Steno-Disc Records Actual Business Letters

Artist unknown, produced by Jerrold B. Thorpe, Keane Records, Hollywood, CA.  (early to mid 1950s).

No. 507 – “Congressional Record”
SIDE A
Track 1: 9 min. at 150 WPM Shorthand Dictation Practice
Track 2: 9 min. at 160 WPM Shorthand Dictation Practice
SIDE B
Track 1: 9 min. at 170 WPM Shorthand Dictation Practice
Track 2: 9 min. at 189 WPM Shorthand Dictation Practice

Back cover is from Steno-Disc No. 513 – Business Letters for Students and Shorthand Brush-Up by Steno-Disc Records, Los Angeles CA.

Bet you want to hear a sample, ya? Steno-Disc No.506 is a good ‘un. On Track 4 a guy quits his job at the Globe Sales Co. and gets hired by a competitor. He doesn’t bother to give his name to his boss, Mr. Carl Fox, but I assume Carl figured it out when the guy didn’t show up for work on Monday.

There’s a three-car pile up on Track 10. Some guy who just quit his job went on a bender and ended up in court.

Some reasonably priced copies of several editions are available at Discogs.
The woman on the covers of the series? Carol Burnett.

Sixth Avenue Between 43rd and 44th Streets, New York, 1948

Todd Webb composed Sixth Avenue Between 43rd and 44th Streets, New York, 1948 from eight separate images. It depicts the west side of Sixth Avenue between West 43rd and 44th Streets, taken on the afternoon of March 24, 1948. Realizing he had to work fast to retain the same light, Webb plotted the shoot beforehand, lining up the edges of each photo with chalk marks on the sidewalk. The image was exhibited at the 1958 Brussels Worlds Fair, and he became internationally recognized as the “historian with a camera.”

“Where am I off to? Gonna check out a record store on 6th. I’ll be back in  a few. Weeks.”

What a treat for the earballs. Imagine what the people of 1948 considered oldies.

[Record store photo found here. Panorama (with caption) and others from here thanks to a Tineye search.]

Natural Sunscreen

Snail Burn

Kinda creeps me out, not so much for the snails, but for everything else – the solar cooker, the scary dude lurking behind the canvas recliner, the ominous black car that the thug drove up in…

Apparently that’s Fin Keheler from Sandy UT, attempting to break the Guinness Book of World Records for keeping the most live snails on his face for ten seconds.  He succeeded with 43 in 2009, breaking the previous record of 36.

[Found here.]

Wave of the future past…

This is sad in a no-respect kinda way.  Looks like a big ol honkin’ no-respectin’ raven head.

This prolly wouldn’t bother me so much if I knew that it was made from 45’s of the Archies, the Ohio Express, or even Tommy Roe. 33’s of the Royal Guardsmen’s greatest hits wouldn’t bother me either.

BUT somewhere in this sculpture might be the last surviving copy of Big Don Petrucci & the Solid Voidz’  “Carbona Mona (got her lights on me).”

What a shame.

[Image from Neatorama.]