I received a package from Paul Di Filippo today containing a CD of ukulele music. I guess he could hear my caterwauling all the way up in Providence and wants me to stop making noises as if someone or something was being tortured. Sure do appreciate it, Paul.

But that’s not the thing Paul’s trying to tell me that’s sending a message I don’t want to hear.

You see, Paul decorated the envelope with clippings from old magazines and newspapers, the way he always does before popping anything in the mail. The front was a humorous collage, but as for the back, well, that was made up of a single large ad (a version of which seems to have been published in the 1947 Johnson Smith & Co. catalogue) which strongly implied there was something lacking about me.

The ad began:

In your business and social affairs—meeting and dealing with other people—have you the cold, “icicle” type of personality that constantly repels others and keeps them at a distance?

And it only went downhill from there …

(more…)

Arnold Gingrich would like you to subscribe to Esquire, Coronet, and Ken, but only if you’re “a responsible person with a proven credit standing in your community.”

If not … nothing to see here. Move along!

Trying to stay as clutter-free as I can, I picked up a stack of back issues of Brooklyn Magazine, and put them to the “How many of these things do I really need?” test.

First off, let me explain that I mean the Brooklyn Magazine which started publishing in 1978, and as far as I know ended in 1979, not the Brooklyn Magazine that’s currently alive and publishing.

As you can see from the first cover of the earlier Brooklyn Magazine and the most current cover I could find for the more recent incarnation, the new publication is a far classier production than we were ever able to put out.

Saying “we” implies I had a lot to do with the mag, but I didn’t. I wrote a book review for each issue, and did an interview with Fred Pohl, since The Way the Future Was was, after all, about growing up in Brooklyn. But other than that, all I ever had to do with the publishing of the magazine was when I’d pop in to say hello while walking from my apartment off Dahill Road in Bensonhurst to my favorite Chinese restaurant on 65th Street, which is how I discovered the magazine existed in the first place.

Yes, that’s right—as I walked from my apartment to pick up Chinese food one day, I noticed a storefront with the Brooklyn Magazine logo, went in and introduced myself to the editor before the first issue was published, and convinced him that he really needed my book reviews to be a part of it all. (more…)

Mystery Monthly was a topnotch digest that published the likes of Ed McBain, Ron Goulart, and Harlan Ellison. But not me.

The first issue came out in 1976, and the last (or so I believe) in 1977, long before I figured out how to create a short story that would get an editor’s attention.

Or get me anything more than an impersonal rejection slip such as this.

Back on February 14, 1972, I sent two poems—one of which I later published in my high school yearbook—to the Poetry Editor of Ramparts. (Hey, I never said this series was going to be devoted only to genre magazines!) Ramparts was known mostly for its political content, but it published poetry, too, so I foolishly figured I’d give it a shot.

I never had a chance. And if you should ever happen to read those poems (which I hope you never will), you’d agree.

Last night, looking to rest my brain after a heavily wired day, I pulled out my bound volume of the July-October 1898 issues of Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly. About as far as you could get from science fiction, right? You’d think so. But mixed in with articles on “The Irish People at Home” and “The Jews of the United States” was an advertisement in which Jules Verne tells us that “Vin Mariani prolongs life, it is wonderful.”

And the father of science fiction isn’t the only notable to urge us to take a sip of “the popular tonic” that is proclaimed to be “nourishing, strengthening, refreshing.” Also recommending the drink are the man who exonerated Dreyfuss (Emile Zola), the author of The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas), the composer of “Ave Maria” (Charles Gounod), and the designer of the Statue of Liberty (Bartholdi)!

Why, so amazing is this beverage that it’s recommended “For Overworked Men, Delicate Women, Sickly Children.”

Since I’d never heard of this miracle elixir before, I decided to learn a bit about Vin Mariani, which turned out to have been created in 1863 and (as I should have expected) was “made from Bordeaux wine treated with coca leaves.”

In fact, at first it contained 6 milligrams of cocaine per fluid ounce of wine, but when exported to the U.S., that was raised to 7.2 milligrams per ounce.

No wonder it is “recommended by all who try it”!

There’s a full-page ad in the April 1924 issue of The Mentor magazine for Webster’s New International Dictionary, which includes an endorsement from Calvin Coolidge in which he states that the volume “has been the official reference and authority in my office here in Washington during my service as Vice President.” Which means it wasn’t a recent endorsement at the time, since Coolidge had been President since 1923.

The ad also states that thousands of new words had been added since the previous edition, and challenges you to identify 24 of them.

Here are those 24 sample words:

Czecho-Slovak
Murman Coast
daylight saving
junior college
capital ship
duvetyn
mirrorscope
Devil Dog
overhead
hot pursuit
mystery ship
kafirin
Air Council
marquisette
vitamin
Schick test
agrimotor
mudgun
broadcast
Esthonia
aerial cascade
narcism
rotogravure
plasmon

The words or phrases I find most interesting are the ones about new-fangled technologies that are now old, like “rotogravure” and “broadcast.” How amazing once were the inventions we now think ancient!

I recognized 13 of the 24. How about you?

I just discovered this advertisement in the January 1893 issue of The Cosmopolitan, and since an entry of mine from last week caused Patrick Nielsen Hayden to comment on the difference between mimeography and spirit duplication, I thought I’d share it here.

If Wikipedia can be trusted, “Edison did not coin the word ‘mimeograph,’ which was first used by Albert Blake Dick when he licensed Edison’s patents in 1887.” And according to Wired, “The A.B. Dick Co. released the Model 0 Flatbed Duplicator in 1887. It sold for $12 ($270 in today’s money).”

Which means that this ad was published fairly close to the dawn of the technology, only six years after that license was first obtained and the mimeograph was offered commercially to the public.

I can’t tell if the product pictured is the Model 0 Flatbed Duplicator, but regardless of whether it’s the original or a later model, it still led to the launch of science-fiction fandom.

Let a thousand fanzines bloom!

As you can see from this advertisement, now that I’ve tired of taking care of your corpse during my stint as a funeral director, I’ve decided to take care of your health instead.

As this ad from The Cosmopolitan urges, “In the list of good resolutions for ’93″—and that’s 1893—”why not include health betterment?”

I know that you’ve all resolved to have healthier new years, so start using Scott’s Emulsion today!

After all, “its effect in Consumption, Scrofula, and other diseases causing rapid loss of healthy tissue has given Scott’s Emulsion of Cod-Liver Oil with Hypophosphites of Lime and Soda, marked pre-eminence over all other forms of nourishment employed in medical practice.”

Why, it’s “almost as palatable as milk.”

“In many thousands of homes the old year will be tuned out and the new one tuned in over the radio,” according to this ad from the January 1927 issue of Scribner’s.

“They can share in the dance music, the cathedral chimes, and the festivities from far and near; listen to the voices of gifted singers and entertainers and to messages of good cheer and inspiration.”

Perhaps it’s time for you to jump on board this new technology since it’s about to turn 1928 and “the experimental days of radio are now largely over.”

Happy New Year!