Like a Candle in the Windy City: Marilyn Hits the Road

WARNING:  Tacky Camera Angles Ahead

 

Marilyn Monroe was loaded on two trailers said goodbye to Chicago on May 8th.  These photos were taken on May 7th as she was being disassembled.

Once again, insomnia and a love of street photography got me out of my hotel late last Monday evening.  I tend to wander aimlessly with a camera in hand.  Chicago is a great people watching town and there is always something interesting going on.  On this particular evening, that something was the sculpture Forever Marilyn being taken apart and readied for shipment to warmer climes.

But first, I need to provide a defense of tastelessness.  I like to think of the camera as a neutral party.  It will always seek drama and interesting light.  A misty night in Chicago with the Wrigley Building bathed in floodlights provides more drama than a poor camera can tolerate.  The view from the other direction was comparatively boring.

You were warned about the tacky/tasteless camera angles.  Turn back before it is too late!

I love the Wrigley Building.  My employer provided the restoration products for it and many of the other landmark buildings in downtown.  Bear in mind that tourists have been basking in the 26' Marilyn's glory for almost a year.

The specter of a 26' Marylin looming over Pioneer Court was controversial to say the least.  It wasn't around long enough to become an object of adoration.  It did draw a number of protests and attention from the teeming masses of tourists.  The Chicago Sun-Times produced a celebratory editorial entitled "Goodbye and Good Riddance, Norma Jean."

This statue represents a titillating and iconic scene from the 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch.  Today we would find much worse on network TV.  It's the scale and placement that draws attention.

As public art, it would be hard to argue that the entire installation wasn't a bit tasteless.  It was kitchy and over-the-top and probably would look more at home in Vegas.  Actually, Palm Springs is a sensible home.  It is warm, optimistic and smells vaguely of Hollywood.  According to local news reports, Marilyn Forever arrived in Palm Springs on May 14th.

I would not have guessed that Marilyn was assembled onsite.  It makes sense.  How could you get this under an overpass in one piece?  Factoid:  this sculpture weighed in at 34,000 pounds!

And we have separation!

Not surprisingly, the crew was very professional and everything was planned out ahead of time.  Seeing Marylin split in half triggered some science fiction memories.  Yeah, like the saucer separation of the Enterprise D!  (Just don't let Troi do the driving.)

The Marilyn Separation continues.

The Marilyn Separation also reminded me of another iconic Star Trek scene.

I didn't want to go too heavy on the photos or I would have added images of one of the crew climbing in and out of the lower section.  Tasteless is one thing; tasteless and disturbing is quite another.

By now you might have surmised that more than one camera was involved.  For walking around at night, I fit the Sony NEX 3 with an Olympus PEN F 38mm f1.8.  I pressed the iPhone into service for wider angles.

Marilyn always did love the bright lights.  Goodbye and enjoy your new desert home!

I walked by Pioneer Court last Friday before heading to the airport.  It looks barren without Marilyn, but I'm sure Chicago has other mass installations in store.

Im*PEN*ding Sense of Doom

This figure is done in an expressive and heroic Deco style, yet wears flares.  Nice.

This paper was a thrift shop find.  It's meant for inkjet printing.

Imagine hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pens and mechanical pencils in one place.  Pen Place also stocks lots of ink and doesn't hesitate to spread small samples for the customers.

Why, oh why did they have to tempt me with carbon fiber?

This is an over the top combination.  More carbon fiber and stainless steel... and I even like the orange sherbet parts.  It may or may not write well.  I could say the same thing about Margo, the gold QDL.  There are times where performance just doesn't matter that much.

Temptation, you are a cruel and horrible mistress.  As it turns out, these tarts run in the $300-600 range.  I guess I am not the only person with extreme tastes.

 And here we have MEK's TWSBI Diamond 540 and my TWSBI Montesa.  The latter is referred to as the "Buy One Get One Free Road to Ruin".  TWSBI recently ran a nice Facebook offer as a means to get rid of old inventory.  I do like this pen.  The refill mechanism on the 540 is sublime.

The temporary display stand is an especially tasty subject for a future post.

A Preview of Coming Attractions

So cryptic this photo is.  Mmmm...  Something to do with Richard Polt's flames it might have.  You seek Godzilla.  Yes.  Godzilla - a powerful copy editor is he!

Mwa, ha, ha.

What could this mad Blogger be thinking?

Type Specimen Book - Western Typesetting

I love this cover graphic.  As found on the shelf, the book has no words or graphics on the spine.  It's just pure black.

Gingercat and I stopped by our favorite used bookstore, Prosperos, and found this great Type Specimen Book.  It was published by the Western Typesetting Company.  There is no copyright or other date information and the price lists are missing from the inside cover sleeve.  The one clue to the date is a 6 digit alphanumeric telephone number that would have been phased out in the 1950s.

The address is in what is now the Quality Hill neighborhood in downtown Kansas City.

 A Google search turns up nothing other than the apparent fact that I got a really good deal on this book.  Any information about the book or the manufacturer would be appreciated.

I also own an American Type Founders specimen book from the 1940s.  I actually prefer the layout and organization of the Western book.

The cowboy theme continues throughout the book.  It's pretty fun! I've posted a few samples.  The Script selection is amazing.

I want the Italic Swash type on a typewriter.

