On Retainer
Jan. 3rd, 2008 06:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogSixteen years ago, this very hour, I held my daughter for the first time. Moments later, as I cradled her gently, I got her to quiet down, knowing even then it would probably be the last time I'd ever shut her up- or want to.
I wished her a happy birthday this year with that most special of early-morning presents: returning her orthodontic retainer to her before it became a very expensive dog treat. She's usually pretty good about putting it away in the mornings, but I do have to provide this valet-straightening service once in awhile. This morning, though, I was reminded of a scene from All in the Family, where the subject of smiles once came up. It's an Archie soliloquy, and it went something like this:
(to his wife)
When I see you smile, I think of the girl that I fell in love with and married.
(to his daughter)
And when I see you smile, I think of all that hard work it took to get you those braces that made your teeth so pretty and straight.
(slow pan over to Meathead, who manages a brief look of anticipation)
As for you, I think your underwear's too tight.
I was just starting junior high when that show became a hit, and somewhere along the line I acquired a pulp paperback which included some of Archie's jokes and diatribes. It's long gone from my collection, but I did find a $5 copy on Amazon just now. They must have been unsure about who to give author credit to (Carroll O'Connor? Norman Lear? Archie himself?), so they settled on John Rich, whose name I remember from the closing credits of the series. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't do any better of a job of indexing things than anyone else these days, so the writing credit comes out as
----
One of the few other references to this compendium online was in this very nice essay from the year 2000, which puts mass-market books like The Sayings of Chairman Archie under the appropriate heading of "ephemera." It then goes on to remind us of what we're missing by casting off ephemeral writings in the name of efficiency or technology. Sure, we can digitize our books and magazine articles (and even, as I've already observed here, our catalogs), but we lose so much context in the process. We lose the art, and the ads, and the diddly-bits that surround the Lead Articles, and 100 years from now, our descendants will be going, "Who were these people? What did they wear? How did they live?"
Maybe Emily will even be among them in 2108. She can at least be certain, though, that long before then she'll have gotten ME to shut up.
I wished her a happy birthday this year with that most special of early-morning presents: returning her orthodontic retainer to her before it became a very expensive dog treat. She's usually pretty good about putting it away in the mornings, but I do have to provide this valet-straightening service once in awhile. This morning, though, I was reminded of a scene from All in the Family, where the subject of smiles once came up. It's an Archie soliloquy, and it went something like this:
(to his wife)
When I see you smile, I think of the girl that I fell in love with and married.
(to his daughter)
And when I see you smile, I think of all that hard work it took to get you those braces that made your teeth so pretty and straight.
(slow pan over to Meathead, who manages a brief look of anticipation)
As for you, I think your underwear's too tight.
I was just starting junior high when that show became a hit, and somewhere along the line I acquired a pulp paperback which included some of Archie's jokes and diatribes. It's long gone from my collection, but I did find a $5 copy on Amazon just now. They must have been unsure about who to give author credit to (Carroll O'Connor? Norman Lear? Archie himself?), so they settled on John Rich, whose name I remember from the closing credits of the series. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't do any better of a job of indexing things than anyone else these days, so the writing credit comes out as
The Wit and Wisdom of Archie Bunker (Paperback)
by Rich John Editor (Author)----
One of the few other references to this compendium online was in this very nice essay from the year 2000, which puts mass-market books like The Sayings of Chairman Archie under the appropriate heading of "ephemera." It then goes on to remind us of what we're missing by casting off ephemeral writings in the name of efficiency or technology. Sure, we can digitize our books and magazine articles (and even, as I've already observed here, our catalogs), but we lose so much context in the process. We lose the art, and the ads, and the diddly-bits that surround the Lead Articles, and 100 years from now, our descendants will be going, "Who were these people? What did they wear? How did they live?"
Maybe Emily will even be among them in 2108. She can at least be certain, though, that long before then she'll have gotten ME to shut up.
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Date: 2008-01-03 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 03:36 am (UTC)