18 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. I’m going to go with: “A tall lemonade drink with a mind of its own, and a curvaceous redhead with the same gimmick.”
    But real men didn’t take lemonade with their redheads, not in 1949.
    No, the banter was great, but it was lighthearted and not exactly pithy. Much as I liked it, and I did, it wasn’t really gritty and bitter enough for proper noir. Philip Marlowe doesn’t sing to his girlfriends, you know.
    I have pronounced, Vitruvius. (Don’t yell at me.)

  2. Understood, Black Mamba (although I think that lemonade was intended in the “understated butler code” sense, in this case ~ note that Diamond only requested “something cool”, it was Francis who brought what he announced as the so-called “lemonade”). I think one can tell from the style of music right at the opening that this one is more light-hearted than it is hard-boiled. That’s to be expected, I think, because the historic evidence shows that tonight’s DJ doesn’t actually do noir (certainly that Jeff Regan show can’t count as noir). He tends to like stuff like:

    Diamond: This hat; I believe it's his.
Wife:    What's that stain on it?
Diamond: Blood. Does your husband bleed a lot?
Wife:    Not recently, we've been getting along.

    And while Diamond mercilessly out-wits the light-in-his-loafers (not that there’s anything wrong with that) hat salesman, I think that we must acknowledge, Black Mamba, that said salesman’s remark to Diamond to the effect that “I suppose you wear a shoulder holster too, or is that bulge your tailor’s fault” was a brilliant bit of camp. Without Cairo, the Maltese Falcon wouldn’t be the same đŸ˜‰

  4. I guess I think of hardboiled as a sub-genre of noir, but I’m sure these things are all disputable (I recently read someone describing “The Night of the Hunter” as noir, well I declare…)
    Anyway, I’m sleepy, g’night.
    (Joel Cairo clearly had the hots for Mary Astor, weren’t you paying attention?)

  5. I think that Diamond’s references to “greek” & “gardenias” (ca. 10:00) were
    pretty clear direct references into the text of Hammett’s Cairo, Black Mamba.

  10. OK. OK. The Opposition and Media’s being out of touch with the ROC is hardly a Reader Tip, as we’ve all known this for years.
    But, L. Ian MacDonald’s article has today’s date on it. Maybe to some it’s news …

  12. Lorrie Goldstein on Marci McDonald’s hysterical screed, “The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada,” in which he points out that it’s Christian pastors, more often than not, who are “trying to undo decades of damage [in troubled communities] caused by secular, liberal, social engineers, who decades ago, thought just like they do today”:
    http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/lorrie_goldstein/2010/05/14/13955851.html

  14. Thanks Vitruvius. The original link was down, but I note a subsequent one works.
    We saw some of that in Mike Harris, and the liberals in this province eviscerated him for it. Now we have mcguinty, who is little more than a shill for the teachers and public sector unions, and this province is sliding downhill fast.
    I’d love to see a Chris Christie emerge here, but I don’t think the people of this country have the backbone for it; we’re too soft and cuddled by the State to want to take collective responsibility for ourselves and make a few hard choices. Certainly Ontario seems beyond redemption; and I have doubts about the rest of socialist canada, too.
    mhb

  16. Vitruvius and mhb, thanks for providing the links to Governor Christie’s exchange. This was a refreshing retort to the progressive media types.
    I have to echo mhb’s wish for a Chris Christie here and also his fears of what the chances are.

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