Once upon a time—of all good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement-stonesContinue reading “SCREEN SCROOGES It’s Cold”
Author Archives: uncleblogsy
Roadster Rage
In previous columns derived from postcards in my “Vacation” file, we have considered the early days of the camper and the way cartoonists saw American automobiles moving from squarish to rounded to squarish again. I have a few postcards left in this stack and noticed a separate phenomenon which the cartoonists can help usContinue reading “Roadster Rage”
On the Road Again
When I was poking through my inventory of vacation-related postcards in quest of a subject for this column (and deciding I will not write about vacations as long as I am still wearing my winter coat when I venture outside) I noticed that every cartoonist has a personal way of drawing cars. Cars haveContinue reading “On the Road Again”
SCREEN SCROOGES: Our Hero
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointedContinue reading “SCREEN SCROOGES: Our Hero”
Home Away From Home
I went riffling through my postcards in search of inspiration for today’s column. The first thing that occurred to me was that riffling counts as wear and tear, and probably lowers the value of the postcards involved. Like a lot of people, I understand the risks of my bad habits; it’s just that IContinue reading “Home Away From Home”
Bumbershoots
I regard the coming of spring or fall as similar to getting over a bad cold. There’s no great trumpet-blared moment marking the border between the extreme and the moderate seasons; you just realize one day that you don’t notice those old symptoms any more, and haven’t for a while and, by golly, youContinue reading “Bumbershoots”
Screen Scrooges: To Begin With
STAVE ONE: Marley’s Ghost Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it; and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his handContinue reading “Screen Scrooges: To Begin With”
Dogs Not Doing That
It has been suggested to me that, for a column about postcards which show dogs doing other things than urinating, there were way too many references to dogs peeing. I am sensitive to the comments of my readers, so I feel I need to show you a few of the postcards in my inventoryContinue reading “Dogs Not Doing That”
What Else Dogs Do
Some time ago, we examined postcards featuring dogs and found that the number one thing our canine friends do in comic postcards is, well, number one. The number of postcards involving peeing pekes and poodles was so vast that there was an equal and opposite number of postcards featuring dogs who weren’t urinating justContinue reading “What Else Dogs Do”
SCREEN SCROOGES: Rules of the Game
The original text of “A Christmas Carol has been chopped into 47 sequences, which form the chapters of this book. For each of these, we start with Dickens’s original. (Why 47? Well, I wanted to do an even 50, but the book won’t break down that way. It insists on 47.) It hasContinue reading “SCREEN SCROOGES: Rules of the Game”
Blogsy Babbles 