Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Insanely Barking Fireman

Yesterday I was going to "post" some more about the episode of the 70s trucker drama MOVIN' ON that I watched at five o'clock in the morning, much to your delight, no doubt. I was going to write about the scene in which Sonny, the character played by Claude Akins, improbably rallies a group of uniformed cops and firemen who happened to be gathered in a historic firehouse, and the extras - real cops and firemen - flatly intone their scripted one-line responses until one fireman starts barking insanely like a dog, which Claude Akins bears with good humor. I was really going to hand it to the editor, who left in that part at the tail end of the scene, and to the insanely barking fireman whose friends put him up to it and who really followed through, though I was also sad that they didn't push it just a little, right over the border into David Lynch territory. We were almost there! But then while I was typing I realized that maybe it wasn't an insanely barking fireman, maybe it was the firehouse dog, wouldn't that make more sense? Surely such a scene would have included a firehouse dog. And it was five in the morning and I was watching it in a stupor and maybe I imagined the insanely barking fireman, and I was real disappointed and started questioning reality. Then McNeil sent me this "link" to a "blog" where the guy "posts" pictures of malls and department stores and related ephemera. McNeil was amazed at the enthusiasm (and, I would add, specificity) of the comments. (Here's a commenter who notes with wonder, "Lenox Square is the only enclosed mall I've visited in which the main entrance continues directly onto the main mall corridor.") The above photo of a Christmas display comes from the mall "blog," LiveMalls. Check it out!