History of advertising, part one

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Eiffel Tower was lit up with a large sign for French automaker Citroen.  (See photo at left).  

Abandoned books/Books about hotels

I recently stopped reading Arthur Hailey's (above, holding a copy of a different one of his books) novel Hotel.  I managed to read more than sixty pages of this novel, which is set in New Orleans in the 1960s and concerns a once proud hotel that has fallen on hard times.  Hailey also wrote such classics as Airport, which spawned a series of popular movies.  Abandoning this book made me remember other books that I actually did finish and that were mostly or partially about hotels--

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

Tintin in the New World by Frederic Tuten

I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal

The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

A Riot of Our Own- Night and Day with the Clash  by Johnny Green and Garry Barker

The World of Suzie Wong by Richard Mason

Times Beach, Missouri

In the early 1980s, the town of Times Beach, MO (southwest of St. Louis) had to be evacuated due to dioxin contamination and also the flooding of the Meramec River. For years the town had contracted with a businessman named Russell Bliss to spray waste oil on the town's dirt roads to keep the dust down. Unfortunately, Bliss sprayed oil that was contaminated with very high levels of dioxin, the chemical used in the military defoliant Agent Orange. Around the time the chemical contamination was discovered, the town was almost completely flooded, so it was decided to permanently evacuate. Today the area is a state park.

What I have been reading lately #21

I just finished reading P.D. James' novel The Children of Men.  It was like the recent movie in many ways (the world is slowly coming to an end because no one can have babies anymore, England is a police-state, etc.).  It was also different from the movie in many ways (really too many to mention).  I found the ending of the book to be creepy (in a good way, though).

The copy I read did not have the same cover as the edition I posted here.  I like the above-cover much better.  The version I read was a movie tie-in edition and had a picture of Clive Owen looking through a broken window.

Picture of the Day

What I have been reading lately #20

I have just finished reading Andrew Graham-Yooll's memoir A State of Fear: Memories of Argentina's Nightmare.  Graham-Yooll is an Argentinian of English descent who worked for many years as a reporter at the Buenos Aires Herald.  During the "dirty war" (the time during the late 1970s and early 1980s when the military dictatorship kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and disappeared tens of thousands of left-wing activists and other opponents), Graham-Yooll reported on events for his paper.  Eventually he had to go into exile in England.  This book is his story.  It didn't take me long to read, but I'll probably be thinking about it for a while.

Abandoned Books and/or Movies #1

Below is a list of movies and/or books that I have given up on/walked out on/refused to finish lately.

Movies:

1. Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal.  I think was about an all-Indian football (soccer) team in London trying to keep from going under.  I also think it was a musical.  I made it through about an hour before turning off the DVD player.

2. Gomorrah.  A gritty, realistic look at modern-day gangsters in Naples, Italy.  It was really quite boring, actually.  I walked out of the theater after about thirty minutes.  This movie got rave reviews, but not from me.

3. Shanghai Knights.  Having sat through Shanghai Noon and The Big Bounce, I thought I could watch anything with Owen Wilson in it.  This movie proves me wrong.

Books:

1.  The Dream of Heroes by Adolfo Bioy Casares.  I've read this at least two or three times before, and it's great, but I couldn't quite manage another attempt.  It's an Argentinian novel set in the 1920s about a young man who has a mysterious vision on the third night of carnival in 1927 and sets out to discover the vision's meaning.  I highly recommend this book.