One of gingercat's friends was very happy to receive s sample of this typeface.

I am still a little obsessed with the blackletter fonts.

The reliable old Epson 3170 scanner is happy to be on the job.  I rescanned the cover and I can tell you that is is a vast improvement over the combination HP scan/print thing that shall not be named.  The next scans are also from the Epson.

I would be remiss in not showing the typewriter simulation samples from this book.

Thanks for reading.  Until next time, yee, haw, pardner!

Royal Hartford Typewriter Factory Photo Resurection

I finally pulled the photo of the Royal Typewriter factory final adjustment room out of its frame and gave it a proper scan.  The driver software for the Epson 3170 has some nice restoration tools built in.  This is a 16-bit grey scale scan with a touch of unsharp mask.  The built in color restoration function did the rest.

The original post with additional information about the factory and the photographed and unadjusted image is at http://vintagetechobsessions.blogspot.com/2012/04/royal-hartford-adjustment-department.html

If you missed it the first time around, this will give you a good idea of how well this print has weathered the last 90+ years.

Photographed in the frame.  How's that for digital magic?

I've added a "Download Zone" to my Fotki site.  Feel free to grab a digital copy at
http://public.fotki.com/coyotesareus/download-zone/technology/

The image comes in file sizes ranging from relatively easy to download to high resolution.  The latter should blow up nicely to just about any size you want.  I'm thinking this would look good on Adorama's black and white paper at poster size.

Lucky me:  Kansas City hosts one of 13 National Archives for Federal archival records.  This Saturday, they are putting on a full day "Preservation Matters" workshop on archival and preservation techniques for photographs, ephemera and household heirlooms.  I'll probably find out that I have done everything wrong, but I am still looking forward to learning more.

The Kingdom of Wacky and Wonderful Illustration

At a recent antique show, I scored a slightly beat up and thoroughly awesome copy of The Kingdom of Nature; An Illustrated History of the Animal World by Mrs. Frank Leslie and copyrighted in 1888.  The preface advertises a content of almost 1,000 illustrations.  Many of them are just amazing in a distinctly late 19th century way.  Here are a few samples to start with.  A series will follow here and on my secondary blog, http://digitalmemoryhole.blogspot.com/

The price for this gem?  $5.00.  One of the high points of living in the dawn of digital books is that the real ones are being dumped on the cheap.  The sad part is that many will never find a home and will end up in a landfill somewhere.  It appears that this book has not been digitized.  I hope you enjoy the images here and to follow.

The Oliver 9 decided to contribute a short review seen further below.

Times were tough in the "Predamite Period" described at the beginning of the book.

The Mighty Oliver 9 is back!  With assistance from the faithful gingercat.  He gets grumpy without exercise.

Fortunately, evolution kicked in.  I wonder if he knew how to use a typewriter?

It's all good until he runs out of femurs for his feline friend.

This calligraphic type style should be mandated by law.

This is a hefty and substantial tome.  Cover to cover, it is pushing 2 inches thick with 440 pages of slight puffery that is typical of the era.  I have read far worse in turn of the last century technology history reviews.  If the title page is any indication, this is probably the best book ever written!  Or something like that.

Yep, best book ever!

Happy Birthday William Shakespeare!

Today is the observed 448th birthday of the Bard.  To celebrate, I scanned portions of a May, 1964 National Geographic article penned by the then director of the Folger Library in Washington, D.C.  In classic National Geographic fashion, the magazine included an amazing map which could not be scanned as a whole.  I hope you enjoy some of the details.

I love this rendition of Puck.

There be monsters here.  This reminds me of the old flat Earth maps that assumed the presence of huge and menacing sea creatures lurking the depths near the edge of the world.

Only a nerd would be excited at finding a vintage magazine featuring Shakespeare's Britain.

Artist's rendition of the Globe.

Of course, there are always the haters that say Shakespeare didn't write the collected works of Shakespeare.  Some say he didn't even exist.  Some point to his signature as being a sign of illiteracy.  I guess that means the majority of doctors can't actually read.  I could say the same for most of my peers in the regulatory compliance world.  My signature is beyond illegible.

I have something special for the Shakespeare deniers: a reminder that on this blog he has some muscle behind him.

As an aside, I am becoming reacquainted with an old friend after the utter failure of a new one.  I've owned an Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner for a number of years.  It is a single purpose device with a more complicated interface than most of the family prefers.  It had been supplanted by an all-in-one scanner/printer combination, a HP Deskjet 4480.  The latter is now declared the worst recent piece of technology I have owned other than Windows Vista.  It won't recognize refill cartridges.  Expensive high capacity cartridges work for a dozen or so pages and then are reported as empty or start overprinting lines.  Worse yet, when there is a cartridge problem, the scanner also stops working.

In contrast, the old Epson still works perfectly and the company has supplied updated drivers for Windows 7.  Bear in mind that this scanner dates to Windows XP.  Kudos to Epson!  I wish I could say the same for Adobe's Lightroom (they never updated RAW profiles for 1.0 and force users to buy new software) and the ColorVision Syder2express (no software updates since Vista).   Please bear with me while I get used to the controls and optimize scan file sizes.

For the HP Deskjet 4480, I present an Epic Fail award photo.  I will never buy another new HP printer, even if it is tossed in free with a computer package.

Vultures await the carcass of the HP 4480.  Long may it rot.