Chevrolet (dead center)
• Kinsey Blended Whiskey (under Chevrolet)
• Pepsi-Cola (two below Kinsey)
• Astor Hotel (on the left – it was demolished in 1967)
• Capitol Theatre (bottom left)
• Loew’s State Theatre (right of Chevrolet – the original closed in 1987 and was demolished in 1990)
• Bond (apparel chain, very nice display on the right)

Our journey through Ye Olde New Yorke continues – from the air!  This image, quite obviously taken from a shiny prop plane, is of the departure of the famed cruise ship RMS Queen Elizabeth.  The really cool thing about this photo is the scale.  You can get a good sense of just how huge this ship was when compared to not only the other boats around it, but even the buildings on the shoreline.  Incidentally, the ship held the record as the largest passenger liner ever built for 56 years.

Launched in 1938, the Queen Elizabeth was originally designed for use as a cruise liner but owing to World War II, she was instead fitted as a troop transport.  She avoided destruction at the hands of the Luftwaffe by bypassing Southampton on her maiden voyage and instead sailing directly to New York.

After the war the ship was fitted for her original purpose – a passenger liner.  She served for more than 20 years (along with the Queen Mary, another Cunard White Star liner) as part of a two-ship weekly transatlantic service from Southampton to Cherbourg (France) to New York, until rising fuel and labor costs (not to mention competition from more economical jet liners) made her too expensive to operate.

Cunard retired the Queen Elizabeth in 1968 (the Queen Mary was retired in ’67), and replaced them both with the smaller and less expensive RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2).  A group of businessmen attempted to convert the ship into a tourist attraction and hotel (as had been successfully done with the Queen Mary), but that failed and she was sold again.  A fire and capsizing in 1972 pretty much sealed the ship’s fate, and she was dismantled for scrap a few years later.

Our last trip down View-Master memory lane (1957 New Jersey) was so much fun, I thought we’d hop across the river and do it again.  For this visit we go back another five years, to witness scenes from New York City circa 1952.  I only have four images to present in this series, mainly because landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and the Chrysler Building look pretty much the same now as they did back then, so there’s little point in showing them (unless you really want me to).

Faithful and long-time readers of this site might remember that the George Washington Bridge was featured in the third part of the New Jersey View-Master series.  It’s worth seeing again for two main reasons.  First, dig those sweet old cars.  *drool*

Second, note the lone deck.  The bridge, which opened in 1931, didn’t get the second deck until 1962.